Cathcart, Maverick Couch, 16, a student fighting his suspension for wearing a “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe" T-shirt, and Couch’s mother, Tonya.

BY PAUL SCHINDLER | In the LGBT civil rights struggle that will surely stretch years into the future, Kevin Cathcart must be counted a long-term player. In 1992, “happily living in Boston,” where he had run the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) since 1984, he was tapped to lead what was then known as the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund when its executive director of six years, Tom Stoddard, decided to move on.

With a series of dinners around the country that culminated in the May 7 Liberty Awards gala in Manhattan, Cathcart has now celebrated 20 years at Lambda Legal and, without sugarcoating the challenges ahead, shared an “optimistic” outlook on the state of the struggle four days later in an interview in his office at the eastern tip of Wall Street.

When Cathcart first came to Manhattan, Lambda had only two offices and 17 of its 21 staffers were located in New York. Its annual budget was just $1.6 million. Four years before the dramatic therapeutic advances on HIV, the LGBT community could not know when, if ever, it would emerge from the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic; in fact, in 1997, Stoddard would die from complications of the virus.

In the legal arena, advocates were still reeling from the 1986 ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick, in which the Supreme Court rejected, on a 5-4 vote, a challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union to the Georgia sodomy law. In the majority opinion, Justice Byron White wrote, of Lambda’s argument about the freedom of gay people to engage in sex, “to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ is, at best, facetious.”

Four years after Cathcart arrived at Lambda, the group was again before the Supreme Court with a major civil rights suit –– this time its challenge to Colorado’s Amendment 2, a voter initiative that barred the state and localities from enacting sexual orientation nondiscrimination protections. In 1996, Lambda prevailed, the court finding that the amendment limited the access of gay people to the political process for no reason rationally related to the interests of the state of Colorado. Only anti-gay animus, the 6-3 majority found, could explain its enactment.

Lambda’s victory in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case, which struck down the nation’s remaining sodomy laws, was the most important LGBT civil rights gain yet. In a 6-3 majority, the Supreme Court, finding anti-gay bias as the only explanation for sodomy laws aimed at same-sex behavior, ruled that consensual private adult sexual conduct was protected liberty under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause.

Cathcart speaking at the Liberty Awards gala in Manhattan on May 7.

Less than six months after the Lawrence victory, the Massachusetts marriage equality ruling won by the group Cathcart formerly ran, GLAD, irrevocably changed the thrust of legal advocacy in the LGBT community. Lambda, which now has five offices, 92 staff members, and a budget of more than $13 million, has been a key player in the explosion of gay marriage litigation. As with every group pressing the issue, there have been advances and setbacks.

In 2009, the group won a unanimous verdict from the Iowa Supreme Court recognizing the right of same-sex couples to marry there. Less than three years earlier, in contrast, New Yorkers were staggered by a 4-2 defeat at the Court of Appeals, in a case also brought by Lambda. Later in 2006, Lambda won a major –– though not complete –– victory when the New Jersey Supreme Court found the Legislature must give same-sex couples all the rights and benefits of marriage by whatever name they choose. The Legislature chose the name civil unions, and Lambda is now back in state court challenging that law.

Lambda’s most recent marriage lawsuit is its first federal case seeking marriage rights at the state level. The group is arguing that Nevada’s 2009 domestic partnership law, which grants same-sex couples “the same rights, protections, and benefits” and “the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties” as marriage, denies them of their federal equal protection rights because it treats two classes of people “similarly situated… in every way” –– straight married couples and same-sex domestic partners –– differently.

Upbeat about the strength of Lambda’s suit in Nevada, Cathcart described it as “a classic textbook case of equal protection.” He noted that its logic is not new, only the group’s choice of courtroom venue. In its challenge to the New Jersey civil union law, Lambda has also asserted a federal equal protection claim along with state constitutional claims. The New Jersey suit is backed by strong empirical findings from a state commission chartered to examine the success of the civil union statute, which several years ago unanimously concluded that it failed in its stated purpose of guaranteeing equality for same-sex couples.

Taking the Nevada law to federal court has significant potential for shaking up the marriage map. The same logic would apply to other civil union and comprehensive domestic partnership jurisdictions –– including Delaware, Illinois, California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, in addition to New Jersey.

In fact, Cathcart clearly believes the impact could go further than the litigation currently challenging California’s Proposition 8. He said he is “optimistic” about how that case will turn out, but explained that the endpoint will likely be a ruling specifically focused on the circumstances in California.

When the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) hired Ted Olson and David Boies, opponents in the Bush v. Gore case that decided the 2000 election, to challenge Prop 8, the star litigators said they were committed to taking the issue of marriage equality all the way to the Supreme Court. Lambda, along with other established LGBT litigation organizations, were initially hostile to the effort, arguing that the current ideological configuration of the high court made it unwise to raise the issue there at this time. Three years later, Cathcart credits the attorneys and AFER with “doing a great job” –– but he doesn’t expect the California case to get to the Supreme Court.

The 2010 victory AFER won before District Judge Vaughn Walker found that the right to marry was “fundamental” and that the 2008 voter initiative violated the due process and equal protection rights of same-sex couples. In February, however, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld Walker, but on considerably narrower grounds, finding there was no rational basis for depriving same-sex couples of rights they had enjoyed since the California Supreme Court granted marriage equality in May 2008; the only plausible explanation for the amendment, it found, was constitutionally impermissible animus and moral disapproval.

Cathcart couldn’t predict whether a larger panel of the Ninth Circuit would re-hear the case, but he expects the narrow February grounds to be the Ninth Circuit’s final word on the matter, one way or the other. Should AFER lose before a larger Ninth Circuit panel, he said, the high court would have no reason to take up any appeal, since it likely has little appetite for the gay marriage question. There would be more reason for the court to entertain an appeal from Prop 8 supporters should they lose, but it could conclude that a narrow ruling applying only to California was something it could leave alone.

Cathcart has an opinion on that. “I think we have a pretty clear idea,” he said. “There is a clear path to how this ends. And I am optimistic that it is going to be upheld.” That optimism is not based on any change in his 2009 view that the current court is inhospitable to gay marriage claims. “I still think that that’s the truth,” he said.

As confident as Cathcart is in the arguments Lambda is making in Nevada and New Jersey, he said he was “absolutely” sure that federal court challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) will get to the high court ahead of any of the pure right to marry cases. In July 2010, a district court judge in Boston struck down DOMA’s section 3, which deprives legal same-sex marriages of federal recognition, on the grounds that it denies Massachusetts same-sex couples their equal protection rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment and interferes with the prerogatives of the State of Massachusetts in administering certain federal-state programs, in defiance of the 10th Amendment.

Earlier this year, a San Francisco judge also struck down DOMA’s section 3 based on Fifth Amendment equal protection grounds in a case where an employee of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals challenged its denial of insurance coverage to her same-sex spouse. GLAD and Lambda have brought similar lawsuits in New York and Hartford on behalf of same-sex couples whose marriages are legal in New York and several New England states.

