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Björk , a recording artist, has gone on record as saying, "If I get into trouble, there's no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself." She added, "I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one, it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men. I've been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren't lesser beings, they're just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists."

She is but one of the contemporary musicians whom I list as non-believers in my just-published Who's Who in Hell: A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalists, Rationalists, and Non-Theists (NY: Barricade Books, $125.) Other musicians, and the book documents why they are included as non-believers: composer-conductor Pierre Boulez; Scottish pop-rock singer Justin Currie; noted composer David Diamond; Brazilian musician-songwriter Gilbert Gil; composer Lou Harrison; popular musician Billy Joel; songwriter-entertainer Tom Lehrer; singer-entertainer Barry Manilow; violinist Yehudi Menuhin, a member of the British Humanist Association; singer-songwriter Randy Newman; orchestra conductor Seiji Ozawa; French flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal; The Residents, a San Francisco-based band; composer Ned Rorem; folksinger-composer Pete Seeger; recording artist Al Stewart; and vocalist Michael Stipe.

CNN did a story about the book, filming me and my former 32-year-old companion Randy . When National Public Radio interviewed me, the subjects of atheism, gays, and lesbians were freely discussed. In the numerous other radio interviews, I did not hesitate to mention my being gay and a humanist, and to my pleasant surprise no negative flack has yet ensued. However, a Brazilian journalist complained that I'd omitted their President Fernando Cardoso. Also, I've learned that Chile's President Ricardo Lagos is a socialist agnostic. Since the book was published, Jane Fonda not only left her freethinking husband Ted [who once described Christianity as "a religion for losers"] Turner but also gave up her own freethinking and became a Born Again. As secular humanist Kurt Vonnegut Jr . would say, "So it goes!"

First, celebrities Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche broke up. Now rock star Melissa Etheridge and director Julie Cypher have broken up, reportedly vowing to remain friends for the sake of their young children. One celebrity who will never need to divorce is non-believer Jodie Foster . She simply never got married and has never revealed who sired her child.

Ian McKellen is the Tony Award-winning actor who continually receives favorable publicity in all the American gay journals. 'Is he married? some potential suitors ask. 'Hardly,' they are informed. 'In fact, in England he's a Knight Bachelor!' Although Sir Ian seldom is quoted for the revelation, he told Tim Appelo of Mr. Showbiz (19 January 1996), 'I was brought up a Christian, low church, and I like the community of churchgoing. That's rather been replaced for me by the community of people I work with. I like a sense of family, of people working together. But I'm an atheist. So God, if She exists, isn't really a part of my life.'

Barry Manilow was recently asked if he believed in God and was told, 'Yes. His name is Clive Davis, and he's the head of my record company.' Asked then about how important his Judaism is, he responded, 'It isn't. My humanism is.'

At Rubyfruit, a prime lesbian bar and Manhattan restaurant, gals were gossiping recently about Pamela Anderson's having her famous breast implants surgically removed. They were too big, she complained, and she didn't need all that attention. A quick call to a local surgeon turned up the fact that no males, to his knowledge, have yet signed up for analagous penile surgery.

New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has become known as the leader who turned our 1950s to 1980s Fun City into our 1990s Glum City. All gay movies, public toilets, and bath houses are now strictly supervised, cinema ushers armed with flashlights lighting up the dark corners of various establishments. However, two London humanists-- Derek Lennard and Malcolm Barnes--recently took in the Times Square, Chelsea, and Greenwich Village areas, paid tribute to Gertrude Stein's statue, and ended up getting high. On a helicopter trip over Manhattan and being eye-to-eye with the Statue of Liberty, that is.

In some of the more crowded Greenwich Village and Chelsea bars, 'fly fishing' has taken on an entirely new meaning.

Quentin Crisp , the 90-year-old ex-British author of The Naked Civil Servant, continues to receive attention for his viewpoints. Regarding Monica Lewinsky, he commented, 'In the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, if any commoners told tales about sexual encounters with the head of state, they were beheaded.' Asked by a young man if he should tell his mother he's gay, Crisp retorted, 'Don't tell your mother anything!'

Religion is being satirized in Onion, a humanistic Midwestern publication that is online at <http://www.theonion.com>. Recent stories have had these headlines: DRUGS WIN DRUG WAR, about public-policy shortfalls; FROG WITH HUMAN HEAD WARNS AGAINST DANGERS OF GENETIC ENGINEERING, about the era of scientific wonders; ANIMAL-RIGHTS ACTIVISTS RELEASE 71,000 COWS INTO WILD, about environmental activists. In one story, which appears to be a heartwarming account of a little paralyzed boy who prays for recovery, the headline is 'NO,' SAYS GOD. Another story in its entirety: 'VANIMO, PAUPUA NEW GUINEA&emdash;In His first official statement since the July 17 tsunami that claimed the lives of an estimated 3,000 Papua New Guineans, the Lord announced Monday that He killed the island villagers as part of His longtime "moving in mysterious ways" policy, calling the natural disaster "part of My unknowable, divine plan for mankind." ' Humor, so it goes, may be the best weapon!

SPRING 1999

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God . . . but to create him," Sir Arthur C. Clarke mused long ago. The eminent non-believer, who loves to reminisce about his stay in Manhattan's Hotel Chelsea, not only has agreed to being a member of the dadaistic National Church of the Exquisite Panic (<http://www.funkup.com>) but also of the philosophy-pursuing FANNY (Freethinking Activist Nonbelieving New Yorkers, <http://idt.net/~wasm/fanny.html>). On February 19th, Sir Arthur was honored by a Sri Lankan stamp that commemorates his adopted island's 50 years of communication. On the double 3.5 rupee stamps, he is pictured twice, once as he looked five decades ago and once as he looks now. Since 1956 the inventor of the communication satellite (COMSAT) has lived in Sri Lanka and in 1975 was honoured as a Resident Guest. He thus becomes the only living secular humanist to be pictured on a postage stamp.

