Queens Center for Gay Senrs | Queens Communy Hoe

Contents:

• QUEENS CENTER FOR GAY SENRS
• THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE GAY KGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND
• WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER: THE FOTTEN HISTORY OF GAY EXISTENCE ON THE PERIPHERY OF URBAN LIFE
• I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN
• JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS ASSISTANT STRENGTH ACH KEV MAXEN OUT PUBLICLY AS GAY

QUEENS CENTER FOR GAY SENRS

(Image cred: Alamy)As a new box-set of Mercury’s solo work is released, Nick Leve nsirs the Queen legend’s myster inty – and his plex relatnship wh both his race and 1984, two years after the Gay Men’s Health Crisis anisatn was formed New York to bat Aids, Freddie Mercury sred his first solo h wh Love Kills. In his lifetime, Brish newspaper The Sun brand the sger a “bisexual rock star”, and recent years the media has equently referred to him as gay.

“I thk if Freddie were livg now the way he lived his own lifetime, we’d probably ll him ‘queer’ rather than ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’, ” says Ryan Butcher, edor of LGBT webse PkNews. His bandmate Brian May said 2008: “I know that all through his life Fred didn’t thk that whether he was gay or not was important.

” Aston also pots out that we readily embrace Judy Garland as a queer in “even though she didn’t make statements about anythg to do wh homophobia and LGBT acceptance” was so outrageoly mp, was almost like a double bluff – Mart AstonBy 1986, when Mercury and Queen gave their most inic performance at Live Aid, there were some openly gay performers the mastream; the UK’s biggt-sellg sgle that year was Don’t Leave Me This Way by the Communards, whose ontman Jimmy Somerville was proudly gay and highly engaged wh the LGBT-rights movement.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE GAY KGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND

Sger Gee Michael remaed the closet, and Culture Club’s Boy Gee had navigated his first flh of fame a few years earlier by tong down his homosexualy. Ryan Butcher go further, scribg Mercury as “almost a vert agent for the LGBT muny, droppg the ltle seeds of queer culture to the heterosexual mdset” the ‘80s, Mercury was known for his tight whe vts and motache – his take on the Castro Clone look that origated San Francis’s queer Castro district and beme popular the gay unrground, but which was ls faiar to mastream mic fans.

WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER: THE FOTTEN HISTORY OF GAY EXISTENCE ON THE PERIPHERY OF URBAN LIFE

Certaly, he didn’t let his massive fame stop him om visg popular London gay venu like Heaven and the Royal Vxhall Tavern.

I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN

’”In Queen’s mic, meanwhile, there were always clu about Mercury’s private life for fans who wanted – and had the knowledge of the gay scene – to spot them. In an era when homophobia and racism were far more prevalent than they are today, Freddie Mercury was the queer, South Asian ontman of the band who released one of rock's most inic sgl, Bohemian Rhapsody, and the bt-sellg album UK chart history, Queen's Greatt Hs.

I was standg on Queens Boulevard and cryg and my iend manfully wiped away my tears and then said, "Well, there's another gay bar down the street.

And I would go gallivantg down Washgton Square South or down LaGuardia Place bee I thought that's what gay was, until I got a lot of that out of my system and then realized that felt really forced and performative and put on, and not a reflectn of whoever I was or whoever I wanted to bee. People should exprs themselv whatever way they see f, however and whoever they are, but I had to go through a phase of turng up the flamboyance to 11 orr to figure out exactly who I was as a young gay man. There was this sense of edge and I thk there was all of that bee there weren't other distractns the way of technology and how you meet people, but I also thk was the reactn to all of the ath the gay muny.

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS ASSISTANT STRENGTH ACH KEV MAXEN OUT PUBLICLY AS GAY

And was only when beme clear was not jt gay men who were g down wh the disease, but that was begng to n rampant the black and traveno er muny.