At least one of those cases, Cathcart said, “is a winner” at the appellate level. If that’s true, the Supreme Court would have no choice but to take the case, since the federal government could not recognize same-sex marriages in some federal appellate circuits but not others.

The issues raised in the DOMA litigation, he explained, are also “an easier conceptual challenge and lift. We’re not asking the court to tell any state what to do.” Instead, the goal is to change the way the federal government treats gay and lesbian couples who marry in states where it is legal.

He likened the DOMA issue to what Lambda came up against in its sodomy litigation. When the Georgia sodomy law went before the high court, more than half the states still had such statutes. By 2003, only 13 did.  “Thirteen states is easier,” he said. “They were no longer being asked to tell a majority of states what to do. In 2003, they were only asked to bring a small minority along in a clean-up operation.”

Despite the marriage referendum loss in North Carolina several days before, Cathcart was upbeat about the prospects for success in November, when Washington State, Maryland, Maine, and Minnesota may also be voting on marriage equality in one fashion or another. “If we win a couple of those and also get marriage back on line in California,” he said, “it makes it feel more inevitable than it did before.”

Conceding that a loss of three or four contests in November would be “a terrible thing,” he noted, “We have shown we can win in the courts and in the legislatures in far worse times.” Pointing to the overwhelming rejection of repeal efforts earlier this year by the Republican-dominated New Hampshire Legislature, Cathcart said, “I can’t be more surprised by North Carolina than I was by New Hampshire.”

Cathcart was effusive in his praise for President Barack Obama’s comments two days earlier endorsing marriage equality. “It didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, I got forced into it,’” he said. “It felt like the best part of the last campaign. It sounded like he finished evolving. He did it beautifully.”

Asked if he was troubled by the president’s statement that marriage will “continue to be worked out at the local level,” Cathcart said, “No, he was recognizing the state of play. In 2012, marriage jurisprudence is state by state. Federalizing the issue too soon is unlikely to be good.”

Despite a lengthy discussion of marriage equality, Cathcart made a point of emphasizing that the issue of nondiscrimination on the job is probably what concerns LGBT Americans more than any other. Lambda’s hotline got about 7,000 calls in 2011, and “employment is the largest single thing people call us about, year in and year out.” The group’s offices in Atlanta and Dallas cover 20 states, none of which offers any nondiscrimination protections above the local level. He praised Equality Florida’s success in pushing for municipal and county ordinances, but said that “local laws are never as strong as state laws.”

Noting Census findings that show impressive numbers of same-sex couples raising children in regions such as the South, Cathcart said that offering them legal protections could have “a snowballing effect… If you don’t feel safe in your job or in your housing or regarding custody of your children, it’s effectively a gag order. It is not safe to be politically active.”

Pointing to a recent decision  from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of a transgender woman fired by the Georgia General Assembly as well as a ruling last month by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding a transgender woman denied a job by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Cathcart said, “We are amazingly closer than we were just a year ago to having gender seen as sex for discrimination purposes.” However, future progress, in the courts and federal agencies, he warned, is dependent on the election outcome in November –– not only for president but for control of Congress as well.

“We desperately need to pass ENDA, and we need it to be trans-inclusive,” he said of the long stalled effort to enact the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Still, Cathcart does not see a strong push on marriage equality as inconsistent with any other goal Lambda has. “I sort of believe in a rising tide theory on marriage gains,” he said. “We litigated Iowa because we thought we could win and because we thought it was critical to have a heartland victory.” In other words, married gay and lesbian couples in the Midwestern farm belt are well positioned to change hearts and minds that have too infrequently been engaged.

Tamir Tanner was among the youth who complained of NYPD harassment in the West Village. | GAY CITY NEWS

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE | Sitting on the West Village piers on a sunny Friday afternoon, Tamir Tanner scowled when the New York City Police Department (NYPD) practice of stopping and frisking was mentioned.

“It’s just not fair,” the 27-year-old said. “It’s really not fair to anybody to be stopped and frisked.”

Tanner estimated that he had been stopped by police in the Sixth Precinct, which patrols Manhattan’s West Village, about 10 times in July of last year.

“They rolled past,” Tanner said. “I guess I looked suspicious to them… I started to feel like they had a problem with me.”

According to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), police stopped and frisked 685,724 people citywide in 2011. Fifty-three percent of those stopped were African-American and 34 percent were Latino. They were also disproportionately young and male. Police stopped and frisked 97,296 people in 2002.

While there were relatively few stops and frisks in the Sixth Precinct in 2011 — just 2,954 — 76.6 percent of those stopped were African-American and Latino. Just eight percent of the residents in that precinct are African-American or Latino, so it is apparent who the police are stopping — the queer youth of color who enjoy hanging out in the West Village and who have been the subject of complaints by some residents there.

“We do know that a lot of our constituency… are stopped in the West Village,” said Ellen Manny Vaz, the communications director at FIERCE, a group that organizes among LGBT youth of color. “These numbers are not surprising. They definitely coincide with what our members are reporting.”

The NYPD, which did not respond to an email seeking comment, has argued that stop and frisk is a necessary anti-crime strategy that has contributed to New York City’s low crime rates. Part of the police rationale for the practice is that it deters those who may carry a weapon because they fear that weapon will be found during a stop and frisk.

The NYCLU report found that the tactic is producing diminishing returns. In 2003, police recovered 604 guns after stopping and frisking 160,851 people. Stops grew by more than 300 percent in 2011 over 2003, but police recovered 780 guns last year. At 176 more guns than in 2003, that is a 29 percent increase.

The report did not say if any guns were recovered in the Sixth Precinct as the result of stop and frisk. The NYCLU press office could not answer that question.

That stop and frisk is being used in the Sixth Precinct is odd. It has been and remains a low-crime precinct. There was one murder in the Sixth Precinct last year compared to 515 citywide. That precinct reported six rapes in 2011 compared to 1,414 citywide, 44 robberies compared to 19,752 citywide, and 38 felony assaults compared 18,579 citywide.

Opponents of stop and frisk say that beyond violating the rights of those who are stopped, it also alienates people in the communities where it is practiced. There is some evidence of that in the West Village.

Eliezer Pardo. | GAY CITY NEWS

“I hate it, I hate it,” said Eliezer Pardo, 32, who was passing time with a friend on one of the West Village piers that jut into the Hudson River. “It makes a lot of us stop coming out here… They don’t treat straight people the way they treat gay people. They harass gay people.”

FIERCE’s Vaz seconded that saying, “It’s not really helping to create safer communities. In fact, it causes negative relationships.”

Pardo said he has prior arrests, and he added that some of the youth who hang out in the West Village do break the law, but, in his view, that does not excuse the NYPD’s use of stop and frisk.