'How do you tell a Maldivian from a Sri Lankan?' I innocently e-mailed a British novelist, not Sir Arthur, who is currently writing about both islands. 'Maldivians are circumcised,' he responded with a sound bite. 'Sri Lankans aren't.' His first-hand observations, I am sure, were based on seeing Muslims in the Maldives and Buddhists in Sri Lanka.

"And how do you tell a Yank from a Limey?" he playfully retorted. My research revealed that in the 1960's, an estimated 95% of American-born boys were circumcised before they left the hospital. Very few were in England, according to a 1997 University of Chicago study that found the practice in the States was most prevalent among white men and men from educated families&emdash;96% in Jewish families questioned, but only 54% for Hispanic men.

The March issue of Pediatrics reports that in the American West, with large populations of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, who do not usually circumcise, the rate now is just 36%. Except for Israel, the United States is the only Western country that still circumcises a majority (66% in 1995) of baby boys. But the trend is downward, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has just issued a new finding that there is no "medical indication" for circumcision. As a result, it may become increasing more difficult, I e-mailed the novelist, to tell a Yank from a Limey.

Here in Greenwich Village, the Village Voice reports that inflation has set in, that $500 was charged in 1996 "for hacking a foreskin." Jewish comics have long been known to say that although a mohel--the hacker--doesn't get paid much, he does get good tips. Critics cite Acts 15, which states that Christians need not practice circumcision. Meanwhile, some children in presumably frivolous lawsuits have demanded of parents that they replace their lost foreskins.

Humanist leaders, of course, long have said that the practice should be for medical reasons only. In 3001, according to Sir Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi novel about that year, much will have changed. The eminent secular humanist writes in 3001, 'Circumcision made a lot of sense in primitive times but no longer. By the mid-twenty-first century so many malpractice suits had been filed that the American Medical Association had been forced to ban it. The practice, however, continued a century later, until some unknown genius coined a slogan&emdash;please excuse the vulgarity&emdash;"God designed us: circumcision is blasphemy." '

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), a strongly anticlerical British novelist who wrote "potboilers" for The New Yorker from 1936 on, enjoyed four decades of devotion with Valentine Ackland, a gal who had boldly changed her name from Molly, cut her hair in an "Eton crop," and often was mistaken for a good-looking guy. I'll Stand By You (1999), a collection of their love letters, is up toward the top of the list of American lesbians' reading. When Ackland converted to Roman Catholicism near the end of her life, Warner had to put up with the sight of rosaries and prayer books around the house.

Candace Gingrich , a lesbian and gay rights activist, is a non-theist. Newt, her half-brother and a Baptist who was a national Republican leader, has expressed his displeasure with the "life style" his half-sister has "chosen." She has stated, "I would have to be considered an agnostic at best. In my own life, I haven't found a need for organized religion. With all the hostile messages coming at me, including from the emissaries of various faiths, it's more urgent to believe in myself. Ultimately, we all have a responsibility to remind ourselves of our ability to be compassionate, respectful, and generous."

Composer and non-theist Ned Rorem has lost his companion to cancer. James Holmes, 59, a composer, choir director, organist, and Rorem's lover since 1967, died in December.

WINTER 1998

His problem is on everyone's tongue. Not just Monica Lewinsky's.

G&L humanist couples at first assumed that "impeachment" referred to President Bill Clinton's curious Baptist custom of feeling guilty each time a Jewish girl showed her thong, followed by his finishing up solo in the bathroom.

But, no, it turns out to mean that according to the U. S. Constitution if a person is asked under oath about his private sex life, he must&emdash;se offendeno, as e'en Ophelia's gravediggers knew&emdash;be impeached in the event he skirts the issue or jockeys with legalisms.

Lawyers now greedily look forward to querying politicians, not just G&L members of the armed forces, about their private affairs. Already three Republicans (conservatives) have 'fessed up to having had adulterous affairs, too: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (who presided over Clinton's impeachment inquiry), House Speaker-not-to-be Bob Livingston (who favored Clinton's impeachment for lying), and Indiana Representative Dan Burton (who, although accused of sleeping with female staffers and groping a lobbyist, once called Clinton an immoral "scumbag"). Female Republicans also are confessing: Idaho Representative Helen Chenoweth has admitted to having had "it" with a married man, but "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it."

Secrets, alas, used to involve privates. "Faith, her privates we," Rosencrantz and Guildenstern told Hamlet when asked for the truth. These days, however, royalty finds itself being fervently photographed in the nude. Clinton's curved privates are no longer so private. And Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank's breakup of a ten-year relationship with Herb Moses has been outed. To bring things to a head, one is no longer even certain what is meant by a "member" of Congress or of Commons.

One wag has predicted that a real money-maker would be "Playmember," a magazine entirely devoted to the sex lives of the world's past and present politicians. Ah, the thought of seeing one's national leader as a cover person: Caesar in bed with King Nicomedes of Bithynia, who left Rome his kingdom when he died. Edward II with Hugh de Despenser, before the poker game. George III , urinating in blue. Thomas Jefferson in a four-poster with his slave Sally. Louis XIV with his mistress Madame de Maintenon, before they married. Napoléon with one of his teenage mistresses.

In New York City, not incidentally, urologist Dr. John K. Lattimer claimed in his eighties that he had Napoléon's phallus, which he purchased from the descendants of Ange Paul Vigrali, a priest and doctor who had attended "the Little Corporal" on St. Helena and who conducted the autopsy when the Emperor, called "the little prick" with some justification by his enemies, died in 1821. The French, however, are usually exempt from such titillating matters, as evidenced by the late Monsieur Mitterand's mistress and wife attending the famed atheist's funeral without incident.

