Executive Director of PhillyGayCalendar

Comedy and the Fag Word

The other night at a comedy show, two of my peers used anti-gay epithets from the stage. And it wasn’t in the context of some brilliant bit of satire. It was just, "What a faggot" and "that guy’s being a fag." I sat through three utterances and then I got up and walked out. Before too long, I had to come right back, though, because I was set to host another comedy show at the same venue afterward. It was awkward. One of the comics who used the epithets offered an apology, but I didn’t let him off easy, because he said things like "You didn’t have to walk out" and "I’m sorry you were offended."

V-Day Breakups

It was just Valentine’s Day, which is supposed to be the most romantical of days, right? Then why did my brother just get dumped by his live-in girlfriend and why have two of my coworkers just broken up with their boyfriends in the last week? What gives, yo?

Person of the Year 2010: Gloria Casarez

Community activists have a history of mainstreaming the marginalized, sheltering the dispossessed, and empowering the powerless. Gloria Casarez has followed this path all the way to City Hall, where, as Mayor Michael Nutter’s director of LGBT affairs, she has one foot in the corridors of authority and one still in the activist tradition.