“To be realistic, I can’t blame it all on them because a lot of the people out here, they don’t act right,” he said. “I understand why they do their job, but they take it overboard.”

West Village residents have for years been complaining about the young people of color who hang out there. Efforts to reach an accommodation in 2005 and 2006 made at the local community board were unsuccessful.

The American Healthcare Foundation warns PrEP would be “catastrophic” for HIV prevention. | AHF

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE | An advisory committee of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended that the regulatory agency approve the use of Truvada, an anti-HIV drug, for HIV-negative people in certain risk groups to prevent them from becoming infected with the AIDS virus.

On May 10, the 22-member Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee voted 19 to three to approve the use of Truvada for gay and bisexual men. The drug was recommended for any HIV-negative person who has a partner who is positive in a 19 to two vote, with one abstention. The committee was less enthusiastic about recommending that Truvada be used for others who may acquire HIV through sex. Twelve members supported that, eight opposed it, and two abstained.

While pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), as this use of Truvada is called, has support from leading AIDS groups, including the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) and Project Inform in San Francisco, it remains controversial as it proposes to give a powerful drug with serious side effects to otherwise healthy people.

“This new drug indication is the baseline, or building block, for a new type of biomedical HIV prevention,” said Marjorie Hill, GMHC’s chief executive officer, said in a May 11 statement. “While we do not have all the necessary information about how the public will respond and potentially utilize this medication for prevention, our constituents, clients, family, and loved ones deserve complete support to advance HIV prevention.”

AIDS groups see PrEP as a welcome addition to their limited arsenal of HIV prevention tools and hope it will reduce new HIV infections among gay and bisexual men, which have remained stubbornly high and unchanging for years.

Truvada, marketed by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, is a combination of two anti-HIV drugs, emtricitabine and tenofovir. Tenofovir is known to cause damage to kidneys and can lead to a loss of bone density, which creates the risk of fractures. Other Truvada side effects can include weight loss, nausea, vomiting, and dizziness.

The rationale for PrEP is based on three large studies. A study of 2,499 uninfected gay and bisexual men and transgender women in six nations found that the risk of becoming infected was cut by 42 percent among participants.

A study of uninfected heterosexual men and women and another of sero-discordant couples, where one partner is positive, found the infection risk was cut by 62 percent to 75 percent. The committee was apparently not convinced that this better data, compared to that for gay men and transgender women, warranted a more general application of PrEP.

“Basically it’s a Tuskegee experiment for gay men,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who opposes PrEP.

For four decades beginning in 1932, the US Public Health Service let some 400 African-American men with syphilis in Tuskegee, Alabama, go untreated to observe the disease course in them.

“I think it’s going to be catastrophic for HIV prevention efforts in this country and particularly among gay men,” Weinstein said. “I think that it’s the easy way out; it’s telling people that there is a magic pill.”

Some PrEP opponents have raised concerns that the Truvada regimen could erode adherence to condom use, the most effective prevention measure.

“I don’t question the efficacy of PrEP on an individual basis, but I’m not confident it will work on a population basis,” Sean Strub, a longtime AIDS activist and the founder of POZ magazine, wrote in an email. “I am concerned that the focus on PrEP will harm behavioral-based prevention efforts.”

A major issue for PrEP is whether those taking the drug will be able to follow the regimen given the side effects.

After the study of gay men and transgender women ended, the FDA measured the “plasma and intracellular emtricitabine and tenofovir concentrations” and found that “less than half of the subjects” taking the drug had “measurable drug levels,” the FDA wrote in a guidance.

An analysis of those who became infected during the study produced an estimate that only 10 percent of participants had “intracellular drug concentrations consistent with daily dosing” requirements of PrEP. Such “poor adherence,” as the FDA called it, could render PrEP ineffective.

“The public health benefit of Truvada for a PrEP indication can only be achieved with access to Truvada and strict adherence with the recommended dosage regimen,” the FDA wrote. “These are the two key factors to achieve efficacy for Truvada for a PrEP indication.”

Frank Hallam’s “Tava (Gustav von Will) Painting (Pier 46),” 1980/ 2011, archival digital print from slide, 18.5 x 12.5 in. | COURTESY OF ARTIST

BY MICHAEL LUONGO |  For young New Yorkers knowing only a sanitized, seemingly well ordered, affluent Manhattan, the overtly sexual gay life on the Hudson River piers in Lower Manhattan in the 1970s seems another world. All the more reason the period needs to be catalogued and remembered.

“The Piers: Art and Sex along the New York Waterfront,” an exhibition at the Leslie/ Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, does exactly that. The exhibit, co-curated by Jonathan Weinberg and Darren Jones, opened in April and has been extended through July 7.

“The Piers” presents more than 70 works, largely photographs, but also film and even recovered pieces of artwork that adorned concrete on the Lower Hudson piers.

Gay life had a modicum of visibility in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, but after the Stonewall Riots of 1969, gay expression exploded. Attached to Greenwich Village, the piers, a crumbling, largely abandoned vestige of New York’s days as a shipping powerhouse, became one of the major social and political centers of the gay movement.

Leslie/ Lohman board president Jonathan David Katz — the director of the Visual Studies doctoral program at SUNY, Buffalo and the co-curator of the recent “Hide/ Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum — said for young people coming of age now, it is especially important to see “The Piers” to understand how different things were and how gay sexuality is now often overlooked.

Katz explained, “I think that we, especially given the political movement of late —  marriage, military, et al. — are in danger of remaking our history in our current image. But ours once was one of profound dissidence, often sexual dissidence, to a degree that seems almost unimaginable today.”

He added, “There was a kind of fusion in the 1970s, almost as a political movement to refute heteronormative standards. And my God, what a thing to combine sex — and great sex — with a form of political activism, and that is what the piers were. There was very much a point that the piers were appended to New York proper. That we would not be forced off to a place that could not be glimpsed. We built a city that was a utopia on our terms.”

Frank Hallam’s “Sunners, Pier 5 (Exterior from Interior),” 1978, archival digital print from slide, 18.5 x 12.5 in. | COURTESY OF ARTIST

Even straight liberals at the time understood the movement’s deeply expressive sexuality. Among them was Shelley Seccombe, the lone female photographer in the exhibit. She said she had moved to Westbeth, an artists’ housing and studio complex on Bethune Street in the far West Village, “in 1970 and began seriously exploring the waterfront soon after that.” Still a dangerous area at the time, she often brought her husband, especially when entering the piers’ abandoned shipping office buildings. These locations were where gay men had sex, addicts did hits, and crime on occasion confronted visitors.

“I always try to be gender-neutral when it comes to photography, but I guess it was an advantage to be female in certain circumstances,” Seccombe said.

The piers’ blend of art and sexuality is what some exhibit photographers remember most. “I was looking for sex, and sometimes I was looking for pictures,” Stanley Stellar recalled. “Sometimes I found both on the same afternoon, and sometimes I found one or the other.”

