On Saturday, May 3, in addition to the usual draws -- from pandas to monkeys -- the National Zoo will also be overrun with animals of a different species, those from the figurative taxonomy of the gay kingdom. You know, bears, otters, pups, social bees.

''It's a nice time where you get to see everyone come together in the community,'' says Jacob Pring, the local promoter responsible for organizing the second annual Gay Day at the Zoo, a fundraiser for The DC Center, the city's primary LGBT community center. Last year's event attracted about 2,000 people and raised $3,500, and Pring expects to exceed those totals this year with greater promotion and participation, including a sizeable contingent of parents and children from Rainbow Families.

Lion's den at the National Zoo

(Photo by JD Uy)

''It's just a regular day at the zoo,'' Pring says. But it's also one in which LGBT zoo-goers are encouraged to wear T-shirts in this year's official color of teal/jade -- ''as close to that color as possible.'' That is, if they aren't able to buy in advance the event's official Nellie's-sponsored T-shirt for $20, the proceeds of which go directly to The DC Center.

''It just so happens to be Kentucky Derby day too,'' Pring adds, ''so if people want to be cute and wear a derby hat, all the better.'' '

Gay Day at the Zoo is Saturday, May 3, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., at National Zoo, 3001 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. Visit gaydayatthezoo.com.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia on Wednesday filed a motion in D.C. Superior Court to dismiss without prejudice the case against Jermaine Brown, who faced a charge of felony murder in the killing of a gay man who was shot, then set ablaze in his Columbia Heights apartment last July.

This development comes two days before Brown was scheduled to appear in Superior Court for a felony status hearing. At Brown's last hearing, April 18, Assistant U.S. Attorney Holly Schick informed the court that an indictment would be filed in time for Brown's April 25 hearing.

However, despite a finding of probable cause that Brown could have committed the murder, issued by Judge Robert E. Morin, and a subsequent order requiring Brown to submit to DNA collection, the government has not been able to obtain the indictment it's been pursuing since January.

As a result, Superior Court Judge Ronna Beck, standing in for Morin, issued an order for the D.C. Jail to release Brown, canceled his scheduled status hearing and jury trial, and granted the government's motion to dismiss the case without prejudice. This means Brown can still be tried for Harris's murder at a later date, should the U.S. Attorney's Office and police secure more evidence to obtain an indictment against him.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment on the case, citing a standing policy of not discussing charging decisions. But the spokesman did say the government will continue to investigation despite dismissing the case.

According to charging documents, the D.C. Fire Department & Emergency Medical Services responded at 6:18 a.m. on July 26, 2013, to a call for an ''odor of smoke'' in the 1000 block of Euclid Street NW, where they found 31-year-old Randolph Scott Harris Jr. restrained in a chair, but severely burned and suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Harris was transported to Washington MedStar Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. According to the District of Columbia Medical Examiner's office, Harris's death was ruled a homicide, caused by three gunshot wounds and burns from being set on fire while still alive.

Brown was arrested following a police investigation that connected him to the crime scene by witnesses. Other witnesses told police they had seen Brown with a bag containing various electronic devices, including an iPad, two iPhones, and an iPod touch, which had been left at the home of a third party. From there, a witness returned the bag to police who matched the serial numbers on the devices to packaging in Harris's apartment.

Prior to his arrest, Brown was interviewed multiple times by police and was challenged on various inconsistencies in his statements to investigators that conflicted with information gathered from witnesses. In the course of one of the interview, Brown told police he had visited the victim, whom he referred to as ''Man,'' and alleged that Man, who was gay, had tried to ''holla'' at him, meaning initiate some sort of sexual relationship. Brown denied ever ''going that way'' – or engaging in a sexual relationship with Harris – because he told police he saw something wrong with being gay and described it as ''nasty.'' However, he later told police that he occasionally engaged in sex with men, but never with Harris.

Spring, despite its lingering chill in 2014, is a time to think of birth, of growth, of renewal. That means youth – LGBT youth, in particular. Like D.C.'s spring, LGBT youth can also be chilly – and sunny and breezy and all the rest. There is no universal template for people, certainly not the youngest among us. They are bois and grrrls, queer and kindred. They are everything at once, coming out, testing their wings and getting a better look at those generations ahead of them who have laid the groundwork, and whom they will gradually replace.

In the D.C. metro area alone, they represent thousands of unique perspectives. Ahead of the Youth Pride Alliance's May 3 Youth Pride Day, Metro Weekly checked in with three of them.

From Mean Streets to Easier Street

Lundyn Terry-Smith with Justin and Philip

(Photo by Todd Franson)

In the world of Annie, a hard-knock life means a nasty orphanage full of toil and show tunes, with a ''Daddy'' Warbucks tap-dancing along to make your life magic. In the world of Lundyn Terry-Smith, things worked a little differently.

''I was living in Baltimore City and I was homeless,'' says Terry-Smith, now 17, of a time shortly after he'd turned 14. The abuse, he says, came primarily from his father. While his mother wasn't abusive, she was also long absent – since he was 8 months old. But there was also abuse at school. ''In elementary school, I got along okay. In middle school it was a little bit tougher, because that's when I figured out I was gay. In high school, it was just terrible. I never really came out and said, 'Hey, I'm gay.' People assumed, and they were correct. That's just how it was. I did get bullied a lot for it. It got pretty bad. It got to the point I was fighting every day, getting shoved in lockers, all that other good stuff.''

The way out, as Terry-Smith saw it, was to run away from home. And, indeed, that ended the daily abuse. Still, the trajectory of his life was far from taking a positive turn. Things were going to get much worse before they got better.

''I was jumping from house to house, with friends and stuff,'' Terry-Smith says of the start of his life on the streets. ''Then I found an abandoned home. It had a couch, and the electricity hadn't been shut off. I stayed there for a little bit. I got addicted to some pretty nasty drugs. Finally, I got really tired of that life. I went to my aunt for help.''

Cue the happy-ending music? Oh, no.

Terry-Smith's aunt was able to get him off the streets and into a 90-day program operated in Maryland by Texas-based Arrow Child & Family Ministries. As a self-identified Pagan, Terry-Smith says his experience with the Christian social-services provider may have provided him a safe harbor, but did little to assuage his sense of isolation.

Whatever his feelings about Arrow, the program did, at least, get him a step closer to that happy ending. Still, Terry-Smith clearly remembers his dissatisfaction coloring his first meeting with Justin and Philip B. Terry-Smith.

''The first thing I said was, 'Get me the hell out of here.'''

The shared last name is the spoiler -- you know where this is going. Following months of getting acquainted and the attendant paperwork and court dates, Lundyn Terry-Smith is officially – right down to the legal last name – part of the family, living in Maryland with his two dads, and thriving in ways that have given him a new lease on life. Not only does he have a roof over his head, but he's also got his own bathroom. And, unlike plenty of people his age, Terry-Smith seems to embrace his chore list.

''It's right here if you'd like me read it to you,'' he says. ''Sundays I have to dust surfaces and do the kitchen floor. Monday is two hours of studying. Tuesday is my laundry day. Wednesday is trash day. Thursday, I have to clean my bathroom. Friday, I have to clean and vacuum my room and the hallway. Saturday, I have to dust and vacuum the living room and dining room.''

He even makes dinner once a week: ''Thursdays are my night to cook. Last night I cooked orange chicken. It was the first time I ever made it. It turned out really good.''

In a safe and stable home, Terry-Smith can actually turn his attention from staying warm and fed – or feeding an addiction – and concentrate on the here and now. He's continuing his high school education online, often heading to Anne Arundel Community College with his father Philip, who serves as an assistant professor of sociology there, and crafting a future as a cosmetologist and professional belly-dancer. That's not all he's got planned for the future.

''April 12, 2013,'' says Terry-Smith. That's the day his fiancé, José, popped the question. ''We've known each other since we were little. He found me and messaged me online. He reminded me who he was, then he told me he was gay. We kept talking and things happened.''

Terry-Smith says the marriage will have to wait a couple years, until José's Army tour ends, but a boy can dream.

''Justin will walk me down the aisle, and Phil will marry us,'' he says of the fixed points. Attire is still up in the air. ''I kind of want to wear a dress to my wedding and be all dragged up. But I'm debating.''

Terry-Smith is more definitive, however, when it comes to where the community could do a better job regarding the younger end of the LGBT spectrum. He says there's a critical need for more service organizations that target LGBT youth, for more culturally competent support groups to help them navigate these first years of having an LGBT identity.

In the meantime, he, at least, has found his own support group.

''Not only do I have homosexual parents, but I have the large group of LGBT friends that they have,'' he says of the social circle he adopted along with his socially prominent parents. ''I feel so welcome. It's amazing. I have such a large support group now. I wish everybody did. Without it, life gets pretty hard.''

Seems Lundyn Terry-Smith's ''Tomorrow'' has already arrived, and the sunshine couldn't be much brighter.

Accepted and Excelling

Simone

In April 2012, Maryland's Bowie State University made history. Two years ago, it became the first of the ''Historically Black Colleges and Universities'' (HBCU) to establish a permanent resource center specifically for ''lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex'' students.

Not long after, Simone Mathis made her own history by starting college – at Bowie State, of course – where she discovered not the resource center, necessarily, but the school's Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA).

''One of my friends from high school had already been a member of the GSA,'' Mathis, a Beltsville native, recalls of her first year in college. ''He took me one day and I loved it. My next semester, I became the treasurer. The semester after that, I ran for president.''

Today, a 20-year-old sophomore majoring in English, Mathis continues as president of the GSA on a campus she characterizes as neither hostile nor overtly welcoming. Rather, everything is just comfortably matter-of-fact.

''It's not like we're secluded,'' Mathis says of her GSA's role on campus, with about 30 to 35 members. ''We're involved in some of the on-campus activities. It's just like being any other student. Every year we mark the Day of Silence. We do LGBT History Month every October with certain events. Every now and then we'll throw in a random one. We do try to stay active.''

The low-key yet involved nature of the Bowie State GSA fits Mathis perfectly, in that her own life has run largely along the same lines. Coming out might have thrown a couple bumps in the road, but they were tiny and easy to navigate.

''Coming out, I lost a significant amount of friends,'' she says, remembering being 15 years old at Bowie High School. ''Other than that, the people who were really my friends stood by me. 'It's okay. We love you for who you are. That's fine.' Coming out to my parents was a little more difficult. I didn't actually come out; they just found out. That was a little difficult. But my family and friends love me for who I am. It really wasn't that hard.''

Not only did she find family acceptance, she found it in abundance.

''I live at home with my mom. She loves me. She loves my girlfriend – my girlfriend lives here now, too,'' Mathis shares. ''My mom likes to take in everybody, so all my sisters still live here, and my aunt and grandmother live with us. We're big family people.''

As for that girlfriend, a student at Baltimore's Stevenson University, it's a relationship that illustrates another corner of Mathis's life where being a lesbian has just not caused much of a ripple.

''We grew up together, went to church together,'' says Mathis, referring to Beltsville's Queen's Chapel United Methodist Church. ''She used to be the youth pastor for our church. We're still pretty active. Our church is full of family members.''

So, welcoming campus, welcoming family, welcoming church? ''Yep. That's very lucky,'' she confirms with a playful laugh.

Despite the apparent ease that colors Mathis's life, she still sees room for improvement, and it comes down to a practical dollars-and-cents sensibility.

''Definitely more scholarships,'' Mathis answers immediately when asked what the older end of the LGBT community might be able to offer its younger counterparts. ''I cannot stress that enough. As a struggling college student, definitely more scholarships. Every other race, ethnicity, group has a scholarship for something. I don't think we have that many. We definitely need more scholarships.''

If things go as planned, one day it might even be Mathis' students applying for such scholarships, as she has her sights set on being a high school English teacher. Sponsoring a GSA for her students, wherever she might land, is also on her radar, as are kids of her own. Whatever her future holds, exactly, it's a fairly safe bet that Mathis will bring to the world the kind of acceptance and community that the world has already shown her.

SMYAL's Eager Ambassador

Marco Hernon

Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders – née the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, but best known as SMYAL, whatever the iteration – throws a heck of a brunch every year. In 2013, it featured Marco Herndon, a young man who moved to Arlington, Va., from Georgia, ahead of his sophomore year of high school, roughly five years ago. SMYAL had asked him to come and share his experience with the organization.

''I talked about how SMYAL has affected my experiences as an LGBT youth,'' Herndon recalls. ''I talked about how I learned a lot of leadership skills through them. I talked about how they exposed me to the diversity of the LGBT community. Growing up in the suburbs in Arlington, I didn't have exposure to a lot of LGBT youth. SMYAL exposed me to a lot of different types of LGBT youth and experiences. What I knew of gay culture was mainly Dupont Circle, or very well-to-do gay men. … It was the first time I met transgender youth who were my age. Just knowing there were other LGBT youth in the area was really cool. I got to express myself in ways I couldn't in high school. I was always trying to act 'not too gay.' In this other space, I was able to just be myself. It really challenged me, as well. Through SMYAL, I learned that there are a lot of different experiences.''

That foundation has had a great influence on Herndon's experience at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where the 20-year-old is focusing on urban and legal studies. From finding SMYAL when he was 16, to volunteering, to becoming a member of SMYAL's Youth Advocates Program during his senior year of high school, Herndon learned not only more about himself and his community, but also about communicating in a variety of environments and about the nuts-and-bolts of operating a nonprofit. All of it useful.

''I'm part of the Lambda Alliance at UPenn. It's the undergrad umbrella organization for LGBT students. I'm on the board, pretty involved with that,'' Herndon says of campus life. ''I've also been able to explore more intersections of the LGBT community. I'm Latino. I've been able to understand what it means to be a Latino gay man within the wider LGBT community. As part of my role in this organization on campus, I've had to organize retreats. I've evolved a lot of the skills I started learning at SMYAL. Whenever I have to plan something or talk about these types of issues, when I have to talk about these 'soft skills,' I always think back to conversations or events at SMYAL. That was a really good starting point in learning how to talk about social issues, learning how to tackle them.''

It's also a question of conversations, he says, when thinking of what's lacking for his generation – young gay men, in particular. Herndon would like to see more conversations about sex, more guidance from the older generation, in an effort to counter high HIV infection rates among his peers.

''My generation of gay men, we have this pervasive hook-up culture, but we don't really have a lot of exposure to what it means to be an openly gay young person,'' says Herndon, describing his generation as pioneers of sorts, a group that may have come of age in high schools with Gay-Straight Alliances – but among the first to do so. Their age of exploration and identity is beginning younger than their forefathers', but without the cultural infrastructure of their straight peers. ''I'd argue we're one of the first generations to be totally open, but there's no real standard, no format. We don't really have an idea of how relationships are supposed to work at our age.

''The HIV/AIDS crisis is happening all over again with LGBT youth, especially 17 to 24 year old gay men, who are the most prone to HIV. There are a lot of different stress points on a young LGBT person. We don't feel like there's a place in the mainstream LGBT movement that's concerned about this.''

Youth leaders like Herndon – with skills learned at SMYAL – may be the ones to start the conversation. While Herndon offers that message to an older generation, he also has a message for those a bit younger, living in the D.C. area, across the LGBT spectrum.

''I'd like them to know that SMYAL is a place where you can be yourself, but that it's also a place that challenges you to think about who you are, and it challenges you to be independent,'' says Herndon. ''It makes you think about your identity in a multidimensional way. It's not just about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer youth. It's also about exploring the wide array of things that define you. In exploring that, you really empower yourself. You realize you can't be reduced to just one thing, that your identity is really a collection of things.''

The Youth Pride Alliance's Youth Pride Day is Saturday, May 3, from noon to 5 p.m., in Dupont Circle. For more information, visit youthpridedc.org.

Like 16th century versions of the biopic, Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), and Henry V, contemplate fascinating lives through an auteur's expansive lens. Equal parts historical page-turner and human drama, each track the political intrigues, power plays and battles spawned, while offering rich soil for Shakespeare's contemplations on the human condition.

If this sounds like heavy lifting, then the place to start might well be with the Shakespeare Theater Company's Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, in which the somber episodes of Henry IV's reign over a volatile Britain share time with the carefree exploits of the antithetical Falstaff's reign over the local ne'er do wells – who happen to include the king's tear-away son, Hal. In this combination, both plays offer a ''something for everyone'' accessibility, including even a bit of above-average swordplay. And since they're playing in rep, the plays can be seen on separate nights but still in order -- a unique opportunity to follow not only Henry's history, but also the way in which Shakespeare darkly and interestingly evolves his characters.

Edward Geroas King Henry IV

(Photo by Scott Suchman)

Carrying both plays, Henry IV, Falstaff and Hal are crucial linchpins and there is no doubt that, whether or not the interpretations speak to you, Edward Gero, Stacy Keach and Matthew Amendt, respectively, make for a strong and memorable continuity. Big stage presences working within the strong vision of director Michael Kahn, these three flawlessly maintain the vibe of their respective worlds and conundrums as they live in parallel, and then as they finally begin to collide. Thus, even with a big cast (in which many play multiple roles across the two productions) and despite an overarching plot that the uninitiated may find obtuse, most will find the drama unfolding among the three men eminently accessible.

