Pope Francis has met with a fourth group of transgender people who found shelter at a Rome church, the Vatican newspaper reported Thursday.
L’Osservatore Romano said the encounter took place Wednesday on the sidelines of Francis’ weekly general audience. The newspaper quoted Sister Genevieve Jeanningros and the Rev. Andrea Conocchia as saying the pope’s welcome brought their guests hope.
The Blessed Immaculate Virgin community in the Torvaianica neighborhood on Rome’s outskirts opened its doors to transgender people during the coronavirus pandemic.
Francis previously met with some of them on April 27, June 22 and Aug. 3, the newspaper said.
“No one should encounter injustice or be thrown away, everyone has dignity of being a child of God,” the paper quoted Sister Jeanningros as saying.
Francis has earned praise from some members of the LGBTQ community for his outreach. When asked in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, he replied, “Who am I to judge?” He has met individually and in groups with transgender people over the course of his pontificate.
But he has strongly opposed “gender theory” and has not changed church teaching that holds that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” In 2021, he allowed publication of a Vatican document asserting that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions since “God cannot bless sin.”
Recently, Francis wrote a letter praising the initiative of a Jesuit-run ministry for LGBTQ Catholics, called Outreach. The online resource is run by the Rev. James Martin, author of “Building a Bridge,” a book about the need for the church to better welcome and minister to LGBTQ Catholics.
Francis praised a recent Outreach event at New York’s Jesuit-run Fordham University, and encouraged organizers “to keep working in the culture of encounter, which shortens the distances and enriches us with differences, in the same manner of Jesus, who made himself close to everyone.”
For most of the six decades that monkeypox has been known to affect people, it was not known as a disease that spreads through sex. Now that has changed.
The current outbreak is by far the biggest involving the virus, and it’s been designated a global emergency. So far, officials say, all evidence indicates that the disease has spread mainly through networks of men who have sex with men.
“It clearly is spreading as an STI (sexually transmitted infection) at this point,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
To protect the people at highest risk while trying to contain the spread, public health agencies are focusing their attention on those men — and attacking the virus based on how it’s behaving now.
On Wednesday, the head of the World Health Organization advised men at risk for monkeypox to consider reducing their sexual partners “for the moment.”
But this is a complicated outbreak that may shift in how it spreads and which population groups are most affected. There is also debate about whether monkeypox should be called a sexually transmitted disease, with some critics complaining that the term creates a stigma and could be used to vilify gay and bisexual men.
Monkeypox can spread in nonsexual ways too, and it’s not enough to use condoms or other typical measures for stopping STDs, Inglesby and other experts say.
Here’s what we know.
What makes something an STD?
A sexually transmitted disease is commonly defined as one that mainly spreads through sexual contact. But some STDs can be spread in other ways, too. HIV can spread through shared needles. Syphilis can spread through kissing. A common, parasite-caused sexual infection called trichomoniasis has been found to spread through the sharing of damp, moist objects like sponges or towels.
Monkeypox has not usually spread easily among people, and experts are still trying to understand exactly how it moves from person to person. In Africa, where small outbreaks have been common for years, people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
But in May, cases began emerging in Europe, the United States and elsewhere that showed a clear pattern of infection through intimate contact with an infected person, like many other sexually transmitted diseases.
The public health workers who respond to outbreaks play a large role how they are framed. Much of the work on monkeypox has been done by professionals who operate sexual health clinics or specialize in STDs.
Indeed, the U.S. government’s response needs to be led by people with that expertise, said David C. Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
“The STD field has a wealth of knowledge and expertise in these areas developed over decades fighting various outbreaks and diseases affecting the very communities … we’re seeing monkeypox taking a toll on today,” Harvey said in a statement.
Who is getting monkeypox?
WHO officials said last week that 99% of all the monkeypox cases beyond Africa were in men and that of those, 98% involved men who have sex with men. Experts suspect that monkeypox outbreaks in Europe and North America were ignited by sex at two raves in Belgium and Spain.
The statistics are the same for cases reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As in Europe, cases have emerged in other groups too, including at least 13 people who were female at birth and at least two children.
Last week, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study of hundreds of monkeypox infections in 16 countries. It found that the suspected means of transmission in 95% of the cases was sexual close contact, as reported by doctors. The researchers noted that it was impossible to confirm sexual transmission.
That idea seemed to be further supported by the finding that most of the men had lesions in the genital or anal areas or in the mouth — areas of sexual contact, the researchers said.
Why is there a debate about calling it an STD?
While there is broad agreement among health officials that monkeypox is being transmitted during sexual encounters, some experts debate whether it should be called an STD. They worry that the term unfairly stigmatizes and that it could undermine efforts to identify infections and tame the outbreak.