Among his favorite images is what he titled “Cyclops” — a “kind of monster monumental” celebrating an intensely sexual man he met and photographed there.

“I have a lot of affection for that image because he was one of a kind — a freak and someone I never saw again after that,” Stellar said, explaining the man cruised major gay gathering spots “attracting gay men by traveling around and showing his package. And that was his calling card of life, and that was a sort of way of doing things back then.”

The day they met, Stellar said, “I was looking for pictures and for sex, and I found both in him. This is a metaphor for my work at that time and maybe still. How hot can I make these pictures and get away with it, and not make them into the pornographic.”

Frank Hallam’s “Tava (Gustav von Will) Painting (Pier 46),” 1980/ 2011, archival digital print from slide, 18.5 x 12.5 in. | COURTESY OF ARTIST

Other photographers on exhibit include Leonard Fink, Frank Hallam, Lee Snider, and Rich Wandel. The exhibit also includes seminal works of the New York avant-garde, such as Vito Acconci’s “Untitled Project for Pier 17,” Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Day’s End,” and David Wojnarowicz’s series “Arthur Rimbaud in New York.” The piers themselves were a canvas for art, becoming an extension of the East Village art scene, especially Pier 34, taken over by Wojnarowicz and Mike Bidlo in 1983.

By that point however, the AIDS epidemic and political transformation had begun to impact the scene, along with urban gentrification and the demolition of many of the pier structures.

For Stellar, when he views images in the exhibit, he said, “what came up for me is my youth and my friends. I was young, and I had all my friends whom I no longer have anymore because they are all dead. It was a different kind of family. They had all the same physical cultural experiences of what it meant to be gay back then, but they are not here anymore.”

Co-curator Darren Jones grew up in Scotland and did not see the piers until 1996, long after their heyday. He explained the exhibition “will appeal to people of all backgrounds with an interest in New York’s recent past. It functions as a social retrospective on the various uses of a now legendary place and time in Manhattan’s history. Gay men used the piers as a meeting place, an urban playground, if you will, to meet friends, sunbathe and relax, as well as to pursue the excitement of sexual encounters. Artists utilized the vast spaces of the pier buildings to make some of the most influential and experimental contemporary art of the 20th century. Many went on to make their names as major players in the art world.”

Jones added that he learned a lot in working on the project, explaining, “Talking to the artists and photographers who were there, who saw this world come and go, and to hear their stories was one of the most moving experiences imaginable. Above all, I had a powerful sense of how fortunate I am to be able to live my life as I do today, in large part due to the progress made by earlier generations of gay men.”

Katz said that what made the piers unique in relation to 1970s bathhouses and discos was that the piers were free, public spaces.

“That very openness was the key,” he said, adding, “You didn’t have to claim anything to walk into them,” including self-identification as gay. “This was a free space, and let’s not lose sight of that. The piers were democratizing,” for the poor, the young, and those new to New York who had not yet found their way. New York today has far fewer such spaces.

Katz said gay New Yorkers should see the exhibit because “the arrogance of the present is that it remakes the past in its own image, and the piers bespeak a very different image and a very different politics from our current one. And while I am very much in favor of the choice for people, for example, to get married, I don’t want our sexual dissidence to get, as we used to say, ‘straightened up.’”

THE PIERS: ART AND SEX ALONG THE NEW YORK WATERFRONT | Leslie/ Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art | 26 Wooster St., btwn. Canal & Grand Sts. | Through Jul. 7 | Tue.-Sat., noon-6 p.m. | Closing reception: Jul. 6, 6-8 p.m. | leslielohman.org

BY PAUL SCHINDLER |

Careful to respond to the religiosity of gay marriage opponents by mentioning his own Christianity, he pointed to “the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.” His teachers, however, were not only his God –– they were also US service members in uniform, members of his staff, friends, college Republicans whom he encounters when visiting campuses, his wife, and even his two young daughters, about whom he said, “It wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently.”

In other words, the president evolved through many of the same conversations and experiences that have changed attitudes and moved hearts across the nation.

Some have noted the president only acted after a sudden three-day media frenzy erupted in the wake of Vice President Joe Biden’s “Meet the Press” appearance; he had no choice, according to the most unflattering interpretation. As Nathan Riley points out on the opposite page, that assessment misses the reality that idealism and pragmatism often live in uneasy balance with each other. Could anyone doubt that sooner or later the president would have taken the stand he did? Many news reports asserted Obama had long been discussing the move and given serious, perhaps final consideration to a plan of doing so before the election in any event. Biden, in fact, was likely aware of the president’s deliberations; when posed the question by David Gregory, he certainly knew the days of Democrats dancing on the head of a pin on gay marriage were drawing to a close.

Several voices in the blogosphere also complained about Obama’s assertion that “this is an issue that is gonna be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue.” Some charged the nation’s first African-American president is falling back on a discredited state’s rights argument. As Arthur S. Leonard lays out on page 16, questions of federal and state impact on marriage are complex. States have traditionally defined marriage, and federal legislation has take up the question only once –– in 1996, with the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act.

Federal courts, however, do play a role in ensuring that any state marriage scheme meets federal constitutional standards, as the Supreme Court did in 1967, when it struck down the remaining bans on interracial marriage. Given the administration’s conclusions about the equal protection flaws in DOMA, Leonard suggests, the Obama Justice Department could well make similar arguments in friend-of-the-court briefs when right to marry cases are brought in federal courts. We should rightly expect that of the president, but nothing he said to ABC should lead us to conclude that is unlikely.

The president’s laudable leadership stands in stark contrast to the inexplicably craven posture taken by Middlesex County Judge Glenn Berman as he sentenced Dharun Ravi in the 2010 Rutgers web spying case. Ravi used his computer camera to spy on his roommate, the late Tyler Clementi, as he shared intimate time with another man; he invited others to dial into a follow-up spying session he planned; he tweeted the humiliation visited on Clementi; he deleted Twitter and cell phone records to cover up his crimes; and he suborned perjury from the woman with whom he viewed Clementi and his guest. For that, he was convicted on 24 counts of invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, witness and evidence tampering, and evasion of apprehension.

The judge was certainly right in not sentencing the defendant to anything close to the 10 years he could have gotten, and he was also correct in recommending to federal officials that the 20-year-old immigrant from India not be deported. Still, after speaking of Ravi’s conduct in unsparingly scathing terms, noting, “I haven’t heard you apologize once,” his sentence of 30 days in jail raised the immediate question of what on earth he would say when meting out a one-year, five-year, or 10-year sentence. Despite an extended turn for the courtroom camera that beamed images around the globe, Berman handed down punishment that seemed suited to a prank, not a pattern of illegal conduct that assaulted a young man’s dignity.

John M. Hunt, the Family Court judge who heard the case, found that he was a juvenile delinquent. The city’s Department of Probation recommended that Tabales be placed in the Juvenile Justice Initiative (JJI), an alternative-to-detention program run by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) for youths older than seven and less than 16.

