Center Blog

The Center is proud to congratulate Kaz Mitchell, Community Outreach & Program Promotions Intern with the Lesbian Cancer Initiative (LCI), for receiving the Mabel Hampton Award at the NYC Black Pride Heritage Awards on Wednesday, August 15, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Kaz, a comedian, dancer and community activist, was honored for her work with LCI, as well as for serving as Director of Circle of Voices, Inc., which works to deliver positive messages through art, performance, seminars and workshops given by women of African descent and women of color. Kaz is a natural fit for the award, named after Mabel Hampton, an American lesbian activist, dancer during the Harlem Renaissance and philanthropist for both black and lesbian/gay organizations.

“It is so wonderful being honored by the community you serve,” Kaz said. “It is my duty to help make the change I want to see in one of the most diversified groups of people. When I was given the opportunity to speak up about the disparities and the many challenges of the LGBTQ community, outreach was my way of showing the love I have for all people!”

“We are thrilled to see Kaz recognized with the Mabel Hampton Humanitarian award,” said Carrie Davis, the Center’s Director of Community Services. “She personifies the spirit of the award through her work as an artist and activist, striving every day to meet the needs of the black, lesbian community. We salute her.”
Kaz and her partner, Jean Wimberly, were featured in GO Magazine’s 2012 Pride Issue article “100 Women We Love”, along with Wanda Sykes, Rachel Maddow and Gloria Bigelow. She was also honored in 2010 by the Lesbian AIDS Project (LAP) for making a difference. Kaz has opened for comedienne Mimi Gonzalez during Women’s Week and performed with Blak Out in Provincetown. In addition to previously serving on the Board of Directors for NYC Black Pride, Brooklyn Pride and the Brooklyn Community Pride Center, Kaz was Co-Chair of Economic Development for former Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Field’s LGBT Advisory Committee.

About NYC Black Pride

Started in 1997, NYC Black Pride is a five day multicultural event targeting the Black and Latino Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community. This year, Black Pride was held August 15-19, and featured an Art & Culture Expo at the Center on Saturday, August 18. NYC Black Pride strives to support and raise awareness of local organizations addressing HIV/AIDS, heart disease and breast cancer. Proceeds from NYC Black Pride are redistributed into the people of color/LGBT community in the NYC area through Gay Men of African Descent, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. For more information, please visit www.nycblackpride.com.

Guest post by Joshua Borja

Photo: Shawn Mac Photography

In honor of Madonna’s 54th birthday, the Center conducted the third installment of its live talk show Q & Gay. Dating columnist Allison Davis moderated the exchange, which pitted Madonna against Lady Gaga to determine which woman is the superior icon.

To kick things off, the Center’s Director of Cultural Programs, Paul Menard, shared that he was not allowed to listen to Madonna in his youth and that he resorted to hiding records in his basement. He explained that he identified with Madonna’s stabs at reinvention: “The idea of being rebellious and being able to reinvent yourself is why Madonna always spoke to me, because that’s something LGBT kids have to do to survive.” He described Madonna’s presence in his life as important and transformative, and he added that Lady Gaga has that same sort of power.

The evening’s panelists—Gawker editor Rich Juzwiak, club promoter Joe Fiore, drag Lady Gaga impersonator Lady Havokk and drag Madonna impersonator Detoxx Busti-ae—opened with an exploration of the big question: Why all the comparisons? Lady Havokk argued that the comparisons sprouted from fan-based antagonism, but Juzwiak pointed out that even Lady Gaga has compared herself to Madonna. Fiore stressed that Madonna’s career has spanned more than 30 years in the industry, whereas Gaga is just starting out. Juzwiak readily agreed that Madonna has had much time to reinvent herself. To deliver a more substantial comparison, we will all just have to wait and see how Gaga settles into her artistry in the long run!

When asked to speculate about Gaga’s next move, Fiore laughed, “Something naked. I don’t know what, but something naked.” Underscoring that she’s a businesswoman, he seemed confident in her continued success. Juzwiak explained that whether “she strips down literally or musically, it will be difficult to find a way to top herself,” as she has set an exhausting pace to maintain.

Davis ultimately oriented the discussion toward the following question: Why do these two artists speak so deeply to the gay community? Alluding to Gaga’s history as a bullied outcast, Lady Havokk expressed admiration for her commitment to safe spaces and for her steadfast celebration of individuality. Detoxx explained, “Every gay person wants to express themselves,” and attributed Madonna’s appeal to her “fame, glamour and her badassness.”

