by Larry Mass Arnie’s gift, as everyone who knew him can attest, was his ability to commiserate, and thereby to console and heal. Arnold Kantrowitz, pioneering and beloved gay activist and writer, passed away peacefully in his sleep on 1/21/22 at the Upper East Side Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in…

Statement for World AIDS Day 12/01/21 by Larry Mass When the first AIDS cases were reported in1981, we felt overwhelmed, to say the least. We weren’t sure what we were dealing with. Was it an STD? Multiple STD’s? Biological warfare? …

Gays, immigration and the endless challenges of consciousness and activism by Lawrence D. Mass In the mid 1970’s I began my journey of consciousness and activism as a watchdog for reactionary developments in psychiatry that threatened to reverse the 1973–74 declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder by the American…

OPERA QUEENS, FANDOM, WAGNERISM and GERMANY by Lawrence D. Mass “Despite Germany’s praiseworthy culture of remembrance, many Germans have a jarringly tenuous grasp of the extent of Nazi crimes or the population’s involvement.” — James Angelos Rosa von Praunheim’s Opera Divas, Opera Queens looks at the world of opera in Germany through the lenses of gay…

by Lawrence D. Mass How many sopranos have had their singing of Dove Sono, the Countess’s great aria in The Marriage of Figaro, described by one of the world’s most discriminating music critics as “note perfect”? Only a few of my closest gay friends knew of my clandestine career as…

ANDREA DWORKIN — THE CASSANDRA OF REVOLUTIONARY FEMINISM Commentary and an Interview with Martin Duberman by Lawrence D. Mass ANDREA DWORKIN: The Feminist as Revolutionary. by Martin Duberman, The New Press, 351 pages, 2020 “Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first stage it is ridiculed, in the second stage it is opposed…

by Lawrence D. Mass — 1/27/21, Holocaust Remembrance Day “The Truth Nobody Wants to Hear” From Left: Michael Shapiro, Gottfried Wagner, John Corigliano, William M. Hoffman, Lawrence D. Mass, 1995, at the home of Michael Shapiro, Chappaqua, New York For Gottfried Wagner, my work on Wagner, art and addiction struck an immediate chord of recognition. I…

THE SUPREME COURT DECISION ON CIVIL LIBERTIES AND THE PANDEMIC: LESSONS FROM AIDS WORLD AIDS DAY REFLECTION, 12/1/2020 by Lawrence D. Mass Imagine the headline: The Supreme Court Affirms the Right of Gay Men to Have Sex in High-Risk Venues. On the basis of its recent decision about civil liberties…

by Lawrence D. Mass Banned from California: -Jim Foshee-Persecution, Redemption, Liberation…and the Gay Civil Rights Movement by Robert C. Steele, Wentworth-Schwartz Publishing, 2020, 361 pages Over the last half century there have been many notable exhibits on LGBT history and culture. A capstone of this legacy was “Stonewall 50” at…