CommuniKate

Emceeing the Gill Foundation’s OutGiving Conference in Lake Las Vegas was like being in a three-day graduate seminar on LGBT philanthropy. We heard great talks by the Gill’s executive director Tim Sweeney and its founder Tim Gill and the ACLU’s Antony Romero. We heard a great panel with our allies: Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richard, NAACP’s Benjamin Jealous, AARP’s Dr. E. Percil Stanford and the NEA’s John Stocks. We also heard from LGBT funders and grantees from the local community center level to the state, national and international level.

Really tactical, brilliant and adorable gay wonks presented the latest statistics about the LGBT community so funders could make informed choices for their giving. It totally schwinged my inner wonk. Like everyone else, LGBT philanthropists’ portfolios are down, but their continuing commitment to funding is not. It was an honor to be with them as they discussed new collaborative investment strategies for the biggest philanthropic impact. It was an exhilarating conference.

Next it was off to give a talk at UPenn’s Diversity Week. UPenn has one of the oldest LGBT centers in the country. I think it might have been started by Ben Franklin’s lesbian niece, but don’t quote me. The student leaders were completely take charge and inspiring. They had originally asked for a 90-minute show, but then requested a 45-minute performance and a 40-minute lecture with a Q&A. Since I often can’t make the distinction between serious and comic, the audience opted for the combo platter so it was a bit of LGBT history, my personal history, with Q&A aka heckling. It was great fun.

Then I rented a car and drove out to Adelphi University on Long Island to do a lecture. Have I told you how much I love GPS? It was Women’s Recognition Week and Adelphi’s Student Activities had planned lots of events: a women’s self-defense class, a spa day [unfortunately not the day I was there] and a Women’s Recognition dinner honoring women students, administrators and faculty for their contribution to campus life. My talk was about using comedy as a force for social change. After my remarks the students brought me up to speed about what and who they think is funny. I took notes! Who knew from Robot Chickens?

Through no fault of my own, my personal performance portfolio is highly diversified – lecture, stand-up, writing, guest TV appearances, vlogging and blogging. It feels as if I did a little of each in the last seven days, ending with emceeing the 20^th Annual GLAAD Media Awards here in New York. It was tres glam as always and a pleasure to see old pals Judith Light, David Mixner and GLAAD’s executive director Neil Guiliano. The dinner is a huge endeavor and it would not be possible without the huge number of wonderful volunteers that are inspired by the work the organization does to celebrate the year’s positive media portrayals of our LGBT community. The free vodka and the after-party help too.

And not for nuthin’ I just got a copy of my new book, I Told You So, hot off the Beacon press. The book and the audio CD read by moi will be available soon. It looks beautiful though my girlfriend thinks the cover is too pink for me. I tell her it’s pink with butch rising.

In a quiet ceremony held earlier this month, I celebrated my twenty-eighth year of performing. Please, no gifts.

On the night of March 21, 1981, on a challenge from my best friend, I did my first show in my hometown Syracuse, New York at a woman’s club called Ms. Adventure. When my friend, Rita, started heckling me about five minutes in, I stopped. “Rita, what are you doing?” She was older, a photographer, always in black turtlenecks because she fancied herself a beatnik. “It’s comedy; we’re supposed to heckle.” Though I was three semesters retired from my teaching gig, I still had my study hall monitor mojo and shut her down expertly. “Cut it out.” She slumped.

Many years and dry heaves later, I marvel at my career. It certainly was not one of the options on the jobs checklist on sixth grade career day. Other: lesbian comic.

The same year I began my career, Pope John Paul and President Ronald Reagan began their careers. Together they were Forgive and Forget. It was also the year that gay men started dying from AIDS. Then it was called “the gay cancer”. Those three events and the thematic variations on them have been intertwined touchstones in my routines for 28 years.

