Montreal Historic Bathhouse Le 456 Closes After 33 Years, Opponents And Proponents Of North Carolina Referendum Proposing A Constitutional Ban On Same Sex Marriage Begins, One Year Later Controversial Hide/Seek Exhibition Opens In New York, Darren Criss, Chris Zylka, Joe Jonas Shirtless Male-Only Mexican Vacation

Montreal’s famed Le 456 Sauna downtown –open around-the-clock since 1979, with some of their regular customers dating back over a quarter-century – has closed its doors to make way for a new 14-storey condominium building. The historic bathhouse was among the city’s oldest gay-run businesses. But Le 456 owner Dany Rathé says a new-and-improved bathhouse (also located at 456 de la Gauchetiere West) will be incorporated into the new building and will, according to the new 456 website, will be called Le 456 Sauna Industriel. “The sauna was still very nice inside,” says Le 456 Sauna owner Dany Rathé. The bathhouse (called “saunas” in Quebec) boasted a pool, gym, steamroom and Jacuzzi with 74 smaller rooms and 7 double rooms over two floors. It could accommodate 200 customers at any given time. “But the building was very old and if there were [only] 50 customers, the place [was so big] it looked empty,” Rathé says. “So I’m very happy that it will be rebuilt. It’ll be better.” The Montreal Gazette reports that the gay historical importance of the building – built in 1836 – predates Le 456 Sauna, however. The building’s first bathhouse, The Neptune Sauna, was opened in 1973 by Andre Laflamme and Lorne Holiday. At the time Laflamme and Holiday also owned the Crescent Street-located Aquarius Sauna which was firebombed in April 1975 when Montreal’s Gay Village was still downtown, before the exodus east after the 1976 Montreal summer Olympic Games. Three customers died in the Aquarius fire, and two of them — found burnt beyond recognition by the second-floor fire exit — were buried in paupers’ graves because their corpses were never identified or claimed by their families. The Neptune was then raided by Montreal police on May 14, 1976. “They yanked off people’s towels and threw everybody together and took pictures and charged them all with being in a common bawdy house,” says Henri Labelle who was working as the cashier at the Neptune that night (Labelle is now a lecturer at Concordia University). “There was a former mayor’s son there, a government minister, a secretary to the Catholic Archbishop and a couple of cops, but they were ushered out the back door while everyone else was thrown in paddy wagons.” Eighty-nine patrons were arrested and police confiscated The Neptune’s 7,000-name membership list. “The police were mad about collecting people’s names during that period,” says author and award-winning historian Ross Higgins, who also co-founded the Quebec Gay Archives. “I was part of the group that called for a meeting at the student centre at McGill University after The Neptune raid. There were over 100 people there and they were very angry. That was the beginning of modern gay organizing in Montreal and lead to the creation the Association pour les droits des gais du Québec (ADGQ).” The Neptune later closed and The Continental Sauna opened in 1977. “But it was short-lived,” Higgins says. Le 456 Sauna then opened in 1979.

Behind-the-scenes efforts are slowly gearing up for a referendum next May in which North Carolina voters will decide whether to engrave a ban on same sex marriage into the state constitution. Proponents and opponents are assembling campaigns that will raise money and build support for their causes. In an era of growing acceptance of same-sex relationships in the U.S., well-funded national groups that view North Carolina as a flashpoint on the gay marriage issue are preparing to get out their checkbooks. According to The Associated Press, at least one is already spending in a bid to sway the outcome May 8 in the only South-eastern state that doesn't limit marriage to a man and a woman in its constitution. The winning side may need millions of dollars. "Money is what gives us the resources to win," said Jeremy Kennedy, of the newly formed Coalition to Protect North Carolina Families, the referendum campaign committee opposed to the constitutional change. The salaries of two coalition employees already are being paid by the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign. TV or radio ads and campaign mailers are expected to reach voters in the weeks leading up the referendum, although exactly how many will be seen and heard may depend on the polling or perceptions that the outcome is uncertain. Voter registration drives, debates on college campuses and pulpit sermons also are in the works. "There's a massive organization going on, and we are extremely excited about having the opportunity to let our voice be heard," said the Rev. Patrick Wooden, pastor of Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, a predominantly black congregation that supports the amendment. Thirty other states already have approved constitutional amendments designed to prevent same-sex marriage. North Carolina state law already limits marriage to a man and a woman, but amendment supporters persuaded enough General Assembly members in mid-September that voters should be allowed to decide. The new Republican-led majority at the Legislature agreed to consider the question after it was blocked for years when Democrats were in charge. Amendment backers say they want to protect traditional marriage by making it harder for a legal challenge by same-sex couples from other states who want their marriages to be recognized. Opponents said expanding gay rights, and not constricting them, is on the right side of history, pointing to six states and the District of Columbia where same sex marriage is legalized.

When “Hide/Seek,” the National Portrait Gallery’s groundbreaking exhibition of gay themes in American portraiture, became the subject of right-wing Catholic ire a year ago, it looked as if the culture wars might be starting up again after a decade of relative calm. The Catholic League accused the Smithsonian of bigotry, some members of Congress began to take notice, and there was a threat the newly elected Republican House of Representatives might take budget knives to the institution if it didn’t censor the show. The Washington Post reports that the campaign against the exhibition was focused on a video by artist David Wojnarowicz, which included a brief scene of ants crawling on crucifix. Secretary G. Wayne Clough was so addled by the controversy that he immediately capitulated, overruled his own curators and forced the video’s removal from the critically acclaimed exhibition. It was a dark day for the Smithsonian, a successful, coordinated attack on free speech that had the larger cultural world wondering if Clough, who had been the longtime president of Georgia Tech, understood the basic values of humanist scholarship on which the Smithsonian was founded. What a difference a year, and 230 miles, makes. On Nov. 18, “Hide/Seek” reopened at the Brooklyn Museum, with the Wojnarowicz video reinstated. When it closes in February, it will travel to the Tacoma Art Museum. Clough’s blunder not only helped make “Hide/Seek” one of the most popular show ever mounted at the National Portrait Gallery, it continues to bring it new audiences from around the country. The usual people made the usual noises before the Brooklyn opening, but the drama played out very differently. A back-channel effort to censor the show by Brooklyn Catholic Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who wrote a private letter to the museum’s board president asking that the video be removed, failed to gain traction. The Catholic League issued increasingly vitriolic statements about the show, saying that Wojnarowicz, who succumbed to AIDS in 1992, “died of self-inflicted wounds.” But unlike Clough, the Brooklyn Museum’s director, Arnold Lehman, refused to take the bait. “There have been thousands and thousands of pre-programmed e-mails, and what we thought was originally a private correspondence was released to the press, asking that the Wojnarowicz video be pulled,” Lehman says of DiMarzio’s letter. But the video will stay. “We are very conscious that we have a long and committed reputation for freedom of expression and against censorship,” says Lehman. The difference between the leadership styles of Clough and Lehman doesn’t alone account for the successful reprise of the uncensored show in Brooklyn. The cultural politics of Washington and New York are very different. The Brooklyn Museum has long experience serving a uniquely diverse audience and, as “Hide/Seek” co-curator David Ward points out, it isn’t federally funded and doesn’t sit in the center of the nation’s capital. But more than anything else, the pace of cultural change on gay and lesbian issues is so rapid that even a year may have transformed the dynamics.

Glee’s Darren Criss as the lead in the Broadway revival of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying January 3-22, 2012.

Cute Chris Zylka spotted departing Vancouver for Los Angeles.

Joe Jonas and a bevy of men spend time in Mexico, shirtless, naturally.