Donna summer gay
Gay in the 80s
It all seemed to be going so well for ‘disco diva’ Donna Summer.
After eight years of success as the queen of the disco scene she had moved out of the club circuit and was now playing large theatres and arenas. The homosexual community had helped build her career by buying – by the truckload – what The Advocate magazine called “fuck anthems” enjoy Love to Like You Baby, I Feel Love and Hot Stuff.
So it all came as a bit of a shock when her born-again Christianity allegedly got the better of her at an Atlantic City gig and she came out with a string of homophobic remarks. These included the declaration that “It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” and that AIDS was God’s punishment on gays.
The issue was exacerbated by the perception that she and her administration were very tardy to address society concerns and, ultimately, only did so when it became clear that protests were impacting on her career.
A ‘Trash Donna’ campaign was mounted wherein people were urged to boycott her records and those who already owned them were urged to send them assist to the tape company. Ian Levine, from London’s Heaven was one of many DJs to ban her records from pla
The Caftan Chronicles
Hey there, Caftaners. Hope you're all hanging in there in these supremely stressful and scary times. I’ll own up it, it’s been a rugged few weeks for me, especially as someone who’s spent their life reporting about care and services for people with HIV/AIDS and other health vulnerabilities. I spent Thursday in D.C. at a small but energized rally to try to get Trump and Rubio to salvage PEPFAR, the U.S. program started by George W. Bush that has saved millions of lives.
As you might’ve heard, Trump and Rubio froze the program literally when it had meds sitting in clinics in poor nations, mostly African, waiting to be disbursed to patients. Since then, they’ve supposedly given the solidify a waiver, but people in the field are still reporting that meds and other lifesaving resources (like equipment they demand to to crucial testing) are still frozen. It’s a very bad situation, and of course it’s made worse by Trump and Rubio’s decimation the past few days of USAID, which overlaps with PEPFAR. Especially if you live in a red state (I wonder how many of my Caftan readers do!), please call your reps in D.C. and tell them to have mercy on this program tha
Letter Shows Donna Summer Defending Herself Against Alleged Anti-Gay Comments
John McConnico/AP Photo
In a newly released letter from Donna Summer to an AIDS advocacy collective, the disco singer defended herself against long-standing accusations that she made insulting comments about gay people during a concert.
During the height of her fame in disco's 1970s heyday, Donna Summer, who died of lung cancer May 17, was an icon in the queer community.
That changed in 1983, when the "Queen of Disco" allegedly made several derogatory remarks about the gay community and HIV/AIDS during a act. The comments sparked immediate backlash from both male lover and straight fans.
"It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," Summer allegedly said during the Atlantic City act. Summer had recently announced she was a born-again Christian, and her alleged comments were based in her new religion.
"I have seen the evils of homosexuality," The Advocate reports she said. "AIDS is the result of your sins."
She later denied ever making the comments, and in a just-released letter from 1989, Summer calls the accusations "unjust and unfair."
The letter, dated July 26 th, was sent to ACT UP
Why “Summer” Makes Me Angry
I entered a matinee performance of the Broadway display Summer: The Donna Summer Musical with expectations as short as temperatures this spring. Even though I’m part of a chorus of gay men who love disco and Donna Summer’s song, I had no interest in seeing this bio-u-sical, which I’d heard was bland and facile. (I hadn’t peruse any reviews and still haven’t at the time of this writing.) When a friend offered me a comp ticket, I reflection, “How bad can it be.” The show exceeded expectations. It feels enjoy a slick, glitzy well-produced spectacle at an amusement park but with less sex appeal. What I didn’t anticipate was to leave the theater as angry as Larry Kramer.
I was almost seduced when the show opened to the sound of the real Donna Summer singing “I Feel Love.” The stage was vacant, except for a turntable spinning a vinyl LP with that instantly known Casablanca tropical paradise record label. It time-warped me to second grade in 1975. While male lover men were listening to DJs spinning “Love to Like You Baby” at the Continental Baths (a breeding basis for disco, the careers of Bette Mi