Gay travel index released; Iowa 14th, Nebraska 30th

Nebraska was 30th, with one point (one point each for having the same age of consent for both heteros and homos and for antidiscrimination legislation (Thank you Omaha) but it lost a point for "hostility of locals." Or, as we like to call it, the Jean Stothert/Franklin Thompson/Hal Daub/Dave Heineman factor.)

Iowa was 14th, with a total of 5 points (two each for antidiscrimination and equal adoption, one each for equal age of consent and marriage equality, but losing a point for "hostility of locals." Or, as we like to say, the Bob Vander Plaats/Chuck Hurley/Danny Carroll factor.)

In last place were Alabama and North Carolina, both -3. In first, New York and Massachusetts, both 8.

Grant Wood, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, painted American Gothic, perhaps the most reproduced and parodied portrait in the history of art. In Iowa City, where he taught art classes at the University of Iowa, he was denounced as a homosexual in a formal departmental complaint lodged by five colleagues. The matter was hushed up. He died of cancer brought on by a severe drinking problem.

Nebraska's greatest novelist, Willa Sibert Cather (1873-1947) was born on Pearl Harbor Day before it was Pearl Harbor Day. H.L. Mencken, the cynic's cynic, said “No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Antonia.”

The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial ridiculously denied that she was a lesbian, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

Cather left Nebraska to live in Pittsburgh (a great city!) and, later, Greenwich Village in New York City.

H/T: JMG