As America goes, so goes the world. Already the appropriately named Rev. Canaan Banana, formerly the President of Zimbabwe, has been caught. He was convicted in November of sodomy with young bodyguards, gardeners, and cooks. The news broke when a police inspector, Jefta Dube, killed a colleague who dared peal a taunt that he'd been "Banana's wife." Also, Malaysia's former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been in court for allegedly having sodomized his wife's former chauffeur. Nova Scotia's former premier, Gerald Regan , was tried but found not guilty of rape, attempted rape, and indecent assault upon three women. So, who next, now that the suspected virgin Mother Teresa is no longer alive to preach against the pleasures of sex!

Gs & Ls who are Republicans (conservatives, moderates) have hoped that Clinton will get kicked out. Those who are Democrats (moderates, liberals) have hoped he'll finish out his presidency. Many remain angry that Clinton in his World AIDS Day remarks did not mention gay people, that his administration has opposed needle-exchange programs, that it fired Joycelyn Elders as Surgeon General for speaking out about safe sex and condoms, and that it has rendered gays and lesbians second class citizens in the military and in marriage. In the Puritanical environment we inherited from England, Americans generally think that Clinton has betrayed friends and colleagues, has done a good job as President during a period of prosperity, did not deserve Judge Starr's (a minion of the tobacco lobby) and the Republicans' mirthless satire of attempting an entrapment and coup d'état, and has given the fine old term "philandering" a dirty name.

o

Quentin Crisp , the gay non-theist, spent Christmas off-Broadway celebrating his 90th birthday. The ex-Britisher who wrote The Naked Civil Servant in 1968, when asked about the Washington scene, tells Yanks that Lady Diana, before she was Princess Diana, knew that royal marriages are never about love. Didn't Queen Alexandra, he relates, when Edward VII was on his deathbed and knowing about his mistress, say, "Let Mrs. Kepple be sent for"? In England, Crisp wittily says in his Gay Nineties show, adultery "is condoned. Divorce is not. In the United States it's the opposite. Every American woman knows marriage is for a little while. Alimony is forever."

o

Two leading gay playwrights, both humanists, have had big successes in New York. Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi was a memorable dramatic experience. Ticket holders started by passing through a group of protesting religious fundamentalists in order to get in, then they passed through a metal detector to make sure that whatever the guard saw bulging wasn't a gun. The play was panned by theists with a vested interest, of course. However, its central theme&emdash;acceptance of outsiders and the need for tolerance&emdash;was praised by the cognoscenti. Its lead character, a Texan named Joshua, spread his Jesus-like gospel of affirmation in saying to his childhood lover, Judas, and others, "God loves us most when we love each other." Judas, of course, betrays him to "the fag haters in priests' robes," and Joshua is crucified by the very ones who jeered him as a young boy, something with which it is easy to empathize. But many found the work less impious than Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" or "Jesus Christ Superstar."

o

Far more blasphemous is Paul Rudnick 's "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told," one of the theatrical season's funniest comedies. God, according to Rudnick, actually created Adam and Steve, not Adam and Steve, as well as Janet and Mabel. The same-sex couples quickly fall for each other. Adam is unsure where he came from, but he does find Eden a "fabulous" place except&emdash;true to his orientation as a nervous esthete&emdash;he's concerned about his hair and says, "I mean, I would have put the lake over there." Steve is the secular humanist type who points out that the Bible has to be wrong because, look, there's no Eve. Jane, meanwhile, is the butch type. Mabel's a dippy spiritual sort.

Laughs are one-a-minute, including at the start when a priest in the audience waves his Bible in the air and demands that the play be stopped&emdash;another plant in the audience tells him to sit down and shut the flock up (not her exact words). As the plot skips around the Bible myths, Adam gets seasick on the ark and Steve gets horny (the priest now plays a cute rhino with an erect horn). The Pharoah, who had found a baby in the bullrushes (the priest is now the love of this "mouth of the Nile"), advises Adam and Steve against vacationing in Sodom. Says the place had become too Disney and, besides, it's off-season for gays.

Act II's setting is a kitschily adorned Chelsea apartment. Adam and Mabel are becoming spiritual, Steve has developed AIDS, and a Mormon father explains to incredulous gays exactly what heterosexuals do when they have sex. "You do that?" with mortification they exclaim to the Mormon (again, the versatile priest)! A delightfully irreverent work, guaranteed to rile the religious right, particularly because of some frontal nudity (the cute priest, alas, never gets unfrocked) and a scene with godly-possible-backdoor-intercourse. "Believe in not knowing" and "Take a real risk&emdash;ask nothing" are two statements playgoers receive from the script. In Britain, you should pray that the play will be resurrected there&emdash;don't miss any such second coming. Also pray for a resurrection of Rudnick's 1990s play, "The Naked Eye," in which a man on a cross has an erection.

o

The Winter Solstice arrived in Manhattan at 20:56 on December 21st, almost entirely unnoticed except by secular humanists who were not taking advantage of the ChristMyth 60% Off sales.

This year's Stonewall Parade was again led by members of the Stonewall Veterans' Association. Although hundreds claim to have been on hand in 1969 during the five days of riots, only five of us marched the entire distance from 52nd Street past St. Patrick's to Christopher Street in Greenwich Village: Stephen van Cline, Jeremiah Newton, Danny Garvin, Sylvia Rey Rivera, and Warren Allen Smith. As the parade of thousands passed the cathedral, many marchers pointed and yelled "Shame!" Sylvia, who marches every year, wrenched her back and had to be carried the last five blocks. All the while he kept yelling to bystanders, "We are your history!" And they lustily cheered back, block after block.

HUMANIST LESBIAN HAS BABY! That could have been, but wasn't, the headline when Oscar-winner actor Jodie Foster, 35, gave birth to a 7 1/2-pound boy she has named Charles. When she starred in "Contact," the movie inspired by humanist Carl Sagan 's 1985 novel, Foster told the press that she had never believed in God nor practiced a religion. In addition to coming out as a freethinker in 1997, she also came out as a lesbian. Because Foster refuses to name the father, wags are betting whether or not the baby&emdash;born an atheist, of course&emdash;will have two mommies.