The audience then asked the panel for their favorite LGBTQ activist aside from Gaga and Madonna. For the first time during the program, Lady Havokk and Detoxx saw eye to eye as they cited Ellen DeGeneres. They both spoke enthusiastically about her activism in being embraced by mainstream television and about her conscientious discussions against bullying. Juzwiak expressed esteem for playwright and public health advocate Larry Kramer, and Fiore said that author, journalist and It Gets Better Project co-founder Dan Savage “does a lot of good.”

Implicit amid the panel’s attempt to identify the superior gay icon is the question: Can one individual represent the entire LGBTQ community? This, I think, is a question that begs to burst out of itself and into a grander context: Can any individual represent the face of an entire community, which is itself an assemblage of individuals with unique histories and inevitably multivariable aesthetics? I would have to say no. Though I side with Team Monstrosity, I’ll probably never express it quite as Lady Havokk does—that is, crossing her black lace-up stiletto-heel knee boots, and sipping from her bejeweled teacup. I can’t say that dance pop and eccentric costumes characterize me or my hopes for more prevalent discourse on gender and sexuality. Nevertheless, by broadening LGBTQ visibility through their artistry, popular cultural icons like Gaga and Madonna open the door for such discourse. Their mandates for self-empowerment nurture the courage that leads to inquiry, the courage to examine the terminology by which we construct gender and sexuality, and the courage to sculpt responsible dialogue.

The program closed with a fantastic Madonna mashup performance by New Agenda, the Center’s Youth Enrichment Services (YES) dance group, mentored by YES Arts & Media Specialist, Raul Rivera. It was an ideal way to remind the audience that no matter how you chose to do it, the idea is to express yourself!

Josh Borja is a physics major at NYU, where he works in the Undergraduate Writing Tutors Program and is editor-in-chief of the Minetta Review.

Last Tuesday, July 31, the third floor of the Center was packed to the brim as volunteers brought in extra seats to accommodate all of the audience members for the highly anticipated conversation, Q&A, and book signing with Neil Giuliano. Among his many accolades, Giuliano can count himself as the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city after coming out publicly in 1996, a journey poignantly chronicled in his recent autobiography, The Campaign Within. Moderated by the lovely Chely Wright—impressive in her own right as the first artist in country music to come out as gay—it is no surprise that late-comers were left standing in the room.

Giuliano’s lifetime of public service is truly noteworthy. His career spans four terms as the mayor of Tempe, Arizona, where he ran three successful re-election campaigns and won an anti-gay recall election with 68% of the vote. He also served as the former president of GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), is the current CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and will represent Arizona in the Democratic National Convention this fall.

Given the long list of accomplishments throughout his career as a public servant, one would expect the usual aloofness characteristic of so many successful, high profile public figures. However, what came through in the conversation and Q&A was a grounded, humble, approachable, and human side to Mr. Giuliano. As he opened up to the audience with personal stories about his journey from a closeted politician living a double life to an outspoken advocate for LGBT issues, we were able to see the great amount of courage and empathy for others that have defined his professional and personal life.

Although the Neil Giuliano speaking at this event came off as calm, confident, and comfortable in his own skin, this has not always been the case. Reading an excerpt from his autobiography, he shared a passage about being a confused and isolated adolescent—a “loner” in the suburban home of his Italian Catholic family in Bloomfield, New Jersey. “I carved ‘Neil’ on the overhang to the basement entrance [of my childhood home]. Perhaps I was already beginning the long process of trying to carve out some type of clarity and identity for myself in a world that was beginning to make less and less sense to me. But I couldn’t have explained it that way at the time.”

Another facet of Neil’s personality that makes him such a magnetic figure is his unique ability to mix humor and heartache into his stories. After candidly sharing with the audience his experience of surviving sexual abuse as a child, he went on to lighten the air in the room. After coming out, he jokes that in nearly every press conference from that point on he was referred to not as Mayor Giuliano, but as the “openly-gay-Mayor” Giuliano. He also told a story about a particularly rough time during his process of coming out in the middle of mayoral term when he left Tempe to attend the men’s gymnastics finals of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. “I know,” he laughs. “What could be gayer than that?”

Neil Giuliano’s story is at once remarkable and universal. Many of us can relate to his feelings of being marked different, of feeling at one time or another like an outsider in our families and communities. At the same time, the courage of his coming out story – in spite of all the circumstances of living constantly in the public eye – inspires us to live out our own truth daily.

In this era of bullying and increasing homophobia, it seems that we find stories of gay teen suicides and vicious hate crimes filling the headlines every other week. For this reason it is more important now than ever that we have positive role models in our community such as Neil Giuliano and Chely Wright. When asked why he decided to write the book, he replies with conviction, “I came out in 1996 and since then I have been on a journey. I have realized that telling our coming out stories is important; that being visible is important.”