Miss Gay Ameri pageant crowns s 49th queen O'Fallon, Ill.

Contents:

• SEARCHG FOR SILVER LAKE: THE RADIL NEIGHBORHOOD THAT CHANGED GAY AMERI
• KANSAS CY PERFORMER KC SUNSHE REFLECTS ON 'DREAM E TE' YEAR AS MR. GAY AMERI 2022
• GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
• DAY IN GAY AMERI
• MR GAY AMERI 2022 IS A MICHAEL JACKSON DRAG
• INTERVIEW WH THE MR GAY AMERI PAGEANT
• MISS GAY AMERI PAGEANT CROWNS S 49TH QUEEN O'FALLON, ILL.
• “I’M A CIZEN OF GAY AMERI”: AN INTERVIEW WH ERIC ORNER
• THE 10 GAYEST STAT IN AMERI FOR 2020
• JAGUARS STRENGTH COACH KEV MAXEN COM OUT AS GAY

SEARCHG FOR SILVER LAKE: THE RADIL NEIGHBORHOOD THAT CHANGED GAY AMERI

Lol NewsMIAMI – The diplomatic ti between the Uned Stat and Jamai uld soon be jeopardy.There are reports that Jamai is refg to accred the spoe of a gay Amerin diplomat.“Our culture is not really acceptg of ,” said Renae Stevens, who was visg the Jamain nsulate Miami Wednday.Attorney Wayne Goldg is an advisor to Jamai’s ernment.“The whole ia of legislatn to legalize same-sex marriag, I thk they still have a long way to go,” he said.

SiegedSec, a self-scribed group of gay furry hackers, took s skills to state ernments late June, breachg agenci across five stat and releasg a wealth of data.The stat targeted on June 27 were Texas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and South Carola. "Uwu gay furri pwn you~ We'll be back aga soon to ntue our chaos and stctn!"Some news outlets, such as Them, raised ncerns that the group's actns uld expose random people to harm, not jt the targeted ernments. Christiane Northup, a matriarch of women’s alternative health, who rose to fame on the strength of several “Oprah” appearanc and btsellg books, published by the New Age self-help platform Hay Hoe, whose founr, Louise Hay, was famo for tellg gay men dyg of AIDS that they jt didn’t love themselv enough.

At the wheel is Roland Palencia, a gay activist who has lived and anized here for Silver Lake Rervoir sh behd , the hills around crowd wh bungalows. We were standg on the hill where the Mattache Society was found 1950, and began to advote for homosexuals not as sners or perverts, but as an opprsed mory who served rights. Ls than two away is the Black Cat Tavern, the se of one of the first public gay rights monstratns, 1967, prottg the Los Angel police partment’s btal New Year’s Eve raid.

KANSAS CY PERFORMER KC SUNSHE REFLECTS ON 'DREAM E TE' YEAR AS MR. GAY AMERI 2022

By the 80s, Silver Lake was a center of queer life, pecially queer Lato life, and, Palencia says, nearly every other storeont was a gay or lbian bar, a leather store, a bookstore, or a muny Aids anizatn. Today, spe the rabow flags flyg along Sunset Boulevard, Silver Lake is beg “-gayed and -Latized” queer history tour began at Silver Lake’s most famo gay landmark: the Black Cat Tavern.

GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG

The prott outsi the Black Cat took place 1967, two years before New York’s Stonewall rt, which is often scribed as the foundatnal event of the US gay rights movement. There’s no reference to the s when the Black Cat buildg transformed to a seri of different gay bars, cludg Le Barco, which offered drag performanc Spanish, and Club Fuck!

DAY IN GAY AMERI

At Basgo’s Dis, which was famo for s art-punk athetic and BDSM performance Sunset Boulevard, there are other holdouts om Silver Lake’s gayer past: Rough Tra, a leather and fetish shop, is a few doors down om the Black Cat. Photograph: ONE Archiv at the USC LibrariOff Sunset Boulevard, the neighborhood streets that were once statns for gay cisg now have hardly any traffic, Palencia poted out as we drove through.