For what does it really boil down to? Two aging men, Henry and Falstaff, each in their own ruthless, sometimes noble, ways controlling respective domains, now beginning to turn inward as the pressures of personal and political survival mount. Caught between them is the young Hal, who though happily slumming it in Falstaff's world, never quite forgets he belongs elsewhere. As war threatens, all three must accept change: Hal must decide who he really wants to be, his father must accept him as not only as heir apparent but also as a capable man, and Falstaff must come to terms with the fact that he has ever only been a weigh station in a much larger and inevitable scheme. None are wholly happy with where they land, but then who is? It's a dynamic we can relate to without ever claiming royal blood or a tavern for a home.

For sheer gravitas and the kind of muscular but emotionally poetic integrity that brings Shakespeare into stark immediacy, Gero takes the day with his King Henry IV. At first fully engaged in ruling the various bellicose British factions, Gero fills his Henry with a convincing expedience and intelligent steel. Hal may blithely mock him (at first), but it is no accident that Henry has no time for frivolity; he has been wracked with responsibility and a morally ambiguous reign. By Part 2, Gero completes a subtle seismic shift and reveals with brilliance the shadows in this man's soul.

And it is a brilliance made all the more potent by Kahn's choice to steep these productions fully and gloriously (except for one small, but wonderful, moment) in full-on classical mode. Tightly sprung, perfectly pitched and paced, these productions are the bloody steaks and tannic reds of the theater; rich, gratifying and offering an energy that endures long after the evening has ended. This essential approach is enhanced by Alexander Dodge's rough-hewn but restrained sets, which evoke Henry's medieval era while serving as symbol for the unsettled nation he must rule.

Counter to Gero's deadly serious Henry is Keach, playing his Falstaff to please the crowd. Embodying his man with some clever prosthetics and a doddering walk, Keach manages the none-too-easy task of entertaining on disparate levels. Thus, while some will howl with joy at the vaudevillian moves while others will cringe, pretty much everyone will find pleasure in his facility with Shakespeare's language and the clever way in which he clearly and yet deftly delivers the bard's wit. It's a writ-large rendering with whiffs of the Old American West, but it is warm, engaging and speaks to the subtle pathos that inflects the character.

Completing the triangle is Amendt's Hal, who is wholly more complicated. Exuding what can only be called an unlikable charm, he is an undeniable force whenever onstage -- compelling, memorable and well matched to the two charismatic older men. But there is an ever-so-slight dampener at the heart of the performance that seems to emanate from something akin too much calculation and not enough being. More specifically, Amendt is master of the language, of Hal's emotions (he cries real tears!), the comic timing, even the staged unexpected; yet, unlike his seasoned co-leads, Amendt doesn't quite generate the sense of the man who is the sum of all these parts. It is all the more distracting when it mingles with Hal's slightly devious characterization: Is it Hal, or Amendt playing Hal?

Stacy Keach in Henry IV

(Photo by Scott Suchman)

Still, it's a small question in a bigger, very wonderful whole. Rounding out the central action in this large cast are many finely tuned performances, with standouts dominated, without doubt, by the senior players. Ted van Griethuysen outdoes himself with beautiful comic portraits. Kevin McGuire brings much potency and poetry to his Shakespeare. Steve Pickering offers a nicely grounded gravitas. Derrick Lee Weeden brings gratifying urgency to his Lord Chief Justice. And Bev Appleton and Brad Bellamy bring big laughs in little roles.

Of the younger members, John Keabler is a suitably fiery rebel Hotspur, thorn in the king's side, but would do well with a less-is-more approach to this man's energy. As his wife Lady Percy, Kelley Curran is a striking figure with a memorable edge, while Chris Genebach offers a compelling presence and voice that leaves one wanting more.

All in, these are two productions guaranteed to deliver ''argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest for ever.''

Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 () run to June 8 in Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall, 610 F St. NW. Tickets are $20 to $110 for one play, with discounts available for combined purchase. Call 202-547-1122 or visit shakespearetheatre.org.

The Maryland Coalition for Transgender Equality (MCTE) -- a bloc of more than 50 political, social-justice, religious and community groups advocating on behalf of transgender rights -- on April 16 launched a campaign aimed at educating the public about a recently passed transgender-rights bill that is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D).

The bill, SB 212, which is also known as the Fairness for All Marylanders Act, passed the Maryland Senate 32-15 and the House of Delegates 82-57 in March. It prohibits discrimination based on a person's gender identity or expression in employment, housing, credit and public accommodations. Such laws already exist on the local level in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard County and Montgomery County, as well as in the city of Hyattsville, Md.

The new multimedia campaign, "Stand for Fairness," aims to counter misconceptions about the details and impact of the legislation in hopes of building broad support for its nondiscrimination provisions. As part of that effort, the campaign will provide answers to "Frequently Asked Questions" about SB 212, and provide personal stories from transgender Marylanders and allies who may be impacted by the law. The coalition is urging allies of the transgender community tosign a pledge that they back the legislation, which will also allow the coalition members to recruit volunteers and keep supporters informed of the campaign's progress.

"The Stand for Fairness campaign will give our broad base of supporters the opportunity to share all the reasons why they support fairness for transgender Marylanders, as well as put a face to the issue by elevating the stories of transgender people facing discrimination," Carrie Evans, the executive director of Equality Maryland, one of the chief members of the Coalition for Trans Equality, said in a statement. "This year Maryland's elected officials stood for fairness by passing The Fairness for All Marylanders Act. Now we're working to make sure Marylanders in every corner of the state understand the bill."

The multimedia campaign could also serve as a pre-emptive strike against an attempt by opponents to petition the law onto the 2014 ballot. The right-wing website MdPetitions.com, which successfully petitioned the 2012 marriage-equality law onto the ballot, thereby forcing supporters to run an ultimately successful but expensive campaign to defend the law, has already been reaching out to its supporters to gauge support for collecting 55,736 valid signatures from registered voters needed to force a referendum in November.

Although a Goucher College poll in March found that 71 percent of Maryland residents supported including gender identity in the state's nondiscrimination laws, opponents have tried to portray the bill as harmful to society and a threat to the safety of women and girls in public restrooms, derisively referring to the measure as "the bathroom bill." Opponents have also recycled one of their chief arguments from the 2012 marriage debate, claiming the expanded protections for transgender individuals do not provide sufficient protections or exemptions for religious employers or organizations.

"Educating Marylanders about this law is essential," Del. Luke Clippinger (D-Baltimore City), the chief sponsor of the gender-identity bill in the House of Delegates, said in a statement. "During debate in the House of Delegates, we heard a lot of incorrect and misleading statements being made. I am glad to see that MCTE is initiating this discussion on the law."

Other members of the coalition also released statements praising the campaign and highlighting its importance in informing Marylanders about the provisions within SB 212.

"HRC has worked on this law for many years, and we want to ensure the public is informed about the elements of this law," said Marty Rouse, HRC national field director.

"As a transgender woman, it's important to me for my fellow Marylanders to know that the Fairness for All Marylanders Act is about my ability to get a job, have a roof over my head, or take my son to dinner at a restaurant without being denied basic rights just because I'm transgender," said Jenna Fischetti of TransMaryland.

Added Vann Michael of Black Transmen, in a statement, "Now is the time for Marylanders to show that we have zero tolerance for discrimination, and stand for fairmess!"

For more information about Stand for Fairness or the Maryland Coalition for Trans Equality, visit mdtransequality.org.

In my early teenaged years as I navigated adolescence and high school, it was hard to imagine what my future would hold. Where would I go to college? What kind of career would I have?

And one of the most pondered questions: Would I find that special someone to share my life with?

For many, these questions are familiar. It's in our nature to want answers. But what is different for young adults who identify as LGBTQ is that answers to these questions aren't so simple, especially when there aren't often visible models for navigating while queer. This was the case for me.

Angela Ferrell-Zabala

Now, many years later, I have made it a point to show up as an example of what is possible as an openly gay person. While my efforts and those of so many others are important, they don't necessarily reach a wide audience. For this reason, gatherings like Youth Pride Day are essential to creating supportive and safe spaces.

If you've ever had a chance to witness a Youth Pride Day event, chances are that you've seen groups of young people kicking back and enjoying an afternoon with their friends while partaking in many diverse entertainment options. To the average spectator this may appear no different than any other youth-focused event, but this is much more. This is an expression of community that might save a life.

Forty percent of all homeless youth identify as LGBTQ. When it comes to the reasons listed as the causes for youth homelessness, the No. 1 cause cited is rejection from one's family. This same population of young adults is more likely to experience harassment and/or violence. LGBTQ youth are also often underserved when it comes to comprehensive health care services, including mental heath services. For these reasons alone, Youth Pride Day serves as not only a celebratory space but also as a place where youth can access a wide array of resources without fear of judgment.

As a member of the board of Youth Pride Alliance, which hosts the annual Youth Pride Day celebration, I can say that this event brings hope to many young LGBTQ adults in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area. It's hope that we believe will linger, helping in times of challenge. It's the sort of hope that I often searched for in my own adolescence.

I also hope that you will take pride in our talented, courageous and inspiring youth while supporting initiatives like Youth Pride Day that provide healthy and safe spaces -- and by modeling what living out loud can be.

The Youth Pride Alliance's 18th annual Youth Pride Day is Saturday, May 3, from noon to 5 p.m., in Dupont Circle, and includes speakers, entertainment and much more. For more information about attending or sponsoring Youth Pride Day, visit youthpridedc.org. Follow the alliance on Twitter @YouthPrideDC.

Angela Ferrell-Zabala is a Youth Pride Alliance board member. She may be contacted at // .

After years of producing a queer prom, Eboné Bell decided to kick things up a notch and launch a full-day LGBT convention-type event.

From workshops on sex, relationships and identity, to a self-defense class, to a craft beer tasting with DC Brau, TaggFest was designed "to bring the whole queer community together, no matter how you identify," Bell says. "We created breakout sessions that aren't just all really serious, but also a little fun, in an environment where people feel safe, where they can voice their opinions, educate and inspire one another and hopefully have conversations afterward."

In fact, TaggFest is just one of two events Bell, in conjunction with her local lesbian magazine Tagg, is throwing this Saturday, Aug. 26, at downtown's Almas Temple. A few hours after TaggFest ends, Bell and company offer the Masquerade Gala. "Anyone who enjoyed the prom," she says referring to the Capital Queer Prom, "will definitely still get that same feel from the Masquerade Gala."

DJ Rosie and DJ MIM will encourage dancing among the gala-goers, dressed up in semi-formal or formal wear as well as masks. Danella Sealock from NBC4 will serve as special guest and host for the gala, which will feature a silent auction as well as a Duke and Duchess competition similar to the prom's King and Queen. Both events benefit the Wanda Alston Foundation.

Whether there will be another Capital Queer Prom, which Bell and her team produced the last seven years, is unlikely. "Honestly, we're not sure," Bell says. "The whole goal is to basically evolve the prom, and I feel that TaggFest and Masquerade Gala is essentially the prom, but just evolved."

The prom and the gala, for one thing, appeal equally to those who like dressing up.

"How many times," asks Bell, "do we get dressed up to hang with our friends, dance and enjoy each other's company? It doesn't happen a lot."

TaggFest is Saturday, April 26, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., followed by the Masquerade Gala, 7 to 11 p.m., at Almas Temple, 1315 K St. NW. Tickets are $30 for TaggFest, $45 for the gala, or $65 combined. Visit taggfest.com.

A report released Tuesday by the Williams Institute, an LBGT-focused policy think tank at the UCLA School of Law, says that extending marriage to same-sex couples in Virginia could generate up to $60 million.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 14,244 same-sex couples live in Virginia. Of those couples, the Williams Institute estimates that 50 percent would choose to marry in the first three years after same-sex marriage is allowed in Virginia, a pattern observed in Massachusetts and other states with marriage equality. The Williams Institute study estimates that nearly 5,000 marriages would occur in the first year alone, generating an estimated $38 million.

The LBGT-rights organization Equality Virginia jumped on the new study, issuing its own statement calling for marriage equality in the commonwealth.

''This report clearly shows that allowing lesbian and gay couples to marry in Virginia is not only the right thing to do, but would also have a positive impact on our economy,'' said James Parrish, the executive director of Equality Virginia.

Another finding from the Williams Institute's report is that existing marriages – same-sex Virginia couples legally married elsewhere – have likely already cost the state tens of millions of dollars in spending and more than $1 million in tax revenue. The report estimates that direct spending by resident same-sex couples on wedding plans would add an estimated $39 million to $50 million to the Virginia economy during the first three years after marriage equality is legalized. Out-of-state wedding guests are estimated to bring in $8 million to $10 million over those first three years.

Wedding arrangements and tourism, Williams estimates, would account for $46 million to $60 million during that period, with $30 million to $38.5 million generated in the first year that same-sex marriage was legal. That increased spending is predicted to add $2.5 million to $3.2 million in tax revenues to state and local coffers, and generate approximately 459 to 595 new jobs related to wedding-related businesses and tourism.

A spokesman for the Family Foundation, a conservative policy think tank that opposes same-sex marriage and has been influential in lobbying Virginia lawmakers to oppose any expansion of LGBT rights, was not immediately available for comment.

The release of the Williams Institute report comes as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is preparing to hear oral arguments in May in the case of Bostic v. Schaefer, a case challenging Virginia's constitutional Marshall-Newman amendment, which prohibits same-sex marriage and bans the recognition of any relationship or contract between same-sex couples that attempts to mirror marriage. A federal judge ruled in February that the ban was unconstitutional, prompting defenders of the ban to appeal the decision to the Fourth Circuit.

In the run-up to the Fourth Circuit's decision, Equality Virginia is organizing ''CookOUTs for Marriage Equality,'' gatherings of married same-sex couples designed to share stories of couples harmed by the marriage ban, to demonstrate there is widespread support for changing the law to allow same-sex couples to marry, and to show solidarity with the plaintiffs challenging the marriage ban. Both a Quinnipiac poll from March of this year and a Washington Post poll from May 2013 show majorities of Virginians support allowing same-sex couples to legally wed.

''Our ban on marriage is out-of-step with the majority of Virginians who support marriage equality,'' Parrish said in a statement. ''The ban is not only hurting loving lesbian and gay couples in Virginia – it is also hurting our economy. This report shows that all Virginians would benefit from marriage equality.''

Just in time for some gorgeous D.C. weather, Nellie's Sports Bar, at 900 U St. NW, has decided to ditch its outdoor, second-floor tent in favor of a retractable roof.

From the bar's Facebook page: "Time for a facelift! We're getting a fancy new retractable roof to replace our tent, and wanted to share our progress with you. But have no fear, our roof is still open for drinks in the meantime, and we've still got our night time DJ's rockin' up there!"

Doug Schantz, co-owner of Nellie's, says workers will replace the floor next week and install windows and drywall the following week. The project is due to be completed by May 15.

Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), a program of The DC Center for the LGBT Community, has announced election results for its 2014 leadership positions. Elections were held at GLOV's monthly meeting, April 24.

Paul Tupper, the group's former secretary, was elected unanimously as GLOV's new chair, replacing co-chairs Matthew Corso and Hassan Naveed. Naveed recently announced he was going to New York to pursue a graduate degree. Corso, meanwhile, was elected to be an executive board member, along with Pilar Pina and Bobbi Elaine Strang, also by unanimous vote.

In a statement delivered to GLOV members, Tupper said, ''We plan to build on GLOV's successes in 2013 and expand the reach of the organization by collaborating more closely with other LGBTQ groups working on the front lines of preventing all forms of violence against our community, especially against the transgender community.''

The group has forged an ongoing relationship with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to combat violent attacks directed against members of the District's LGBT community in the course of its work.

Individuals interested in volunteering or learning more about GLOV can contact the organization at // or visit glovdc.org.

Rick Hammerly hisses at Erin Driscoll early in Act 2 of Signature Theatre's The Threepenny Opera. Yes, the veteran local actor really and truly hisses at his younger but equally celebrated colleague -- as loudly and dramatically as any big cat feeling threatened. Hammerly hisses at Driscoll after she nails an operatic vocal run that he had just fumbled -- although the real reason he hisses is because Driscoll's character, Polly Peachum, aka "Pirate Jenny," has stolen away the man with whom Hammerly's character, Lucy Brown, had planned to have a baby.

Threepenny Opera Hammerly (L) and Jarvis

(Photo by Margot Schulman)

Did you catch that? Yes, it's true, Hammerly is once again pulling a wig down from the shelf and donning female drag at Signature Theatre, a decade after his Helen Hayes Award-winning turn in the title role of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Here he all but steals the show as Lucy, arguably the most hopelessly deluded lover of Macheath, aka Mack the Knife, played by the charismatic Mitchell Jarvis. The notorious criminal in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's nearly 90-year-old musical farce has got quite the harem lined up in London's gritty underworld. And director Matthew Gardiner has seen to it that you'll love the women in Signature's production all right. The phenomenal Natascia Diaz as Jenny, the woman who ultimately betrays Mack, is the first to sing, offering a dramatic rendering of the famous standard "Mack The Knife" -- here dubbed "The Flick Knife Song" -- which she starts off singing a cappella, showcasing her seemingly perfect pitch and incredible tone. Another female standout is the Signature staple Donna Migliaccio, who bowls us over in her typically wonderful way as Polly's domineering mother Mrs. Peachum.

