ISSN: 2372-2207

VICTORY!June 26, 2015: United States Supreme Court Legalizes Same Sex Marriage

July 2015 Suggested Retail Price $2.95

2 Diversity Rules MagazineJuly 2015

My Two CentsBy Jim Koury, Editor

Inside This Issue (partial listing) David-Elijah Nahmod ...................................... Page 3 A Momentous Week ......................................... Page 4 Kristen MacKenzie ........................................... Page 8 Amazon Trail .................................................... Page 11 Hiden Away....................................................... Page 14 Robert Saldarini ................................................ Page 16 Heading to San Diego ...................................... Page 17 inQUEERies .................................................... Page 19 Resources and Diversions ..................................Page 22

Welcome to the July issue of Diver-sity Rules Magazine! This month’s edition is an especially exciting one since it comes on the heels of a mo-mentous month of June! On June 26th the Supreme Court of the United States issued its opinion in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges and declared same sex marriage bans unconstitutional, thus legal-izing gay marriage throughout the nation.

It is a decision we have been antici-pating and hoping for during these many years of ongoing litigation. It is a hard fought prize and one which advanced our country for-ward toward its inherent purpose of equality for all. We are a much better nation because of this deci-sion.

As someone said on my Facebook wall in response to the court’s mo-mentous decision. The Supreme Court “...voted in favor of hu-mans, not just liberals. It was the right thing to do.” This statement epitomizes what this country

should be about and that’s what the affirmative rulings handed down during the last week in June were all about -- PEOPLE and their dignity -- which the GOP seems to have abdicated and lost sight of for whatever reason.

We can take a breath momentarily and rejoice in our victory. How-ever, despite marriage equality coming to America it does NOT mean all is well! We still have many battle lines to gear up for.

In many states LGBT folks can still be fired, evicted, denied adop-tion rights and denied services simply for being who they are. Our transgender brothers and sisters are still persecuted, as many of the ad-vancements gained do not apply to them (e.g., open military service).

We have lots to do yet folks... LOTS TO DO. Do not tolerate any second class treatment. Keep fighting and more importantly -- do not become complacent!

Diversity Rules MagazinePO Box 72

Oneonta, NY 13820James R. Koury, Editor/Publisher

607.435.1587

Websitewww.diversityrulesmagazine.com

Blogwww.diversityrulesmagazine.blogspot.com

E-Mailgeneralinfo@diversityrulesmagazine.com

Copyright 2015 Diversity Rules MagazineAll Rights Reserved

Disclaimers

If you have a question or comment regard-ing this issue or future issues of Diversity Rules Magazine, the publisher would love to hear from you! Feel free to contact Di-versity Rules using the e-mail above or mailing address listed above. Content sub-mission are always welcome too!

All submissions become the property of Diversity Rules Magazine. However, origi-nating authors reserve all rights to their creative works.

Diversity Rules Magazine’s physical offices are located at 189 River Street, Oneonta, NY 13820.

Diversity Rules Magazine will not know-ingly publish or advertise text which is fraudulent or misleading. The publisher reserves the right to edit, limit, revise, or reject any text without cause.

Diversity Rules Magazine does not assume any fnancial responsibility for typographi-cal errors. If any errors are found, please notify Diversity Rules Magazine immedi-ately. Materials in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without writ-ten permission from the publisher.

3Diversity Rules MagazineJuly 2015

David-Elijah Nah-mod is a film crit-ic and reporter in San Francisco. His articles ap-pear regularly in

The Bay Area Reporter and SF Weekly. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

David developed Post Traumatic Syndrome Disor-der (PTSD) after surviving gay conversion therapy as a child and has found that many in the LGBT community suffer from severe, often untreated emotional disorders due to the extreme anti-gay traumas they endured. This column chronicles his journey.

Few Hollywood horror stories are sadder than that of Barbara Pay-ton. Sultry, sensual and extraor-dinarily beautiful, Payton seemed destined for Hollywood stardom after receiving good notices for her first two films, the film noir thrillers Trapped (1949) and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950). A year later, she was appearing in B movies like Bride of the Gorilla. By 1955 her film career was over.

When she died a dozen years later, Barbara Payton’s alcohol ravaged body made her look far older than her thirty-nine years. She had spent many of those final years drinking herself into a stupor while she dreamed of a Hollywood comeback in a town that had forgot-ten her. Unemployable in any capacity as the 1960s progressed, she turned to prostitution. At her lowest ebb Payton sold herself for five dollars a trick up and down Hollywood Boulevard. The press wasn’t kind to her when she was arrested for prostitution and for passing bad checks.

Barbara Payton (1927-1967) is a tragic, cautionary tale of what can happen when mental illness is judged or goes untreated. It should have been obvious to the judges whom she stood before in those 1960s court-room that Payton was a woman in deep crisis and in need of help. No help was forthcoming.

It’s now believed that Payton may have suffered from untreated, undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Nearly four decades after her passing, there’s no way of verifying whether or not Payton actually had a diagnosable mental illness other than acute alcoholism. Based on her well documented behavior, it’s highly unlikely that she was a sane woman. Her hard partying lifestyle in-cluded many affairs in which she brazenly and publicly went after married men at a time when such behavior was considered career suicide. Were these the actions of a woman fully aware of her own behavior? Payton in fact relished all the bad press she received, believing it was proof of her stardom.

The Hollywood power brokers soon began to view Payton as more trouble than she was worth. Her con-tract at Warner Brothers was cancelled barely a year after her star making turn in Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye, in which she had more than held her own against superstar James Cagney. Even after she was reduced to appearing in B movies like Bad Blonde (1953) and Bride of the Gorilla (1951), she remained steadfast in her belief that she was a major box office star. Her par-tying, and her drinking escalated.

One of Payton’s tragedies is that she was a gifted ac-tress. In 1955 she starred in the low budget film noir Murder Is My Beat, which was directed by Edward G. Ulmer, an independent filmmaker who retains a huge cult following to this day. Ulmer had himself been shut out of the studio system years earlier, yet he managed to forge a successful career working as a freelancer for the “poverty row” production companies of the era.

PTSD Memoir - Con’t on page 7

If You Could Read My MindA PTSD Memoir: A Remembrance of Barbara Payton

By David-Elijah Nahmod