Doctor Alleges Homophobia at a Brooklyn Hospital

A gay surgery resident at the Brooklyn Hospital Center faced severe harassment and anti-LGBTQ discrimination from supervisors and colleagues in 2017 and 2018, according to a Brooklyn Su... Show more

A gay surgery resident at the Brooklyn Hospital Center faced severe harassment and anti-LGBTQ discrimination from supervisors and colleagues in 2017 and 2018, according to a Brooklyn Supreme Court lawsuit he filed in September of 2018. The doctor who filed the suit, Chad Jensen, described a disturbing workplace culture rife with homophobic comments, sexual harassment, and retaliation at the downtown Brooklyn teaching hospital at 121 DeKalb Avenue. Jensen also said doctors would routinely make homophobic remarks about patients. In what appeared to be an early red flag, Jensen stated in his lawsuit that a fellow doctor advised him not to come out as gay to the director of the hospital’s general surgery residency program, Dr. Armand Asarian, because that colleague was aware of homophobic comments Asarian made about patients in the past. Still, Asarian later found out about Jensen’s sexual orientation and “targeted and demeaned him because he was gay,” according to the suit. In one of Jensen’s examples, he pointed to a time when he was returning to work after nursing a case of strep throat. He said he was met with a verbal onslaught of homophobia when Dr. Sandeep Sirsi, the associate program director, along with a chief resident probed him with questions about “how his ‘gonoherpesyphilis’ was” and joked that Jensen was HIV-positive. In November of 2017, Jensen said another chief resident threatened him physically. The suit also alleges that doctor told Jensen via a text message that “Dr. Asarian stands for the same principles I do,” which Jensen interpreted as meaning that the chief resident...

L’Amour, L’Amour

After many successful regional productions, Pearl Cleage’s extraordinary play “Blues for an Alabama Sky” has finally come to New York in a wonderful production from Keen Company. Though... Show more

After many successful regional productions, Pearl Cleage’s extraordinary play “Blues for an Alabama Sky” has finally come to New York in a wonderful production from Keen Company. Though the play was written in 1995, it is reminiscent of Tennessee Williams or William Inge in its scope, structure, character development, and emotional impact, giving it a classic feel that wonderfully serves the story. Difficult subject matter unfolds slowly as Cleage’s finely drawn characters and fluid exposition draw the audience into the world of the play with elegance and sensitivity. Set in Harlem in 1930, the story follow the trials and challenges of a set of people at the end of the Harlem Renaissance. The Depression has hit hard in Harlem and day-to-day survival is not assured. People are struggling, yet one is likely to meet Langston Hughes at a party or on the street. Angel, a nightclub singer with a disastrous relationship history, has been fired from her job for confronting her mobster boyfriend from the stage after he’s dumped her. She lives with Guy, a gay man who dreams of designing costumes for Josephine Baker in Paris. Their neighbor across the hall, Delia, is a churchgoing woman who works with Margaret Sanger in trying to establish a family planning clinic in Harlem. Sam is the doctor who delivers all the local babies and is rumored to help with a different kind of family planning. Leland, an upright and rigidly moralistic man from Alabama, who has lost his wife and son in childbirth, has escaped to New York. He spies Angel leaning out the window on a hot summer night and is smitten. What f...

Ninth Circuit Tosses Another Cisgender Bathroom Suit

The San Francisco-based Ninth District Court of Appeals has affirmed a district court ruling that a school district in Dallas, Oregon, did not violate the legal rights of parents and st... Show more

The San Francisco-based Ninth District Court of Appeals has affirmed a district court ruling that a school district in Dallas, Oregon, did not violate the legal rights of parents and students who objected to its policy of allowing transgender students to use bathroom and locker room facilities consistent with their gender identity. The February 12 decision upholding District Judge Marco A. Hernandez’s ruling came from a unanimous three-judge panel comprised of A. Wallace Tashima, who was appointed by Bill Clinton and wrote the court’s opinion, Susan P. Graber, also appointed by Clinton, and John B. Owens, appointed by Barack Obama. The school district adopted its policy in response to a request from a transgender student, cited in the court’s opinion as Student A, who was identified as female at birth but announced in September 2015 that he identifies as a boy and wished to use the boys’ bathroom and locker room. This request came in advance of the Obama administration sending out its letter to school districts nationwide advising that trans students have a legal right to such access, a directive the Trump administration disavowed shortly after taking office. The district adopted a policy it called the “Student Safety Plan” allowing trans students to “use any of the bathrooms in the building to which he identifies sexually.” School staff were to be trained regarding Title IX, the federal statute requiring schools receiving federal funding to afford equal educational opportunity for students regardless of their sex. The plan also provided that the gym teacher would be the first to enter t...