For its first-ever production of either Bertolt or Weill, Signature Theatre doesn't flinch for a second -- not just in picking one of the most cutting critiques of capitalism and modern society, but also in choosing possibly the most shocking of recent adaptations. Book writer Robert David MacDonald and lyricist Jeremy Sams's 20-year-old British take on the classic freely and naturally incorporates profanity and scandalous talk and action into this, well, fucking tale. As but one example, in earlier, tamer -- as far as it goes -- versions of The Threepenny Opera, one of the most compelling numbers is known as "The World Is Mean." Here, that song is "Life's A Bitch (And Then You Die)." It's the first of three finales, and it's sung by the Peachum family, led by the sturdy Bobby Smith as Mr. Peachum. Yes, father, mother and daughter all agree that, essentially, life sucks. They'd like to do good and do better, they sing, but there's just not enough demand for it.

The Threepenny Opera is a satire on the consumerism and corruption that runs rampant in a society in which everyone, even those at the top, have to take and steal and just live selfishly to get ahead. Even if your views are that dystopian and depressing, you can't help but find the good in this production: its strong cast, and also its sharp design team. You'll be awed by Misha Kachman's bright, multi-leveled set, which is especially enhanced by video designer Rocco DiSanti's CNN-style news tickers espousing familiar platitudes such as "So what?" and "Not my problem" in addition to stock numbers. Costume designer Frank Labovitz adds pizazz with his colorful wear, from Burberry plaids for Polly to Adidas attire for Macky's cohorts.

Labovitz dresses Hammerly in a burgundy wig, too-tight tie-dyed jeans, a black leather jacket and a Union Jack T-shirt covering up a bulging belly. So by the time he lets out that drag queen hiss, in other words, you'll no doubt be purring with laughter.

Two GentlemenofVerona: Valentine Zachary Fine (l) and Proteus Noah Brody

(Photo by Jeff Malet)

Over at the Folger Theatre, meanwhile, it's more barking than hissing.

Notably, no actual dog appears in the new production of Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Folger, despite the fact that a sad-faced canine is the central image used in the show's promotions, including on the program cover.

Instead, the Fiasco Theater company, as so many companies before it, gives the minor role to one of its two gentlemen leads, Zachary Fine, letting him double as the anthropomorphized dog, Crab. The result might be slightly less of a cheap shot than it is as written by Shakespeare, in what is believed by many to be his first play -- after all, putting a real dog onstage is a pretty base stab at generating easy laughs. But it certainly doesn't make you love this problematic comedy any more, and doesn't help Fiasco and Folger's case for reviving it.

The human dog is naturally not the only twist this production makes in a mostly vain attempt to dress up this stale tale as contemporary. In the program Folger even excerpts an essay from a Shakespeare scholar who sees homoeroticism in the same-sex friendship at the heart of the story, going on to assert that this otherwise platonic relationship seems paramount to any of the play's male-female romantic pairings. Yet that doesn't make it gay, or even gay-friendly, in a contemporary way. Chalk it up to just one more attempt to rationalize what is otherwise a pretty irrational story.

Two Gentlemen of Verona revolves around two men, Proteus (Noah Brody) and Valentine (Fine), who are bosom buddies until each meets a beautiful woman who harbors love in return. But then in a jealousy-fueled power play, Proteus decides he prefers Valentine's love Sylvia (Emily Young) to his own Julia (Jessie Austrian), and schemes to make her his. And thus what develops is a de facto broken love square: Julia loves Proteus, who loves Sylvia, who loves Valentine -- who also loves Sylvia. Poor, poor Julia. By play's end, Proteus has even resorted to rape as his last-ditch ploy to make Sylvia his, and his attempt is only foiled when Valentine catches him in the act, threatening murder if he proceeds. Proteus relents and begs Valentine's forgiveness, a plea that Valentine accepts all too readily from someone who violated his friendship and came "thisclose" to violating his beloved.

That the two couples also seem to unite and live happily ever after from this point on is the chief problem with the play, at least in a contemporary time when women are not powerless or one-dimensional. Post-assault Sylvia doesn't seem to object one bit to Proteus as Valentine's best man. Even worse, Julia doesn't so much as blink about rekindling romance with such a violent, treasonous lover. Whatever the "gentlemen" want, it seems, these wilting women give, without reservation or hesitation.

The actor-driven Fiasco Theater has been celebrated in its home base of New York for its inventive, stripped-down way of reimagining and re-telling Shakespeare, particularly the Bard's weaker plays -- including Cymbelline, a production of which Fiasco will offer in a week's run at Folger Theatre immediately after Verona. The focus is on the acting, not the staging -- although here, at least, you can't help but appreciate acclaimed Washington set designer James Kronzer's simple but dramatic backdrop. It's the kind of classically minded elegant stage on which anything would look better and engage you more than it probably should.

As co-directors, Jessie Austrian and Ben Steinfeld managed to cast a team of actors with great comic timing and sensibility, who also have an abundance of good looks and charisma, such that you're willing to suspend disbelief and escape reality, taking an improbable journey with them far more willingly and for much longer of time than makes sense. Because, ultimately, you can try hard to understand or even justify The Two Gentlemen of Verona -- through contemporary allusions or modern sensibilities about love and friendship. But to inverse and twist a famous mathematical metaphor, you just can't circle this broken square.

It's pretty much a dog of a play.

The Threepenny Opera () runs to June 1 -- with a Pride performance Friday, May 9, at 8 p.m. -- at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. Tickets are $40 to $95. Call 703-820-9771 or visit signature-theatre.org. The Two Gentlemen of Verona () runs to May 28 at Folger Shakespeare Theatre, 201 East Capitol St. SE. Tickets are $40 to $72. Call 202-544-7077 or visit folger.edu.

As he started work on HBO's True Blood, actor Denis O'Hare was instructed that vampires don't touch each other.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, fuck that! This one does," says O'Hare, who played Russell Edgington, the evil vampire king of Mississippi for two seasons. "I was playing the most ancient and most colorful vampire. And I was like, 'I'm not going to be bound by these rules.'" So O'Hare kept his arm around the actor who played his character's first boyfriend. "He was probably beyond sexuality in some ways," O'Hare says. "As such an ancient person, he had a different conception of what sexuality was. But he certainly preferred to sleep with men."

Denis O'Hare in ''Homer's Coat: An Iliad''

(Photo by Joan Marcus)

O'Hare, who's also a key cast member on FX's popular American Horror Story, has appeared in numerous supporting roles in film and television over the past decade, most notably in critically heralded LGBT-themed projects, including 2008's Milk, 2009's An Englishman in New York, last year's Dallas Buyers Club and HBO's forthcoming The Normal Heart. More often than not, O'Hare plays the villain, or at least an unpopular character. He traces the work back to growing up in suburban Detroit, and specifically playing Pontius Pilate in a high school production of Jesus Christ Superstar. "Oh, this is the best part here," the 52-year-old recalls thinking. "He's the most tortured. He's the most interesting. He's got the best song."

O'Hare, who is gay, won a Tony Award for his role in the 2003 gay-themed baseball play Take Me Out, and continues to work in theater, both as writer and actor. This weekend at the Clarice Smith Center he'll perform the one-man show he developed several years ago with his writing partner Lisa Peterson. Created partly in reaction to a sense that America is now "perpetually at war," An Iliad is an intriguing contemporary adaptation of the classic war poem by Homer.

"It sounds so daunting when somebody hears Homer or they hear The Iliad," he says, adding that audiences don't need to know or remember anything. "We tell the entire story, we fill them in. It's actually funnier than people would expect. The Iliad is one of the great stories of all time." '

An Iliad runs Friday, May 2, and Saturday, May 3, at 8 p.m. at the 'Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's Kay Theatre, University of Maryland, University Boulevard and Stadium Drive, College Park. Tickets are $40. Call 301-405-ARTS or visit claricesmithcenter.umd.edu.

The day after Sean Dorsey's very first dance at dance school, the school's director "informed me that my work, quote, 'made people very uncomfortable.'" This, despite the fact that "immediately after the performance, I got all kinds of love and praise from local choreographers and dancers and all these people, most of whom were straight."

Dorsey didn't let the director's discomfort dissuade him. The San Francisco-based dancer/choreographer has gone on to make it his mission to "bring transgender and queer bodies and stories into modern and contemporary dance," and in ways that "are not abstract or pretentious, [but] powerful and moving and completely accessible to all audiences."

The Secret History of Love

(Photo by Lydia Daniller)

His nearly decade-old company Sean Dorsey Dance is now set to make its D.C. debut with The Secret History of Love, a "full-throttle dance exploration" into how earlier queer generations "managed to survive and find love" -- despite rampant disapproval and harassment.

"We tend to really desexualize our elders, even LGBT elders," he says, "when in fact everything about making space for love and relationships, and bathhouses -- you name it -- those doors were open and created by our elders." Dorsey developed the narrative piece through a two-year LGBT Elders Oral History Project. He performs it with three of his company dancers, as well as singer Shawna Virago, a transgender woman.

Dorsey, who was "assigned female at birth" 41 years ago in Vancouver, B.C., has been living as a proud transgender man for decades. "I am very blessed that I have a wonderfully supportive family," he says. But whatever happened to that school director who found Dorsey's work so uncomfortable? "She actually withheld my graduation diploma," he says. But Dorsey got the last laugh. "You know, the school since closed, so that might just kind of be the karma working itself out."

Dance Place presents Sean Dorsey Dance Friday, May 9, and Saturday, May 10, at 8 p.m., at Joe's Movement Emporium, 3309 Bunker Hill Road, Mount Rainier, Md. Tickets are $22. Call 202-269-1600 or visit danceplace.org or joesmovement.org.

A group of about 30 people, including faith leaders of various denominations, gathered outside the Arlington County Courthouse on Friday afternoon, April 25, to protest Virginia's same-sex-marriage ban and to urge legislators to take the steps needed to put that ban on the ballot in hopes of repealing it.

Every year since Virginia voters approved the constitutional ban, the Marshall-Newman Amendment, in 2006, a group of dedicated individuals has trekked to local courthouses throughout the state to demonstrate their support for marriage equality.

'Witness for Love'' rally in Arlington, Virginia

(Photo by John Riley)

Many of Friday's participants are affiliated with the group People of Faith for Equality in Virginia (POFEV), which has taken the lead in organizing such demonstrations, dubbed "Witnesses for Love." Participants also came from Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), the statewide LGBT-rights organization Equality Virginia, Virginia Pride, and the Alliance for Progressive Values, among others.

This year's demonstrations were scheduled to occur in up to 23 locations throughout the commonwealth on Valentine's Day, but many were canceled due to weather. Friday's rally in Arlington was one such "Witness for Love," where interfaith religious leaders and local residents come together to sing, offer prayers, make speeches about equality and stand in solidarity. This year, as in previous years, same-sex couples have attended the demonstrations and applied for marriage licenses as a symbolic gesture, knowing the applications will be denied by the county clerk.

Since the first of the 2014 demonstrations, starting on Valentine's Day, the Rev. Robin Gorsline, president of POFEV, has consistently said the aim of the rallies is to change hearts and minds and create an impetus for legislative action by highlighting the stories of same-sex couples disadvantaged by Virginia's ban. Notably, in February a federal judge declared the ban unconstitutional. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is due to hear arguments in that case in May.

Arlington County Clerk Paul Ferguson, a Witness for Love participant for the past three years, praised the Arlington demonstrators for their dedication and resilience, as many have returned year after year, vowing to do so until the ban is lifted. Even though Ferguson was forced to reject the same-sex marriage-license applications Friday, he has repeatedly told same-sex couples he will keep their applications in a file that can be reopened once he can legally process them. At Friday's rally, Ferguson posed for pictures with two couples who applied for licenses -- Michael Bagwell and Clark Chesser of Fairfax, and Kathleen Light and Ann Rahn of Arlington -- and their rejected applications.

"I just want to commend everybody who's worked so hard on this issue," Ferguson told the crowd. "There's every reason to be angry about the discrimination you face, but you have put your energy into changing what is a discriminatory policy."

State Del. Patrick Hope (D-Arlington Co.), a candidate for Congress who represents the area around the county courthouse and who attended the rally, told Metro Weekly that he knows legislators whose opinions around marriage equality are changing, but added that it remains an uphill fight to pass the necessary measures that would return the Marshall-Newman Amendment to the ballot.

Under Virginia law, the earliest the amendment could be repealed would be 2016, and only if the General Assembly, in both 2015 and 2016, were to approve the change, which would then still have to appear as a referendum on the ballot during the 2016 presidential election.

"I think the faster route will be the Supreme Court," Hope said. "Not only would this route help Virginia, it would help the entire country, and that's how I hope this issue is resolved."

Gorsline said the turnout at POFEV's rallies, whether they are held in Arlington, in Lynchburg, as another was on April 16, or in Hanover County, where one is scheduled for May 1, demonstrates there are people of faith who hold pro-LGBT values.

Gorsline said that right-wing groups, such as the Family Foundation, a socially conservative think tank that has a strong influence over policies promoted by the Virginia General Assembly, often claim that advancing LGBT equality threatens their religious liberty. He countered that argument by pointing out it is the more liberal religious denominations that are being discriminated against for their beliefs.

"It's a very clear thing for me, and for us, that, at the moment, our religious liberty is being denied," Gorsline said. "As a pastor of a congregation that approves of marrying same-gender couples, encourages it, for good reasons, for the stability of families and all of that, I'm not allowed to do for them what I do for straight couples. The law should allow religions to make their own decisions."

Even if same-sex marriage is made legal in the commonwealth, Gorsline noted, any denomination has the right to deny a religious marriage to a couple -- same-sex or not -- that does not meet its particular requirements.

Gorsline added that POFEV has plans to continue fighting for equality measures for LGBT people even if the courts eventually rule the ban unconstitutional. For instance, Gorsline said, a change in marriage law in the commonwealth will likely make it easier for same-sex couples to raise children, but will not completely change Virginia's adoption laws, which allow single LGBT people to adopt or become foster parents, but not same-sex couples.

"Although a change in the marriage law would not automatically change laws on adoption and foster care, I think the current laws would be harder to maintain, which is why they're trying anything they can to hold on, to stop the marriage thing," said Gorsline. "It will be a fight, but we'll win."

"What can I do with just 10 fingers that will wow people?"

Years after Rolling Stone heralded her one of its "New Guitar Gods" and "a genre unto herself," Kaki King had been searching for new ways to dazzle as a solo guitar performer, one with a strong percussive-guitar, indie-rock repertoire. And then she discovered projection wrapping and the work of lighting designers V Owen Bush and Benton-C Bainbridge, who go by the name Glowing Pictures.

Kaki King

(Photo by Shervin Lainez)

Working together, the three have developed an innovative, immersive audio-visual show. "They're going to be projecting images onto the surface of the guitar itself, as well as the large screen behind me," King explains. "And as I'm playing, the volume of what I'm doing dictates how big the images get. Then, in the following section, each note corresponds to a different color that spirals out onto my guitar. It sort of gives me this paintbrush to create visuals using this instrument that I'm already very familiar with."

"It really is the beginning of something," King adds about her new work with Glowing Pictures. Meanwhile, she's also exploring work as a composer for new music classical groups. For example, the large ensemble Alarm Will Sound just premiered a new King commission as part of a "(post)folk" performance featuring King at Carnegie Hall. "That was a big, scary challenge," admits the 34-year-old. By contrast, while there's no real precedent for it, her show with Glowing Pictures is otherwise a natural progression of her live show. In fact, the show's title The Neck Is A Bridge To The Body is simply a metaphor for her guitar -- her way of stressing that despite the lighting and visual enhancement, "I'm still me, I'm still playing guitar, it's still a guitar show."

The two shows next weekend at Artisphere, in conjunction with the venue's ambitious sound exhibition Fermata, will be the first performance of the piece outside of King's base in Brooklyn. Later this year she plans to tour and also release the original music she's created for it. But before that, over the summer? King will have new domestic duties to tend to.

"My wife is having a baby," she says, "so I wanted to be fully prepared and totally around for that."

Kaki King performs Saturday, May 10, at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Artisphere, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. Tickets are $18 in advance or $22 day of show. Call 703-875-1100 or visit artisphere.com.

Since its earliest days, Metro Weekly set aside two pages for a map and listings toward the magazine's back. Long before the ubiquitous Google Maps, ensconced on our cell phones, told us "in 400 feet, turn left," the magazine's map was a crucial part of its makeup, helping both locals and tourists locate not only gay bars, but gay-friendly restaurants and retail establishments.

There were a number of years when the map was what might be called "reader-hostile" -- an indecipherable yet decidedly artistic clamor. It was later supplanted by a far more direct, reader-friendly topography, only to be replaced in more recent years by a simple list of venues with QR Codes alongside their names.

