TONY GIAMPETRUZZI

Staph infection — the full story

TONY GIAMPETRUZZI — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:59:25 GMT

In the flesh
That’s right, a rare bug that threatened to eat away at gay guys like mice on cheese is rampant in the city closest to Portland.

Reading the New York Times this past week, you might have thought gay guys were becoming the unwitting vessels of a rare, unyielding flesh-eating disease. Making matters worse, the story (NEW BACTERIA STRAIN IS STRIKING GAY MEN) said the bacteria was attacking and spreading among gay men in San Francisco and Boston.

That’s right, a rare bug that threatened to eat away at gay guys like mice on cheese is rampant right here, where New England cruises.

The Times also said the bacteria are transmitted by sex, or by a simple touch. According to the initial report, released online this past week by the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Times said, “the new strain seems to have ‘spread rapidly’ in gay populations in San Francisco and Boston . . . and ‘has the potential for rapid, nationwide dissemination’ among gay men.”

Within hours, an AIDS-like panic was under way. EPIDEMIC FEARED — GAYS MAY SPREAD DEADLY STAPH INFECTION TO GENERAL POPULATION was the headline of a press release issued by the conservative group Concerned Women for America; a European paper dubbed the bacteria “the new HIV.”

Not quite. The Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (S. aureus for short) has been around for years, most commonly in hospitals, but the new strain (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA) is more aggressive than it was in the past, and happens to be found in gay men — possibly because they tend to be treated for STDs.

Dr. Stephen Boswell of Boston’s Fenway Community Health, a well-known expert on matters such as STDs (not that this bacteria is one) says that gay men need not be alarmed — just aware.

“It’s certainly reasonable to believe that S. aureus bacteria is transmitted during sex, but we’re really not sure,” says Boswell, making a distinction between skin-contact transmission (including when skin touches during sex) and diseases that are transmitted only or primarily when engaged in sex acts.

“This is something that needs to be dealt with . . . quickly if you have it. And, if you’re a doctor . . . and you’re not familiar with this strain, you might be tempted to prescribe a common drug that wouldn’t treat the infection,” says Boswell, who described a boil in a gay man’s nether regions as a sign of the infection. “This is not a new thing, and I don’t think that it will remain confined to gay men, but everyone needs to know that it is a problem that is developing, that they need to be seen and treated early by people who are knowledgeable.”

Senator Collins objects to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

TONY GIAMPETRUZZI — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 20:58:40 GMT

Equal rights
Senator Susan Collins ignored thousands of letters delivered to her office beseeching her to allow gays in the military.

WHY THE CHANGE OF HEART? Senator
Collins is playing politics.

Senator Susan Collins ignored thousands of letters delivered to her office beseeching her to allow gays in the military, and polls suggesting that as many as 79 percent of Americans believe gays should be able to serve openly in the armed forces.

And though her office was barely cajoled into issuing a bland two-sentence statement for a Phoenix story three months ago (see “Ducking the Question,” by Tony Giampetruzzi, May 11), she’s starting to sing with the choir now, crediting a gay retired admiral from Maine who recently sat down with her to tell her his thoughts on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law that requires gays to camouflage their personal lives if they want to keep serving (and to avoid being “outed” by comrades with personal beefs).

At a hearing last week leading up to the Senate confirmation vote on whether Admiral Michael Mullen should be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a single question from Collins signaled that her thinking had changed, prefaced with the admission that the unnamed gay admiral “urged [her] to urge [Mullen] to reexamine” DADT.

“Admiral Mullen, this morning you described our troops as being strained and stretched. And this is a concern that I share and that I think every member of this panel shares. We’ve seen longer deployments, more waivers granted to recruits with criminal records. We’ve actually seen an extension of the age limit for recruits. We’ve also experienced considerable difficulty in filling specialty positions such as for linguists, which are obviously very important in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Collins, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Press reports have said that more than 50 Arabic linguists have been discharged from our armed forces since the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy was instituted,” she continued. “In addition to the loss of translators, the estimates are that there were more than 11,000 other service members that have been separated since ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was instituted by Congress back in the early ’90s. In your view, should we reevaluate this policy?”

Mullen’s stammered answer saying he supported the policy and wants Congress to make its own decisions didn’t amount to much; her question caused the most reaction.

A source close to Collins tells the Phoenix she is likely to become the lead Republican senator backing the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would reverse DADT and create a non-discrimination policy for the military. The bill is picking up sponsors in the House, and activists have long hoped Collins would join them to take the debate to the Senate.