Warm and fuzzy histories of the People’s Pope belie the fact that he championed heterosexual supremacy and the subjugation of women, pedophilia cover-ups, and the end of liberation theology. Though compared to his successor, John Paul seems a benign Mr. Magoo, his tenure began a long conservative retrenchment in communion with other right wing religious movements.

Warm and fuzzy histories about the Great Communicator belie the fact that President Reagan championed deregulation of markets, disregard for minority rights and the anti-government mantra that led years later to Bush at president-select, Brownie at FEMA and Gonzalez at Justice. As the health epidemic raged, Reagan never uttered the word AIDS in his eight years in office. It was under Reagan, that the right-wing religionistas got a seat at the table and said grace.

There are no warm and fuzzy stories about the appalling health crisis that was and still is AIDS. As AIDS rages in poor communities and especially among women worldwide it is cold comfort to know that in the early 80s it forced gay men and lesbians to work together out in the open on protests, community organizing and public education about our LGBT community. Fighting AIDS did unify and galvanize our LGBT movement but I would rather have my friends back and be able to grow old with them.

We are gradually emerging from the PTSD of being in an abusive relationship for the last eight years. Bush was a bully; he was on the crack of Iraq; he and his B&E thug pals terrorized the neighborhood especially the gay kids; he ran up the credit cards; he left the place in a shambles; he was always at the gym, no one could understand why we stayed with him.

Hopefully that was the last blast of a cycle begun almost thirty years ago. Despite obstacles aplenty, we LGBT people have made dramatic changes in the forty years since Stonewall. I look forward to working more years. I plan to chronicle the passage of a trans-inclusive ENDA, the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, full federal marriage equality, safe schools for LGBT youth, full health care for elder gays, and freedom from religious intolerance.

Happy Anniversary to me! In lieu of gifts, send money to your favorite LGBT group or your local food pantry.

Nothing like Boston’s Women’s Fenway dinner to kick the end-of-winter-blues to the curb. The yearly dinner to raise money for Fenway Community Health is a pleasure to attend and tons of fun to emcee. This year’s honorary chair Katherine Patrick was in attendance with her mom and dad, Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts. Mayor Tom Menino, a long and steadfast LGBT ally asked me during his remarks that I would make fun of now, without George Bush. He winced slightly when I smiled sweetly and said, “I’ll always have the pope.”

The Susan Love Award, celebrating a woman who has made a significant contribution to the field of health in the women’s community was given to Lily Tomlin. This year pioneering breast cancer activist Susan Love [www.armyofwomen.org] came to the dinner to give her award to Lily. Lily was humble and in a fundraising feisty mood. That’s how it came about that Lily, as Ernestine from the phone company, and I, as Lily’s older butch friend Vito came to auction ourselves off as guest lunch companions in Provincetown for some lucky lesbians. I’ll do anything to raise money for the Fenway – even drag king.

Through some well-placed kisses, we got 102 pledges of $1,500 dollars each to sponsor a seat in the new theater at the Fenway that is looking to officially open its new state of the art doors at the end of March 2009. A dream come true.

After entirely too much late night fun, I caught an early morning flight to Rochester on Sunday. Make that flights. It was like the old Maine codger, “Come to think of it, you cain’t get thar from here.” I flew from Boston to JFK then Bismarck ND. I don’t think I would have minded the travel so much except that every airport waiting area had that damnable Dick Cheney all rosy and rested doing an hour long interview with John King on CNN. Why is he not in jail with Bernie Madoff? Put them both in the same solitary cell.

I finally made it to Rochester for an afternoon show sponsored by the Rochester Friends of Good government. The performance was held in conjunction with their annual Health Fair and I do congratulate my fellow upstaters for all their hard work. And I thank all who attended on one of those rare sunny, warmish, hopeful upstate spring afternoons. It was such a healthy weekend.

I’m off to get ready for the OutGiving Conference north of Las Vegas, Nevada, where they have the real casinos, not like the ones on Wall Street.