Arts & Entertainment
GLAAD Media Awards 2018 releases nominees
Netflix raked in the highest number of nominations for TV shows
(‘Call Me By Your Name.’ Screenshot via YouTube.)
The 29th annual GLAAD Media Awards announced its 2018 nominees at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday via Trace Lysette (“Transparent”) and Wilson Cruz (“Star Trek: Discovery”).
Netflix raked in the most nominations for television with seven nominations. ABC, CBS and NBC came in at a close second with six nominations. This was also the first time the category Outstanding Kids & Family Programming was introduced which recognizes “Andi Mack,” and “Doc McStuffins,” among others, for their LGBT inclusion.
Critically-acclaimed films “Call Me By Your Name,” “Lady Bird” and “The Shape of Water” also scored nominations.
For music, Miley Cyrus, Sam Smith, Halsey and Kesha all earned nominations for Outstanding Music Artist.
Special recognition was also given to the animated short film “In a Heartbeat,” written and directed by Esteban Bravo and Beth David, as well as Jay-Z’s track “Smile,” about his mother’s coming out, from his album “4:44.”
Check out the full list of nominees below.
OUTSTANDING FILM – WIDE RELEASE
“Battle of the Sexes” (Fox Searchlight)
“Call Me by Your Name” (Sony Pictures Classics)
“Lady Bird” (A24)
“Professor Marston and the Wonder Women” (Annapurna Pictures)
“The Shape of Water” (Fox Searchlight)
OUTSTANDING FILM – LIMITED RELEASE
“BPM” (The Orchard)
“A Fantastic Woman” (Sony Pictures Classics)
“God’s Own Country” (Samuel Goldwyn Films/Orion Pictures)
“Thelma” (The Orchard)
“The Wound” (Kino Lorber)
OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES
“The Bold Type” (Freeform)
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (FOX)
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” (The CW)
“Modern Family” (ABC)
“One Day at a Time” (Netflix)
“One Mississippi” (Amazon)
“Superstore” (NBC)
“Survivor’s Remorse” (Starz)
“Transparent” (Amazon)
“Will & Grace” (NBC)
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
“Billions” (Showtime)
“Doubt” (CBS)
“The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu)
“Nashville” (CMT)
“Sense8” (Netflix)
“Shadowhunters” (Freeform)
“Star” (FOX)
“Star Trek: Discovery” (CBS All Access)
“This Is Us” (NBC)
“Wynonna Earp” (Syfy)
OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL EPISODE (in a series without a regular LGBTQ character)
“Chapter 8”, “Legion” (FX)
“Grace”, “Pure Genius” (CBS)
“Lady Cha Cha”, “Easy” (Netflix)
“The Missionaries”, “Room 104” (HBO)
“Thanksgiving”, “Master of None” (Netflix)
OUTSTANDING TV MOVIE OR LIMITED SERIES
“American Horror Story: Cult” (FX)
“Feud: Bette and Joan” (FX)
“Godless” (Netflix)
“Queers” (BBC America)
“When We Rise” (ABC)
OUTSTANDING KIDS & FAMILY PROGRAMMING
“Andi Mack” (Disney Channel)
“Chosen Family”, “Danger & Eggs” (Amazon)
“The Emergency Plan”, “Doc McStuffins” (Disney Channel)
“The Loud House” (Nickelodeon)
“Steven Universe” (Cartoon Network)
OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARY
“Chavela” (Music Box Films)
“Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric” (National Geographic)
“Kiki” (Sundance Selects)
“Real Boy”- “Independent Lens” (PBS)
“This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous” (YouTube Red)
OUTSTANDING REALITY PROGRAM
“Gaycation with Ellen Page” (Viceland)
“I Am Jazz” (TLC)
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” (VH1)
“Survivor: Game Changers” (CBS)
“The Voice” (NBC)
OUTSTANDING MUSIC ARTIST
Miley Cyrus, “Younger Now” (RCA Records)
Halsey, “Hopeless Fountain Kingdom” (Astralwerks Records)
Honey Dijon, “The Best of Both Worlds” (Classic Music Company)
Kehlani, “SweetSexySavage” (TSNMI/Atlantic Records)
Kelela, “Take Me Apart” (Warp Records)
Kesha, “Rainbow” (Kemosabe/RCA Records)
Perfume Genius, “No Shape” (Matador Records)
Sam Smith, “The Thrill of It All” (Capitol Records)
St. Vincent, “MASSEDUCTION” (Loma Vista Recordings)
Wrabel, “We Could Be Beautiful” (Epic/Sony Records)
OUTSTANDING COMIC BOOK
“America,” written by Gabby Rivera (Marvel Comics)
“The Backstagers,” written by James Tynion IV (BOOM! Studios)
“Batwoman,” written by Marguerite Bennett, James Tynion IV (DC Comics)
“Black Panther: World of Wakanda,” written by Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Yona Harvey, Rembert “Browne” (Marvel Comics)
“Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love,” written by Sarah Vaughn (DC Comics)
“Goldie Vance,” written by Hope Larson, Jackie Ball (BOOM! Studios)
“Iceman,” written by Sina Grace (Marvel Comics)
“Lumberjanes,” written by Kat Leyh, Shannon Watters (BOOM! Studios)
“Quantum Teens are Go,” written by Magdalene Visaggio (Black Mask Comics)
“The Woods,” written by James Tynion IV (BOOM! Studios)
OUTSTANDING DAILY DRAMA
“The Bold and The Beautiful” (CBS)
“Days of Our Lives” (NBC)
“The Young & the Restless” (CBS)
OUTSTANDING TALK SHOW EPISODE
“Australia Marriage Equality”, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” (HBO)
“Danica Roem”, “The Opposition with Jordan Klepper” (Comedy Central)
“Laila and Logan Ireland, Transgender Military Couple”, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” (syndicated)
“Laverne Cox and Gavin Grimm”, “The View” (ABC)
“Trans Veterans React to Ban”, “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” (Comedy Central)
OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM – NEWSMAGAZINE
“A Boy Named Lucas”, “20/20” (ABC)
“China Queer”, “The Naked Truth” (Fusion)
“Gay Purge?”, “Nightline” (ABC)
“The Pulse of Orlando: Terror at the Nightclub”, “Anderson Cooper 360” (CNN)
“Trans Youth”, “VICE on HBO” (HBO)
OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM SEGMENT
“The Abolitionists Face the Love Army” KAPP-KVEW Local News (KAPP-35/KVEW-42 [Tri Cities/Yakima, Wash.])
“DJ Zeke Thomas Goes Public”, “Good Morning America” (ABC)
“Murders Raise Alarm for Transgender Community”, “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” (NBC)
“Transgender Murders in Louisiana Part of Disturbing Trend”, “CBS Evening News” (CBS)
“Transgender Rights under Fire in Trump Era”, “AM Joy” (MSNBC)
OUTSTANDING NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
“Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The Journey of a Transgender Man” by Lauren McGaughy (The Dallas Morning News)
“Lesbian College Coaches Still Face Difficult Atmosphere to Come Out” by Shannon Ryan (Chicago Tribune)
“Pulse Victims’ Families in Puerto Rico: ‘We Have to Cry Alone'” by Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio (Orlando Sentinel)
“Revised Guidance on HIV Proves Life-Transforming” by Lenny Bernstein (The Washington Post)
“The Silent Epidemic: Black Gay Men and HIV” [series] (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
OUTSTANDING MAGAZINE ARTICLE
“America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic” by Linda Villarosa (The New York Times Magazine)
“Beyond ‘He’ or ‘She’: The Changing Meaning of Gender and Sexuality” by Katy Steinmetz (Time)
“Forbidden Lives: The Gay Men Who Fled Chechnya’s Purge” by Masha Gessen (The New Yorker)
“Free Radical” by Nathan Heller (Vogue)
“Trans, Teen, and Homeless” by Laura Rena Murray (Rolling Stone)
OUTSTANDING MAGAZINE OVERALL COVERAGE
The Advocate
Billboard
People
Teen Vogue
Time
OUTSTANDING DIGITAL JOURNALISM ARTICLE
“The Ballad of Bobby Brooks, the First Gay Student-Body President of Texas A&M” by Lauren Larson (GQ.com)
“For Those We Lost and Those Who Survived: The Pulse Massacre One Year Later” by James Michael Nichols (HuffPost Queer Voices)
“‘I Am a Girl Now,’ Sage Smith Wrote. Then She Went Missing.” by Emma Eisenberg (Splinter)
“Meet the Transgender Student Who Fought Discrimination at His Maryland High School (and Won)” by Nico Lang (INTO)
“Why Bisexual Men Are Still Fighting to Convince Us They Exist” by Samantha Allen (Splinter)
OUTSTANDING DIGITAL JOURNALISM – MULTIMEDIA
“Former Patriots and Chiefs Tackle Ryan O’Callaghan Comes Out as Gay” by Cyd Zeigler (Outsports/SB Nation)
“Made to Model: Trans Beauty in Fashion” (LogoTV.com)
“‘This Is How We Win’: Inside Danica Roem’s Historic Victory” by Diana Tourjée (Broadly.Vice.com)
“Transgender Day of Remembrance” by Saeed Jones (AM to DM, BuzzFeed News)
“US Travel Ban Leaves LGBT Refugees in Limbo” by Nina dos Santos (CNN.com)
OUTSTANDING BLOG
Autostraddle
Gays With Kids
My Fabulous Disease
Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents
Transgriot
OUTSTANDING SCRIPTED TELEVISION SERIES
“Las chicas del cable” (Netflix)
“La doble vida de Estela Carrillo” (Univision)
“Ingobernable” (Netflix)
OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM – NEWSMAGAZINE (Spanish Language)
