…news items about the right-wing preacher whose threats persuaded Microsoft to wimp out on supporting gay rights weren’t enough, now there’s a right-wing preacher in North Carolina who’s kicked all Democrats out of his church.

…the probable reasoning behind the Bushies’ made-up anger over Kerry’s innocuous reference to Mary Cheney’s lesbianism:

“…The ensuing fake controversy is the GOP’s 2004 campaign in nutshell: Don’t let’s talk about Bush’s dismal record. Let’s talk well-spun trivia — or flat-out smears — instead.And when it comes to sensitive treatment of gays and families of gays, no one can match the record of Republicans — for wallowing so deep in the gutter of bigotry that they definitively make life quantifiably worse for gays, lesbians, and their families.”

The Northwest Film Forum opened its spacious new digs Thursday night with a surrealistic, nearly Fellini-esque party.

Outside, there were big searchlights, a small red carpet, and a dozen beauty-queen hostesses. Each wore a sash reading “Welcome to NWFF” in a different language. Inside, the smaller of the two auditoria displayed short, strange film clips played at half-speed. In the tall-ceilinged but somehow claustrophobic lobby, big-bucks donors hobnobbed with scruffy artist types.

Among the live performers: Drag-queen rock band Cross Dress for Less (above), and our current fave Japanese-inspired pop combo the Buttersprites.

The new space is a big achievement for NWFF, whose operations had been split among two or three smaller storefronts. It originally began as WigglyWorld Studios, which took over the film production and editing equipment of 911 Media Arts when that longstanding cultural-empowerment group decided to phase out that side of its operation.

The 911 folks chose to concentrate on video production, particularly digital video. Their choice seems to have been wise, from the standpoint of supporting DIY creativity. Across North America, digital video has become the overwhelming format of choice for documentaries, no-budget shorts, and at least a few indie feature films, such as Thirteen.

The new NWFF’s theaters are equipped for both film and video projection. But its production/editing facilities, classes, grant program, and forthcoming distribution entity (The Film Company) are religiously devoted to celluloid.

Even here in Software City USA, communities of artisans continue to preserve older ways of making things, such as letterpress printing and analog music recording. Motion-picture film is another technology that’s more cumbersome than its modern successors, but which offers its own distinct qualities.

Film’s lighting and exposure settings are more persnickety than those of digital video, but can produce more stunning results. Film’s slower frame rate gives it a less realistic, more fantastical quality. Most pairs of eyes can tell the difference between film and video, and most still associate the look of film with the look of “a real movie.” Shooting on film, when it’s done right, can give an indie director more credibility, both among audiences and within the marketplace.

Film remains a viable option for moviemakers. But it’s among the most complex art forms around, with many different skills and disciplines to be learned. So it needs places where its secrets can be passed on, where its aesthetics can be learned. Places like the Northwest Film Forum.

As a sidebar, the new NWFF is an anchor for an emerging “arts strip” along Twelfth Avenue on Capitol Hill. Indeed, the Buttersprites followed their NWFF opening-night gig by performing the same set an hour later, a block away, at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. The Photographic Center Northwest and Aftermath Gallery are a few blocks south of NWFF; the offices of Artist Trust are two blocks north. Richard Hugo House holds its literary events and programs a block away on Eleventh. Several storefront galleries have opened nearby on Pike and Pine streets.

Capitol Hill may have lost Cornish College and Fred Meyer this past year, but at least it’s still the heart of Seattle’s arts infrastructure.

…at least in Europe, need to start paying attention to the actions of neo-fascistic gay men:

“With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay. It’s time to admit something. Fascism isn’t something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is – in part, at least – a gay thing, and it’s time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music.”

IT’S THE THIRD AND LAST PART of our look at the LGBT Pride rally/parade. Yesterday we saw the gents; today it’s the ladies.

The Pride festival’s officially all about forthrightly declaring one’s sexuality, no matter what people say.

So I’ll forthrightly declare: I mainly go to Pride to enjoy the presence of the women.

The fact that the women are mostly lesbians (with a few bis and post-op trannies mixed in) matters not one atom.

In my long life, I’ve viewed and adored thousands of women who didn’t want to have sex with me. From this point-O-view, lesbians are merely one subset.

