Oct. 11 is National Coming Out Day, National Depression Screening Day, It’s My Party Day and National Sausage Pizza Day. While these events suggest a Mad Libs composite (forlorn Papa John’s delivery boy gets in touch with his sexuality at a sausage party?), we’ll focus on the first one: National Coming Out Day.
In Washington, members of the LGBT community will march on D.C. for “equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.” Locally, the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival will be winding down.
Friday’s films include The Campaign (4:45 p.m.), a documentary about the fight to stop California’s controversial Prop 8, followed by the Cuban American comedy Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf? (6:30 p.m.) and Test, an engrossing film about dancers in the early days of the AIDS crisis (8:30 p.m.)
Closing day for the festival is Saturday, capped off with the fizzy comedy G.B.F. (short for Gay Best Friend) at 8:30 p.m.
Also this week, a more solemn occasion will be commemorated: the 20th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard (pictured). Stephen Jimenez has written a controversial new take on Shepard’s murder, The Book of Matt, and he’ll be at Inkwood Books on Wed., Oct. 16, at 7 p.m. to talk about his findings — and hopefully address accusations that his new interpretation “de-gays” the tragedy and plays into the hands of right-wing opposition to hate crime legislation. See if the openly gay author sets the record straight.
This article appears in Oct 3-9, 2013.