When one sifts through years of the map, it's astonishing to see just how many gay nightspots we have lost, some for reasons beyond their control (curse you Nationals Park -- we enjoyed our nights at La Cage!), others because their time had simply come (farewell, Tracks). But even more astonishing are those places that have persevered and are still going strong -- JR.'s, Annie's, Ziegfeld's/Secrets, the DC Eagle (temporarily on hiatus), Phase 1, the Green Lantern, the Fireplace, to name a few. These are the places we frequented in 1994. Twenty years later, we still do, along with relative newcomers like Town, Nellie's, PW.'s, Number Nine and Freddie's Beach Bar.

What follows is a selection of 20 places that, for whatever reason, closed their doors. Over the years, they played host to our lives. Now, they play host to our fondest memories. We miss them all.

1. Where do you see Metro Weekly five years from now?

As Metro Weekly celebrates its 25th Anniversary, we imagine continuing with two distinct experiences: print and online. As printing technology will likely be about the same, you'll still see our glossy issues around the metro area. How we design the layout may be vastly different. (Think holograms.) If 20 years has shown anything, it's that we don't stay still for too long, even if you can expect the same great content. As for online, well, that might be anyone's guess. Maybe you'll be reading Metro Weekly's latest on your Google Glass, or streaming Metro Weekly video through your implanted cerebral iChip. It's bound to be a breathtaking ride.

2. What was your favorite Halloween costume over the years?

Many amazing Halloween costumes have appeared on our pages, but the most memorable appeared as a full page in 2003. The costume a hilarious, tasteless tribute to the mauling of Roy Horn (of Siegfried and Roy) by one of his beloved white tigers (because it's always a good idea to put your head in the mouth of a tiger). The fetching costume featured ample blood splatter and a decapitated Roy head. We didn't learn till many years later that the person adorning said costume was JR.'s manager Dave Peruzza, who a decade later dressed up for our own Halloween cover as a blood-drenched Carrie.

3. Why did you decide to have a Patron Saint for every issue?

The very first Patron Saint -- Divine -- appeared in the masthead of the Aug. 25, 1994, edition, which featured Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on the cover. The Patron Saint is sometimes a way for Metro Weekly to honor someone who has passed, whether a soul associated with the magazine, mentioned in an interview, or well known in the larger LGBT community. Other times, the Patron Saint is a chance to express our more playful disposition by employing a fictional character who has some bearing on a particular week's content. Simply put, we have a Patron Saint because it's another way for us to express ourselves and honor others.

4. What was MW's very first feature or interview?

Ironically, it was a straight woman -- Annie Adjchavanich, a photographer whose show, Biological Men, at the Hemphill Gallery in Georgetown, celebrated the illusion of drag in big, boldly dramatic, black-and-white prints. Dressed in male drag and clutching the rump of a faux Marilyn Monroe, Annie was photographed by Richard von Zimmer. In the fall of 1994, Annie joined Metro Weekly as its principal photographer.

5. What inspired you to start your own magazine?

Let's put it as simply as possible. Randy Shulman was a film and theater critic working in D.C. He started contributing (under a pseudonym) to Michael's Arts & Entertainment Weekly, eventually becoming its editor (under yet another pseudonym). When Michael's abruptly closed shy of its own one-year anniversary, Randy turned to the suddenly unemployed staff and declared, "Let's put out our own magazine! And this time let's make it worth reading!" Three weeks later, on May 5, 1994, Metro Weekly made its debut.

6. Do you model your style after other print magazines?

It's no secret among staffers that Randy is obsessed with The New Yorker (though Metro Weekly's in-depth "Q and A" interviews owe more to the DNA of "The Playboy Interview," because gay men really do read Playboy for the interviews). Case in point: At least once a year, Randy bellows to the staff, "We're going to move our calendars to the front of the magazine because that's how The New Yorker does it!" And at least once a year the staff collectively retorts, "No."

7. What has been the best cover celebrity "get" you've ever had, and how did it come to be?

This is a tough one because it's not just the gets, but the demands Randy puts on beleaguered publicists: "It has to be a one-hour interview or no dice." (Normally, with a celebrity you're lucky to get 20 minutes.) Sometimes it takes months to set up a basic interview. For that reason, we choose Kathy Griffin, who took a whopping four months to land. That said, we've been working on Barbra for 20 years. We're still holding out hope.

8. Would you ever create an art book of all the original covers you've photographed or drawn?

Maybe not all, but most of our portraits, taken over the years by Todd Franson, Michael Wichita, Julian P. Vankim and Annie Adjchavanich, as well as cover illustrations by Christopher Cunetto, Scott G. Brooks, Linas Garsys, Stewart Haggas, Kendra Kuliga and Paul Myatt may one day appear in one of those massive tomes that puts a strain on your coffee table.

9. If Metro Weekly had an official mascot, what would it be?

How about a brightly colored tropical bird with a proud rainbow beak? We can call him Metro Beakly! Then again, we'd rather not get sued by the folks at Froot Loops.

10. If you could go back and re-do a cover, which cover would it be?

Admittedly, we've had our share of duds over the years, but there is one legendary cover affectionately known among staff as "Pee Cups." We'd really like a do-over on that one, please.

11. Whatever happened to Hearsay, and just who was Hearsay anyway?

Depending on who you believe, Mark "Atlas Shrugged" Lee, Ed "My Kind of Town" Bailey or Eric "Lactating is Not Abnormal for a Man in My Condition" Hirshfeld, Hearsay either decided that Nightlife was dead and took a vow of silence after joining the Holy Order of Monkfish, works as a bartender at the city's newest nightspot, Number 3.14159, or helps rid Eric daily of his excess Vitamin-D enriched milk. The identity of Hearsay has never been uncovered, but Brett "Yeah, It's a Big Nightstick" Parson swears GLLLUP is hot on the cold case.

12. How many people have worked for Metro Weekly? How big is the staff?

That's a tricky number. At the moment, Metro Weekly has eight full-time staff. We have about as many more involved in some way, whether writing content, illustrating, photographing or otherwise contributing. Over the years, we calculate more than a 135 people have worked with us.

13. What's the worst mistake that ever ended up in the magazine?

Art director Mike Heffner wrote a dummy caption as a placeholder for a news photo -- "Mike and Jeff at some event we can't remember" -- and forgot to replace it prior to going to print. Okay, there probably have been worse errors, but we're not admitting to them. Next question.

14. Will you eventually just be online only?

While Metro Weekly can only increase its online presence moving forward, that in no way means we plan to relinquish print to history. We love print! We love our pads and our smartphones and all the rest, but there is a special place in Metro Weekly's heart for print, for being fully accessible at no cost, for greeting you on the streets where you live and in the venues you frequent. We do, of course, hope you'll recycle those issues you're not reserving for your personal collection.

15. How long does it take to make an issue?

That's a very complex question. Some pieces that appear in the magazine or online are the result of weeks of labor. Other items come together in an instant. Suffice to say, we'd always like more time. Anyone got a Tardis for rent?

16. Is the photographer guy I see out always so upbeat?

As far as we can tell, absolutely. Ward Morrison is the living embodiment of joy riding a unicorn across a rainbow. Unless it's one of those weeks he's doing "The Cleanse." Then you may want to steer clear.

17. What was your most elaborate photo shoot ever?

"The Peeps Issue," which appeared April 20, 2000. Working with the entire staff, photography director Michael Wichita set up a veritable Peeps sweatshop in an empty office space at 1012 14th St. NW, and constructed elaborate costumes and scenarios, which he then photographed for what was one of Metro Weekly's most memorable issues of that era.

18. Why don't you have subscriptions?

Because we have better things to do with our tongues than lick stamps.

19. How do you pick the events you send a photographer to?

There are many considerations when it comes to assigning an event to a photographer. If it's a bar other nightlife venue, we would look to special events or the last time a venue may have appeared in the magazine. Do we expect a big crowd? That's very important, as a photographer coming back from an event with 20 people is not going to give us enough photos to fill a page. Some annual events are obvious, like the Human Rights Campaign's National Dinner or AIDS Walk. We love to take pictures of the community and would likely cover more events if we had more resources. But, at the end of the day, it's always a question of what's happening, which photographers are available, and how much space we expect to have in the magazine.

20. What's on your nightstand?

A lamp, an alarm clock, eyedrops, a half-eaten gummy bear, a half-empty coffee cup, a stapler, pink fuzzy handcuffs, an extra pair of nylons, exactly 14 cents in loose change, The New Yorker, Car & Driver, a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and, of course, the latest Metro Weekly.

At any given time in our history, Metro Weekly has never relied upon an army of writers or photographers to get things done. It's always been up to a relative few to tell the stories of our times. Still, we have managed to get around.

These features, differing from out straightforward ''Q and A'' interviews in that we craft the narrative, often include multiple perspectives and sometimes provide an opportunity to tell a story while standing right in the middle of it. They might be hard news, they might be human interest, they might be first person. It's our hope that each serves to help illuminate the human condition.

1. ''To Serve, With Love: Behind the Scenes at Food & Friends''

November 23, 1995

By Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

At the other end of the room, far from where Smith packs up the day's ''shipment,'' stands a makeshift assembly line staffed by three of F&F's countless volunteers. One spoons a foil-bottomed container full of the casserole, another positions a form-fitting lid into place, a third clamps the lid on with a sealing machine and stacks the tightly sealed containers onto a large tray. Chef Paul Fuzi walks by and notices that the tray is nearly full. He replaces it with an empty tray and carts the full one over to Smith.

There are no assigned duties here, no room for egos. Everyone does whatever is needed. And usually everything and anything is needed.

By morning's end Smith, along with Fuzi and a small legion of volunteers, will have prepared enough provisions to serve the organization's 440 ''clients'' -- homebound men, women, children, and families with HIV/AIDS -- three nourishing, well-balanced meals.

2. ''Ride of a Lifetime: On the road with the first AIDSRide''

June 27, 1996

By Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

Kevin Mischka, who had organized a contingent of HIV-Positive riders known as the Positive Peddlers, pointed to the mud on his Tanqueray jersey. ''I had a little accident,'' he said, sheepishly. ''But at least it was a glamorous accident -- I went right over my handlebars into the mud!''

According to most riders, the first 48 miles were a breeze. … By day two of the ride, most of the riders were in agony from the rural route hills.

''This is the toughest bike ride I have ever done,'' said Food & Friends's Brent Minor, whose two older brothers travelled from North Carolina to ride with him. … Minor said he only walked his bike up two hills.

''They were not hills, darling, they were elevator shafts! But you know, I am loving every minute of it. I need to go out and buy a new crotch, of course, because mine is completely worn out now.''

3. ''Camp Camping It Up: The joys of gay summer camp''

July 16, 1998

By Randy Shulman

''OH, YOO HOO!'' I yell to the instructor, an Australian named Emma, down below. ''I DON'T WANT TO GO THROUGH WITH THIS AFTER ALL! YOU CAN LET ME DOWN NOW!''

Emma, dear, sweet Emma, Emma of the safety line, Emma who has the power to release me, to bring me gliding gently, safely back to the comfort of the soft, brown dirt of Earth, says quite plainly, ''No.''

I decide to wait Emma out. If I don't move, Emma will have to let me down. … A crowd has gathered. Their shouts drift skyward and probe my fuzzy, fear-addled brain. There are no taunts, no cries of ''faggot'' or ''sissy boy.'' There's nothing but a verbal wellspring of encouragement and support.

''COME ON, RANDY!'' ''YOU CAN DO IT RANDY!'' ''RAN-DY! RAN-DY! RAN-DY!''

I never realized just how irritating -- and motivating -- the sound of one's name being chanted in unison was.

How did I get here? How could I -- a man who's never climbed anything taller than a stepladder -- get into this position? For the answer to that, you have to travel back a few days to Sunday, August 24, to a small propeller plane bound for a gay and lesbian summer camp in Maine called, ingeniously enough, Camp Camp.

4. ''Into the Mouse Trap: Disney's most fabulous day of the year''

Into the Mouse Trap

June 27, 2002

By Will Doig. Photography by Michael Wichita

The daily parade is like Disney uncut. It's Walt in his purest form. It's when Disney World gets to stand up, throw out its hip and say, "Look how fabulous we are!" Understandably, the parade's pretty big with the gays.

Off to the side, an elderly straight couple looks on in that blank way that old people do, their eyes rendered opaque by glasses with triple-thick lenses. I decide to fill them in on what all the red shirts are about. I guess it's obvious, but it's easy to assume that people from that generation might need a little nudge.

"What am I, stupid?" the woman responds to my innocuous query of whether she knew it was Gay Day. "They're all wearing them," she says.

Indeed, she's right. They are all wearing them. Her husband is pretending he doesn't know I'm there, or maybe he genuinely doesn't. I press on with my attempt to open her mind.

"What do you think about all this?" I ask vaguely.

"Well, it's their problem. They'll have to deal with it," she says.

I want more information -- how will they have to deal with it? Are we talking about Hell now? Eternal damnation? Or are we simply touching on the discrimination and persecution that they'll have to face because of people like herself? I'm about to ask her when she whispers, "Are you one of them?" Like, literally whispers, as if it's 1954 and I've just been caught cruising J. Edgar at a black tie State Department function.

I tell her I am indeed one of them, and she repeats that it's my problem and that eventually I'll have to deal with it. I'm sensing that I'm not going to get any more specifics out of her, so I thank her for her time and return to the parade.

By ten past three, the parade begins to round the corner. Someone tells me that its official name is the "Share a Dream Come True" parade. Disney songs blare from every nook, including the Mickey Mouse song once again, this time a deep house remix. The parade boils down to a procession of floats, each with a different Disney character under a glass covering, the kind of coverings a waiter might remove with a voila! from a serving of Baked Alaska. Mickey comes first, and a recording of his voice plays different sound bites while the Mickey in the bubble acts like he's speaking them. He points and nods at the crowd. Everyone loves it. The crowd goes nuts.

5. ''Buzz Cut: With Nation's Friday night party closed, will Feds focus on Velvet?''

September 26, 2002

By Will Doig

Buzz has also accused the D.C. Police Department of harassing and intimidating patrons. Huie, who also serves as the club's night manager, claims to have been "whipped around to a wall by five police officers" while exiting the club through a side door, and then detained for 25 minutes. She believes the officers' intention was to intimidate passersby who were walking toward the club. Narcotics Inspector Hilton Burton of the D.C.P.D. denies the accusations.

"We don't harass anyone. When we go in to do a drug operation it's pretty clandestine up to the point where we lock someone up. When we lock them up, we take them out of the club. There's no harassing. We enforce the law."

Ed Bailey doesn't believe such harassment has occurred on Saturday nights, saying his customers are a vocal group and that "if something had happened, we would have heard about it."

With Buzz gone, Velvet moves up a rung as one of Washington's biggest weekly parties. Although it shared the same venue as Buzz, the link between the two events ends there. But people who don't make Nation their home on weekends are apt to miss this little byte of information and see the whole thing as one package deal, worries Bailey.

"It depends on the sophistication of someone's knowledge about the industry," he says. "I don't know how the government and all of its agencies look at Nation nightclub, but it's probably unlikely that they're able to look at it and see that Friday nights and Saturday nights are separate."

Still, Velvet thus far has not been directly affected. The party's DJ lineup is booked through the rest of the year, and Bailey has no plans to change that.

"You have to go on, and we have every intention of doing so," he says.

6. ''AIDS Walk's Last Stand?''

October 3, 2002

By Sean Bugg

As AIDS changed, AIDS Walk changed.

Since 1997, Whitman-Walker has seen at least some drop in attendance and money raised in each year's AIDS Walk. But even with that general trend, the first two years of the new decade have been particularly rough. Where in 1999 AIDS Walk raised about $1.5 million for the Clinic's AIDS programs, AIDS Walk 2000 dropped by almost half, to just over $850,000. That was nearly halved again in 2001, with the event pulling in less than $500,000.

And these trends aren't confined to AIDS Walk Washington, says Whitman-Walker's Executive Director Cornelius Baker, who points to AIDS Walks in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle that have watched their returns drop. However, while Seattle experienced yet another difficult year, the New York and Los Angeles Walks rebounded in 2002.

"The question is will we be like Seattle or New York," Baker says.

Whether the AIDS Walk rebounds or not for 2002 is, perhaps, of more vital importance than at any other point in the event's 16-year history -- if AIDS Walk doesn't meet its fundraising goal of $850,000, Baker says, the Clinic will face "severe budget reductions." That means possible cuts in programs, waiting lists for services, and staff layoffs. In the days leading up to the Walk, it's too early to tell if the Clinic will meet that goal.

7. ''Play Time: The toys of leather''

January 15, 2004

By Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

Sometimes where it all comes together is in the wonderful world of electricity.

And within that wonderful world lies a handy, albeit pricey, item known as The Violet Wand, a hand-held generator that comes complete with multiple glass and metal attachments which, depending on how much power is juiced through them, produce anywhere from a tingling sensation to a full-blown shock to the system.

"The Violet Wand is a very low voltage type toy," says [Patti] Brown. "It's something that came about at the turn of the last century that was used by doctors to cure everything from headaches to kidney disease to female troubles. These little low doses of electric shock were thought to be the new medical breakthrough at the time."

Of course, the wand didn't cure anything. But it might have aroused more than a few highly charged prurient interests.

"The stimulation it provides can be very erotic," says Brown. "And it can get extremely intense depending on what you're doing with it."