Like a Medieval troubadour toward a lady of the court, my attraction to the Pride Parade lesbians is both defined and enhanced by knowing my desire probably won’t be physically consummated.

Rather, I can only express my admiration and my yearning as artistically as I can, and trust that, at least on some level, these strong women can gratefully accept my highest regard for their faces, their bodies, and their courageous hearts.

Of course, should any one of these women turn out to be bi (or het-curious), and find herself reading this, I would love the chance to channel this high adoration toward a lower plane.

IT’S PART 2 OF 3 of our documentin’ last Sunday’s LGBT Pride Parade.

Today, we separate the boys from the girls, since that’s what gaydom essentially does.

The prime contradiction of the “gender diversity” and gay-rights movements is that they (rightfully) demand society welcome a broader range of gender-types and relationship-types, yet the most common of these uncommon sexualities is that of men who prefer to smooch it up with their fellow men. William Burroughs and other commentators have noted over the years that male-gaydom isn’t a weaker or sissier masculinity but a more exclusive masculinity. It’s manhood uncompromised by the need to live with, or satisfy, women.

Given that, of course, there are still many, many types of man-loving men and man-and-man relationships. I predict that even when (not if) gay-tolerance finally spreads out to the vast suburban and rural stretches of this country, gays will still choose to congregate in the major cities, because only in a large population base (or via net-dating) will a pseudo-Eurotrash fashion victim in search of a leather-bondage cowboy be likely to discover his soulmate.

But then again, bifurcating and bisecting’s what U.S. society seems to be all about these days. We’re (including my own het-self) spinning out into ever-narrower subcultural niches. In this regard, it’s commendable that the Pride people have kept so many queer-culture subsectors involved all these years.

Among these subsectors: Drag afficianados. If we’re to believe the papers, drag-queen performance, on both pro and amateur levels, is significantly less popular than it had been in the ’90s. Still, for those who truly care for the art form, it’s never mattered whether it was considered “in” or “out.”

On his net-radio talk show Sex Life, local “sexpert” Dane Ballard recently discussed why the Pride Parade seems to have become passe to many local gays. You can hear it all here, once the archive file’s been placed online (which should be as early as today).

By the way, ’twas nice that the Seafair Pirates showed up. For some fifty years, the Pirates have represented a just slightly more acceptable image of rowdy male bonding, in a town that’s spent the past century trying to distance itself from its rough-hewn frontier past.

Over the next two or three days, we’ll look back at the massive affirmation of corporate- and local-government-approved taboo-bustin’ that is the Gay Pride Parade. (The event’s actual name is almost as long as the event itself, so we won’t bother with it.)

We’ll let somebody else (Mr. Dan Savage, perhaps?) discuss whether there’s an intrinsically transgressive aspect to homosexuality and other “alt” sexualities, and hence whether a pride fest that welcomes banks, beer companies, city-council members, etc. contradicts said transgressive aspect, drawing “gender outlaws” into everyday mainstream society.

This year, as you might imagine, there was a renewed spirit of political activism at the parade, and it centered around lesbians and gay men demanding a certain ordinary mark of acceptance into everyday mainstream society, a marriage license.

Other messages were also conveyed by marchers, dancers, and others. Some messages called for religious tolerance. Others called for intolerance toward abusive relationships (a boy carried a sign that read “Abusive Priests Suck”).

And some messages expressed the one paramount lesson we all must heed this year.

Not only have the Mariners descended to the depths of their ’80s suckiness, but during their current road trip the joint was rented out to pious hatemonger James Dobson. He held what his staff billed as a stirring crusade-service defending “traditional marriage.”

In Dobsonspeak, “traditional” (i.e., heterosexual) marriage is simultaneously the strongest, most sacred bond in human society AND something so frail as to require government-sanctioned monopoly status, via the clad-iron banning of all other possible romantic combinations.

Fortunately, many upright area citizens were more than willing to vocally disagree.

This chalk-art slogan reads, “Love Thy Neighbor.* (Some Restrictions May Apply.)”

WITH THE ARRIVAL of spring came the return, corporate galleries be damned, of the indie art walk in Occidental Park. Artists now have to buy a city license and sign a disclaimer attesting they’re selling their own stuff, but the freewheeling spirit of creation and discovery remains.

