Category: Memphis Gaydar

Backstreet owner Shane Trice was set to appear in Environmental Court Friday morning, but the case has been reset until September 25th. The club will remain closed until then.

The city’s largest gay dance club was raided and temporarily closed last week as a public nuisance, the result of a months-long undercover police operation. Trice was arrested and charged with aggravated gambling promotion, storage of liquor for sale, possession of gambling device, and unlawful sale of alcohol.

According to Backstreet’s e-mail newsletter sent out on Thursday, patrons are encouraged to hang out at Metro (1349 Autumn) on Friday night and Mary’s (405 N. Cleveland) on Saturday night.

Outflix, the city’s annual gay film festival, opens Friday night at Malco’s Ridgeway Four Theater and runs through Thursday, Sept. 17th. Eighteen films — a mix of fictional feature films, shorts, and documentaries — will screen over the course of the festival.

On Friday, Outflix opens with The Big Gay Musical, a lighthearted film about two actors starring in an off-Broadway musical who learn valuable lessons about accepting who they are. Of course, they only reach this conclusion after a cameo by Rick Skye as Liza Minnelli and plenty of campy showtunes. The Big Gay Musical begins at 8 p.m., after the Outflix opening party at 6:30 p.m.

On Sunday, don’t miss Ready? Ok! , the adorable tale of a 10-year-old boy who dreams of becoming a cheerleader. Though his single mother (played by Carrie Preston of True Blood and Transamerica) would rather Josh (Lurie Posten of Step Brothers) excel on the wrestling team, Josh goes on a campaign to raise his own funds for the city’s annual cheer camp. The film screens at 7 p.m.

• Lurie Posten and Michael Emerson in Ready? Ok!

Other highlights include Transpoofed (a short film about transgender dating), Standing-n-Truth (a documentary on people living with HIV/AIDS), and And Then Came Lola (a sexy lesbian romp inspired by the arthouse classic Run, Lola, Run).

For a complete schedule, check out the Outflix website. Tickets are $9 per film or $70 for a festival pass.

Being part of a class of people who aren’t granted equal rights can really weigh on one’s mind, especially for LGBT folks who spend much of their free time fighting for marriage, non-discrimination, and hate crimes legislation. Having efforts shot down time and time again can lead to adverse effects on mental and physical health. So can having existing rights — such as adoption — attacked year after year in the state legislature.

University of Memphis professors Sharon Horne and Heidi Levitt have been studying how LGBT folks cope with the effects of anti-LGBT amendments and policies. They’ll share that research on Saturday, Sept. 5 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center (892 S. Cooper).

Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center member Audrey May is attempting to organize a Women’s Book Club. It would feature readings and discussion of books written by female authors and possibly even some meet-ups with those authors.

Interested? E-mail women@mglcc.org to get involved.

In last night’s mayoral debate on WMC-TV, all nine candidates present — Charles Carpenter, Wanda Halbert, AC Wharton, Carol Chumney, Kenneth Whalum, Sharon Webb, Prince Mongo, Jerry Lawler, and Myron Lowery — declared support for a non-discrimination ordinance protecting city of Memphis employees.

News anchor Joe Birch posed the question, but he didn’t specifically mention that the ordinance would protect gay and lesbian workers. One would assume that’s what he meant since he framed the question by comparing a possible city ordinance to the county ordinance intended to protect LGBT workers that passed earlier this year.

In other LGBT-related mayoral debate news, panelist and Memphis Flyer political reporter Jackson Baker asked candidate Whalum to explain what happened with the two lesbians who claimed they were ejected from his New Olivet Baptist Church last Sunday.

Whalum avoided the question, saying he would “absolutely, positively not” explain what happened.

Whalum went on to say: “You know what happened. Nothing happened out of the ordinary. Find out. Come over there and find out.”

I placed a call to New Olivet Baptist Church on Monday, as soon as I’d heard about the incident involving a lesbian couple ejected from pastor and Memphis mayoral candidate Kenneth Whalum’s church (see my last post for details). I was told he was out, so I left a message.

Yesterday, I finally received a call from a member of Whalum’s church staff. She informed me that Whalum would like me to check his Facebook page for his account of what happened in church service last Sunday that resulted in the ejection of the lesbian couple.