"The Violet Wand is used for a sharp, stinging pain," says [Melissa] Fishman, who specializes in electric play. "You can use anything metal, taking it anywhere from just making a wet spot to actually branding someone."

8. ''Where Do We Fit?: Social conservatives on gay Americans and the new order''

December 9, 2004

By Will O'Bryan. Photoillustration by Todd Franson

"I would describe that end as gaining access to the institution of marriage, to have homosexuality received as normative," [Brian] Fahling says. "I think they tried to advance far too swiftly, and they attempted to gain in the courts what they could never accomplish in the legislative arena. And I think that built resentment. There may be a slower, more methodical approach, to allow time to fill in the gaps, to have hearts and minds changed over the longer goal. …

"I'm not convinced they'll ultimately be successful," Fahling concludes, saying that for gay Americans to be fully integrated into American society, they'll have to trump the "nature of man." In other words, it's an ultimate winner-take-all battle between civil rights and procreation. "I don't regard the long-term prospects of the homosexual movement are very cheery for them."

9. ''Hostile Territory: The Fight for Gay Equality in Virginia''

February 3, 2005

By Sean Bugg. Photography by Todd Franson

It's not just the size of the crowd in the room that speaks to the concern and the urgency about what's happening in Virginia. You can see the concern in their faces as well, along with an eagerness to do something to make these things right. But how optimistic can you be in a state that's seriously considering making the license plate a daily slap in the face?

"These are very large odds we're up against," says Jay Fisette, chair of the Arlington County Board of Supervisors and a board member of Equality Virginia. Fisette is one of the few gay elected officials in the state, along with Alexandria's gay representative in the House of Delegates, Adam Ebbin.

Fisette exhorts the crowd to make sure their voices are heard by coming out and telling their personal stories so legislators will understand the real impact of the legislation they are considering.

"To be gay or lesbian in 2005 is to be political. You've been made political."

10. ''The Last Inning: A Whole New Ballgame in Southeast DC''

The Last Inning

April 14, 2005

By Sean Bugg. Photography by Todd Franson

The proposed location of the new baseball stadium -- a prize piece of the multi-million dollar deal that brought the national pastime to the nation's capital -- lands squarely atop a block of businesses along O Street in Southeast that cater to the gay community.

Ziegfeld's. Secrets. Glorious Health and Amusement. The Follies. Club Baths. Heat. All lie just beyond the proposed right field. Just outside of the stadium's environs would be longtime nightlife stalwarts Edge/Wet and Nation -- locations that many believe will eventually succumb to the ancillary development the stadium will engender.

"I'm not happy at all with anything happening here," says Bob Siegel. He's sitting in his office at Glorious Health, security monitors behind him keeping tabs on the late afternoon street traffic. Siegel owns all the buildings along this stretch of O Street, with the exception of the Club Baths, and is a landlord for the other businesses.

"I want to continue to be here with what I have here," he says. "I don't want to go anywhere."

11. ''Marching On: As the door to MMM participation closes for the black LGBT community, another door to increased activism may be opening''

October 20, 2005

By Will O'Bryan. Photography by Ward Morrison

On Saturday morning, Oct. 15, following the successful opening reception for the Unity Weekend at Us Helping Us the night before, [H. Alexander] Robinson walked grimly about Freedom Plaza, looking like a man whose hopes had been dashed. "You've heard the news, haven't you?" he asked.

The news was not good. [Donna] Payne and [Keith] Boykin reported to the MMM event early that day, only to learn that Boykin would not be speaking. Payne said that [Rev. Willie] Wilson cited an ambiguous procedure for the reason Boykin was pulled from the lineup. "[Wilson] smiled and said, 'You will not be speaking today,'" Payne told those gathered back at Freedom Plaza. "I'm so angry."

As the marquee at National Theater touted Les Misérables across the street, the small Freedom Plaza crowd of about 200 soldiered on.

"You see we still have challenges, but you see how we've lifted the community up for the past nine months," [Carlene] Cheatam told the group. "The fact that I am black, that I am lesbian, is all good. … I'm brave enough to believe they can't make it without us."

12. ''Forever Annie's: The steakhouse that transformed 17th Street''

March 2, 2006

By Will O'Bryan. Photography by Todd Franson

Some say it's a landmark. Some say it's an institution. Some call it a part of Washington's gay identity. Whatever Annie's Paramount Steakhouse is, there's one thing it ain't -- pretentious. Between the menu and the staff, this anchor on 17th Street exudes comfort. And it's been doing it for more than 50 years.

Annie Kaylor, 78, personifies the attitude of her namesake restaurant. Sitting in a booth by the bar, she's brought some prepared notes to help her find the words to describe Annie's -- handwritten on her personalized Ziggy stationery from home. It makes you want to hug her or call her "Momma." Plenty do.

"Dining out at Annie's is definitely a homey atmosphere," she reads. Sidney, her husband of 40 years sits across the aisle at the bar. Her sister, Sophie, is there, too. They've all worked at Annie's at one time or another.

"No one is treated better than anyone else. We are all accepted. It's a fun environment. To say the least, the food is great and basic. It's a fun experience in that there are no strangers where you go to Annie's," she says. "Our customers know we care about them. This means the world to us. The love is there. The love comes from the man who built this restaurant, by the name of George Katinas."

13. ''Silver Celebration: Twenty-Five Years of Singing and Outreach from the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington''

June 22, 2006

By Will O'Bryan. Photography by Todd Franson

On June 18, 1981, Ronald Reagan was president. Lady Diana Spencer was a little more than a month away from marrying Prince Charles. Pope John Paul II had been shot a month prior. And the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus performed at the Kennedy Center.

"For me, it was an incredibly big deal," says Steve Herman, a non-singing, support member of the GMCW since the beginning -- earning him the title Grande Dame. "By the time all this happened, I was 39 years old. I'd been out most of my life. I was very comfortable with my life, my relationships, my family. At the same time, our lives were really in the bars, kind of behind the scenes. It was 'inner circle' things. Then, all of a sudden, you hear that a group with 'Gay' in its title was going to be at the Kennedy Center for all to see and hear. For people like me, this was an incredibly major thing to happen. I remember a lot of proud people on the stage, and a lot of proud people in the audience. Several hundred gay men were up there singing. For me, it was a major turning point."

An ominous coincidence in the GMCW's June 1981 founding was the initial discovery that same month of five gay Los Angeles men with a rare form of pneumonia found only in people with weakened immune systems. As Herman talks about the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington offering a new kind of pride, nobody could have known just how valuable that would be as this new illness began ravaging the gay community. Scores of members would soon die of AIDS-related illnesses.

"The first year, it didn't really hit. Then it started to become far more in our consciousness," says Herman. "We began to have members -- and friends, partners of members -- coming down with AIDS. At that point, the chorus wanted to do something for the community, so we sang at AIDS services. "I consider us family," he continues. "We really, really support each other."

14. ''State of Play: LGBT advocacy is evolving – despite setbacks and challenges''

October 7, 2010

By Chris Geidner. Illustration by Scott G. Brooks

Even Robin McGehee, co-founder and director of Get Equal – the organization that burst onto the scene with a dramatic challenge to [Joe] Solmonese when Dan Choi and James Pietrangelo II chained themselves to the White House fence on March 18 – acknowledged that when it comes to putting forth the strategy that will lead to success, "I don't know that answer."

But – and where she and Solmonese might differ – she adds, "All that we know is that by playing by the traditional rules, it's not working."

From the advent of GOProud, which board Chairman Chris Barron says is "not interested in the group hug from the gay left," to Chad Griffin's decision to recruit top-tier lawyers to file a federal lawsuit aimed at striking down Proposition 8 in California when none of the established legal groups would do it, the traditional rules and traditional roles are being challenged.

The impact and longevity of those challenges remain open questions. But for all the questions about the pursuit of LGBT equality, there are many voices, often leading many people in sometimes differing directions.

For groups like the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which works to elect qualified LGBT candidates, this has impacted the organization's work.

"My job is to work with the candidates and the officials," Victory Fund President Chuck Wolfe says. "Anything I can do that helps them win, that's what we do. And, in some cases, that's advising candidates on how to traverse some of these questions when organizations might disagree with each other on positions."

15. ''Domestic Disturbance: Before DOMA, there was another debate over marriage – within the gay and lesbian community''

Domestic Distrubance

May 4, 2011

By Chris Geidner. Photoillustration by Todd Franson

Elizabeth Birch, then the executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, describes 1996 as a very uncertain time. "This is what we understood," she says. "Hawaii was bubbling along – even the legal organizations were very nervous about Hawaii in the beginning. At the time, it was one of the most potent, difficult issues. Even Democrats had tremendous issues with it privately – even our best friends."

Including President Bill Clinton, whose political advisers pushed him to sign the bill, according to Richard Socarides, Clinton's liaison to the gay and lesbian community at the time.

"Fifteen years later, I think we can be fairly candid about why that happened," Socarides says. "And the only reason it happened is because the people who believed that vetoing the bill would have jeopardized the president's election won the political argument. That's the only reason the bill got signed."

But for Freedom to Marry President Evan Wolfson, who was a lawyer at Lambda Legal at the time and was co-counsel on the Hawaii case, DOMA is a complicated story.

"If I had had to pick which would you rather have, a win in Hawaii or subsequent state or blocking DOMA, I would have chosen the win. Because, without the wins first, we weren't going anywhere," he says. "If necessary, we would overturn DOMA on the strength of the wins, and that's exactly what's now happening."

16. ''Over and Out: Servicemembers wake to a world with one less piece of official discrimination''

Over and Out

September 21, 2011

By Chris Geidner and John Riley. Photography by Todd Franson and Ward Morrison

On the screens behind the bar appeared a picture of the American flag with a clock counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until the repeal of the military's policy banning lesbian, gay and bisexual servicemembers from serving openly.

After a brief announcement by Alex Nicholson and Jarrod Chlapowski of Servicemembers United, the countdown began. As the seconds ticked down to midnight, the crowd was on its feet, chanting.

"5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1!"

Then the crowd shouted with joy. On the video screen, the words flashed over and over: "DADT IS HISTORY."

The DJ started up the music and the beat of Lady Gaga's "Edge of Glory" filled the club.

17. ''Sarah Smiles: AU student president comes out as transgender''

May 10, 2012

By Will O'Bryan. Photography by Todd Franson

Instead, in these days after coming out, [Sarah] McBride is learning to live fully. And she knows that her position – with regard to race, familial support, socio-economics and all the rest – grants her far more privilege than so many other transgender people. She is emphatic in that recognition, taking nothing for granted. Nor does she take her life as Tim for granted, saying that despite her struggle with identity, she is proud of all her pre-coming-out accomplishments. Still, no one can fault McBride for enjoying the simple indulgence of finding her footing, navigating her new life – even throwing a sort of "birthday" for herself last Saturday, May 5.

"Saturday was the first day of presenting as myself full time," says McBride, adding that the party included friends from both D.C. and Delaware. It was a celebration that helped to prepare her for moving about the AU campus Monday as herself, where she felt "a thousand eyes" looking at her. She's also faced down two women she passed on the street near her home who seemed to laugh at her.

"It's disappointing, but lots of people have to deal with more than people laughing at them."

18. ''The Choice: While Romney's secured some LGBT support, most seem well aware of what Obama has delivered''

November 1, 2012

By Justin Snow

"Sure, there are plenty of issues facing lesbians, gay men and bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans that ought to be discussed," [the Washington Post's Jonathan] Capehart wrote. "But after years of gays being used in bigoted ways as wedges in American politics by Democrats and Republicans, the silence is a blessed relief."

Although Capehart argued that no discussion of LGBT issues symbolizes a broader shift in the views of voters toward key issues like marriage equality, not everyone agrees.

"It's disappointing," Dustin Lance Black, the gay activist and screenwriter of Milk, said of the failure to mention LGBT issues after the first debate last month.

"I'm always disheartened because I feel like whenever we talk about gay and lesbian equality we have an opportunity to get the truth out and that is what changes minds," Black told Metro Weekly during the Human Rights Campaign's national dinner. "The more people learn about gay and lesbian equality, the more people end up taking our side. And once they've come to the side of equality they almost never leave."

19. ''From Wyoming to Washington: Ford's builds a month of programming around 'The Laramie Project'''

September 26, 2013

By Will O'Bryan

"I said, 'We have this gallery space downstairs and we'd really like to do something great with that,'" [Paul] Tetreault recalls telling Judy Shepard. "And she said, 'Well, you know, we have these letters. After Matthew's beating and murder, we got over 10,000 letters and cards. They're in the basement of our home in Casper and no one's ever seen them. You can have access to those.' That meeting, in this room, is where that exhibit was born. We sent a team of four people to Casper, Wyo., shortly after that."

Heading that team was Tracey Avant, Ford's curator of exhibitions, who found herself in a somewhat surreal setting, standing in a storage room off the Shepards' finished basement, facing several boxes of correspondence and other materials related to Matthew Shepard's death and the response it generated – a very sizable response.

"They had these tubs, bins stacked up with the materials," Avant explains of her expedition to Casper. "We knew going in there would be about 10 of these bins filled with letters. Someone had gone through them when they got donations and things like that, but they weren't organized in any particular way."

The most surprising find, Avant says, wasn't in anything they discovered, but what they did not.

"The biggest thing I took away from this experience is that when these things happen, you realize that more people are compassionate and caring and understanding than not," she says. "In the course of these 10,000 letters, they probably received less than a handful of hate mail, which to me was shocking. I would've assumed that there would've been a lot more."

20. ''The Decline and Fall of the Ex-Gay Movement: How a multimillion-dollar industry that seeks to 'cure' gay people was brought to its knees''

The Decline and Fall of the Ex-Gay Movement

October 17, 2013

By Justin Snow. Photoillustration by Todd Franson

With a policy that did not permit dating, the group proved a perfect haven for someone trying to avoid dealing with their sexuality. "Basically [they believed] God would tell you who you were going to marry. You'd pray about it and go talk to your counselor and pastor about it and they'd advise if it was God's will and the guy would propose to the girl and they'd get married," [Tracey] St. Pierre says.

St. Pierre would be a member of the ministry for the next 12 years and celibate for nearly 15 years.

"During that time I would pray, fast and beg God to change me and to change my desires. I think I was in self-deception for a lot of that time because during that time I didn't really allow myself to have feelings for women, but when I look back I can see all these crushes that I had on all the different women," St. Pierre continues. "And, somehow, God never told me I was going to marry a guy."

St. Pierre's story is not unique. It mirrors the stories of thousands of people who, often as adolescents, underwent various forms of "reparative" or "conversion" therapy to rid themselves of their homosexuality. Many were told they were to blame and had let sin into their lives. Others were told one of their parents hadn't loved them enough, or had loved them too much, or that they were the victims of child abuse. For St. Pierre, it was her religious beliefs that pushed her to try to "pray away the gay." For others, shame and societal condemnation pushed them into therapy. Often such measures weren't a choice, but something thrust upon them by parents.

Everyone has a story. Since the beginning, Metro Weekly has shared those stories. More often than not, they're in the sources' own words. We've just been there to ask the questions, to prod for a little more here or there. The results have been astonishing, particularly with the many who have given us the time to talk at length and feature them as a cover story. These long-format "Q and A" interviews have come to characterize the magazine as strongly as any single element could.

Aside from being purely entertaining, the breadth of these interviews takes us on a trip from a time when AIDS had a stranglehold on the community, to when "gay" was just evolving into "LGBT," to a change in tone toward earnest optimism, like George Takei's accurate take on the future.

With more than 700 interviews to choose from, as rich as they are, it's impossible to choose the 20 "greatest." But a taste from 20 great interviews? That's easy.

1. Quentin Crisp, "Queen of Queens"

Quentin Crisp

December 22, 1994

Interview by Randy Shulman. Photography by Annie Adjchavanich. Illustration by Paul Myatt

METRO WEEKLY: What are your thoughts about AIDS, which has affected the gay community so profoundly.

MR. CRISP: It has -- and I don't know why. When I was young, syphilis was all the rage. And none of us took any notice of it. We went on as we'd always gone on, and we didn't catch it. Now people who have caught AIDS are regarded as martyrs. There's no candelight vigil for people who have died of heart attacks.

MW: Are you saying we're making too much fuss about AIDS?MR. CRISP: We are making AIDS a sacred cause.

MW: Have you ever had a great love?

MR. CRISP: No, I don't really understand what love is. I knew one man for four years. He came and visited me in my room every weekend for four years. And my life became a series of weekends for which I prepared.

MW: Didn't you love him?

MR. CRISP: I was sorry for him. Because in knowing him, I knew the whole world. He was the first person who gave me a glimpse of what it is like to be a human being.

MW: What would you say to those who would abolish homosexuality?

MR. CRISP: You can't abolish homosexuality. And if you make it unacceptable, it will go underground. And then it will be murky and dismal and frightening. I don't think legislation makes any difference. When the law was changed in England and consenting adults were allowed to carry on, a woman said to me, "It has made a lot of difference to you." And I said, "It made no difference to me. Nobody ever pointed at me and said, 'Look at him, he's illegal.' They pointed at me and said, "Look at him, he's effeminate.'" That remains forever. You are marked down. You are worthless. You are alone.