When a disease is defined as a sexually transmitted infection that mainly affects men who have sex with men, many people may begin to think of it as “a gay disease” that poses no risk to them, said Jason Farley, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
That’s what happened in the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, which contributed to the spread of HIV to other groups. Farley said.
“We learn nothing from our history,” said Farley, who is gay.
The WHO recommendation that at-risk men limit their sexual partners is sensible public health advice, he said. But it also amplifies “the message that this is a gay disease,” he said.
“This is the fine line between having a public health approach that focuses on the epidemiology of now, compared to the likelihood of the continued emergence of new cases in” the general community, he said.
“Monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted infection,” he said. “It is an infection that can be transmitted with sexual contact.”
What is known about transmission?
Some researchers have found evidence of the monkeypox virus in semen. A study in Spain found monkeypox virus DNA in the semen of some infected men, as well as in saliva and other body fluids. But the study didn’t answer whether the virus actually has spread through semen.
Sorting that out could affect the understanding of not only how men spread the infection, but also how long they might be contagious. Evidence of some other viruses — like Ebola and Zika — has been found in the semen of some men months after they were thought to be fully recovered.
Meanwhile, scientists believe the primary route of transmission during the current outbreak has been skin-to-skin contact during sexual encounters with someone who has symptoms. In that respect, it’s similar to herpes, some experts noted.
The virus also may spread through saliva and respiratory droplets during prolonged, face-to-face contact, such as during kissing and cuddling — a kind of spread that can occur outside of sex.
Researchers are exploring how often, and in what situations, that kind of spread might happen, said Christopher Mores, a professor of global health at George Washington University.
“We would do ourselves a disservice to try and exclude anything from the realm of possibility at this point,” he said.
Officials also say people can catch monkeypox from touching items that previously touched an infected person’s rash or body fluids, such as towels or bedsheets. That is thought to explain the infections of the U.S. children.
Why are these details important?
It’s important to understand exactly how monkeypox spreads in order to give people the information they need to protect themselves, health officials say.
That said, health officials believe those who are currently at the highest risk are gay or bisexual men who have sex with multiple partners. That understanding has shaped much of the work to contain the outbreak, including prioritization of the supply of vaccines and treatments.
The government has been shipping a monkeypox vaccine, but the supply is limited. So far it’s only been recommended as a post-exposure treatment or for people who have had multiple sex partners in the past two weeks in a place where monkeypox cases have been reported.
The vaccine is new, and officials are trying to gather data on exactly how well it works.
British health authorities said Friday the monkeypox outbreak across the country may be peaking and that the epidemic’s growth rate has slowed.
The U.K.’s Health Security Agency said in a statement there were “early signs that the outbreak is plateauing,” with 2,859 cases detected since May. No deaths have been reported. Last month, authorities estimated the outbreak was doubling in size about every two weeks, but the number of new infections has dropped in recent weeks.
“While the most recent data suggest the growth of the outbreak has slowed, we cannot be complacent,” said Dr. Meera Chand, Director of Clinical and Emerging Infections at the Health Security Agency. She said anyone who thought they might have monkeypox should skip meeting friends, social gatherings and avoid sexual contact.
The Health Security Agency said its most recent analysis of the outbreak “shows that monkeypox continues to be transmitted primarily in interconnected sexual networks of gay, bisexual, or men who have sex with other men.” More than 70% of the U.K.’s cases are in London.
British officials noted a small number of infections among women, but said there was not enough evidence to suggest there was sustained spread of monkeypox beyond gay and bisexual men; 99% of all cases in the U.K. are in men.
Scientists who analyzed monkeypox viruses in the U.K. noted a number of mutations compared to viruses circulating in Africa, but said there was no evidence those genetic changes made monkeypox any more transmissible.
The World Health Organization said this week that 92% of monkeypox cases beyond Africa were likely infected through sex and its Director-General recently appealed to vulnerable gay and bisexual men to consider reducing their sexual partners “for the moment.”
To date, more than 26,000 monkeypox cases have been reported in nearly 90 countries, with a 19% increase in the last week.
In June, British authorities expanded their vaccination strategy, offering vaccines not only to health workers treating monkeypox patients and high-risk contacts of patients, but to some men who are gay or bisexual and at high risk of catching the virus, including those with multiple sexual partners or who participate in group sex.
Last month, the U.K. downgraded its assessment of the monkeypox outbreak and dropped a recommendation for the contacts of monkeypox cases to isolate for three weeks unless they have symptoms. The change was prompted by data showing that only a small number of contacts are ultimately sickened by monkeypox and a lack of evidence that the disease spreads without close, intimate or sexual contact.