Unfortunately, that’s not so easy. Since Whalum has privacy settings on his Facebook page, one must be “friends” with him to view the page. In order to see Whalum’s response, I had to request to become his Facebook friend. Only after he approved me (which to his credit was rather quickly) was I able to view his response.

After some digging through comments from his page on Tuesday, I found a few vague responses Whalum had made to comments on his status update: “i’ll answer any questions today about “the incident”. to quote President Obama…”teachable moment” :-)” Here’s the most comprehensive of his answers, given in response to questions posed by commenter Danielle Inez:

From Inez:
Candidate Whalum, do you mind sharing the following: When did you become aware of the incident involving the two women? What was the rest of the congregation doing? What were the women doing when you became aware; it’s safe to assume you didn’t see everything? What were the people in their immediate vicinity doing when you became aware? How did the ushers respond to the women? How did the security respond to the women? How did the congregation respond to the incident? How did you respond? That’s all people need/want to know.

From Whalum:
woohoo!!!!! sup d!? great questions: (1) when several members complained to me about the disruptive behavior; (2) the rest of the congregation was WORSHIPING, praying, praising, singing, dancing, crying, laughing, and other general stuff people do at our church; (3) when i became aware, they were shouting obscenities, and waving arms wildly while … leaving sanctuary; (4) by asking them to quiet down or leave; (5) by asking them to leave because of their increasingly disruptive behavior; (6) by WORSHIPING, praying, praising, singing, dancing, crying, laughing, and other general stuff people do at our church 🙂 (7) as i always do, by moving forward with the liturgical sequence. Again, GREAT questions. I can’t imagine that anyone would need more than that, so I’ll hang around a few more minutes, then I’m out. Peace.

While I admire Whalum’s embrace of social media, an old-fashioned phone call would have been nice. As a mayoral candidate, I believe he has a responsibility to be accessible to all media outlets, especially in relation to controversial incidents such as this one.

In an effort to learn more about mayoral candidate Kenneth Whalum, Yas Meen and Monique Stevens visited the reverend’s New Olivet Baptist Church Sunday morning. But they claim the experience resulted verbal attacks and expulsion from the church.

“I had been having political debates with my partner about who to vote for for mayor. I said Whalum was the man to vote for, and she was going for Herenton,” Meen says. “We decided to go to [Whalum’s] church to see what he was all about.”

Meen says many in the congregation were giving them dirty looks as soon as they sat down. But she says the real trouble started when the women — who are both agnostic — opted out of a “sanctified dance” that supposedly involved congregants dancing in the aisles, laying on the floor to pray, and blowing kisses to God.

“People were telling us we needed to blow kisses, and I said, I don’t communicate with my higher power like that,” says Meen, who admitted to feeling uncomfortable with New Olivet’s unique style of worship. She said Whalum directly called them out for not participating.

Later, when Stevens placed her arm around Meen, the women claim a security guard asked the two to leave the church. He said he’d already called the police. The women allege that a group of about 25 young men pushed them out of the church while others taunted them with calls of “demon” and “devil worshipper.” Stevens’ glasses were broken and she suffered scratches and bruises.

“I was there to support him as mayor, but he won’t be getting my vote now,” Meen says. “If he’s going to act like that in church, how will he act in front of [the citizens of Memphis]?”

Whalum was not immediately available for comment, but if he does return Flyer phone calls, we’ll be certain to update the story at that time.

According to the New Olivet’s website, the church offers “compassion and refuge, reaching out to a lost and hurting world that needs salvation and purpose.”

For more details, check out Jonathan Cole’s blog post on Grand Divisions.

Though the Memphis City Council is holding off on discussing a city-wide non-discrimination ordinance until after the special mayoral election, Nashville is moving full steam ahead.

An ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Nashville’s metro government passed the second reading by the Metro Council last Tuesday night. The vote was 23 to 16, but it must pass one more reading before becoming official. According to the Nashville Scene, a passage on the second reading “usually is tantamount to final approval.”

Nashville’s Metro Council voted down a proposal to ban discrimination against LGBT city workers in 2003.

For more, check out “Pith In the Wind” on the Nashville Scene‘s website.

In a city council committee meeting this morning, city councilwoman Janis Fullilove announced that discussion of an employment non-discrimination ordinance for the city of Memphis has been postponed until November 3rd, after the special mayoral election.

The move came at the request of the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP), the LGBT civil rights protection organization behind the ordinance.