2. Michelangelo Signorile, "The Next Level"

June 22, 1995

Interview by Sean Bugg. Photography by Randy Shulman

MW: You've gotten involved with the controversy about possible closing of bathhouses and sex clubs in New York. Have you found that's one of the reasons people are upset with the stances you've taken?

SIGNORILE: The bathhouse thing has been completely distorted and blown out of proportion. ... We are in the middle of a health emergency. If what I'm proposing is an inconvenience, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for a lot of things -- but that's how it is. It's an inconvenience, it's not the end of the world. It's not a quarantine. Nobody said you can't have sex in your house and do whatever you want. We're trying to stem transmission that occurs in an establishment where there's multi-partner unsafe sex. Yes, unsafe sex may be happening in the home, too. But where is most transmission happening? Where is it happening exponentially? We don't know that. And some evidence has shown that the closing of the bathhouses had an effect on bringing transmissions down. Nobody wants to close them; we just want to make them safe.

MW: Beyond making them a "place that's safe," do you see sex clubs as a viable educational tool?

SIGNORILE: Absolutely. When they're safe. They can create a community norm that extended outside of the clubs in how people behave at home. There was a norm set up, and that norm was you don't have anal sex without a condom. If somebody did it you were, like, "Hey, are you crazy or something?" That broke down completely.

MW: You spend a lot of time in the book discussing the uses of computer technology such as on-line services in the coming out process.

SIGNORILE: I think [computer technology] is going to be seen as a revolution in the gay community. In terms of political organizing, it's a great tool. I get e-mail from everyone in the gay community who's organizing anything and wants action right away, a blitz of someone's office right away with e-mail. In terms of the closet, it's making it so much easier for people to access information about homosexuality. It's providing a place where people can make their first steps. I've interviewed so many people who think they wouldn't have been out at all if not for the Internet, especially people living in small towns and out in rural America. I think it's going to bring millions of people out of the closet over the next twenty years.

3. Ian McKellen, "Ian for All Seasons"

Ian McKellen

January 25, 1996

Interview by Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: You came out in 1988. Talk a little about your life as an openly gay actor and what led to your finally coming out.

MCKELLEN: What led me to it was having lived for 49 years as a gay man and realizing that I always had been out -- except to the media and to my family. Everybody else in my life knew. And I didn't realize until I came out what a weight that being in the closet had been. I wish I'd come out twenty years earlier.

MW: Do you ever look back with regret?

MCKELLEN: I don't look back with regret, I just regret it. You wonder how different your life would have been. But I don't regret the results of my life, particularly with regard to my career, because what I'm doing now gives me enormous pleasure. And perhaps if I'd been openly gay, I wouldn't have needed to act as much as I did -- I wouldn't have needed to so obviously draw attention to things that I was happy about in myself in order to deflect attention away from things that I wanted to keep a secret. That's a dreadful way of carrying on, but I think it's one of the motives that made me an actor.

MW: Has there been a great love in your life?

MCKELLEN: Yes, there has. But I'm not going to talk about him, because he's not here to talk about me. If we were here together that would be a different matter. But I hope it's not the only love. At the moment I live by myself, and I'm increasingly aware of what I'm missing through not living with somebody else. Whether that situation will ever change, I don't know.

4. Jessica Xavier, "2 Lives to Live"

Jessica Xavier

December 4, 1997

Interview by Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: Is your vagina fully functional?

XAVIER: Yes. I can't have kids, of course. But I do have sexual response and I'm pleased with what I got. It could have been better, but the surgeon I went to at the time...was doing this one very basic straightforward technique, and since he had the lowest rate of post-op complications, he was the guy that I went to.

MW: How could it have been better, if you don't mind my asking?

XAVIER: I don't have a clitoris, and I think I would have liked to have had one. I haven't gone back for a labia plasty.

MW: Can you have a sexual encounter with a man?

XAVIER: I'm a little shallow in that regard. It would probably be painful. So I haven't yet.

MW: Do you still experience orgasms?

XAVIER: Yes. Most transsexual women have vaginal orgasms. ... It's hard to dislike any orgasm, but I kind of like my orgasms now better.

MW: Is there anything you miss about being a man in society?XAVIER: I miss some of the physical strength that I used to have as a man: it's much harder for me to lift heavy objects now. Oh, and one other thing: I miss being able to pee standing up.

5. Dixie Carter, "The Importance of Dixie"

September 3, 1998

Interview by Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: Do you have any thoughts on gay rights?

DIXIE: I think that gay rights should exist.

MW: Let me be more specific. What about the possibility of gay marriage?

DIXIE: That's hard for me, because I'm very old fashioned, very old-timey. So that idea is hard for me. On the other hand, maybe the most loving marriage that I've ever seen is a gay marriage. It has not been codified as such by the church, but it is a marriage. And has ben for years and years and years. But to answer your question, I have to work through what marriage means -- and the first thing my mind goes to is that marriage is for the procreation of the race. It's a sacrament to unite people so that they can begin a family and have children. But Hal Holbrook and I got married at an age past when we can expect to have children. So here I am in a very happy marriage that I think is fine. So if I feel that way about my marriage to Hal, why would I have a problem with a gay marriage? Still, it's hard for me. I'm very traditional.

MW: Another issue that's been raised recently in a big way is known as "reparative therapy," where gay people are saying they've been cured through various ministries led by the right wing.

DIXIE: I think the word cure is insulting, isn't it? ... Tell me, are these people who are "cured," are they ever going to be happy?

MW: It's hard to say.

DIXIE: Well, down the line it will be discovered whether or not they will be happy. I hate to use this corny expression but everybody has got to find out who they are and what their needs are. And putting yourself in a straight jacket for appearance's sake is not going to get it. But as I've said, I'm old-fashioned. I'm still trying to work through [the idea of] women preachers. I am a person for whom change is difficult. I don't agree with the way that children are brought up now for the most part. I can't bear to see them in those little tennis shoes they put on children. Please. And those vile colors. I just want to see little babies in white. I want to see them in pastels. I don't want to see them in red and black... I feel like such an anachronistic person, but I am slowly coming around -- my children are slowly getting me close to where I should be. Maybe by the turn of the century, I'll be up with everybody else.

6. Lawrence R. Banks, "The Visible Man"

March 4, 1999

Interview by Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: You often hear criticism that today's black movement doesn't have leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

BANKS: It's an invalid criticism. A lot of what people refer to as "black leadership" is not really black leadership. It's a white choice of leadership for blacks. I could pick up a newspaper today and be exposed to "black leaders" I know nothing about -- people whom, if the "white folks" didn't put it in the paper or the TV screen, I wouldn't know anything about. Whites don't rally around the same people -- millions of whites don't see Bill Clinton as their president.

MW: That's because whites as a whole never had a perceived "movement." Not like blacks. Not like gays.

BANKS: The whites had a movement -- that's why there was a civil war. Look, you could walk out of here and down the street, and despite the fact that this is basically a black neighborhood, who is going to pay you much mind? They're certainly not going to make any decisions about who you are as a person or your value as an individual. But if I were to go in certain areas of this city and just walk, I'd get an awful lot of attention. Blacks are marked, period -- before you ever open your mouth. And usually that mark is a negative mark.

Now, I'm not down on whites. I'm not racist. But I suspect there are very few white folks who see a black person and say, "Oh, this is my lucky day, there goes a black person!" ... The black person really has to keep his or her own thing together, keep his own counsel.

MW: I understand what you're saying, but having lived so many years, you must admit, things are better now than when you were a young man.

BANKS: It is better in general terms. But if you are that person for whom it is not better, but worse, the fact that it's better in general doesn't help you. Like the guy tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged for three miles to his death down in Texas. ...

MW: Do you at all feel proud of where our society has come in the 71 years you have been alive?

BANKS: As a black gay person, I don't relate to what the gay establishment is doing, has done or has accomplished. I don't feel that closely aligned to it. I don't think it includes me. What blacks have accomplished and are doing affects me because it cuts to the heart and soul of who I am. If I were not gay, I'd still be black. But I don't feel a part of the gay establishment. Because I think of it as largely exclusive, not inclusive.

7. Kathleen DeBold, "Examining the Mautner Project"

September 21, 2000

Interview by Sean Bugg. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: I've been a professional homo for quite a while. Do you feel like we construct our own little world and get caught by surprise when those things come up?

DEBOLD: It makes you feel very safe. It's funny, even in our little neighborhood, I was walking down the road just getting some exercise. A car came by me and this group of guys yelled out, "Fat dyke bitch!" It was such a shock. But then I was like, "Well, they got all three right." At 40 miles an hour, they're good. So you never know.

One thing that's very hard and complicates lesbian health is HMOs. I had this one doctor who was insisting on giving me a pregnancy test. I said, "I'm not pregnant. There's no chance I'm pregnant." And she said, "Well, we are going to do this anyway." I said, "Look, I have never had sex with a man. This is not necessary." And she goes, "You're 42 years old and you've never had sex with a man? I don't believe that." She said it in this huge loud voice that went out into the waiting room. I was sure that everyone knew. And then, after this whole thing, I thought it was resolved. When the bill came, there was a pregnancy test on it.

MW: And that was a woman doctor?

DEBOLD: Yes, that was a woman doctor.

MW: This could be my own blindness, but I don't see as many prominent lesbian physicians as I see prominent gay physicians. There's sort of a gay doctors club and I don't see the lesbian equivalent of that.

DEBOLD: There are not enough lesbian doctors. Not enough "out" lesbian doctors. Because, you know, it's a risk for the doctor, too. It's funny, but sometimes a gay doctor can have so much internalized homophobia, they actually are not helping the client with what they are going through.

It's hard to be a woman in med school. It's hard to be a woman and even get into med school. And that's one thing we are trying to do -- get people in med school and train them in the barriers to lesbians getting health care. ... It's a lot easier to get to people young enough before they are set in their ways.

MW: It's likely that younger doctors might be more comfortable discussing sexual history on their new patients. I know that's been a big sticking point -- just getting doctors to ask.

DEBOLD: Exactly. Sexual questions. And also the way doctors ask questions. They still say, "Are you sexually active?" "No, I just lie there." Sexual activity is a big ranger. And to a lot of doctors it's "Yes or no." Then, "Do you use birth control?" And then they move on. I've never had a doctor ask me about anal sex or oral sex or multiple partners. Things they need to know, big time.

8. Larry Stansbury, "Time Well Spent"

January 25, 2001

Interview by Sean Bugg. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: When BHT started and through the earlier years, it was primarily a leather organization, though. The leather community was under a lot of fire during the early part of the AIDS epidemic, from some people who perceived the leather community as an "instigator" of the disease. Did BHT suffer from those types of perception problems?

STANSBURY: All along, there ahs been a misconception what the leather community has been about. We're very much like everybody else, we just have a particular like of leather. Some of us because we ride motorcycles, and for some people it's more of a dress statement. But a lot of people just don't understand that.

The Spartan Motorcycle Club is thirty-three years old. The Academy Awards [of Washington] is thirty-eight years old. Those are two of the longest surviving organizations in this city -- a leather group and a drag group. Even though some people see the leather community as one of those "branch" communities, the strength of the gay community has started and continues with the leather community. You'll find some of the most dedicated people you'll ever meet.

MW: Would you say the perception of the leather community has changed at all over the past ten years or so?

Stansbury: I think visibility is helping a lot. We don't make apologies because we wear leather or Levis. A lot of people wear Levis now and guess where it started? And a lot of that started with the D.C. Eagle. So many people have misconceptions about the Eagle. "Oh, that's a leather bar, I'm afraid to go in there." It has its own mystique, a well-deserved one. It caters to the leather/Levi community, but everybody's been welcome there.

MW: One of the reasons I asked about the change in perception is because Mid-Atlantic Leather weekend seems to have grown a lot over the past few years. It seems to draw even more of a "non-leather" crowd, which is interesting because different scenes tend to keep to themselves.

STANSBURY: I think it offers opportunities for people to explore other venues. It would be wrong to assume that every person in leather is into heavy S&M. Some are, but not everybody is.

9. Caushun, "Words of Caushun"

May 23, 2002

Interview by Will Doig

MW: A lot of openly gay celebrities insist that their sexuality is just a small part of who they are and that their professional lives are separate, but you totally blend your sexuality and your career. In fact, a lot of your lyrics really flaunt the fact that you're gay.

CAUSHUN: You know, people choose to think, "Oh, he's gay and he's exploiting his sexuality." But sexuality is such a big part of every rapper's lifestyle. Ninety-nine percent of the rappers out there have songs that talk about their sexual experiences. So if that's the way the game is played, if other rappers can exploit their heterosexuality, why can't I exploit my sexuality?

MW: So you think your sexual references are only more apparent because they're about men rather than women?

CAUSHUN: Exactly. Jay-Z is singing about girls, girls, girls. Well, I'm in that same situation with guys, so that's what I'm going to rap about. ... If I pretend to be a thug when that's not what I am, I would be succumbing to the pressures of the world, forcing myself back into the closet. That's not the road I wanted to take. You've got to be who you are.

MW: Do you think there are a lot of rappers and hip-hop artists who are gay but still in the closet?

CAUSHUN: Of course. I know rappers who haven't come out.

MW: Gay has become much more accepted -- even hip -- in television and Hollywood, yet it remains fairly taboo in the music industry. Why is that?

CAUSHUN: Because so few people in the industry have stood up and said, "What's so wrong with being gay?" And the only people who do are RuPaul and Elton John and other over-the-top types, the ones who feed into the stereotypes of a typical gay man, a camp man, or a typical drag queen. The fact that they're so out there makes it easier to digest for the heterosexual community.

10. Rufus Wainwright, "The Reluctant Hedonist"

September 25, 2003

Interview by Randy Shulman

MW: Do you consider yourself to have an addictive personality?

WAINWRIGHT: I consider myself to be a hedonist.

MW: That said, do you think it's easier for gay men to fall into and court an addictive lifestyle?

WAINWRIGHT: This is what I think. The kind of historical hedonistic bacchanalian orgy-esque legend of the gay lifestyle is ancient and will always exist. It's sacred and is a good thing -- for a time. Some people think they can do it forever. But I think, unfortunately, a lot of these kinds of attitudes and things existed before chemistry really took off. And also AIDS, a problem which hasn't been solved yet. And I just find that it's a real conundrum at this point because we all love to have our wild times but we don't live in the same sort of world anymore. And you can ask anyone who was coming of age in the sixties and the seventies and the eighties how many lives have been lost already and how many casualties there are. And I just feel that sometimes in the gay world there's just a total denial of that.

MW: Yet you entered into it as well.

WAINWRIGHT: I totally entered it.

MW: Was there a particular low point that you recall during this period?

WAINWRIGHT: There were many, many low points. Many high moments, many low moments. I think the song on Want One that deals with this whole subject is "Go or Go Ahead." That was a real low point. I just remember being in my car and pulling over and crying. It was very much about sitting down and facing the exterminating angel.

MW: You claim to have been addicted to sex during this period. Is there a point where you started to view sex in a different way?

WAINWRIGHT: I think sex is a serious powerful force that cannot be put under any heading of good or bad or this or that. It's to be reckoned with. I've done a lot of sexual exploring -- a lot. I'm like a sexual Captain Nemo. But it really hasn't given me anything emotional in the end. In the end, I've felt quite bankrupt. I'm happy about what happened, but I'm really looking for love.

MW: But you have to cross a line, I think, to get to a point where you're ready to look for love.

WAINWRIGHT: I think you do. I also think some people don't. It's really up to the individual. There is this idea that if you're gay you have to go through this really ferocious sexual period, you know? And maybe not everyone should. Maybe some people can't and some people can. I don't know. I'm happy it exists, but there should be an alternative to that as well. ...

In all honesty, I think sex is stupid sometimes. It's a fun thing and it's a necessary thing, but it's really the lowest form of energy on the planet, the lowest form of expression. It just has nothing to do with love. I think the two of them can meet at certain points -- I've had great sex and I've been in love -- but comparing all of that to the emotions that I have towards a friend or a member of my family or a work of art, it's really quite low.

11. David Mixner, "Politically Speaking"

David Mixner

July 29, 2004

Interview by Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: George W. Bush.

MIXNER: He's a dangerous, dangerous man. The most dangerous president I have ever seen in all my years. He makes Nixon look like a liberal. If someone said to me, what do you think is the most dangerous thing about George W. Bush, well, I mean, it's hard to pick. But I always come up with a few choice bits. The obvious one is the tribe that I'm part of and what he's doing to us. Our civil liberties are at stake, our separation of church and state is at stake, our Supreme Court is at stake. The ability of the president to go to war at choice is at stake. And pretty much the foreign policy of our country and disregard for the Geneva Accord is at stake. Our obligations to international treaties are at stake. I can't remember when all of this has been at stake in an election. Planned Parenthood. Family clinics in Africa who can't get money to distribute condoms for AIDS. It's genocidal. This man has no regard for centuries of knowledge and tradition and the journeys of people who have stood for human rights and dignity. He has just completely thrown all of that aside. He is one of the most rigid ideologues I've ever seen occupy the presidency.

MW: How do you feel about outing as a political tactic?