In JJI starting that June, Tabales agreed to abide by a curfew, attend school, stop using marijuana and other drugs, and not get arrested again. The Tabales family received multisystemic therapy (MST) from a psychologist at the Child Center of New York (CCNY), a private agency with an ACS contract to perform the therapy with some of the roughly 250 juveniles who are enrolled in JJI every year. It did not work.

Tabales was arrested for fare beating in September 2010. He tested positive for marijuana six times between July 31 and November 3. Tabales missed 19 therapy appointments. His mother missed others, and she resisted enforcing elements of the therapy. He frequently skipped school and regularly violated his curfew.

Eventually fearing for her son’s safety, Tabales’ mother wanted Probation to issue a violation petition to Hunt so he would be detained. CCNY talked her out of it, but the agency eventually closed his case on December 13.

Terminating a case is the “most severe sanction available” to ACS and CCNY, Hunt wrote in a 98-page decision he issued on March 14 of this year. Probation, the city’s Law Department, and Tabales’ attorney were informed, but Probation wanted to place Tabales in an inpatient drug program and did not cite him for violating the terms of his agreement.

Anthony Collao, a straight youth killed last year by a group shouting anti-gay slurs that allegedly included Luis Tabales.

In 2011, on January 9, Tabales was arrested in the Bronx and indicted  on 11 charges, including robbery and assault, which are violent felonies. On January 25, he was arrested and charged with attempted robbery and assault in Brooklyn.

Last year, on March 12, Tabales, now 17, and five other young men were accused of using anti-gay slurs as they allegedly beat Anthony Collao to death on a Queens street. Their charges include murder, manslaughter, gang assault, and robbery, with some charged as hate crimes. Collao, 18, was straight.

Two days later and nine months after Tabales entered JJI, Probation delivered a violation petition to Hunt. It sent an amended petition to the judge on April 29 of last year.

“Luis T. self-destructed amid a perfect storm of good intentions, boundless optimism, and the city’s ambitious policy of utilizing community-based alternative to placement programs,” Hunt wrote. “It is clear to this court that the therapeutic interventions provided to Mr. T. in this case failed miserably.”

It may be a measure of Hunt’s anger about this case that he adhered to the legal requirement to not identify Tabales, but his footnotes cite press reports on the Collao murder making clear who he is referring to.

The failure was not Probation’s alone, Hunt wrote. The CCNY psychologist filed monthly reports with Probation that “under-reported the frequency and nature of the violations of the conditions of probation,” and that psychologist, his supervisor, and a psychologist who was consulting on the case “merely treated the multiple violations of probation as behavioral issues to address through further expansion of the MST services being offered,” Hunt wrote. The judge called MST a “nebulous therapeutic program.”

In 2008, Hunt had another juvenile — Ronald B. — who violated his 2007 probation requirements. He was placed in JJI. In May of 2009, probation informed Hunt that Ronald B., who had since turned 17, had been arrested for robbery three months earlier and pleaded guilty a month before. Ronald B. was by then serving one-to-three years in an upstate prison.

Though the case was closed, “those administering the JJI/ MST program are encouraged to thoroughly review the circumstances of this case so that structural and programmatic problems can be identified and changes implemented where necessary,” Hunt wrote in a 2009 decision on the case.

The Bloomberg administration has long wanted to reform the city’s juvenile justice programs. New York State holds many juvenile delinquents, and the city pays for their detention in upstate facilities that have been harshly criticized by former judges, advocates, and some in government as ineffective and expensive.

In the state budget for the current fiscal year, Governor Andrew Cuomo included the Close to Home Initiative, a program that allows New York City to house and counsel all but the most serious juvenile delinquents in the city.

“We can do far better at a fraction of the cost,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a joint committee of the State Legislature in January. “By keeping the kids more closely connected to their families, their schools, their churches, and communities, we’re confident that we can improve public safety, save money, and help more kids stay out of trouble and help them make new starts in their still young lives.”

In an affirmation filed with Hunt, ACS said it is collecting data on the performance of JJI and MST when enrollees are participating and after they leave the program. It did not share that data with Gay City News, so it is unclear if the Tabales and Ronald B. cases are aberrations.

ACS did not comment on the Tabales case.

In a statement, Probation said, “Advancing public safety is the [department’s] primary concern, and we consider it a tragedy whenever a citizen or client is the victim of violence. Probation is working with prosecutors to standardize and expedite the process by which we recommend juvenile clients for revocation. We remain committed to the practice of referring clients to high-quality programs that can provide the services and resources they need to get back on track while continuing to actively supervise their cases.”

In a statement, CCNY also expressed regret for Collao’s death and added, “We fulfilled our responsibilities by filing monthly reports to the Department of Probation, in which we explicitly recounted Luis’s behaviors… [W]e informed the Department of Probation that we could no longer work with Luis because of the family’s lack of engagement. This termination happened months before the horrible incident took place. The Department of Probation conceded in court that it should have reported him back to the court for violation of probation much sooner. All of this is part of the court record.”

Hunt concluded that the Tabales “case was treated differently from those cases where a juvenile probationer has not been ordered to participate in the JJI/ MST program, and his case should serve as a red flag amidst the current rush to replace institutional placements with community-based alternatives.”

Some people evolve. Like Obama. Like the NAACP. Others don’t. Mitt Romney. The most Reverend Ruben Diaz. The Holy See.

The only big ugly secret about black homophobia is that it’s just like white homophobia, only with a different color scheme. The epidemic is particularly virulent in fundamentalist churches and in communities (and nations) of all races where people are poor and angry –– and their spiritual immune systems are already compromised, no matter how loud they pray.

It’s tempting to focus our attention there. That’s real homophobia –– queers getting denounced from pulpits, hatred formalized in anti-gay laws that almost always lead to attacks and gay-bashing. If not executions.

But hatred is almost as insidious when it’s that casual kind of bigotry people indulge in because jokes need their butts. It’s nice to have somebody around that you can kick for a laugh. Reduce in size to pump up your own ego, which so often feeds on the shame and humiliation of others.

It’s why Dharun Ravi doesn’t feel guilty for the death of Tyler Clementi, his roommate at Rutgers. He’s not a homophobe. Not him. It was just a prank, setting up that webcam. It’s not like he chased Ty into traffic wielding a baseball bat. Or pushed him from the bridge.

I remember myself at 18, and the panic and horror I felt when the door to my dorm room popped open and my roommate walked in and saw me messing around with a girl. She retreated as fast as she could and was actually pretty cool about it, saying to put a note or something on the door next time. But there wasn’t a next time, not in that room anyway. I was too ashamed.

I can’t imagine what I would have done if I’d found out other people had actually watched. Seen me fumbling with a girl almost for the first time. Me touching her, her touching me. If my roommate had spread the word to 150 of her Twitter followers making fun of me, I would have been desperate, too. Especially if she continued to issue invitations promising more fun to come.

