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Jake's political debate and Gay Icons preview party
Quentin Crisp: An Englishman in New York
New exhibition at National Portrait Gallery will surprise many
This Thursday July 2nd, Jake, the online gay professional networking community which hosts social events every week for its members in private clubs and bars, stages its political debate and Gay Icons preview party at the National Portrait Gallery.
Joining cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw and other front benchers from all three main parties will be Nick Boles, Head of Implementation for the Conservative party and seventh most influential gay man in the UK according to the Independent on Sunday's 2009 Pink List.
The images for Gay Icons (until October 18) were chosen by a 10-strong panel of the great and the good from the LGBT world, including Billie Jean King, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Elton John, but not without controversy. It spans the worlds of art, music, literature, sport and politics, but some of the expected figures have been ignored to make way for others (some of them straight) in a switch that may surprise many.
There's no Garland, Minnelli, Streisand or Minogue (or even Oscar Wilde or Michelangelo): instead the panel has chosen a more considered list that attempts to avoid the obvious and debunk the stereotype of the gay icon as encompassing only the ability to look or sound fabulous or have a tear-drenched and tragic personal life, or even to be actually gay for that matter, but rather those who inspired them through the "tough times" to realise their potential in the face of prejudice.
Many lesbian, gay and bisexual stars, activists and geniuses are represented of course, with Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing, K.D. Lang, Harvey Milk, Patricia Highsmith, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Joe Orton, Ellen DeGeneres, Francis Bacon, Daphne Du Maurier, Quentin Crisp and Bessie Smith amongst the 60 paintings and photographs on display, but also the straight Mstislav Rostropovich, chosen for his defence of democratic and artistic freedom, and one of Billie Jean King's choices, Nelson Mandela.
