Christopher Lisotta

Gay Marriage Squabble

About 200 people showed up at the corner of San Vicente and Santa Monica boulevards in West Hollywood, more than marriage-equality rally organizers expected, considering that the fairly impromptu protest was competing with demonstrations in Santa Monica directed at a visiting George W. Bush. The West Hollywood rally was called......

A Think Tank for Gays

Chuck Williams is a man who is among the most successful of his generation. Smart and industrious, he made a name for himself in the world of business without his sexuality getting in the way. “I certainly got involved in all kinds of issues that relate to gay rights, but......

So Goes the Gay Nation

After a decade of legal fights and painful setbacks, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) political movement won something few thought could be accomplished so soon — legal marriage for same-sex couples. True, it was in Massachusetts, the bluest of the blue states, but hundreds of Massachusetts same-sex couples have......

No Wedding Bells in WeHo

For gay and lesbian couples who have been waiting forever for the right to legally marry, the video clips of happy queer newlyweds bounding out of San Francisco City Hall with marriage licenses have been quite a sight. If San Francisco can do it, many Southern California gays and lesbians......

Grant Turck, The Missionary

Photo by Larry Hirshowitz Grant Turck doesn’t look like one to raise a ruckus, with his dress shirt tucked into neat blue jeans and his unfailingly polite demeanor. But the Pepperdine sophomore has been shaking up the status quo at his conservative Christian university (Ken Starr is again on the......

Our Big Fat Gay Year

Considering the conservative pall hanging over the country, it’s amazing how 2003 became the most definitive year in terms of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender culture in over a decade. Winnie Stachelberg, of the advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, marveled at all of the unexpected landmark moments by summing them......
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Founding Fathers and Renters

If you drive west along Santa Monica Boulevard from Hollywood and cross La Brea, you can sense your arrival in West Hollywood. Besides the bright-blue street signs, the city got the power company to bury lines underground and pull out the wooden electric poles that dominate the boulevard to the......

Queers in the Military

By the end of today, two or three members of the U.S. military will be tossed out for being gay. It’s been like that virtually every day since November 30, 1993, when President Clinton signed the law that sought to formalize the military’s policy of throwing out anybody who deigned......
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Invisible Man

Photo courtesy of the Bayard Rustin Estate It’s a wonder that Bayard Rustin is not better remembered. The architect of arguably the greatest civil rights event of the 20th century, the 1963 march on Washington, Rustin is credited with cementing Gandhi’s nonviolence beliefs in the African-American struggle for equality. His......

It’s About More Than Sodomy

When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he supported the state’s anti-sodomy laws. He called them a “symbolic gesture of traditional values,” suggesting that they didn’t really harm anyone while encouraging pleasant things like church weddings and babies born in wedlock. This was compassionate conservatism, remember? But substitute another......