Ravi posted, “People are having a viewing party with a bottle of Bacardi and beer in this kid’s room for my roommate” and “Be careful it could get nasty” and “Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes, it’s happening again.”

The word “rape” springs to mind. Where the point isn’t the physical attack, the sex, but the dominance and humiliation. Because let’s be honest. Ravi knew what he was doing. Had a clear intent to diminish Tyler, make him less than human. Multiply his shame with the number of witnesses. He didn’t need a pulpit to assemble a jeering mob.

It worked. Tyler apparently viewed Ravi’s Twitter posts 38 times. Tried to tell the school administration and take appropriate action. He asked for a different roommate. Tried to tell himself it wasn’t that big a deal. But it didn’t work. He couldn’t live with the humiliation. Killed himself. Was pushed.

If Ravi lied about what he did and tried to cover it up, erasing tweets, getting rid of posts, it wasn’t from shame. It was just because it would be an awful lot of trouble.

It’s worth saying his homophobia had nothing to do with his ethnicity, though India doesn’t exactly embrace queers. In fact, this kind of jolly American bullying shows his perfect assimilation into a country that talks a lot about equality, but doesn’t really aspire to it.

Queer activists are no better. Half our failures are because our campaigns have been blinded by race or class. The exit polls on the Prop 8 debacle in California showed African Americans had been important movers in dumping same-sex marriage. But was the problem that black people were somehow intrinsically more homophobic than white ones, or that our wise gay leaders saw those differences, believed they were more than skin deep, and abandoned the fight? They rarely shape campaigns for poor neighborhoods, especially ones that are full of minorities. As if they never vote.

It’s time to for us all to admit that equality shouldn’t just be a goal for the LGBT community, it should be our whole strategy. We should see everyone as a potential partner, as capable of change. In fact, we should demand it. The NAACP has opened a door. We should dash through it. Celebrate.

The president and vice president at the White House in the summer of 2011. | PETE SOUZA/ THE WHITE HOUSE

BY NATHAN RILEY | A great hijacking has begun to rob President Barack Obama of a narrative that credits his idealism in his support for marriage equality.

One reason the hijacking gained traction is a false notion of what idealism is. Simply put, many feel that if something is heartfelt, it shouldn’t be tarnished by calculation. That places an impossible burden on the rational thinker, much less a leader seeking reelection.

Doubting such a leader’s sincerity can be toxic, reinforcing widespread cynicism. Does Barack Obama really believe in gay rights? Wasn’t it only self-interest and not his convictions at play?

The mainstream media didn’t lead with this interpretation, but I hear it in conversations with my friends, who remain tempered in their enthusiasm, even suspicious, especially the youngest among them. A New York Times poll found that 67 percent of respondents doubted his good faith in his gay marriage evolution.

But evidence from Obama’s record points in a different direction — he made his decision because of his beliefs, his ideology. No president in US history has been as friendly to the LGBT community.

Granted that he was pushed, but the pressure on him was largely fueled by an increasingly impressive record of progress. Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, whatever others may say, truly was an initiative orchestrated by the president, who enlisted the cooperation of the Department of Defense. His Justice Department’s refusal to support the Defense of Marriage Act leaves the Republican House of Representatives to defend in court the law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex marriages.

On Obama’s watch, the nation has also enacted a hate crimes law that protects the LGBT community; his administration has initiated federal government policies protecting transgender Americans; the president has ordered essentially all hospitals to grant visitation to same-sex partners; and his Affordable Care Act opens up medical care to all LGBT people.

And these achievement by no means exhaust the list.

Based on this record, it is clear the president is a believer. Not only a believer, he takes risks and works to reduce the likelihood of backlash against LGBT initiatives. Obama’s decision to back marriage equality is a leap into the unknown. No one can be certain it will help his reelection. The first Gallup tracking poll after his announcement found the president losing support, and it pushes evangelical Christians more willingly into Mitt Romney’s camp. Right-wing religious leaders who had supported Rick Santorum in the Republican primaries were quick to shift their support to the former Massachusetts governor, as the president’s move overshadowed lingering GOP discord.

The bottom line: When it came time to decide a tough call, Obama made the idealistic choice.

Idealistic yet rational, the president’s announcement fits into a grand strategy of making the election a choice between a good man and a hardnosed businessman with a streak of cruelty. Romney wants to turn the election into a referendum on the economy alone. Marriage equality reminds many Americans that they are comfortable with the president’s character.

Barack Obama offered personal reasons — heartfelt reasons — for abandoning the civil union compromise that had been the national Democrats’ consensus position for the past decade. He is friends with couples in committed relationships; he sends his daughters to a school where they have friends who have same-sex parents. His evolution was guided by his Christianity, he said.

The president told Democrats unhappy with his decision, especially in swing states and districts that could easily go Republican, that his stance allows them to draw a critical distinction with their opponents. Romney supports a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting marriage equality in all 50 states. Democrats, showing unity, can remind voters how their election reversals of two years ago emboldened a right wing pushing the Republican Party toward reactionary policies.

Financial backing for the president’s reelection showed an immediate bump, but there is no way to tell yet how voters in battleground state like Florida, Nevada, Ohio, or Colorado may factor the president’s decision into their choice in November. Months before the election, it is impossible to predict whether the president has helped or hurt the cause of liberalism. But he will no longer be damned for evading the issue.

The pressure from the LGBT community and that generated by Vice President Joe Biden’s May 6 comments on “Meet the Press” succeeded because the president could no longer contain the contradictions of his own position and in his own conscience. In his interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, he said, “I asked myself right after that New York vote… if I had been a state senator how would I have voted? And I had to admit … I would have voted yes.” The time had come to move from civil unions to full equality for LGBT couples.

It’s certainly true there was a carefully orchestrated campaign to move the president, that the LGBT community and its friends are important cogs in his fundraising machine, and that they weren’t shy about making their wishes known. The community deserves credit for pressing the issue in an election year, but the campaign was effective because the president was receptive and ready.

In the end, the president’s position may prove not that difficult politically. Obama voters differ on same-sex marriage, but they are unlikely to change their vote based on that disagreement. What used to be a Republican wedge splitting Democrats has become at worst a neutral matter of opinion to likely supporters of the president. The announcement may yet turn out badly, but it has at least an equal chance of going well, defining Barak Obama as a pragmatist with a clear and compelling idealist bent.

James Corden in Richard Bean’s “One Man, Two Guvnors,” directed by Nicholas Hytner. | JOAN MARCUS

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE | There is no greater joy to be had on Broadway right now — perhaps on the entire planet, come to think of it — than watching James Corden in the lead of the hilarious British import “One Man, Two Guvnors.” Adapting liberally from the 18th century play “The Servant of Two Masters,” which itself was a takeoff on classic commedia dell’arte, playwright Richard Bean has created a rollicking story of one Francis Henshall, who in trying to make his way in the world accepts positions to serve both the upper class Stanley Stubbers and the villain Roscoe Crabbe, whom we discover almost instantaneously is really his twin sister Rachel in disguise.