Next stop: marriage

TONY GIAMPETRUZZI — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:48:46 GMT

As New Hampshire enacts civil unions, Maine’s gay-marriage advocates get ready
If we had asked the leadership at Equality Maine about their plan for gay marriage say, two years ago, they would have likely said, “If we told you, we’d have to kill you.”

If we had asked the leadership at Equality Maine about their plan for gay marriage say, two years ago, they would have likely said, “If we told you, we’d have to kill you.” After all, it was then that equal-rights activists were campaigning for the umpteenth time to keep a non-discrimination law on the books.

To fend off wild Sodom and Gomorrah claims made by some notorious righties, part of the message was that the law did not, and would not, have anything to do with gay marriage.

Those in the know, however, were well aware that the law had both nothing and everything to do with gay marriage — every piece of pro-gay legislation is another piece of the treasure map, and, in Maine, activists aren’t at all squirrelly about their plan now.

“Marriage,” Betsy Smith, the executive director of Equality Maine, says confidently when asked what her group’s plan is for the future. She even offers a timetable: three to five years.

Smith and Darlene Huntress, who runs the group’s public-policy operation, have reason to be optimistic. Last week, grudgingly conservative New Hampshire enshrined civil unions into law, making the Granite State the fifth in the US to pass some sort of same-sex couple law.

New Hampshire joins Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey, who all provide civil unions, and Massachusetts, where gay couples can get married.

However, the road each state took to obtain “spousal” rights has been different, and the results have been mixed. Moreover, most of the states obtained civil unions as a compromise when pro-marriage folks asked to be officially wed, and those activists haven’t stopped their push for full equality. For instance, court cases pending in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont could make full-on marriage a reality in the short term.

In Massachusetts, activists this month will try to stymie a constitutional amendment that would overturn gay marriage there, and, now that the state’s governor is no longer a wizard of the Mormon Church, a 1913 law may also be overturned that prevents couples from other states being married in Massachusetts.

Waiting game
All that, say Smith and Huntress, means that Maine is biding its time.

“The truth is, we don’t know what the plan is because the earth is constantly shifting around us, from New Jersey to Connecticut to Massachusetts to pending marriage bills in Vermont to Maryland. There’s even one in Iowa,” says Smith. “This issue shifts more than the non-discrimination stuff ever did.”

Flirting with danger

TONY GIAMPETRUZZI — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 17:14:11 GMT

Portland boy, half of Dangerous Muse, making good as gender-bending electro-pop star
Mike Furey wants to play Bubba’s Sulky Lounge. Dangerous Muse, "The Rejection" (QuickTime)

FUTURE FROM THE PAST: Dangerous duo go for a nationwide ride.

Mike Furey wants to play Bubba’s Sulky Lounge in South Portland, Maine.

It’s a rather unremarkable goal, particularly when you’re half of Dangerous Muse, the duo whose first video, “The Rejection,” is charting in the top two on LOGO network’s video countdown show, The Click List, beating out major acts like Justin Timberlake and Madonna.

Top videos on the so-called “gay network” are selected by viewers who vote by clicking their faves on LOGO’s Web site, and Furey, a native South Portlander, and his musical partner, Tom Napack, are seeing stars.

“Oh, it’s wild — I cried. OK, I didn’t cry, but I definitely had a minute when the video hit in real time, and I’m definitely not a hyper-emotional person,” says Furey of seeing the video hit the small screen for the first time a couple weeks ago when he and Napack debuted it live on LOGO.

“I don’t really know how to describe it! I guess it could be compared to how someone feels when they are given an award for their accomplishments. It’s an acknowledgement that ‘what you guys are doing is real.’”

The video, which, like the song, explores the gray area that seems to define sexuality these days (and, perhaps, the sexuality of Napack and Furey — they don’t like labels) is indeed flinging the duo who were the darlings of MySpace for more than a year into the mainstream, but they’ve had some help along the way.

The gay magazine of record, The Advocate, declared with a dramatic cover shot of the guys last summer that Furey and Napack are “out musicians on the brink of stardom,” but the pair says the magazine was just a little more than half right.

At the time, “The Rejection” had hit Billboard charts with a bang, and it began selling swiftly on iTunes (it actually debuted on the site’s dance chart in the number-two spot last November.)

But, if “out” means that the pair is “openly gay,” the queer mag got it just a little bit wrong.

“It was a concern, but we really tried to stress the fact that our sexuality is not able to be defined in such exclusive terms,” says Napack, 21, a native of suburban Maryland who is currently a student at New York City’s Fordham University.

To which Furey, 23, Muse’s voice and lyricist quickly — coyly — adds: “I think the cover is amazing.”