MIXNER: Let me just say, having worked in a number of state legislatures and campaigns, there's nothing more infuriating than coming up to a closeted person who's working against you. When you're working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week and suddenly you find out that the guy who's sending out the negative press release is a member of your tribe. It's like blacks for George Wallace -- I'm like "Huh?"

Now, having said that, and understanding how infuriating it has been in my life to come across those people, it's so very important that, given our journey -- especially with AIDS -- that we don't become them. If our ideas rest and fall on extortion and blackmail, then what are our ideas worth? I hope we would create an attractiveness that would be irresistible to any closeted gay person, that they'd want to join us eventually. I'm terrified that I'm gonna wake up some morning and some kid on the Hill is going to have killed himself. And then how are we going to feel about outing? We're playing with people's lives. We're making their decisions for their life journeys. It's not a small deal. I almost killed myself when I was blackmailed. I know the terror I felt, I know the fear. I really hope that in this time where we have great ideas of human rights and liberty and justice and equality to take to the American people, and also to maybe redefine for them what love is, that our ideas and our chances on victory do not rest on such anger.

The world is filled with hypocrites. That is just a fact of life. Now the question is, do we give them a forum? Is that our battle? To out people? Or is our battle equality, justice and liberty? Where do we put our energy? Do we jerk off and feel good that got rid of our anger by outing these people? Or do we focus on the battle?

MW: You've known Bill Clinton for thirty-five years. What are your thoughts about his presidency and the gay community?

MIXNER: Bill Clinton will go down in history as one of the greatest presidents for this community, ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever. For the scope and the breadth of the changes he made in the agencies and the State Department. It was against the law for us to openly serve in the State Department before he came in. People seem to forget that. Against the law. We could not work in the State Department. He made historical changes across the board. But he was far from perfect -- DOMA, Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

MW: Have you read the book?

MIXNER: No. Nine hundred pages of his life, are you kidding? I don't think so. I won't read nine-hundred pages of my life.

MW: DOMA is not addressed in it.

MIXNER: If I was him, I wouldn't want to mention it either.

12. Brett Parson, "Police Story"

Brett Parson

March 17, 2005

Interview by Sean Bugg. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: What's different between being a police officer and being a police officer in the GLLU?

PARSON: The first thing I want to do is turn that question around and tell you what's not different. We're police officers just like any other police officers in D.C., with full jurisdiction and full investigative authority and arrest powers. We specialize in dealing with the GLBT community. Other police officers may be assigned to the sex offense branch, the check and fraud unit, or school resource officers -- they each have a specialty and when issues come up in that particular subject area, they are called upon to assist. That's what we do in GLLU. We specialize in dealing with a community that has been traditionally under-served, disrespected and discriminated against. There are many ways that we serve that community, and probably the most important is that we do not just focus exclusively on community relations. We do general policing.

MW: When was the first time you came out after you joined the police?

PARSON: I have no idea because it was not a conscious effort on my part. When I chose to leave professional ice hockey to go into law enforcement, my partner and I decided it was going to be a non-issue. I was not going to change pronouns. I wasn't going to be ambiguous about what our relationship was. And it was never an issue, from day one at the academy. So I really can't pinpoint a day -- it just didn't happen.

Let's face it, I'm not exactly a wallflower and if there was anybody who had a problem with it, chances are they probably weren't going to stand up to me and say, "Oh, you're going to fuckin' hell." It just wasn't going to happen. Could somebody else who had a different personality have gotten away with it the way I did? Maybe yes, maybe no. I don't know.

MW: How was your coming out [to your family]?

PARSON: I probably had one of the better experiences. I didn't choose to come out to my parents until I had a life partner. And my [then-partner] and I had been together for about 6 months or so when both of us decided we wanted our families to know what was going on, so we both went to tell our parents on Thanksgiving. I had no anxiety about it. I knew my parents would not have a problem with it. It was just going to be a matter of delivering it.

My mom and dad were waiting for me because we were getting ready to go out for the traditional Thanksgiving Jewish meal of Chinese food, and I said, "Sit down, I want to tell you something." I never do that. "What, what, what? We're hungry," my dad said. I said, "I've got something I want to talk about." "Can we talk about it in the restaurant?" "No, I don't want to talk about it in the restaurant."

So we talked about my work in professional hockey at the time and how I was away from home and there are parts of me you never see. My father finally said, "What are you trying to say?" I said, "Well, there's somebody in my life. And his name is Mike." And my father said, "And we needed to stay away from the Chinese restaurant for that? Come on, let's go." No issue whatsoever. Didn't miss a beat. We talked about it throughout dinner, and they called the neighbors over from another table: "Hey, our son's gay, isn't this great? Want an egg roll?"

13. Ruby Corado, "Trans-American"

Ruby Corado

March 30, 2006

Interview by Sean Bugg. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: What led you to get involved with the coalition to change D.C.'s Human Rights Act?

CORADO: In the '90s, my friends and I would go to a party or a club on Saturday and we'd have so much fun. It would be 4 a.m. and we wanted to still be in drag and living in the moment we were having. And then people on the street would start calling us names. That's really how it all started. I realized that there were many of us who were very feminine -- what we call "gender queer" now -- and we had some special needs.

Also, for myself, I realized that with all of the changes I was going through, I was feeling fabulous. I was really living the life I wanted to live and feeling great and so proud of myself and on top of the world. And then I get on the bus and get called "faggot." And that's when I realized that the person I was becoming really had fewer opportunities, had many more barriers than when I looked not so feminine. I actually lost my job.

I was finding that things were a lot tougher. This beautiful, wonderful, amazing person that I was becoming was not supposed to be out in public. And because I was bringing it out in public, people were very cruel. I would apply for jobs and they'd look at me funny from the moment I walked in the door. Really, when I was living as a gay person I had some benefits, because even when I was super gay, the moment I looked butch, that's where it all stopped. But once I was becoming this gorgeous person, there was no turning back. I cannot be butch anymore. I am who I am. And that's how I got involved as an activist.

MW: When you look at the Human Rights Act as now amended, what's the best thing you expect to happen?

CORADO: For many years in this city, transgender people have had really bad experiences, beginning with the violence that we've suffered. D.C. is one of the five worst cities for transgender people in the whole country. And being out there every day trying to survive and then trying to integrate into a society that doesn't have clear protections for transgender and gender queer people, having this [law] is like a big gift because sometimes in order to fight a war you need to have ammunition.

It feels like we have a tool to educate people, a tool to educate ourselves about what our rights are. It's very frustrating for a community activist that every day we encounter the needs of transgender and gender queer people, and sometimes there are very few things that we're able to do. If we have a kid who is transgender or gender queer who doesn't have a job, a place to live or medical care -- sometimes we just don't have many things that we can give them. So this legislation making it clear that it is not okay to discriminate, we have something we can begin to use as a tool in educating people.

MW: You mentioned the difficulties the transgender community has faced in D.C. over the past few years, particularly violence. Why do transgender people face such problems?

CORADO: Unfortunately, in big cities like D.C., we have transgender people who are so out and so proud, that some people feel that it's not okay, that we are not supposed to be happy. And, unfortunately, it translates into violence. In the last decade there have been a lot of transgender people killed, not to even mention the transgender people who have been beaten up. There's not a month that goes by that you don't hear about somebody getting beaten up in Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Capitol Hill, you name it. They aren't getting beat up for being straight-acting. They're getting beat up for being too feminine, for being too butch.

14. Cybill Shepherd, "Cybill Rights"

March 22, 2007

Interview by Randy Shulman

MW: You have been quoted as saying that you had wondered about lesbianism at various times during your life. "I wanted to be open to the possibility of having a woman as a lover. I am not actively pursuing it but it is not over yet," is how the quote reads.

SHEPHERD: It's not over till it's over.

MW: Well, if the opportunity arose, do you honestly think you would be open to it?

SHEPHERD: Yes, I do. I don't know how you describe me then. I think there are some things I could say that are not politically correct, but I have to say that it definitely would be a possibility, depending on the person.

MW: There are a lot of people who would just shut that side of themselves off, who would just try to avoid it. For you to be even frank about the possibility of it is extraordinary.

SHEPHERD: Well, you know, I marched on Washington in a major gay and lesbian march. The Human Rights Campaign sponsored me, and when I got there I said, "I want to be in that first row and carry the banner" and they said, "I'm sorry, unless you're gay or lesbian, we're not going to let you carry it. Because the people who've worked so hard, they deserve to carry it." I took issue with that. I said, "I don't know why you'd have to be gay and lesbian to lead the march and carry the banner. It is an equal investment for anyone, regardless of what their orientation is or whatever you want to call it." I said, "Would Martin Luther King not have let me march with him because my skin was white? I don't see any difference in the issue." It's about bigotry and hatred.

MW: Did you end up carrying the banner?

SHEPHERD: I did.

MW: Why has gay rights, in particular, been such an important topic to you?

SHEPHERD: I think of myself as being born as a political being, and there was a moment in my life [where it came together for me]. It was in 1968, when Martin Luther King was killed -- assassinated -- about three and a half miles from where I was in high school. I'll never forget it. They announced it over the intercom that school was closing early and we were all to go home. I remember going out and looking towards downtown [Memphis], stricken, feeling responsible, feeling the heaviness of that hatred, of racial hatred, and feeling terrible that I hadn't done anything to support the right way, meaning the fair way. And since I'd been born and raised in the segregated South, I remember "colored-only" and "white-only" bathrooms. And during the Mid-South Fair, the blacks went on a different day from the whites. The only black people I knew growing up were domesticated servants. Being around that hatred, I had internalized on some deep, emotional level an empathy -- knowing it was wrong, but never talking, hearing racist comments all the time in my home and everywhere, but not standing up. Then when I got into the ninth grade, I began to be more enlightened. I had close friends and we all agreed on it. It was wrong, it was a horrible racial inequality in this country and it needed to be addressed.

So, to answer your question, as you open yourself up to civil rights, it really doesn't matter what your excuse is for handing human beings something that says "You're less than me, you don't get the equal rights should you choose to have a partnership with someone. You don't get the economic benefits or the tax benefits of marriage." Once you start going towards what I call the "right thinking," you can't draw the line. You have to go all the way. You can't discriminate.

MW: It would help if more high-profile celebrities such as yourself put themselves front and center for the cause. There are so many out there who are gay but still in the closet. Why do you think it's so difficult for actors or actresses to feel comfortable enough to be out?

SHEPHERD: Well, even I lost a very lucrative contract to speak to a women's organization in Texas the day after it was announced that I was doing The L Word. So people are discriminated against and are losing jobs. So, of course, there's fear. I had a lot of fear. I don't know what I was afraid of. I had a lot of fear when the episodes first came on, a huge amount of fear that I'd never really felt before. I think that everybody has his own prejudice inside, and often we have to start to enlighten ourselves about our own prejudices. And we're fed these lies and the hatred in so many ways that you have to confront your own prejudices. I don't think that any person alive is free from prejudice. We'll never be free from prejudice. It's part of being human. What was my fear? Was my fear that people would think I was a lesbian? And then would they think less of me? Was my fear that I am a lesbian? Was my fear that I would get cooties? I don't know. I just had a lot of fear. And also playing into that was the fact was that being sexual in a part for a woman my age in this business is very rare. We're usually stuck with playing the crazy mothers. And we're lucky to get those parts.

15. Ron Simmons, "Radically Relevant"

Ron Simmons

November 27, 2008

Interview by Will O'Bryan. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: What was your childhood like in Brooklyn?

SIMMONS: It was hell. I had a horrible childhood. I was suicidal at 13. If I seem to laugh a lot now, it's because I think about then.

I was introduced to homosexuality at an early age -- I was 5 or 6. My cousin, maybe a year or two older, his family had gotten evicted so he was staying with us. He and I were sleeping in the same bed. One night, he says to me, "Do you want to do what the grownups do?" I had no idea what the he was talking about.

MW: Did he mean pay taxes?

SIMMONS: Right! [Laughs.] He showed me. He took me in his arms and he kissed me. It was just wonderful.

I believe, frankly, that being gay -- as opposed to being homosexual, really feeling "I am gay" -- is much more of an innate, kind of spiritual thing. In my case, it was going to be there already, but that triggered it at such an early age. I never thought I was doing anything wrong. It felt good. What was I doing? Holding a guy, embracing, and basically playing house.

In the second grade, I played serious house with a guy named Larry. We put my sister's doll under my shirt and pretended I was pregnant. We had no idea what we were doing. We were just acting out, a fantasy. I felt perfectly comfortable. He was really cute.

What happened was puberty. In fifth grade, he started chasing the girls. And so did the other guys. I realized that I didn't want to. I couldn't figure out why we couldn't go back and have fun with each other the way we did before.

Then the name calling started: "faggot."

Because I was studious, I guess an attractive kid, the girls would chase me -- and that would terrify me. I didn't know quite how to react to what was happening around me. Pulling away from the girls, you become stigmatized. I was the sissy.

I studied a lot, and that paid off in that I did quite well in school. When I reached junior high school, they changed the ruling and said that basically a kid could go to any junior high school. My mother immediately signed me up to go way out -- Sheepshead Bay. There was a good chance that the white kids would not really be happy to see me coming. They were waiting for you. If you got off at the stop in the Italian neighborhood, there was a lot of flak. If you got off at the stop in the Jewish neighborhood -- the school was right in the middle -- you had a better chance. In high school, I do remember one time some white guys calling out "nigger."

MW: So, out of the homophobic frying pan and into the racist fire?

SIMMONS: Right. Needless to say, the sexual thing went into this deep, deep closet that didn't come out again until I went away to college. I went away to college by God's grace, because Lord knows I wasn't supposed to. So many times in my life, things have just happened that it's like something divine going on.

16. John Waters, "Waters World"

John Waters

December 3, 2009

Interview by Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: What do you look for in a man?

WATERS: You mean a boyfriend man?

MW: Yes.

WATERS: My favorite is a blue-collar closet queen because they don't want to be in my movies. They don't want to meet famous people. They don't want to go on tour with me. They want to come over to my house and hang out. I've never had a famous boyfriend. Anybody that would want to walk the red carpet with me would be a bad boyfriend. I don't go to work with them. Why should they want to go to work with me? People have to be able to make me laugh. I like people that have had some backstory. I don't want somebody like me especially, they don't have to be intellectual at all. I know enough smart people. Who wants to talk about books in bed?

MW: Do you have a boyfriend at the moment?

WATERS: No, but I have a couple friends I see -- that I always see.

MW: Have you ever had a long-term boyfriend?

WATERS: Yeah, three.

MW: What's the longest?

WATERS: Five years. But I never lived with 'em. I could never live with anybody that would allow me to dominate them enough so that they could live in this house, the way it looks, totally my taste. I wouldn't want to be my boyfriend.

MW: Clearly they wanted to be your boyfriend.

WATERS: That isn't a boyfriend, that's a groupie.

MW: So no marriage for John Waters?

WATERS: Oh, God, no. I have a great life as a single man. You kidding? At Elton John's party, I got seated next to Yoko Ono. Joan Kennedy, at another party. I have a great life as a single man. I live in four cities. I am very happy to be a single man. I don't need somebody else to make me feel better.

MW: In Metro Weekly we do a feature where we ask a series of questions to our Nightlife Coverboys. I want to ask you three questions from that list, the obvious one being what's on you nightstand?

WATERS: I have two nightstands because I have a bed with a table on each side of it. So I'll tell you each side. On the left side is three books, The Story of Chicken Little, Slovenly Peter and Baltimore Afire. I also collect fake food -- so there's a bowl of fake grits. There is a can opener Patty Hearst gave me that is a horse's ass. There is a picture of the Queen from Snow White.

On the right side table there's more fake food -- a bowl of cereal that really looks real, a little piece of bacon, a pickle, five books -- Impossible Princess by Kevin Killian, Monkey Painting by Thierry Lenain, All Around Atlantis by Deborah Eisenberg, and Hotel Theory by Wayne Kostenbaum -- a box of Kleenex, brass knuckles, an eight-ball that tells your fortune -- it's broken -- and a rubber knife.

MW: Do you keep anything in the drawers of the nightstands?

WATERS: Yeah. But I'm not telling you what's in there. I've told you enough, haven't I?

MW: Where is the most unusual place that John Waters has ever had sex?

WATERS: That I wouldn't tell you. Because here's the thing -- people that tell a journalist that have no friends.

17. Chely Wright

June 10, 2010

Interview by Sean Bugg

MW: A lot of us agonize over how we come out to our families. How did you actually do it?

WRIGHT: I finally realized I had to tell my father because he called me at one point in Nashville and said, "Chel, we're not close like we used to be. Have I done something wrong?" That just ripped my heart out. When you hide you start to live separate lives. You don't share your life the way that you want to, because you have a secret.

When he got to my hotel room -- he always likes to come hang out with me as I'm getting ready for a show -- I said, "Pippy, I need to talk to you." He said, "What's wrong? You're sick? You have cancer?" I said, "I don't have cancer, but I need to tell you something I've needed to tell you my whole life but I'm scared and I've always been afraid you won't want to be my dad anymore." And I said, "I'm gay."