FOUND ON THE GROUND on East Pike Street: “We’re getting married tomorrow in Portland, whether you like it or not.”

THE QUINTON INSTRUMENTS building on Denny Way, formerly a warehouse for the old Frederick & Nelson department store, is coming down for one of Paul Allen’s megaprojects.

Quinton, now out in the far suburbs, makes, among other things, hi-tech treadmills. I trod on one at Providence Hospital last September. The diagnostician asked me to tell her when I was too pooped to keep running in place. Ten minutes later, after the machine’s difficulty level had been upped to six miles an hour at a fifteen percent uphill grade, I gave the word; which, of course, was “Jane, stop this crazy thing.”

ABOVE, the remains of Titlewave Books; which, as previously mentioned here, closed after nineteen years.

Below, the remains of Venus, the plus-size clothing boutique on Capitol Hill that insisted women of dimension are beautiful.

WITH MUCH LESS MEDIA HYPE this time around (thank God), Krispy Kreme opened its latest donut stand on First Avenue South last week, just in time to get the staff trained before nearby Safeco Field opens for the start of baseball season next week.

They promoted the new place by handing out boxes of the glazed circles downtown. The boxes include a full ingredient listing. Among the deliciously good things that go into those sweet Os: Vital wheat gluten, diammonium phosphate, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, ethoxylated mono-and-diglycerides, calcium propionate, fungal alpha amylase, pentosanase, protease, and carnuba wax.

KEXP’S PUTTING OUT POSTERS and postcards around town, aimed at helping the station’s core listeners feel proud of their indie-musical knowledge. This one, f’rinstance, is a cute joke if you know the two bands referenced by the visual clues. Since you all undoubtedly know them, I won’t have to tell the names here.

MY FORMER RESIDENCE SITE of Corvallis, OR has suspended its courageous practice of issuing same-sex marriage licenses. (Actually, it’s suspending all marriage licenses, while the courts attempt to figure all this out.) But the Heart of the Valley did make the No. 10 spot in a new survey of the best places to live in the country.

I’M MORE THAN PROUD to announce that Benton County, OR, where I spent two of the most productive years of my post-adolescent life, has become the second Oregon county to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Or, as we Oregon State fans say, GO BEAVERS!

THE PORTLAND AREA’S been stricken lately with an economy even worse than Seattle’s, a basketball team filled with ungrateful bad boys, and lower-than-expected levels of Lewis & Clark Bicentennial tourism.

But, like the clever and hearty pioneers they are, Oregonians always find some new economic hope. This week, it’s in the form of joining the same-sex-marriage bandwagon.

Multnomah County’s officially invited girl-girl and boy-boy pairs to rush to the Rose City, pay modest license fees into the local gov’t. coffers, get their simple declarative ceremonies, and freely spend their honeymoon bucks at the region’s hotels, restaurants, shops, and entertainments.

I predict it will only be days before enterprising entrepreneurs offer weekend package tours geared for non-heteros in love. Amtrak or Horizon Air fares, accomodations at a fine downtown hostelry, a prepackaged ceremony in one of several styles, two-for-one meal coupons, maybe even a Powell’s Books gift card to start your no-sales-tax shopping spree.

And, of course, a complementary video of My Own Private Idaho for the gents, or Personal Best for the ladies.

(Actually, it turns out the Portland tourism people already had a web page, even before the gay-marriage thang started, promoting their town as a cool destination for the GLBT set.)

P.S.: Why hasn’t Wash. state joined the bandwagon? For one thing, same-gender marriages are more explicitly forbidden in Washington’s legal code than in Oregon’s. To change this would require legislative action, a ballot initiative, or a thorough court challenge.

The anti-gay-marriage Constitutional amendment.

JUST WHEN HE SEEMED to have disappeared off the face o’ the earth, Bill Maher roars back with a fervent plea for some politician somewhere to unapologetically support gay marriage: “The only thing abominable about being gay is the amount of time you have to put in at the gym.”

BACK IN THE EARLY NINETIES, drag-queen cabaret shows were all the rage. Now, they’re struggling to survive, here and elsewhere.