Roscoe may have been killed by Stanley and has fled, with Rachel, who’s in love with Stanley, in pursuit. These are the “two guvnors” Henshall tries to serve, and this is just one of the interconnected plots too numerous to explain.

And why spoil the fun?

All of this plotting is just a structure on which to hang physical comedy, over-the-top gags, and the relentless pursuit, by Francis, of something to eat.

As Francis, Corden commands the stage with an amazing ease and is so in the moment that when the unexpected happens, he simply rolls with it — and leaves the audience rolling in the aisles. Corden is the embodiment of comic inspiration that leads to genius and plays so wonderfully with the rest of the cast that one wishes the show would never end — just pause long enough so your sides can stop aching from the laughing.

The entire company is spectacular, directed with perfection by Nicholas Hytner. Their timing is impeccable, and each of the silly characters is beautifully rendered. Oliver Chris is hilarious as the twit Stanley. Jemima Rooper is excellent as Roscoe/ Rachel, and Tom Edden plays an octogenarian waiter who on his first day at the pub has to serve two madcap dinners up and down a flight of stairs. His physical clowning — and his work with Corden — leaves you breathless from laughter.

The play has been set in 1961, and there is also a band, the Craze, that plays pastiche period music by Grant Olding that’s just sensational.

There are, I’m told, some people who don’t like this kind of humor, and if you’re one of them, then this may not be for you. But for everyone else, it’s a high point of the theater season and the most refreshing comic treat Broadway has had in a a long time.

ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS | Music Box Theater | 239 W. 45th St. | Tue. at 7 p.m.; Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. | $26.50-$126.50 | telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

The only pleasure one can possibly derive from watching Matthew Broderick’s performance in “Nice Work If You Can Get It” is to sit there and wonder who the producers might have hired who could actually do the role. There couldn’t be a more wrong-headed choice than Broderick to play the singing, dancing playboy millionaire Jimmy Winter, who the script says is “dripping with charm.” Broderick’s performance is about as charm-free as it could be.

Most of his performance consists of rehashing his whiny line-readings from “The Producers.” His singing is reedy, and he delivers the songs as if by rote, with no understanding of what he’s saying. His dancing is tentative and lumbering. He’s so inept that he very nearly sinks the whole shebang while taking some of the most beloved Gershwin songs in the American Songbook and brutally trampling them under his unsure foot.

Gershwin mash-ups are nothing new to Broadway. Both “My One and Only” and “Crazy For You” created new books to showcase the songs. But both of those had actors who knew how to sell a number. Watching Broderick, one sighs for the lack of Harry Groener and Tommy Tune — not to mention Judy Benson and Twiggy — who made Gershwin glow on all levels.

“Nice Work” has a book by Joe DiPietro, who has borrowed from Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse to create the flimsy story replete with bootleggers, prohibitionists who discover the sauce, chorines, and mismatched lovers. The book has its charming moments, but mostly exists to tie songs together and give performers their star turns.

And there are some star turns to be had, despite Broderick’s best efforts at sucking everything on stage into his own personal void. Kelli O’Hara as Billie, the bootlegger dressed as a man who falls for Jimmy, is outstanding, especially given the circumstances. The reward for returning from intermission is to hear her sing “But Not For Me.” In fact, every time O’Hara is on either alone or with anyone other than Broderick, she has the inimitable pluck and sparkle required for a trouser role.

In supporting roles, Judy Kaye as the battle-axe reformer who changes her tune when she gets a taste of demon rum is hilarious. Michael McGrath as Billie’s sidekick forced into the role of butler at Jimmy’s Long Island estate, where the bootleggers had hoped to hide out, has all the low comedy meant as counterpoint to Jimmy’s sophistication. Unfortunately, McGrath is left to do all the lifting himself, and he does it marvelously.

Kathleen Marshall seems to have directed around Broderick. She’s got a great ensemble, and the lavish show is nice to look at thanks to Derek McClane’s sets and Martin Pakledinaz’s costumes. For all their efforts, though, it’s unfortunate that saddled with a miscast leading man, they weren’t able to get passable — let alone nice — work out of this rich material.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT | Imperial Theatre | 249 W. 45th St. | Tue., Thu. at 7 p.m. | Wed., Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. | $46.50-$136.50 | telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

Mare Winningham stars in Nina Raine’s “Tribes,” now running at Barrow Street Theatre. COURTESY: O&M CO.

“There was something in the water of that decade,” she told me. “So many actors came out of there. The excitement of those competitions was intense, and the comedown afterwards was so severe for me that I was so grateful there would be another one, weeks away. It was addictive, incredibly competitive, but also very friendly and social. Our teachers would encourage us to direct as well, and I remember my mom asking me if I’d even started practicing my own monologue yet. I would spend the weekend working on it, which basically meant co-opting the bathroom from my five siblings and going there in front of the big old mirror.”

“Tribes,” with its compassionate take on deafness, is Winningham’s third foray into this theme, after her TV work in “Helen Keller: the Miracle Continues” and “Love is Never Silent”: “This is something that’s come back into my life and I think there’s a reason. When I met [partially deaf co-actor] Russell Harvard, he signed to me. I had quite a vocabulary back in 1985, but it faded away. I do know how to sign ‘I’ve forgotten everything,’ which I did to him, but then he spoke, ‘You’ll remember. My mother remembers you from the movie,’ and she’d told him, ’Oh, you can sign to her. She’s fluent.’ My bad, but if you don’t practice… Our cast needs to take some time out and maybe hire a coach to help us. We try and learn a couple of phrases every night, but it always degenerates into cuss words or tasteless phrases. I’m like the old lady, saying, ‘Come on kids, let’s get serious!’”

Asked if she ever gets sick of being asked about her classic Brat Pack movie, “St. Elmo’s Fire,” Winningham laughs, “No, but I’m always surprised that it was such a cultural moment in time. I missed it somehow because I was older then than everyone that was in it and pregnant with my third kid. I really poopoo’ed it: ‘Whatever this little dude thing is, I’ll just do it.’ And then it came out and kind of defined a generation. I didn’t see it coming and am still surprised when somebody tells me, ‘That was the most important movie of my college years!’ and I’m, ‘All right, I was fat with a baby and laughing it off as best I could.’ Joel Schumacher seemed to know the zeitgeist, and we were sort of like ‘Friends’ before ‘Friends.’

Winningham’s co-actors — Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, etc. — went on to have big starry careers, where she seemed always to be a character actor, even in lead roles: “Yeah. I’m here to tell to tell other actresses who look like me that it’s not a bad thing [laughs]. There are sometimes too many glamorous, beautiful, youthful people, and they all compete. I really had my pick of the great TV movies for a 15-year run, and they were really good parts, primarily Everywoman or girl next door or person you would recognize yourself in. They were not star roles, but character-driven. Looking like an average Joe is not bad.”