”Silver Lake, then a largely Lato neighborhood, beme a haven for Palencia and his iends, who -found Gay and Lbian Latos Unidos (GLLU), an advocy group foced on issu and people they felt whe gay anizatns and whe femist anizatns ignored. While there were tensns at the time between gay and lbian anizers LA, the gay men who started GLLU reached out to lbian Latas to get them volved as lears the group, as documented Unidad, a new film about the group’s history. Palencia said this was ccial: “Polilly, the lbians were much more evolved terms of their thkg of systems – like patriarchy, enomic systems, sexism, even racism, ” wh an agenda “that went beyond sexual polics” members supported Lato labor anizers and the Uned Farm Workers, and proment labor activists, cludg Dolor Huerta, marched alongsi them a 1983 Pri Wt Hollywood gay scene, ntrast, was sometim explicly racist and misogynistic: Stud One, a proment club, sparked protts for s excln of men of lor and of women, and s obv preference for wealthier whe male Silver Lake uld also be dangero, Palencia said: there were gay-bashg attacks rried out by lol Lato gang members.

Photograph: Male Tolle/The GuardianTo addrs the tensns between gay and Lato rints whout turng to “mass rceratn, ” anizers started a ee lol mic ftival, the Sunset Junctn street fair, 1980, which had activi for kids and bands to appeal to a wi range of cultural terts. Photograph: Male Tolle/The GuardianGay anizatns led by whe activists Los Angel often neglected outreach to people of lor, cludg Lato muny members, failg even to offer ccial rmatn Spanish.

MR GAY AMERI 2022 IS A MICHAEL JACKSON DRAG

Palencia drove a few blocks off Sunset Boulevard to what he lled a “ltle oasis that’s still the same as what ’s been the past s” l Campo, an inic Mexin rtrant a bright pk buildg, has been a refuge for gay patrons sce s foundg 1962, and ’s still owned by the same Hollywood showbiz Del Campo, who started the rtrant, had been a dancer featured films like Wt Si Story, an Amerin Paris, and A Star is Born, and his old iends and lleagu beme his new patrons – cludg, of urse, many gay people. Instead, her son said, the rtrant beme her the early days, closeted gay Hollywood celebri like Rock Hudson, one of the most proment people to die early the Aids crisis, equented the rtrant, which had dark booths wh curtas on the wdows, so that patrons uld de whout scty om outsi. One of Robert and Ga’s sons me out to them as gay while stg one of the booths once popular wh closeted rtrant host when we vised was 18-year-old Logan Wynn, who has lived the neighborhood his whole life, and who chatted amiably wh about the rtrant’s gay history and his memori of eatg here as a kid.

He says servg as an ambassador for the LGBTQ+ muny while legislators are targetg gay and trans people has ma him more nsc of the way the muny is reprented. In late 1972, Nashville, TN (at The Watch Your Hat and Coat Saloon), Norman Jon (a/k/a Norma Kristie), was the first man to be crowned as Miss Gay Ameri.

Through the visn of Jerry Peak, the origal owner of the Miss Gay Ameri Pageant, Norman Jon, Miss Gay Ameri Emer, not only sired to enhance the art of female illn as a petor but also to one day create his mark history as promoter the art form. After relquishg reign as Miss Gay Ameri 1973, Norman Jon purchased ( 1975) the Miss Gay Ameri pageant, om origal owner Jerry Peek, hop of one day growg the pageant system to be the most prtig and most rpected pageant for female impersonators the world. Many thanks go to Jerry Peek, for his pneer visn and effort pageantry through the art of female impersonatn, and to Norman Jon for his 30 years of ditn and sire to mold the Miss Gay Ameri pageant to the “bt of the bt” many years of trial and tribulatn, Norman Jon achieved this goal as the official Miss Gay Ameri pageant ntu today, to be the most prtig, most well rpected, the olst and the largt pageant system for female impersonators the untry and world.

INTERVIEW WH THE MR GAY AMERI PAGEANT

Now owned by Mad Angel Entertament, the pageant ntu to grow and is expected to bee even greater and more prtig, years to as the “Symbol of Excellence”, each wner of the Miss Gay Ameri system reprents profsnalism and the utmost of qualy entertament that the art of female impersonatn has to offer. Wh no body gmentatn below the neck allowed, many nttants rely on breast pads, hip pads, flatterg clothg, hairstyle and make-up to merge to a wng batn that will sre high enough to bee the natn’s next Miss Gay nearly thirty (and growg) direct State and Regnal prelimary pageants to the Miss Gay Ameri natnal petn, each year the wner and first alternate of each direct prelimary will travel to the Natnal petn hop of achievg their goal of beg the next Miss Gay Ameri. Likewise many of the State pageants have direct prelimari whereby the wner and first alternate of the “metropolan” prelimary pageants will travel to the State ntt, effort to be the State’s next Symbol of Excellence and to qualify for the natnal petn, hop to be crowned as the next Miss Gay Ameri.

While this pageant at first, was marketed exclively for the gay muny, people om all walks of life have grown to enjoy and admire the ditn and talent need to be succsful this pageant system. The newly crowned Miss Gay Ameri n earn as much as $70, 000 durg their reign as Miss Gay Ameri, sh, priz, travel, appearance fe and gratuy for appearance.

But even light of all the threats, gay bars are figurg out how to fill hol muny needs, how to pete wh apps and apathy, how to balance muny tradns wh more clive valu. And what’s more, the “gay bar” as exists popular imagatn — an exclive space by and for eher gay men or women — has never reprented what gay bars actually are.

MISS GAY AMERI PAGEANT CROWNS S 49TH QUEEN O'FALLON, ILL.

Is , “I don’t need gay bars my middle age, but I might as a retiree, ” or is , “I don’t need gay bars now that I’m a mted partnership, but I might if I were sgle”? I don’t know that needg gay bars is an on-off swch for the rt of your life, and so ’s important to me that the bars that n serve all of be open for when we need them. ” A lot of amics bate or wonr whether we’re a post-gay phase, where we — and ’s never que clear who the “we” is — don’t need our gay inti or LGBTQ+ inti anymore.

But one of the thgs I realized talkg to owners of bars that don’t intify as gay bars but are certaly full of gay people is that maybe other bars need to prove to that they’re post-straight. Here I rely on David Halper, who wrote a book, How to Be Gay, and he nclus that even if was a world whout opprsn, we still are raised a heteronormative world.

“I’M A CIZEN OF GAY AMERI”: AN INTERVIEW WH ERIC ORNER

I’m not married to the ia of a gay bar always beg everythg — if ’s a queer fe, if ’s a nonprof LGBTQ+ center — but I thk the panmic tght all how important is to have physil plac to ngregate, and those will rema important even a hypothetil, non-opprsive future.

Was there anythg else your rearch you were surprised by, posively or negatively, or maybe a prenceived notn that you had about gay bars that was challenged?

The fact that you have a bar that’s maly Latx folks or a bar that’s Ain-Amerin LGBTQ+ folks, that didn’t surprise me, although I was very terted to fd out what were the challeng of nng those kds of bs bee those are the bars that’ve been closg among the fastt — gay bars that serve people of lor. A new bill troduced by the Arkansas Senate aims to classify drag performanc as "adult-oriented bs, " and the drag muny the Natural State is the wake of the ripple Rock, Arkansas has played host to the Miss Gay Ameri Pageant multiple tim sce s foundg 1972, but Senate Bill 43 has the team behd the pageant eyg a new lotn -- pecially if the bill is signed to law.

THE 10 GAYEST STAT IN AMERI FOR 2020

Michael Dutzer, CEO and executive producer of Mad Angel Entertament (the pany that produc the pageant), told NBC affiliate KARK News that the Miss Gay Ameri Pageant had "roots" Arkansas. Mad Angel Entertament spends nearly $70, 000 on show productn, and the 51st Miss Gay Ameri was jt crowned this past senate general assembly is set to vote on the bill on Tuday, January 24.

JAGUARS STRENGTH COACH KEV MAXEN COM OUT AS GAY

"He says servg as an ambassador for the LGBTQ+ muny while legislators are targetg gay and trans people has ma him more nsc of the way the muny is reprented. For the first time, we asked rears to tweet photos for A Day Gay Ameri, and that ma for a lively look at our varied liv om sunrise to well past sunset. Many of this year's participants the Day Gay Ameri project were their teen years or early twenti, perhaps livg differently than those who me before them.

Part four of the "Day Gay Ameri" photo seri heads to work wh gay Amerins, cludg Christopher Allen, Jennifer Higgs, and Anastasia Genouzos as they prepare for Vote for Equaly's Harvey Milk Day nvass Los 02 2010 5:00 AM. For part two of The Advote's Day Gay Ameri 2010 seri, rears show how they kick back, relax and, the se of Verna Gray and Pat Ewart, enjoy some Starbucks Chigo's 19 2010 5:00 AM.