So we had a two- or three-hour conversation about it. It ran the gamut of emotion. He kept saying, "Why didn't you tell me? I'm disappointed that you didn't know I'd love you no matter what." And I said, "Dad, don't you remember the gay jokes? You know, the jokes at the dinner table?" He buried his face in his hands and he just sobbed and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

That's a hard conversation to have with a man who was raised to believe that gays are sinful and wrong and condemned to hell. In that very instant, when the kid that he knew and loved and respected and admired and adored, told him that's who I was, everything about that word changed for him.

MW: Has that impacted your father's life back home?

WRIGHT: Of course. You know, I've got a community of gay support. It's one thing for my family to support me, but when they go back into their world of small town and mid-America it's tough. ...

Here's one of the most disturbing things that happened. My sister and I are very, very close, and she lives in a town of 400. She said that her preacher came to her house last Friday and said, "Jenny, I need to tell you that on Sunday I'm going to be preaching a sermon on homosexuality." She said, "Really? Okay, well, don't look at me when you do it." When that preacher got up in front of the congregation -- which, by the way, my nieces and nephews were sitting in the pews -- he got a dry-erase board up and drew some graphs and stick figures and lines and arrows, and equated gays with murderers.

MW: Wow.

WRIGHT: That's what we're dealing with. Jen said it was all she could do to not break down and cry. Her 12-year-old son Max just kept looking up at her and saying, "Momma?" I can take people disparaging me and nasty phone calls coming into radio stations when I'm on the air, but to know that a preacher is up there telling my nieces and nephews that their Aunt Chely is the same as a murderer really, really upsets me. That's a problem for me.

18. Edward Albee, "Who's Afraid of Edward Albee?"

Edward Albee

March 10, 2011

Interview by Randy Shulman. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: You've seen quite a bit of history -- in particular, a lot of gay history. You've seen enormous changes in your lifetime. Can you reflect a bit on how you feel about some of those changes with regard to the LGBT movement?

ALBEE: Well, you know, it's very, very nice that gay people are not being lynched the way blacks were back in the really terrible days. But gays are still subject to the same prejudices and the same ill-treatment and the same second-class citizenship that a lot of other minorities -- blacks, Jews, Muslims -- are subject to.

One thing does trouble me. I don't think that gay people are any different from anybody else, because I don't think where you put your dick defines anything about your nature. Where you put your dick merely defines where you put your dick, right? I don't understand at the same time why so many gays want to be exactly like so many of these awful breeders -- these awful hetero types who really behave appallingly. Why do all gay people wish to vanish into this society? Is it self-protection? I don't know. I just don't want us to be forced to think that we must imitate other people and behave the way they do in order to become invisible.

I had a 35-year relationship. Were we married? Yeah, I guess we were. We certainly felt that we were. We certainly treated each other like we were married to each other. Did we ever feel the need to get a marriage license? No, of course not. We knew we were married to each other. All this legality that people seem so involved with nowadays, it troubles me just a little bit. I understand all the problems to come with wills and families denying access to the loved one and all of that, but come on, do we really want to be exactly like straight people?

MW: But those are very real situations, real problems for some people.

ALBEE: Yeah, and those problems should be solved, of course. There should be nothing legally standing in the way of two people to be married if they wish to be, of course.

MW: Going back to something you said a moment ago, I think being gay is more than just where you put your dick. I think being gay is actually an emotional attachment to the person of the same sex.

ALBEE: What is the difference between emotional attachment of a guy to a guy and emotional attachment of a guy to a gal? What's the difference?

MW: Are you saying there's no difference? I suppose, from a basic, human standpoint, there's no difference. Our opponents would cite the differences from a reproductive standpoint -- you know, "It's not the way God intended it to be, it's unnatural."

ALBEE: I would like to meet God someday so that I can ask him whether he really feels that way about homosexuals. I can't imagine a God who would be that prejudiced.

MW: Well, what if you did meet God? And what if God said to you, "Actually, homosexuality is unnatural. It was a mistake and I didn't mean for it to happen." What would you then say to God?

ALBEE: I would say, "Grow up."

19. Wade Davis, "Field Goals"

Wade Davis

August 9, 2012

Interview by Sean Bugg. Photography by Todd Franson

MW: When did you first have an inkling that you were gay?

DAVIS: I was in a gym-class locker room — not football, but a high school gym-class locker room. I was pretty late in understanding that. I just remember going home, watching straight porn for hours trying to focus on the woman and make myself believe that what happened was just what guys do as a comparison thing: "Oh, I'm just comparing my body to this guy." I think that that does happen amongst adolescent boys, but I knew at that moment it was different. Like, when I saw this guy, I wanted to hold his hand, kiss him, touch him. It wasn't just that I wanted to have a flex off. So that was the first moment that I knew there was something different.

MW: So you go to college, you're playing ball. How did you construct a closet?

DAVIS: I started to emulate everything that I saw straight guys do that I thought I should do. Having a girlfriend, wearing oversized pants and oversized T-shirts. Making sure that if I went to a club I took a girl home with me -- whether we did anything or not, which most times we didn't. I looked the part of a straight guy, a football player who didn't do anything that was gay. And I was always a shit-talker. I was born to talk shit, so that came easy for me.

MW: Whenever we talk about why gay men have not come out in professional sports, we end up talking about locker rooms. What is it about the locker room that keeps people in the closet?

DAVIS: I think it's a couple of things that intersect. For me, in the football locker room I never was worried about being attracted to any of my teammates, because that was a place that was sacred to me. That was a place where I was with my family, like with my brothers. But one of the biggest issues is that straight guys are just worried that another man is going to objectify them. Straight guys are used to never being objectified unless they ask for it, unless they take off their shirt around women. But the idea of having another man, who may be more physically imposing than you, be attracted to you, is a space where men can be objectified in a way that makes them feel weak, so it challenges their ideas of masculinity. I think that's part of it.

For gay men, it's the worry that their teammates will assume that because I'm gay I'm automatically attracted to you, which is so far from the truth. I've spoken to many of my other gay friends, and when you're in the locker room the last thing you're thinking about is your teammates in a sexual way. I mean, it never crossed my mind. No. Because that's the space where you're actually happy, you're feeling safe and you don't want to make anyone else feel unsafe.

MW: During your course of time in the NFL, did you ever come out to anybody?

DAVIS: No-ho-ho-ho. [Laughs.] No, there was never a question in my mind. Never a thought. There was not one football player that I would have considered telling.

MW: You said that you're a natural-born shit-talker. Did you ever find yourself talking shit about gays and lesbians to cover yourself?

DAVIS: One of the things I'm least proud of is that I was a bully in high school. I wanted to make my friends think that I couldn't be gay if I made fun of other gay people. We used to do this thing at lunchtime, we called it "holding court." We would sit on top of the tables right at the door and as soon as someone walked in we would start making fun of them for whatever reason. And that was part of my posturing, that was part of me proving my masculinity, proving I was the big dog.

MW: You've spent a good part of your career in a sport where African-American men are expected and respected. In general, an African-American male face is kind of the face of a lot of pro sports. Now you're a black man in the gay community, and that community is perceived as a very white face. How is it a different experience for you, as a black man?

DAVIS: It's saddening that the norm is for you to be black and an athlete. It's not the norm for you to be black and anything else; maybe you're black and a rapper, black and a musician.

I'm lucky that, because of being an ex-athlete, I'm privileged to be able to exist in the gay white world. I'm accepted. People want to be my friend, people want to date me. I've been told more times than I can count that, "Normally I don't date black men but I would date you." And people actually think that that's an okay comment, that I'm going to just say, "Oh, thanks!"

But I have a lot of black gay friends who don't feel like they fit into the gay community. And I understand my privilege there, so I try as much as I can to have thoughtful conversations about it. Oftentimes, if you are white and gay, you don't understand that you have a built-in community, that the black gay community is very disjointed because of the amount of shame and stigma that black men face. I definitely feel an obligation to stay connected to the gay black community, but I also want to build a bridge between both communities, so that black gay men feel that they can interact with the white gay community and vice versa. You know, like the old saying goes, all your black friends have lots of white friends, and all your white friends have one black friend. And it's kind of true. It's so sad.

MW: Much of the LGBT community likes to think of itself as more progressive on race issues than the rest of the country. Do you think the LGBT community actually is a little bit better on race, or is that something we just tell ourselves to feel better?

DAVIS: People won't like this, but I think it's something we tell ourselves to make ourselves look better. Gay people have been oppressed for a while — we're hated and we're fighting against it. But as soon as we have a little bit of power we oppress someone else in our own community because we're just not conscious of the fact that we're doing it. It's like someone saying, "I'm not racist, I'm colorblind." When you don't see color, you can't see racism.

20. George Takei, "The Takei Time"

January 24, 2013.

Interview by Randy Shulman

MW: You and Brad have been together for how long now?

TAKEI: Twenty-five years now. ...

MW: Do you still wake up in the morning and look at Brad and feel the love that you felt 25 years ago?

TAKEI: Yes. I love to hear his breathing and sometimes his snoring right next to me. Brad travels with me wherever I go, even when it's some business thing. He'll roam around the city while I'm in meetings. Our lives are intertwined.

MW: It's nice to find that kind of lasting love.

TAKEI: It is. And you know, in many ways, because we're gay and there's this public sense that gays aren't stable, we feel that we're blessed in that we can be as happy as we are together. I don't mean it in the all lovey-dovey things, but it's a normal kind of thing between two people. You have your differences and you have your arguments, but that's all part of it. And at night, when you're going to bed, you see that all that arguing is really petty and silly. We really love each other and that's what really counts.

MW: How old is Brad, may I ask?

TAKEI: Brad is 57. I'm 75.

MW: So nearly a 20-year difference between you. Has that ever been an issue?

TAKEI: Well, it is a concern on the part of both of us because we have DOMA to contend with. We had very good friends, a couple -- a gay couple -- in Washington, D.C. They'd been together for almost 20 years. Mark went out of town on business and when he came back and opened the apartment door, he found his partner on the floor. He had had a heart attack and had passed. His partner's brother lived in Boston -- they were estranged for a long, long time. He happened to be a lawyer and he came down and took everything. And that is a big concern with us. The laws are against us.

That's what the Boston case that's before the Supreme Court is all about. It was a lesbian couple, and one passed and because their union -- they were married in Massachusetts -- but because their union is not federally recognized because we have DOMA, the surviving spouse would have had to pay over half of the deceased's estate tax, which would not have happened if they were straight. I mean, it's a cruel situation. And me being older than Brad, I'm very concerned about that. We built our lives together. Our estate is ours, and I want it to go to Brad without that kind of taxation, like any married couple who have been together for 25 years.

There are hundreds of laws that make life difficult and sometimes cruel for LGBT couples because of DOMA. And we are optimistic that we can live to the point where we will see DOMA gone forever -- and I think that's going to be very soon. In fact, next year is going to be a good year, I think, for the LGBT community because that issue is before the Supreme Court. We also have Proposition 8 before the Supreme Court. Two courts have already ruled it unconstitutional and I am almost confident that it's going to be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But the Boston case is the important one because it challenges DOMA.

So I think it's an amazing thing that's happening in our lifetime. And 2013 is going to be eminently fulfilling for our community. I think the Supreme Court is going to come through for us. I'm an optimist.

Visit us online at MetroWeekly.com. Sign up for our email list, The Daily Blast, at metroweekly.com/join.

It seems just like yesterday.

Running around frantically in my tiny apartment at the corner of 17th and T Streets, scrambling to get the very first issue of Metro Arts & Entertainment Weekly written and to the printer. I don't have clear, detailed memories of it, apart from recalling that pages were laid out in PageMaker on a monochrome IBM computer (floppy disks!), printed out on a cheap black and white laser printer, and then pasted onto templates through the aid of a hot-glue gun. The pages were then bound into a loose-leaf three-ring binder -- "the book," as it came to be known -- which was then raced to the printer by car and handed off, relay style, to the camera department. From there, I always said, "It's in God's hands." God, in this case, being the printing press, which would not break down and create a distribution delay. God forbid.

I remember franticness. Followed by relief. Followed by exhilaration. Followed by a lot of celebratory alcohol. Followed by a hangover. Rinse and repeat.

Premiere Issue of Metro Weekly magazine

In the ensuing years the changes came. Many changes -- to the name, to the logo, to the format, to the way we submitted our files to the printer, to the staff -- and through them all we've remained consistent to our mission to create a magazine -- and a website -- that speaks to the LGBT community, locally and beyond, in a literate, interesting and, whenever possible, unique way. A magazine that covers things that are more than just LGBT-oriented, because as LGBT people, we are interested in things beyond our own microcosm.

The fight for equality has begat same-sex marriage, the end of "Don't Ask, Don't' Tell," and a rise in our awareness and a fuller understanding of our transgender brothers and sisters. These two decades have seen monumental advances in combating HIV/AIDS, though we've lost so many in that time and still have such a long way to go. And the view, from 1994 to 2014, has changed so dramatically that we routinely browse the world outside our all-too-often confining borders thanks to this little always-connected thing they call The Interwebs. These changes have been reflected in our pages, often through the words of the people who were working hard to implement them.

Quality has always been our hallmark at Metro Weekly. I have worked -- and continue to work -- with an abundance of talented writers, photographers and illustrators – more than any editor/publisher has a right to. Sifting through 20 years of Metro Weekly -- more than 1,000 issues -- only reinforced that notion. It's an honor, really, and very humbling.

Some of our writers and artists have moved on to other venues -- Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The Daily Beast, BuzzFeed. But just as many have stayed here for years -- Todd Franson, Will O'Bryan, David Uy, Sean Bugg, Kate Wingfield and Doug Rule have worked with the magazine for more than a decade. Then there are the relative newcomers -- Justin Snow, John Riley, Rhuaridh Marr, Brandon Harrison, Chris Gerard, Richard J. Rosendall, Troy Petenbrink, Zack Rosen -- who have carved out their niches within the magazine, whether it be politics or pets, music or cars, technology or travel, offering voices, both in print and online, that are distinct and unique and complementary to one another.

In Julian Vankim, we unearthed a magnificent photographer who brings an alternative sensibility (and a bit of relief pitching) to Todd Franson, whose own extraordinary ways with portraiture have defined this magazine's look for much of its existence. We're lucky to work with incredible illustrators, each of whom bring their own spark of life to the magazine, from the elegant, thoughtful illustrations of Christopher Cunetto (who also doubles as one of our Scene photographers) to Scott G. Brooks, whose elaborate detail-work frequently leaves one's jaw ajar for hours if not days. And, of course, there's Ward Morrison. Everybody knows Ward. Everybody's been photographed by Ward. Everybody's been hugged by Ward. And everybody is all the better for it.

There are plenty who operate behind the scenes to ensure things run smoothly, notably David Uy, who arrived in 2002 and brought us onto the Web with a dazzling flair. David is overseeing the launch of our newly redesigned website (coming soon!), which all staffers younger than me (everyone, come to think of it) say is far more appealing than our current outmoded look. But what do I know about technology? I still type texts with my forefinger while chewing my tongue out the side of my mouth. We'd never get into your hands were it not for the weekly efforts of Dennis Havrilla and Richard Goldsmith. And thanks to the talented Aram Vartian, we've been able to toss the occasional video into the mix with the same kind of quality and care we bring to our print and online endeavors.

It's these people who work extra hard, often through weekends, to ensure that Metro Weekly isn't just one of the best, most interesting LGBT magazines you'll ever read, but that MetroWeekly.com is a place you'll gladly visit daily (which, I'm pleased to say, you do). We engage the world of social media with a page on Facebook and a perch on Twitter, as well as an email we call The Daily Blast, and which, like everything here, is constantly evolving. (Sign up at metroweekly.com/join.)

Indeed, the combined efforts of these people -- and those who came before them -- have been the reason for the magazine's success all these years. The magazine you are holding today is a tribute to everyone who has ever been part of it. And I am grateful to every single one of them for their efforts, for their talent, for their devotion to this publication.

Think of this issue as a kickoff to a year of recollections and tributes, as we'll continue to look back at our history throughout the year. For me personally, editing this particular issue unleashed a torrent of fond memories and evoked strong, deep emotions. Maybe I'll share a story every so often on our Facebook page (facebook.com/metroweekly) or tweet a rarely seen snapshot from the past (twitter.com/metroweekly), as there is plenty to still be seen and celebrated. Too much, almost. But we can't stay steeped in the past. We have a magazine to put out for the present. Once this week is done, we're on to next week.

Expect changes in the coming months. We've already introduced Pets, Home and Car sections. We added Technology, Health and Games to our arts and leisure roster, and are about to debut Food. (Fun aside: Out On the Town has appeared in every single issue since the very first.) We'll keep growing, keep evolving, keep trying on new things and revisiting former ideas in a new way. We are grateful for your readership, grateful for our advertisers whose support allows us to do our job to the height of our ability (which is why you should support our advertisers), and we will never take your readership for granted. We will always strive to earn it, week in, week out.

Producing Metro Weekly has now occupied a full third of my own life. It is, for me, a legacy -- an unexpected one as I never really set out in life to be a magazine publisher. Yet now I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing. And I can't think of any magazine I'd rather be publishing more than Metro Weekly.

It may seem just like yesterday, but around here it already feels like tomorrow.

Randy Shulman

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief