Arts & Entertainment
A trans Scientologist’s memoir
Brutally honest book by woman cast out by religion
‘A Queer and Pleasant Danger’
By Kate Bornstein
Beacon Press
$25.95/288 pages
(Beacon Press)
You are a pretty tame human being.
Oh, sure, you break out sometimes and go a little wild, but overall, you’re no threat to most people. You were domesticated years ago, you know when to hide your claws, and you stopped biting in preschool. You’re even housebroken.
But uncivilized? Hardly.
Menacing? Never!
Author Kate Bornstein isn’t either, but there’s a significant group of people that, she says, have labeled her as a “potential trouble source.” In her new book “A Queer and Pleasant Danger,” she explains how she got to be so hazardous.
At four-and-a-half years old, most kids are just learning their ABCs, but Albert Bornstein knew at that age that he wasn’t a boy, so he must be a girl. He also knew that wasn’t what people wanted to hear, so he never spilled his secret; instead, he grew up wanting to be Audrey Hepburn — and if not Hepburn, there were other choices.
He always loved women. There were so many he could imagine being.
It was mid-1970 when Bornstein – twenty-something, anorexic, altruistic, and seeking spiritual meaning – started a cross-country pilgrimage that landed him in Colorado. There, while looking for new boots, he found a Scientology center.
He entered… and stayed.
Happy in his newly embraced “applied religious philosophy,” Bornstein became the perfect Scientologist: charming and silver-tongued, he quickly developed into a top-performing salesman of high rank. Two years after joining the organization, he was married; a year after that, he was a father.
He also began acting upon his girlish urges, but wasn’t bothered by it. Scientology taught that humans were spiritual beings called thetans, and thetans had no gender… so what was the harm in wearing women’s clothing and sleeping with men? His inner woman seemed unstoppable.
Then, 12 years after joining, when everything came crashing down (due to a still-dizzying misunderstanding), Bornstein was cast out of the community he’d embraced for a third of his life. Feeling bereft, and overwhelmed he sought therapy and a community of a different sort.
What he found was the person she was all along.
There are a lot of adjectives that one can use to describe “A Queer and Pleasant Danger:” snarky, funny, anguished, frightening. Heartbreaking. Brave. Honest.
Author Kate Bornstein worked six years on this memoir that she started for her daughter (whom Bornstein assumes will never read it), and for the teenage grandchildren who will likewise be denied the story because they’re Scientologists and Bornstein is essentially dead to them. What Bornstein doesn’t say about Scientology, in fact, is more chilling than what she does say.
In writing this memoir, Bornstein puts on a certain bravado that doesn’t last in the presence of the vulnerability she often displays. This is a softer, sometimes sorrowful, side of the always-outspoken Kate Bornstein, and I loved it.
Be aware that there are painfully graphic scenes in this book, and some that are brutally blunt. If you can stand those (appropriate-to-this-memoir) paragraphs, though, “A Queer and Pleasant Danger” is a wildly wonderful read.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
Drag artists perform for crowds in towns across Virginia. The photographer follows Gerryatrick, Shenandoah, Climaxx, Emerald Envy among others over eight months as they perform at venues in the Virginia towns of Staunton, Harrisonburg and Fredericksburg.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
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