Arts & Entertainment
Being gay might just save Andy Cohen’s career
He could shoot a twink in the middle of Ninth Avenue and not get arrested
The only person getting sued more than Donald Trump these days is Andy Cohen. Yes, the gay executive producer of the Real Housewives franchise and host of Bravo’s late night talk show “Watch What Happens Live” is facing a litany of litigation that could make the orange one come somewhere close to a blush. And, just like with Trump, he might be the only person to face a handful of inappropriate workplace behavior allegations and still hold onto his job. What’s Andy’s secret? It might be that he’s gay.
First, former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Brandi Glanville accused him of sexual harassment, claiming that Cohen sent her a sexually explicit video in which he said he was about to have sex with another Bravolebrity and wanted Glanville to watch. (Andy said on the artist formerly known as Twitter that it was a joke and Brandi seemed to acknowledge that at the time.)
Next up is Leah McSweeney, a former “Real Housewives of New York” cast member, who accused Cohen of contributing to a “rotted workplace culture.” She also alleges that he routinely does cocaine with some of the Housewives and the ones who enjoy a bit of the booger sugar with him get preferential treatment, including kinder edits on the show. (Andy dismissed this lawsuit as a “shakedown.”)
The day after McSweeney’s suit, Rachel Leviss, the former “Vanderpump Rules” star who was a lynchpin of a huge scandal last winter, sued her former castmates for potentially distributing an adult video of her. Cohen was not named in that suit because he’s not an executive producer of that show — nor in one by former Real Housewife of New Jersey, Caroline Manzo, accusing the aforementioned Brandi of sexual harassment.
These bombshell revelations — especially the sexual harassment and the cocaine use — were met by fans with disinterested shrugs. “This Andy Cohen slander is ridiculous. Why are people up in arms that he allegedly did cocaine and gossiped with the Housewives? Like pretty sure that’s his job,” one Twitter user says.
There are plenty of those sentiments on Twitter and many statements of support from the Housewives who say he never offered them coke. (But since when are we believing anything the Housewives say?) So how is it that, like Trump, Andy Cohen could shoot a twink in the middle of Ninth Avenue and not get arrested?
It’s because he’s always been totally honest about who he is. Andy was an openly gay TV exec way back in the early aughts, when it wasn’t cool and he faced potential repercussions both personally and career-wise by being open. But it wasn’t that he was just telling the truth about being gay, he made it part of his brand that he likes a drink (or seven) and that he likes to unwind by smoking weed, which he was vocal about before it was legal in New York.
Andy made his millions not just getting rich women to yell at each other on television, but also by being America’s slightly naughty but mostly fun gay BFF. The gossip, the drugs, the sexy jokes, they were all a part of the mystique that everyone bought into and it has served as Andy’s impenetrable force field for his entire career. On New Year’s Eve 2022, he was hosting CNN’s broadcast with his gay bestie Anderson Cooper and “overserved” himself, which led him to go on what the press would call a drunken rant making fun of fellow host Ryan Seacrest and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Did CNN fire him or fans turn against him? No. CNN did ban alcohol from the next year’s broadcast, but after Andy pleaded with them for his tipples they allowed him and Anderson to do shots at midnight.
A similar thing happened this past June when a video taken secretly in a gay club showed Andy getting handsy with a game stripper and tweaking his nipples. Instead of demanding his resignation, fans demanded the social media account that posted it to give Andy a break. He is a single working father of two who has never been quiet about the fact that he enjoys sleeping around. He was just blowing off some steam at Pride; in the words of Bethenny Frankel, get off his jock.
Speaking of Bethenny, could she be the one behind all of this litigation? Several of the people suing Andy and Bravo are using the same lawyers that Bethenny used to kick off the “reality reckoning” in which she is trying to get better workplace conditions and fair treatment for reality stars. That is surely a noble aim, but the way to do it is not by launching weak-sauce attacks at Andy, especially since Andy seems to have a learned a lesson that most members of the LGBTQ community learn early on: If you’re truthful about who you are, no one can use it as a weapon against you.
