Sometimes the most simple pieces of art end up being the most provocative. Take for instance this post from Box Turtle Bulletin, which tells the story of a student artist at Brigham Young University who constructed an installation that features photos of a gay student and another student who is straight but supportive. The pictures do not identify who is gay or straight. Not exactly the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, right? Well think again. BYU put the kibosh on the installation. BYU also didn’t bother to tell the artist. All I can envision is a BYU administrator with his eyes tightly closed shut murmuring to himself, “I can’t see you, I can’t see you!”
Archive for December 8th, 2008
Apparently Prop 8 booster and LA County Republican Chair Linda Boyd found that out the hard way this past weekend, when a coalition of Ron Paul supporters and GOP gays pissed about Boyd’s support for Prop 8 get her ass ousted from her position.
Boi from Troi provides all the details and includes a hilarious screed from Boyd’s husband, who is none too pleased with the “flotsam and jetsam” who had the audacity to show up and vote his wife out of her position. Boi from Troi isn’t all that sympathetic:
Enjoy the wilderness, Linda Boyd, and take solace that you are not alone in paying the price for supporting discrimination. The rest of us will enjoy ourschadenfreude.
Today I received an email from associate publisher and ad manager Greg Inzunza at Clout Magazine, a freebee glossy LGBT lifestyle mag that the publishers of the Long Beach Press-Telegram started a about a year ago. The whole idea of Clout was a magazine that built its ad base around non-sexual advertising and focused on travel, local Southern California personalities, home design and shopping–I wrote a pretty long piece for the first issue on the Long Beach Grunions, an LGBT swim team. That kind of ad strategy is not an easy world to live in, especially in the gay market, but it is possible (think the NYC-based MetroSource, another mag I occasionally contribute to).
Well, today the hammer fell. Here ’s what Inzunza said in his email:
In each issue we presented homes where couples lived and loved. We can proudly say that our advertising revenue doubled when the State Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in May this year. However, when Proposition 8 passed in the November 4 election, we saw revenue basically drop dramatically.
Look, there’s plenty wrong with the economic fundamentals of the publishing business–just ask The Tribune Company, The New York Times Co. and even Clout’s parent company LANG–so maybe Prop 8 is a convenient excuse to hide behind instead of saying the Clout model was never viable, particularly in a depressed ad market. But research has been done (here, for instance) showing same-sex marriage boosts the economy, so taking it away could have an opposite effect.
Inzunza sure thinks so. I talked to Greg tonight about the numbers, and he said he could pinpoint down to the day the California Supreme Court ruled on same-sex marriage by
looking at his sales charts. Businesses that had never thought of advertising in gay pubs were suddenly interested, so much so that LANG incorporated same-sex wedding advertiser guides in all its publications, he explained.
After the ballot initiative campaign started, that impacted ad sales to the tune of $15,000. And once Prop 8 passed, that was it. “It basically felt like they were trying to stay away from us,” he said. “With no legal tie-in, why should they promote it?”
To the most cynical supporters of Prop 8, this is a win-win. Marriage’s big threat to the anti-gay voices behind Yes 0n 8 was its ability to legitimize and visualize healthy, rather ordinary same-sex couples. Killing LGBT publications is another step in making people feel invisible.
According to The NY Daily News blog The Daily Politics, less likely to happen, despite a Democratic takeover of the State Senate:
It now appears fairly certain that legislation to legalize gay marriage is on indefinite hold in the Senate as the result of the deal brokered by Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Malcolm Smith and the Gang of Three.
A source close to the gang said the plan is to have the same-sex marriage bill introduced, determined to have fiscal implications (although I’m not exactly certain what those might be) and referred to the Finance Committee, which, assuming the agreement between the gang and Smith sticks, will be headed by Sen. Carl Kruger, who could stop the measure in its tracks.
08
Dec
08
el coyote manager steps down
Check out the story I wrote for Frontiers Newsmagazine’s web site about Marjorie Christoffersen, the embattled manager at El Coyote. She will no longer serve as a manager and is stepping down from El Coyote’s board.