Journalists flitted crazily as Hillary and Bill Clinton flew this past summer to nearby Long Island, where Steven Spielberg was their host. Well over $1-million was collected for the Democratic Party at three bashes attended by notables from all over. One bash was hosted by Jonathan Sheffer, founder of the Eos orchestra. Although his $1.6-million converted barn house was featured in all the news stories, no one seemed to notice it is co-owned with Sheffer's companion, Dr. Christopher Barley. Newspapers, now that O. J. Simpson is passé, are increasing their circulation with stories about the President's involvement in a sex scandal (wags say the gal was outfitted with White House knee pads). Readers, however, failed to notice that reporters at the bash wrote that the President was treated to puffer fish rather than to the delicacy's actual name: blowfish.

Actor-singer Bruce Willis , who is married to Demi Moore , recently went on record: "Organized religions in general, in my opinion, are dying forms. They were all very important when we didn't know why the sun moved, why weather changed, why hurricanes occurred, or volcanoes happened. Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology. But there are people who interpret the Bible literally. Literally! I choose not to believe that's the way."

Stephen Sondheim, who may be Jewish although others say he is a secularist, has finally acknowledged his homosexuality. Meryle Secrest's Stephen Sondheim: A Life (1998) describes his working relationship with Leonard Bernstein (who once accepted an American Humanist Association award) and tells of his dating women while having relations with men. In 1991, he said he fell in love for the first time in his life, to Peter Jones, a young writer. The book includes a showbiz tale about Larry Kert, who was so tired during a 1972 London opening of "Company" that he strode to the front of the stage and said, "Who do I have to screw to get out of this show?" After a moment of silence, Sondheim's voice was heard from the back: "Same person you screwed to get in."

An old story still going the rounds in Manhattan: Sean Connery on the Dame Edna Show is asked, "Well, Sean, what James Bond film was it where your nude body was exposed&emdash;and on which one saw a crawling spider?" "A spider! On me? Never! That was a stunt man," exclaimed Connery. The guest seated to Connery's left, however, chimed in, "Well, really now, it looked like a spider to me!"

"Queer," which has been used disparagingly since the 1920s, is increasingly being adopted as a preferred term by radical homosexuals, particularly in the American academic community. Or so the forthcoming Random House Webster's Dictionary will state. Mainstreamers, however, continue to use gay and lesbian as the terms of choice.

[Photo of Tallulah Bankhead]

It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. It is the gossipiest of times.

It has probably always been so. Even the ancients were intrigued by the story of Adamastor , whose penis was so monstrously huge that he and the nymph Thetis were unable to have sex. Or by the whispered rumor that Alcibiades, when not attempting to seduce Socrates , went around drunkenly knocking phalluses off public statues.

American universities in large numbers now have instituted "queer studies programs." Their scope was touched upon in a March television show, the popular "60 Minutes" program. In it, one professor related how the 28-year-old lawyer Abraham Lincoln had shared a double bed for four years with 23-year-old Joshua Fry Speed. That news came as no surprise to those who already had known that President James Buchanan (1857-1861), our only bachelor president and once our minister to Great Britain, had been roommates for over two decades with Alabama Senator William Rufus de Vane King, who reportedly was called "Miss Nancy" by Washingtonians of that day.

Gore Vidal's Palimpsest (1995) had details about numbers of world leaders, including several about his fellow promiscuous friend Jack Kennedy . When Kennedy was only the President-elect, he is said to have grinned when called "the President-erect." Vidal the atheist admirer of Lucretius told how Tennessee Williams , when visiting, had found Kennedy sexually attractive. "Look at that ass," Tennessee had told Vidal as the three of them were being shown around. "You can't cruise our next president," Vidal told him sternly. But later when Vidal told Kennedy, Kennedy had grinned and said, "That's very exciting."

Vidal's tales about various VIPs also include one about the Bishop of Epheseus. In his Live From Golgotha (1982) Vidal described the bishop, the heterosexual Timothy, as having had "the largest dick in our part of Asia Minor." Further, he was represented as having been an acolyte and "love toy" of St. Paul . . . which should give women adequate ammunition for their feminist canons.

Last year Washington had complained about too much sex in Hollywood, Billy Crystal quipped in his opening monologue at this year's Oscar Awards. This year, of course, numbers of women are eager to obtain advances from publishers for their material about alleged sexual advances by President Bill Clinton, who understandably chose to leave for an extended tour of Africa, where he drew bigger crowds than the Pope , probably because of his greater sex appeal.

At the Oscars, Dustin Hoffman , introducing a short clip that featured all sixty-nine Best Picture winners at this year's Oscar Awards, mused whether "the number 69 is as significant internationally as it is at home." Meanwhile, rumors fly about Dustin's demands that all movie shots of him be personally checked to insure that he is not shown to have a limp wrist.

Jodie Foster, who has come out as being both a freethinker and a lesbian, now says she is pregnant. "I couldn't be happier," she told columnist Liz Smith, "But, no, I'm not going to discuss the father, the method, or anything of that nature." Similarly, Sandra Bernhard is giving no clue as to the father of her forthcoming baby, except to say she had insisted the donor be Jewish. Upon arrival, of course, the babies will touch down as non-theists--any religious baggage gets checked aboard later.

The cognoscenti are presently marveling about two works that describe the sexual appetites of numbers of VIPs. Josephine, an overlooked 1993 work by Josephine Baker 's "adopted children" Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase, has juicy gossip about Baker's bi-sexual escapades with numbers of noted as well as not-so-noted admirers and tells of her gay fourth husband, Jo Bouillon. Jean-Claude, who operates a spiffy restaurant in Manhattan's theatre district, has been observed to be not above publically goosing his handsome waiters.