More Transphobic Comments from Bloomberg Surface

Presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg last year referred to transgender women as “he, she, or it” and “some guy wearing a dress,” adding to the former Republican New York City mayor’s p... Show more

Presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg last year referred to transgender women as “he, she, or it” and “some guy wearing a dress,” adding to the former Republican New York City mayor’s problematic record on issues like race, gender, and LGBTQ rights. Bloomberg made the comments at a Bermuda Business Development Agency event in Manhattan on March 21 of last year and said those words while he was explaining why he believed presidential candidates would not win if they prioritized transgender rights. “If your conversation during a presidential election is about some guy wearing a dress and whether he, she, or it can go to the locker room with their daughter, that’s not a winning formula for most people,” Bloomberg said, according to a YouTube video that appears to have been removed from the platform. BuzzFeed News reported on the video clip on February 18 and the video was subsequently re-posted on Twitter and distributed widely. The comments surfaced just weeks after a video showed Bloomberg pushing a classist and transphobic narrative about Midwestern voters during an event at Britain’s Oxford University in 2016. While there, he similarly referred to trans women as men “wearing a dress” and suggested that folks from the Midwest do not accept LGBTQ rights. Rather, he insinuated that only educated and wealthy people understand queer issues. “If you want to know if someone is a good salesman, give him the job of going to the Midwest, and picking a town, and selling to that town the concept that some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter,” Bloomberg said in a video...

Mozart, Berlioz & Handel: What Could Be Better?

The Met’s “Così fan tutte” (February 15) showed the advantages of recasting and reassigning conducting duties in this 2018 staging. Harry Bicket led a sparkling reading with a strong, f... Show more

The Met’s “Così fan tutte” (February 15) showed the advantages of recasting and reassigning conducting duties in this 2018 staging. Harry Bicket led a sparkling reading with a strong, fully plausible cast. They still had to contend with Phelim McDermott’s good-spirited but way overbusy “Coney Island” production revived by Sara Erde, which has impressive visual values but — from the Overture onwards — upstages the music and story with a 12-person “Skills Ensemble,” some hammy and some rather blank. Too much dancing to the beat and extra-musical noise: both besetting sins of comedies at the Met these days, as if a moment’s stillness would risk losing HD audiences. As it happens, the afternoon’s most affecting moments were those clear of mugging or (literally) fire-breathing extras. “Per pietà” soared as sung by the very capable Nicole Car: not the most individual of sounds but technically able and far more natural in the role than Amanda Majeski — a good Mozart singer who never seems to hit her stride at the Met — had been. And the slightly narrow-timbred but very pleasing-voiced Ben Bliss, one of two original cast members, aced “Tradito, schernito”. (Why on earth don’t they let Ferrando sing his second aria,”Ah, lo veggio,” the absence of which leaves a perceptible hole onstage?) I liked Serena Malfi’s sparkily feisty Dorabella much more this time around. Broadway star Kelli O’Hara had fared acceptably in her overhyped Met Despina, but Heidi Stober brought a more rounded, penetrating instrument to her music, doing a fine job throughout. I first heard Luca Pisaroni as a stellar Guglielmo i...

Gay Progressive Offers a Working Class Vision For Albany

Up until the very moment his interview with Gay City News took place, out gay Brooklyn State Senate candidate Jabari Brisport was plugging away at numbers on his laptop. But the 32-year... Show more

Up until the very moment his interview with Gay City News took place, out gay Brooklyn State Senate candidate Jabari Brisport was plugging away at numbers on his laptop. But the 32-year-old Democratic Socialist of America-endorsed progressive wasn’t crunching data for his campaign. He was working overtime for his students. Brisport spends his days as a public school math teacher at Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, and after the final bell he morphs into an energetic political candidate hungry to take on the most pressing issues facing working class communities in the 25th State Senate District, which encompasses all or parts of Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Red Hook, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Sunset Park, Gowanus, and Park Slope. He’s running an historic campaign — he would be the first out LGBTQ Black member of the State Legislature — on a platform dedicated to strengthening public schools, addressing gentrification and homelessness, implementing single-payer healthcare, fully decriminalizing sex work, maintaining bail reform advances, and legalizing marijuana — that last in a way that prioritizes the communities of color that have long been on the losing end of the war on drugs. Those are among the progressive ideas Brisport emphasizes most. And at a time when at least one billionaire is pumping hundreds of millions of his own dollars into a political campaign, Brisport is positioning himself as the antidote to that: He says he isn’t taking corporate donations or cash from real estate developers, landlords, lobbyists, charter schools, or the fossil fuel industry. It’s Brisport’s second g...