“Así viven los estudiantes transgénero después de que Trump anulara la ley de baños de Obama para escuela públicas” , “Primer Impacto” (Univision)
“Pulse, huellas de la masacre”, “Docufilms” (CNN en Español)
“Ser transgénero en Latinoamérica: sus experiencias y crecimiento”, “Vive la Salud” (CNN en Español)
OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM SEGMENT (Spanish Language)
“Comunidad LGBTQ vulnerable bajo nuevo gobierno”, “Perspectiva Nacional” (Entravision)
“Entrevista con Daniela Vega”, “Showbiz” (CNN en Español)
“Joven transgénero tiene un mensaje para las familias: ‘Acepten a sus hijos'”, “Al Punto” (Univision)
“El triunfo de una diseñadora mexicana transgénero en Nueva York”, “Noticias Telemundo” (Telemundo)
“Unidos contra la discriminación y el acoso contra la comunidad LGBT”, “Despierta América” (Univision)
OUTSTANDING DIGITAL JOURNALISM (Spanish Language)
“La compleja realidad de ser gay en América Latina” (cnnespanol.cnn.com)
“‘No aprobar el Dream Act significaría una sentencia de muerte’, jóvenes LGBT y DACA” (laopinion.com)
“Padres de familia de Dallas luchan por los derechos de su hija transgénero” (aldiadallas.com)
“Primera senadora trans aspira a impulsar medidas para sectores discriminados” (efe.com)
“Tres hermanitos para dos papás” (laopinion.com)
Photos
PHOTOS: Cheers to Out Sports!
LGBTQ homeless youth services organization honors local leagues
The Wanda Alston Foundation held a “Cheers to Out Sports!” event at the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center on Monday, Nov. 17. The event was held by the LGBTQ homeless youth services organization to honor local LGBTQ sports leagues for their philanthropic support.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Theater
Gay, straight men bond over finances, single fatherhood in Mosaic show
‘A Case for the Existence of God’ set in rural Idaho
‘A Case for the Existence of God’
Through Dec. 7
Mosaic Theater Company at Atlas Performing Arts Center
1333 H St,, N.E.
Tickets: $42- $56 (discounts available)
Mosaictheater.org
With each new work, Samuel D. Hunter has become more interested in “big ideas thriving in small containers.” Increasingly, he likes to write plays with very few characters and simple sets.
His 2022 two-person play, “A Case for the Existence of God,” (now running at Mosaic Theater Company) is one of these minimal pieces. “Audiences might come in expecting a theological debate set in the Vatican, but instead it’s two guys sitting in a cubicle discussing terms on a bank loan,” says Hunter (who goes by Sam).
Like many of his plays, this award-winning work unfolds in rural Idaho, where Hunter was raised. Two men, one gay, the other straight (here played by local out actors Jaysen Wright and Lee Osorio, respectively), bond over financial insecurity and the joys and challenges of single fatherhood.
His newest success is similarly reduced. Touted as Hunter’s long-awaited Broadway debut, “Little Bear Ridge Road” features Laurie Metcalf as Sarah and Micah Stock as Ethan, Sarah’s estranged gay nephew who returns to Idaho from Seattle to settle his late father’s estate. At 90 minutes, the play’s cast is small and the setting consists only of a reclining couch in a dark void.
“I was very content to be making theater off-Broadway. It’s where most of my favorite plays live.” However, Hunter, 44, does admit to feeling validated: “Over the years there’s been this notion that my plays are too small or too Idaho for Broadway. I feel that’s misguided, so now with my play at the Booth Theatre, my favorite Broadway house, it kind of proves that.”
With “smaller” plays not necessarily the rage on Broadway, he’s pleased that he made it there without compromising the kind of plays he likes to write.
Hunter first spoke with The Blade in 2011 when his “A Bright Day in Boise” made its area premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. At the time, he was still described as an up-and-coming playwright though he’d already nabbed an Obie for this dark comedy about seeking Rapture in an Idaho Hobby Lobby.
In 2015, his “The Whale,” played at Rep Stage starring out actor Michael Russotto as Charlie, a morbidly obese gay English teacher struggling with depression. Hunter wrote the screenplay for the subsequent 2022 film which garnered an Oscar for actor Brendan Frazier.