Meanwhile, even in Sri Lanka they are talking about a work that tells how a dirt-poor Depression-era American boy becomes an oral delight and sex partner of the rich and beautiful in the international social world. Based on an actual 1943 murder, the novel drops names such as Maxine Elliott, said to have been Edward VII's mistress; describes the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; and includes tales about Cole Porter, Lucius Beebe, Clifton Webb, George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler, Glenway Wescott, Gloria Swanson, Elsa Maxwell, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Pablo Picasso, Barbara Stanwyck, Charley Knickerbocker, Tallulah Bankhead , and others. The author of The Good Life (1997) is Charles G. Hulse, who completed his lover Gordon Merrick 's unfinished work. In 1988, Merrick died in Sri Lanka, where Hulse lives part-time and the rest of the time in France.

Although some gay humanists are lamenting that the U. S. Presidency is being looked at more for its entertainment value than for its leadership, few can avoid seeing stories and reading blow-by-blow accounts of what variious VIPs are doing to each other. Lady Chatterley's lover: you're being upstaged.

[Photo of Leonard Bernstein, who bedded Rorem?]

Virgil Thomson, whose "Four Saints in Three Acts" (1928) and "The Mother of Us All" (1947) had operatic librettos by Gertrude Stein, was gay and a non-believer. This is documented in Anthony Tommasini's biography, Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle (1997), which includes how the famous composer and influential music critic was once arrested in a male bordello in Brooklyn and how, at the age of ninety, he was wooed by a young admirer. Film buffs know that Thomson's 1949 film score for "Louisiana Story" received the only Pulitzer Prize given for a film. In addition to describing Thomson's distaste for organized religion, the biographer relates how, when in college, Thomson was introduced to and supplied with drugs by a Mormon who had rationalized in a 1918 doctoral dissertation that peyote was not technically a drug, that it allowed one to reach up to the "higher power" and "exalted state" that Jesus Christ had attained. Who was the Mormon? None other than the church founder's grandson, Dr. Frederick Madison Smith, who himself became the President of the religious group.

In his nineties, Thomson helped pre-plan the final "show," his own funeral service. He chose it to be held in St. John's (Episcopal) Cathedral, which Gothic structure he called "St. John the Too-Too Divine." He also chose to die in his sleep, appropriately "in time to make all editions of the Sunday New York Times ." Although no speeches or spoken tributes were to be allowed, the cathedral's dean, the Very Reverent James P. Morton, gave a lengthy, pompous, and inaccurate tribute to Thomson, whom he barely knew, including basic facts of Virgil's life which were incorrect. Later, in the little Missouri cemetery where Thomson's ashes were buried, the local Baptist minister overlooked Virgil's distaste for organized religion, saying that "Virgil's parents were Baptists through and through. Virgil was read to from the Bible. Virgil was raised a Baptist, and that was important." He then read two Psalms of David, a chapter from Revelations, and a passage from John. Just as plans in life go awry, so in death.

Lou Harrison, sometimes dubbed the senior gay composer in the United States, has been honored by issuance of a new compact disc, "Lou Harrison: A Portrait" (Argo, 1997), performed by the California Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Barry Jekowsky. The eighty-year-old's work is contained in an eighty-minute anthology that illustrates why his avant-garde 1940s music brought him success and a seat in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A "card-bearing humanist" and devotee of Lucretius and Epicurus, Harrison has lived in Aptos, California, since 1967 with William Colvig, a contractor and member of an electricians' union.

Ned Rorem, sometimes described as music's elder statesman as well as its enfant terrible," is another musician who is an atheist and does not believe in an afterlife. He remains a nominal member of his parents' church, the Quaker, because "For better or worse I believe that all war is wrong at all times. But I never go to meeting . . . any more than to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, the tenets of which I nonetheless observe." Rorem believes that gay-rights groups should seek to abolish the military, not achieve fuller representation in it.

To a Times reporter (28 Jan 1998), Rorem said, "I don't think life has a purpose. We invent purposes to get through life. I feel basically good, but I am surrounded by death, the deaths of friends, and friends' mates, and every time it is unbearable. I don't believe in God, and I know there is no afterlife. Yet I do believe in belief. I'm not moved by the belief of the Moonies, but I am by the belief of Michelangelo, King David, and [social critic and pacifist] Paul Goodman."

Rorem's Paris Diary (1966) shocked many with its revelations about his and others' sexual escapades as, for example, "I can't sleep with famous people. Or for that matter with rich people, or people in power, used to being the center of attention. I have been in bed with four Time covers &endash; Lenny Bernstein, Tennessee Williams, Noel Coward, and John Cheever (included among 3,000 proportionately anonymous souls, including one woman) - and I performed out of a combination of duress and politeness." For twenty-seven years, Rorem has lived monogamously with James Holmes, an organist and choir director in New York.

[Photo of Elton John, a/k/a Sir Horace Pussy]

In Britain the royal family is having its private affairs, uh, exposed by Ms. Kitty Litter. Concurrently, in America Ms. Paula Jones is trying to expose our President's privates. Years ago when he was Governor of Arkansas, she says, he dropped his trousers and demanded oral sex. Her lips quivering, she has brought charges and demanded that Pres. Bill Clinton be photographed to prove her claim that he has "a distinguishing characteristic," of which she was a witness, known as Peyronie's disease. As our parents all taught us, that's when the penis is erect and there's a sharp curvature. Because there is admittedly no direct physical evidence of wrongdoing, poor Paula's perilous predicament is pitiable. Meanwhile, Clinton's physician has reported that during his annual physical the President was found to be "normal in all respects." (That he is normal, of course, has been known ever since he supported the Armed Forces "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. )

Napoleon is another world leader to whom a story can be added as an appendage. Or did you know that the descendants of Ange Paul Vignali, a priest and doctor who had attended him on St. Helena, was the one who conducted the autopsy when the Emperor died in 1821? Well, Vignali had once been scorned by Napoleon, so he kept Napoleon's phallus as a souvenir. Now the family jewel has ended up as a urological relic owned by Dr. John K. Lattimer, a retired urologist at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. "The Little Corporal," you will recall, was called that by his admirers. His enemies, you may not have known, called the 5' 2" emperor "the little prick."

Elton John, who is not known to be a theist, is the subject of a new documentary film. He mentions the fake names he has used when checking into hotels, such as Sir Colin Chihuahua, Prince Fooboo, Sir Humphrey Handbag. When his mother once rang up to ask for him when he was registered as Sir Horace Pussy, according to columnist Larry Sutton, the hotel clerk asked "Who is calling?" She wasn't too pleased, says Elton, at having to respond, "Mrs. Pussy."

Gianni Versace's killer, Andrew Cunanan, was heavily into sadomasochistic sex, according to Maureen Orth in Vanity Fair (Sep 97). He was into drugs, latex, and face masks with just the nostrils showing through. Receipts found in his belongings indicated that he had been in New York City May 5, 6, 7, and 8. He had seen a movie on 23rd Street near the famed Chelsea Hotel, and he had gone to a west side club that advertises steam rooms, showers, and weights. Muscular types in the gay Greenwich Village and Chelsea areas are wondering if perhaps he may have rubbed up against them.

Nearby, at 206 West 23rd St. , the "world's first S&M cafe" has opened. La Nouvelle Justine has waiters with whips, and diners sit in an appropriately depraved environment. Not far away at the 14th Street's Manhole, gay as well as straight S&M clubs share space. One feature is a motorcycle, upon which a couple may sit and, in between loud slaps, "Thank you, sir" is clearly audible.

Pianist Van Cliburn , who won the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition and went on to accumulate a fortune as a star concern pianist, has won a palimony suit brought by Thomas Zaremba. A Texas Court of Appeals dismissed Zaremba's claim that the two had been sexual partners starting in 1966 and that he had provided services "like shopping, doing the mail, paying the bills, drafting checks, co-managing the household, and dealing with accountants, creditors, and real estate agents in exchange for a share in Cliburn's income."

Challenging an Advocate article that claimed secular gays and lesbians are indebted to their religious counterparts, Harley A. Brown of Philadelphia's gay and lesbian secular humanist group retorted in that magazine (2 Sep 97) that "It was secular psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, and philosophers who developed the humanistic attitudes and scientific basis for the social acceptance of homosexuality. Other than the Unitarian Universalists, no major straight-controlled churches have been able to immediately accept this because the Bible, 'the word of God,' and irrational faith has stood in the way."

Katha Pollitt, the controversial American writer and secular humanist (for whom religion is "the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom"), has observed that Princess Diana and Mother Teresa were both "flowers of hierarchical, feudal, essentially masculine institutions in which they had no structural power but whose authoritarian natures they obscured and prettified." Both, she found, "despite protestations to the contrary, were in the modern mass-market image business. Neither challenged the status quo that produced the social evils they supposedly helped alleviate--in fact, by promoting the illusion that nuns with no medical training, or checks from wealthy donors, or selling your dressed for charity could 'make a difference' on a significant scale, they masked those evils (or even, in the case of Mother Teresa's opposition to abortion and birth control, made them worse)." Why, Pollitt questioned, should children's hospitals require Di's fundraising services instead of receiving adequate support from taxpayers?

Nathan Lane, who thinks he's not out, was seen recently with a slender stud at Splash, a gay bar in Chelsea, the part of Manhattan just north of Greenwich Village that has now become the city's gay center.

Transvestite prostitutes are not necessarily increasing in numbers, but they get mentioned more often in the press these days. Actor Eddie Murphy, who had a reputation for picking them up in New York City, got caught doing so in California but claimed he was just giving a ride home to the poor gal out so late. Now, Rodney "Can't-we-all-just-get-along" King, six years after his video-taped beating by cops triggered worldwide outrage, is serving 90 days in a California jail for trying to throw his wife out of a moving car. He also has been arrested for drunken driving and for solicitation of a transvestite prostitute.

[photo of Nathan Lane with Robin Williams]

New Yorkers are abuzz about the flamboyantly gay character, Buzz, in "Love! Valour! Compassion!" The Off-Broadway part had been played by Nathan Lane, whom many claim is America's funniest actor. In the new movie based on Terrence McNally's smash play, the part is played by Jason Alexande r, a star in the popular "Seinfeld" telecast. In one scene, Alexander appears naked except for an apron, a Panama hat, and red pumps, his endomorphic butt in full view as he bitchily steals one scene after another. "I'm the only straight actor I know of who has played this role," he recently told an Entertainment Weekly reporter. (Jason, Jason, sh! Nathan Lane has not yet come out of the closet!)

Another straight actor in "Love! Valour! Compassion!" (no gay actors, it appears, are to be found in Hollywood) is Ramon, a cocky Latino played by Randy Becker. Like the rest of the cast of six, he shucks his clothes and cavorts in the nude (to the particular delight of all concerned). With consummate enthusiasm (nay, passion!), he French-kisses one of the weekenders he has just met. And he is entirely credible in an S&M scene in which he is tied to a chair and is abused (with valour!) by his lover of but a few weeks. Most who see the movie will assume Becker is gay, but he is not. And as for whether he was embarrassed at being nude in the movie, Becker ingenuously told a reporter, "It was no big deal." (No, it wasn't, Randy, but it's still an above-average one.)

No gay humanists have come out so far this year. We're still unsure about Ellen DeGeneres's religious makeup (except that she was an atheist at birth), but her April 30th "coming out" show on "Ellen" netted her a Nielsen rating showing 39% of New York City's TV sets were tuned to her station (49% in Boston). In Canada, however, Member of Parliament Svend Robinson not only reveals that he is a non-theist but also publicly states that he is gay.

HTTP was created for the Internet by a gay American secular humanist, Ted Nelson (son of actress Celeste Holm). The World Wide Web was created by a British Unitarian, Tim Berners-Lee. To the present writer, billionaire Warren Buffet has confirmed that he is an agnostic. Meanwhile, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, when asked about the supernatural, responded, "I don't know if there's a god or not. Uh, but uh . . . religion principles are quite valid." Perhaps because his wife is Catholic, he quickly added, "Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."

Results from what gossip columnist Bruce Bibby calls the Annual Gay Superbowl, the telecast most call Oscar Night , are in. Sorry, but you already know there are few winners to report! My personal winner was in the audience. No, definitely not the Scientologist, Tom Cruise. My winner was the basketball player with Edwardian jacket and hat that covered his yellow hair, the lover who had enthralled Madonna for a few bedroom bouts, the controversial chap with tattoos who soon will appear in a movie: Dennis Rodman.

"The English Patient," which was about a hero who turned British military secrets over to the Nazis in exchange for an airplane with which to rescue his mistress, was a winner. But not, of course, because it depicted Peter Rühring playing a British mapmaker in love with a young Moroccan man.

"The Birdcage," the main movie with a gay plot but with no openly gay actors, at least had Oscar-nominated sets which were openly gay.

"Romeo and Juliet" featured Romeo's best friend, Mercutio, as a cross-dresser and a homosexual, but Mercutio won no award. Playwright Terrence McNally said of "Hamlet" that "the greatest gay character ever written is Hamlet. . . . Reconsider his misogynic treatment of both his mother and his alleged girlfriend, reexamine his relationship with his best friend, Horatio, and check out his over-the-top enthusiasm for the theater and actors. If it takes one to know one, Hamlet is one. Trust me on this."

"Marvin's Room" was written by gay playwright Scott McPherson before he died of AIDS, and it had been hoped to have been a winner.

"The Portrait of a Lady" was based on a Henry James work. Henry's sister Alice was, according to A. L. Rowse, "a Lesbian of a pronounced type." Will Self in Cock and Bull (1992) thought Henry had "only half a cock," having lost it chasing after a fire engine while trying to help an amateur fire fighter. Recent gay rumors link James to Oliver Wendell Holmes. But the movie, alas, was a portrait of Isabel Archer, not of the closeted Henry.

"Fly Away Home" was produced by gay Hollywood manager Sandy Gallin.

"Michael Collins" was a political drama produced by Geffen Pictures, which is headed by gay mogul David Geffen .

"The First Wives Club" 's Marc Shaiman was nominated for best original musical or comedy score. And gay honcho Scott Rudin had produced the work which was reportedly scripted in part by reigning gay wit Paul Rudnick.

"Shine" depicts the Australian piano prodigy David Helfgott's first teacher, played by Nicholas Bell. Helfgott's father always had wondered why the teacher had never married, and he found out when at one of David's concerts the teacher attended with a male date.

"Sling Blade" was about Billy Bob Thornton's real-life pal John Ritter, a small-town gay everyman, the best-conceived gay character of the year, whose unconditional love extends to the woman he never bedded and the son he never fathered.

Gay characters in Hollywood movies are almost always played by non-gays. For example, by breeders such as Antonio Banderas; Cher; Robert Downey Jr.; Whoopi Goldberg; Tom Hanks; Mariel Hemingway; Jonathan Pryce; Will Smith; Wesley Snipes; Terence Stamp; Patrick Stewart; Meryl Streep; Patrick Swayze; Uma Thurman; Jennifer Tilly; and Robin Williams.

The gay Sir Ian McKellen predicted not long ago that "the first young actor of talent who comes out and stars in a movie and is a hit will be the most famous actor in the world and make a fortune for his agents and his managers and producers and the studio."

Well, we who watch the Annual Gay Superbowl are still on hold and waiting!

[Allen Windsor Reports from the Big Apple.]

Edward Albee, the American playwright who is openly gay but who dislikes being called an American gay playwright, spoke on Dec. 10th to several hundred at the Gay Center in Manhattan. Two days prior, he had received the 1996 Kennedy Center Honors Award from President and Mrs. Bill Clinton at the White House.

Arriving in New York to applause although a few minutes late, he headed straight for the men's room at the front of the room, then received tumultuous applause upon exiting. In an off-the-cuff, very informal session, he gave no lecture but answered anyone's questions. Asked to dish the White House event, he said the best part was that he was the honoree, that he didn't have to "do" anything. Did his lover go along? Oh, yes, and for decades he has always been accompanied by whomever his current lover had been. How was the food? The cold shrimp was marvelous. Did he get to speak to the prez? Well, he got in a few licks on behalf of Federal aid to the arts. Had he written "Zoo Story" in four weeks? Yes, while earning $37 per week at Western Union, using a company typewriter and paper he purloined. When did he realize he was gay? Well, he was in a prep school at the age of 12. Is he an unbeliever who, like so many gays, does not believe in an afterlife? Well, no. Jesus was a good revolutionary, although Albee didn't go along with the divinity part. In fact, he had startled a lady when recently asked what person, if he could have dinner with anyone, he would choose. He had answered Jesus. "Well," he told the attentive gay crowd, "who did you think I'd have chosen, Neil Simon?"

No mention was made that Salman Rushdie, when he performed as an actor on Pakistani TV in Albee's The Zoo Story , had had to cut a line about God's being a colored queen who wears a kimono and plucks His eyebrows.

Albee has consistently denied that he originally had two gays in mind rather than the straight couple in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962; film 1966). Asked again, he explained that the plot would not make sense in light of the couple's fixation about a nonexistent son whom they had created to sustain themselves in their attempt, they said, to "try to claw our way into compassion." How could two males have had a son? Besides, he observed, "I know a woman from a man. If I'd had males in mind, I would say so."

Although David Tribe, the Australian-born secularist, has termed Albee a nonbeliever, Albee made it clear that he thinks Jesus lived, likes his outlook and character, but just doesn't accept all that divinity stuff. Albee may never even have heard about secular humanists, in short. Gore Vidal, on the contrary, is a total nonbeliever.