Winningham does star in “Hatfields & McCoys,” filmed in Romania: “I have the best role, I think, as the matriarch of the McCoys, who thinks her husband is dead in the Civil War, with ten kids to raise. So when he shows up in the first scene, she feels like she’s seeing a ghost, and the trajectory of her character is so great because she has a little bit of psychic ability to know that no good is gonna come of any of it. She is methodically broken down, as one by one her sons are killed, and ends up in an insane asylum. It breaks your heart because all she wants is a double boiler, a very simple woman who can’t get anything she deserves or needs.

“In my career, I can look back and think, ‘Okay, recognize when it’s good because you see how a lot of time goes by before you get a great part. You gotta do what you gotta do, but every ten years there’s something special and this feels like one of those.”

Winningham’s Oscar-nominated “Georgia” was definitely one of those: “Great movie, and those people are still my dearest friends — Jennifer Jason Leigh, her mother Barbara Turner [the screenwriter], and our director, Ulu Grosbard, who just passed away. By coincidence, Barbara had come out here to see my play and we found out Ulu had died the day before. We went to his memorial, which was amazing, but it brought up all that special time, when we went to Cannes. I kind of owe them the high point of my career.

“Oscar night was tricky, because Kevin Spacey and I — who had done ‘The Sound of Music’ in high school together — to be sitting at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion … He was right in front of me with his mom and I was the row behind with my parents, and at one point he turned around and we were both like, ‘Look where we are!’ He had Red Vines, so we were all eating licorice, and I knew I wasn’t going to win so I was just relaxed, in a stunning Vera Wang gown, soaking it all in. Mira Sorvino had won every single award for ‘Mighty Aphrodite,’ so everyone in our category knew we could all just hang.

“And then Kevin won!  I wish I could have shared that night with Jennifer, because she should have been nominated. But I was walking to my seat and Meryl Streep was walking toward me — My God, it’s Meryl! — and she stopped me and said, ‘Omigod, “Georgia” was so amazing. Will you do me a favor and tell Jennifer that that was one of the greatest performances?’ So I got to call Jenny and tell her that.”

Peggy Pope on Broadway with Jimmy Stewart in 1972, when he reprised his 1950 screen role in “Harvey.”

“Atta Girl: Tales from a Life in the Trenches of Show Business” (iuniverse.com) is actress Peggy Pope’s memoir, the title of which comes from her most famous line from her most famous role as Margaret Foster, the office lush in “Nine to Five.” Meeting Pope, you can easily see why she’s been steadily employed for more than half a century — she’s a total original, with her adorable voice and accent, forthright manner, and offbeat wit, all of it masked in a genuine wide-eyed innocence that is frankly irresistible.

“I couldn’t get a reading for ‘Nine to Five,’ she confessed. “And then my agent called: ‘You wanna do it tonight? They’re going into production tomorrow.’ So I went in and the only other one there was a woman with white hair. I thought, ‘They want some old biddy.’ I had come from New York leads in regional shows and was half-hearted about this small part. [Director] Colin Higgins said, ‘Hello, but I was actually thinking of her as someone older.’ I didn’t care anymore and said, ‘You want old? There’s old in the lobby! Why don’t you get her?’ And he drew back and said, ‘I never heard an actress talk like that. Actually, because I wrote it, with a flick of the pen I could change that.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you could.’ Then I left, and they called me and said, ‘Show up.’”

Pope played Agnes Gooch to Ann Miller’s Mame, “but I didn’t know how to sing, and Gooch has a two and a half-octave song with a high B flat. Ann Miller was just a delicious singer, everything perfect with the dancing, but she didn’t act really well. She’d never done a live play before, and her idea of acting was not to move when the other person was talking because the camera wasn’t on her.

“Every night when I hit that high note — I would just get there some way or another — she was such a good sport about it. She had these long false eyelashes and the only giveaway was that they would flutter while she waited for me, but very disciplined and never said a word about it.  She had five wigs because she sweated so much, but she didn’t know about curtains or flies.

“Once she grabbed me and said, ‘Peggy, what are the flies?’ So I told her a little bit about them, not that things could fall on you from there. She kinda lost interest, didn’t need to know about that. And she also didn’t know about the 20-pound bar in the curtain hem which made it fall right. Every night, she didn’t realize the audience who was standing up all had white hair — it was Florida — and all they wanted was to get into their limos ahead of each other. She thought it was a standing ovation, and she would go out and take another bow and the poor stage hand would be jumping on the curtain rope. Finally, they took him away to the hospital because he pulled a muscle.”

Helen Hayes, the most overrated actress to ever bear the title First Lady of the American Theater “was very domineering during ‘Harvey.’ One night Marian Hailey, who played Helen’s daughter, came to me in the dressing room and said, ‘Miss Hayes hit me!’ There’s a scene with Mrs. Chauvenet that opens the play and the older woman, who played her, could never do it to Helen’s satisfaction. Hayes told her how to make her entrance, and one night she and Marian were waiting in the wings to make their entrance. Hayes kept complaining about her, ‘Why can’t she get that right?’ and Marian, who always spoke the truth, said, ‘I think you’re making her nervous, telling her how to do it.’ Hayes stopped and said, ‘You’re very bossy!,’ and she hit her hard on the arm with her cane! Marian was as white as a sheet.”

The films of Romy Schneider be celebrated at French Institute Alliance Français through June. | PHOTOFEST/ COURTESY OF FIAF

Gorgeous, tragic Romy Schneider (1938-82) is being celebrated at French Institute Alliance Français with a retrospective of her films through June 26 (22 E. 60th St.; fiaf.org). She became a star at 17 when she played the Empress Elizabeth of Austria in the fondly recalled “Sissi” series of movies, and went on to work with some of the most prominent directors of her time — Orson Welles, Luchino Visconti (for whom she again played Elisabeth in his “Ludwig”), Claude Sautet, Bertrand Tavernier, Joseph Losey, Robert Siodmak, Costa-Gravas, Henri Clouzot, and more.

Her personal life was turbulent, with her husband Harry Meyen committing suicide and her 14-year-old son by him, David, dying when he impaled himself on a fence in 1981. She was found dead from alcohol and pills in her Paris apartment in 1982.

At the height of her stardom, she had an intense affair with actor Alain Delon, and the film she made with him, “Christine,” a remake of Schnitzler’s “Liebelei,” which had starred her mother, Magda, in 1933, is part of the series. Lusciously photographed in color, they were perhaps the most impossibly beautiful couple in film history, enough to make Brangelina look like a pair of ouch-faces. Delon, who remained a friend, arranged for her to be buried with her son, and each year since 1984, the Prix Romy Schneider is awarded to the most promising young actress in French cinema.

Contact David Noh at Inthenoh@aol.com and check out his blog at nohway.wordpress.com.