The year leading up to the Academy Awards ceremony was filled with travel, press, and festivals. It was a heady time. Because of the success of the film there are a lot of non-English language productions of “The Whale” taking place all over the world.
“I don’t see them all,” says Hunter. “When I was invited to Rio de Janeiro to see the Portuguese language premiere, I went. That wasn’t a hard thing to say yes to.”
And then, in the middle of the film hoopla, says Hunter, director Joe Mantello and Laurie (Metcalf) approached him about writing a play for them to do at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago before it moved to Broadway. He’d never met either of them, and they gave me carte blanche.
Early in his career, Hunter didn’t write gay characters, but after meeting his husband in grad school at the University of Iowa that changed, he began to explore that part of his life in his plays, including splashes of himself in his queer characters without making it autobiographical.
He says, “Whether it’s myself or other people, I’ve never wholesale lifted a character or story from real life and plopped it in a play. I need to breathing room to figure out characters on their own terms. It wouldn’t be fair to ask an actor to play me.”
His queer characters made his plays more artistically successful, adds Hunter. “I started putting something of myself on the line. For whatever reason, and it was probably internalized homophobia, I had been holding back.”
Though his work is personal, once he hands it over for production, it quickly becomes collaborative, which is the reason he prefers plays compared to other forms of writing.
“There’s a certain amount of detachment. I become just another member of the team that’s servicing the story. There’s a joy in that.”
Hunter is married to influential dramaturg John Baker. They live in New York City with their little girl, and two dogs. As a dad, Hunter believes despite what’s happening in the world, it’s your job to be hopeful.
“Hope is the harder choice to make. I do it not only for my daughter but because cynicism masquerades as intelligence which I find lazy. Having hope is the better way to live.”
Books
New book highlights long history of LGBTQ oppression
‘Queer Enlightenments’ a reminder that inequality is nothing new
‘Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers’
By Anthony Delaney
c.2025, Atlantic Monthly Press
$30/352 pages
It had to start somewhere.
The discrimination, the persecution, the inequality, it had a launching point. Can you put your finger on that date? Was it DADT, the 1950s scare, the Kinsey report? Certainly not Stonewall, or the Marriage Act, so where did it come from? In “Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers” by Anthony Delaney, the story of queer oppression goes back so much farther.
The first recorded instance of the word “homosexual” arrived loudly in the spring of 1868: Hungarian journalist Károly Mária Kerthbeny wrote a letter to German activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs referring to “same-sex-attracted men” with that new term. Many people believe that this was the “invention” of homosexuality, but Delaney begs to differ.
“Queer histories run much deeper than this…” he says.
Take, for instance, the delightfully named Mrs. Clap, who ran a “House” in London in which men often met other men for “marriage.” On a February night in 1726, Mrs. Clap’s House was raided and 40 men were taken to jail, where they were put in filthy, dank confines until the courts could get to them. One of the men was ultimately hanged for the crime of sodomy. Mrs. Clap was pilloried, and then disappeared from history.
William Pulteney had a duel with John, Lord Hervey, over insults flung at the latter man. The truth: Hervey was, in fact, openly a “sodomite.” He and his companion, Ste Fox had even set up a home together.
Adopting your lover was common in 18th century London, in order to make him a legal heir. In about 1769, rumors spread that the lovely female spy, the Chevalier d’Éon, was actually Charles d’Éon de Beaumont, a man who had been dressing in feminine attire for much longer than his espionage career. Anne Lister’s masculine demeanor often left her an “outcast.” And as George Wilson brought his bride to North American in 1821, he confessed to loving men, thus becoming North America’s first official “female husband.”
Sometimes, history can be quite dry. So can author Anthony Delaney’s wit. Together, though, they work well inside “Queer Enlightenments.”
Undoubtedly, you well know that inequality and persecution aren’t new things – which Delaney underscores here – and queer ancestors faced them head-on, just as people do today. The twist, in this often-chilling narrative, is that punishments levied on 18th- and 19th-century queer folk was harsher and Delaney doesn’t soften those accounts for readers. Read this book, and you’re platform-side at a hanging, in jail with an ally, at a duel with a complicated basis, embedded in a King’s court, and on a ship with a man whose new wife generously ignored his secret. Most of these tales are set in Great Britain and Europe, but North America features some, and Delaney wraps up thing nicely for today’s relevance.
While there’s some amusing side-eyeing in this book, “Queer Enlightenments” is a bit on the heavy side, so give yourself time with it. Pick it up, though, and you’ll love it til the end.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
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Calendar: November 14-20