New Yorkers are not booking wedding packages to Honolulu. Not just yet. Honolulu may hope to become the Reno of gay marriages, but each of the 50 state legislatures makes its own marriage rules. There are 29 states that let first cousins marry and 21 that don't. In some, females can marry at 15, whereas in most others they must be 18. Already, 16 states have passed laws banning same-sex marriage and 20 have rejected such laws. Although gays may eventually be allowed to marry, it will be years and waves of backlash before all the legal issues are resolved. Anyone for a really long engagement?

Angel Garcia, a licensed groom, was interrupted about midnight by a security officer at the NY Aqueduct race track. Naked, he was lying on the stall floor, apparently having fallen off the plastic bucket he had been standing on. The filly, Saratoga Capers, was chained and, after it was examined by a vet, Garcia was charged with engaging in sexual conduct with an animal. News reports did not suggest whether Garcia was gay or a breeder. Meanwhile, in her first race since the incident, Saratoga Capers came in third, paying $3.10 on a $2. bet.

New York City's back rooms, pitch dark places which are packed to the four walls with guys of all shapes and sizes, have disappeared, to the credit of the much disliked Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Responsible gay leaders, however, have hailed their closing, claiming it was shocking that condom-less sex had been so common at a time when gays have been leaders in educating the general public about avoiding venereal and HIV problems. At the November1996 Humanist World Congress held in Mexico City, at least four humanists were so intrigued that several gay bars openly had back rooms that they spent part of the conference "observing" orgies in the darkness.

No gay humanist group in Manhattan is on the World Wide Web. However, if you've a big hard disk, cruise over to http://www.gaycenter.org Or if you want to pick up a nude Hawaiian, http://www.pixi.com/~simonson/ Or for Costa Ricans, http://www.indiana.edu/~arenal/TR

[Photo of Gore Vidal]

When Gore Vidal was elected a Humanist Laureate by others in the International Academy of Humanism, he overlooked the vote, failing to acknowledge the honour from the Council for Secular Humanism

The Academy of Humanism's 75 members, who are listed in issues of Free Inquiry, include five Nobel Prize winners and such familiar GALHA names as Sir Hermann Bondi and Professor Rob Tielman.

The inaction by the author of Myra Breckenridge was not particularly surprising. He had, years ago, deliberately refused membership in the prestigious 250-member American Academy of Arts and Letters, telling them, "Thanks, but I already belong to the Diners Club." Also, he has piqued some noted people with his acerbic opinions: Of Solzhenitsyn: "He is a bad novelist and a fool. The combination ususally makes for great popularity in the United States." Of Ronald Reagan : "A triumph of the embalmer's art." Of Truman Capote: "Capote has made lying an art. A mini art." Of America: "The civilization whose absence drove Henry James to Europe."

Vidal's Live From Golgotha (1982) was a satire as blasphemous as anything Salman Rushdie might imagine. Its Bishop of Ephesus, the heterosexual Timothy who was said to have had "the largest dick in our part of Asia Minor," was represented as having been an acolyte and "love toy" of St. Paul. Vidal's nontheistic bent was never hidden, as exemplified by a 1992 declaration, "I'm really interested now in trying to destroy monotheism in the United States. That is the source of all the problems."

In 1995 his autobiographical Palimpsest (1995) pulled no punches and included tales showing he knew almost everybody who was "anybody." It included in Vidalian detail his homosexual experiences (never a bottom); his one love ( Jimmy Trimble, a Marine scout killed by a grenade in 1944); Gene Vidal (Gore said of his father, who was in medical books because he had three balls, "I never dared look&endash;you don't look at parents&endash;but it is recorded that they were all of equal size"); Greta Garbo (told she should return to Sweden, that the king was dying, responded, "So far to go, and for what? He'll die anyway"); Wallis Simpson (who died after an anesthetic following a fifth face-lift); the Duke of Windsor (Wallis "knew how to control his premature ejaculation"); Eleanore Roosevelt (known for serving "the most inedible meals in the White House"); Paul Newman (who, when reading Nietzsche aboard a troopship, found a chaplain making a pass at him and it really put him off. "Off Christianity or homosexuality?" Vidal had asked. "Neither," responded Newman. "Nietzsche"); Jackie Onassis 's losing her virginity (to John Marquand Jr. on a creaky Parisian lift); Lee Radzwill (who put messages in Pres. Kennedy's coffin, "presumably for Jack to deliver on the other side"); President Kennedy ( Tennessee Williams told Gore he found Kennedy's ass "attractive," to which Kennedy, when told, grinned, "That's very exciting."). The book has dishy tales about dozens of others whom Vidal knew personally, many intimately.

A pity, then, that such an outspokenly colorful atheist had ignored the Academy of Humanism honor!

So, a mentor of the Council, I came up with a fey plan to get Vidal into the Humanist Academy. Palimpsest had cited his affection for pre-Judeo-Christian times and specifically for Apuleius, Petronius, and Lucretius . It was the latter who, he found, had anticipated Darwin by 2000 years. Mortals were not let down from on high by some golden chain, Lucretius held. To which Vidal declared, "So much for the antique notion of Cadmus sowing dragon's teeth to create human beings or the peculiarly silly story of Adam and Eve believed by so many of my countrymen." Further, it was Lucretius who was "aware&endash;how, I wonder?&endash;that we evolved."

Taking an envelope which contained a copy of my Free Inquiry interview with Sir Peter Ustinov, and including inside a self-addressed stamped envelope with an unsigned memo, "I agree to be listed as a Humanist Laureate," I hiked off to a local book-signing.

"Mr. Vidal," I said as I approached the 70-year-old, somewhat dourly, "you and I," and here my voice raised in volume," are in love with the same man!"

It was clear from his reaction that he had never before seen me. For a split second, he seemed both startled and bemused. Observers anticipated a scene. Side conversations abruptly halted. A Random House representative approached, warily. Vidal clearly was trying to guess what was about to happen.

I then slipped him the envelope.

"Lucretius ," I said with a smile.

My next day's mail included the memo . . . signed.

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