No one ever thought less of Andy because he was gay because he was always up front about it — same about the booze, the drug use, and tweaking a stripper’s nipples during Pride. While a court of law will definitely rule on whether or not any of these cases has any weight, the court of public opinion doesn’t seem to care — well, at least about these specifics. Andy has hired a crisis PR team, but it doesn’t seem like he really needs it. Everything he needs to know he learned by being gay, that once you open that closet door and show the public what is really inside, no matter what it is, they can never use that against you.
The 44th annual Queen of Hearts pageant was held at The Lodge in Boonsboro, Md. on Friday, Feb. 20. Six contestants vied for the title and Bev was crowned the winner.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
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Books
New book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians, documents war experiences
Tuesday marks four years since Russia attacked Ukraine
Journalist J. Lester Feder’s new book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians and their experiences during Russia’s war against their country.
Feder for “The Queer Face of War: Portraits and Stories from Ukraine” interviewed and photographed LGBTQ Ukrainians in Kyiv, the country’s capital, and in other cities. They include Olena Hloba, the co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ Ukrainians, who fled her home in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha shortly after Russia launched its war on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russian soldiers killed civilians as they withdrew from Bucha. Videos and photographs that emerged from the Kyiv suburb showed dead bodies with their hands tied behind their back and other signs of torture.
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group, wrote the book’s forward.
The book also profiles Viktor Pylypenko, a gay man who the Ukrainian military assigned to the 72nd Mechanized Black Cossack Brigade after the war began. Feder writes Pylypenko’s unit “was deployed to some of the fiercest and most important battles of the war.”
“The brigade was pivotal to beating Russian forces back from Kyiv in their initial attempt to take the capital, helping them liberate territory near Kharkiv and defending the front lines in Donbas,” wrote Feder.
Pylypenko spent two years fighting “on Ukraine’s most dangerous battlefields, serving primarily as a medic.”
“At times he felt he was living in a horror movie, watching tank shells tear his fellow soldiers apart before his eyes,” wrote Feder. “He held many men as they took their final breaths. Of the roughly one hundred who entered the unit with him, only six remained when he was discharged in 2024. He didn’t leave by choice: he went home to take care of his father, who had suffered a stroke.”
Feder notes one of Pylypenko’s former commanders attacked him online when he came out. Pylypenko said another commander defended him.
Feder also profiled Diana and Oleksii Polukhin, two residents of Kherson, a port city in southern Ukraine that is near the mouth of the Dnieper River.
Ukrainian forces regained control of Kherson in November 2022, nine months after Russia occupied it.
Diana, a cigarette vender, and Polukhin told Feder that Russian forces demanded they disclose the names of other LGBTQ Ukrainians in Kherson. Russian forces also tortured Diana and Polukhin while in their custody.
Polukhim is the first LGBTQ victim of Russian persecution to report their case to Ukrainian prosecutors.
Feder, who is of Ukrainian descent, first visited Ukraine in 2013 when he wrote for BuzzFeed.
He was Outright International’s Senior Fellow for Emergency Research from 2021-2023. Feder last traveled to Ukraine in December 2024.
Feder spoke about his book at Politics and Prose at the Wharf in Southwest D.C. on Feb. 6. The Washington Blade spoke with Feder on Feb. 20.
Feder told the Blade he began to work on the book when he was at Outright International and working with humanitarian groups on how to better serve LGBTQ Ukrainians. Feder said military service requirements, a lack of access to hormone therapy and documents that accurately reflect a person’s gender identity and LGBTQ-friendly shelters are among the myriad challenges that LGBTQ Ukrainians have faced since the war began.
“All of these were components of a queer experience of war that was not well documented, and we had never seen in one place, especially with photos,” he told the Blade. “I felt really called to do that, not only because of what was happening in Ukraine, but also as a way to bring to the surface issues that we’d had seen in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan.”
Feder also spoke with the Blade about the war’s geopolitical implications.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013 signed a law that bans the “promotion of homosexuality” to minors.
The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in Sochi, a Russian resort city on the Black Sea. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine a few weeks after the games ended.
Russia’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown has continued over the last decade.
The Russian Supreme Court in 2023 ruled the “international LGBT movement” is an extremist organization and banned it. The Russian Justice Ministry last month designated ILGA World, a global LGBTQ and intersex rights group, as an “undesirable” organization.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has sought to align itself with Europe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after a 2021 meeting with then-President Joe Biden at the White House said his country would continue to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. (Zelenskyy’s relationship with the U.S. has grown more tense since the Trump-Vance administration took office.) Zelenskyy in 2022 publicly backed civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Then-Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova in 2023 applauded Kyiv Pride and other LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in her country when she spoke at a photo exhibit at Ukraine House in D.C. that highlighted LGBTQ and intersex soldiers. Then-Kyiv Pride Executive Director Lenny Emson, who Feder profiles in his book, was among those who attended the event.
“Thank you for everything you do in Kyiv, and thank you for everything that you do in order to fight the discrimination that still is somewhere in Ukraine,” said Markarova. “Not everything is perfect yet, but you know, I think we are moving in the right direction. And we together will not only fight the external enemy, but also will see equality.”
Feder in response to the Blade’s question about why he decided to write his book said he “didn’t feel” the “significance of Russia’s war against Ukraine” for LGBTQ people around the world “was fully understood.”
“This was an opportunity to tell that big story,” he said.
“The crackdown on LGBT rights inside Russia was essentially a laboratory for a strategy of attacking democratic values by attacking queer rights and it was one as Ukraine was getting closet to Europe back in 2013, 2014,” he added. “It was a strategy they were using as part of their foreign policy, and it was one they were using not only in Ukraine over the past decade, but around the world.”
Feder said Republicans are using “that same strategy to attack queer people, to attack democracy itself.”
“I felt like it was important that Americans understand that history,” he said.
More than a dozen LGBTQ athletes won medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that ended on Sunday.
Cayla Barnes, Hilary Knight, and Alex Carpenter are LGBTQ members of the U.S. women’s hockey team that won a gold medal after they defeated Canada in overtime. Knight the day before the Feb. 19 match proposed to her girlfriend, Brittany Bowe, an Olympic speed skater.
French ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron, who is gay, and his partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry won gold. American alpine skier Breezy Johnson, who is bisexual, won gold in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, was part of the American figure skating team that won gold in the team event.
Swiss freestyle skier Mathilde Gremaud, who is in a relationship with Vali Höll, an Austrian mountain biker, won gold in women’s freeski slopestyle.
Bruce Mouat, who is the captain of the British curling team that won a silver medal, is gay. Six members of the Canadian women’s hockey team — Emily Clark, Erin Ambrose, Emerance Maschmeyer, Brianne Jenner, Laura Stacey, and Marie-Philip Poulin — that won silver are LGBTQ.
Swedish freestyle skier Sandra Naeslund, who is a lesbian, won a bronze medal in ski cross.
Belgian speed skater Tineke den Dulk, who is bisexual, was part of her country’s mixed 2000-meter relay that won bronze. Canadian ice dancer Paul Poirier, who is gay, and his partner, Piper Gilles, won bronze.
Laura Zimmermann, who is queer, is a member of the Swiss women’s hockey team that won bronze when they defeated Sweden.
Outsports.com notes all of the LGBTQ Olympians who competed at the games and who medaled.
Va. activists preparing campaign in support of repealing marriage amendment
PHOTOS: Queen of Hearts
New book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians, documents war experiences
More than a dozen LGBTQ athletes medal at Olympics
Rob Jetten becomes first gay Dutch prime minister
Judge rescinds order against activist in Capital Pride lawsuit
Trans activists arrested outside HHS headquarters in D.C.
How do we honor Renee Good, Alex Pretti?
Calendar: February 20-26