Monkeypox spreads when people have close, physical contact with an infected person’s lesions, their clothing or bedsheets. Most people recover without needing treatment, but the lesions can be extremely painful and more severe cases can result in complications including encephalitis and death.
A 74-year-old retired schoolteacher from a New York City suburb was sentenced to 30 months in prison Wednesday for mailing dozens of violent threats to LGBTQ affiliated individuals, groups and businesses over several years.
According to prosecutors, Robert Fehring threatened to blow up the Stonewall Inn, a historic bar in Manhattan considered the birthplace of the gay rights movement. He also threatened to place explosives at 2021 New York City Pride march that would “make the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting look like a cakewalk,” referring to the 2016 attack in which 49 people were killed and dozens wounded at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Other messages threatened to kill, shoot and bomb LGBTQ affiliated businesses and individuals, including an African American-owned barbershop in Brooklyn that Fehring wrote in one letter “is the perfect place for a bombing.”
Fehring pleaded guilty in February to mailing threatening communications through the postal service.
“We are disappointed in the length of the sentence, but Mr. Fehring is happy to be putting this nightmare behind him,” his attorney, Glenn Obedin, said in an email. “He is deeply remorseful for what occurred, and looks forward to living quietly with his family once he has served his sentence.”
An FBI search of Fehring’s home last November in Bayport, Long Island, yielded two loaded shotguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in addition to copies of letters containing threats. Investigators also found a stamped envelope addressed to an LGBTQ-affiliated attorney containing the remains of a dead bird, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
“Robert Fehring made heinous threats against members of the LGBTQ community in locations throughout New York, including Suffolk County, for nearly eight years,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said in a statement. “Thanks to the tireless efforts of our department’s Hate Crimes Unit detectives and the diligent work of our law enforcement partners, Fehring is being held accountable for his crimes.”
More than 20 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit Tuesday against President Joe Biden’s administration over a Department of Agriculture school meal program that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The challenge, led by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery, claims that the federal government is attempting to force states and schools to follow anti-discrimination requirements that “misconstrue the law.”
The coalition of attorneys general are hoping for a similar result to a separate challenge from earlier this month when a Tennessee judge temporarily barred two federal agencies from enforcing directives issued by Biden’s administration that extended protections for LGBTQ people in schools and workplaces.
The judge sided with the attorneys general, ruling that the directives infringed on states’ right to enact laws, such as banning students from participating in sports based on their gender identity or requiring schools and businesses to provide bathrooms and showers to accommodate transgender people.
“This case is, yet again, about a federal agency trying to change law, which is Congress’ exclusive prerogative,” Slatery said in a statement. “The USDA simply does not have that authority. We have successfully challenged the Biden Administration’s other attempts to rewrite law and we will challenge this as well.”
In May, the USDA announced that it would include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as a violation of Title IX, the sweeping 1972 law that bars sex-based discrimination in “any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” The directive requires states to review allegations of discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as update their policies and signage.
The agency warned that states and schools that receive federal funds, which include the national school lunch program overseen by the USDA, have agreed to follow civil rights laws. Although the agency says it wants voluntary compliance, it also has promised to refer violations to the Department of Justice. It is not clear whether the federal government would hold back funding for school meal programs as part of its enforcement.
The directive followed a landmark civil rights decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020 that, under a provision called Title VII, protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in the workplace.
According to the lawsuit, the attorneys general allege that the USDA’s new directive is based on a “misreading” of the Supreme Court’s ruling and did not provide states and other groups the opportunity to provide public comment.
The attorneys general involved in the lawsuit filed Tuesday are from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
A spokesperson for the USDA did not immediately return a request for comment.
The head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday advised men at risk of catching monkeypox to consider reducing their sexual partners “for the moment” following the U.N. health agency declaring the escalating outbreaks in multiple countries to be a global emergency.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 98% of the monkeypox cases detected since the outbreaks emerged in May have been among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. He called for those at risk to take steps to protect themselves.
“That means making safe choices for yourself and others, for men who have sex with men,” Tedros said. “This includes, for the moment, reducing your number of sexual partners.”
Infectious individuals should isolate and avoid gatherings involving close, physical contact, while people should get contact details for any new sexual partners in case they need to follow up later, the WHO chief said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not suggested that men who have sex with men reduce their sexual partners, only that they avoid skin-to-skin contact with people who have a rash that could be monkeypox.
WHO officials emphasized that monkeypox can infect anyone in close contact with a patient or their contaminated clothing or bedsheets. The U.N. health agency has warned that the disease could be more severe in vulnerable populations like children or pregnant women.
To date, more than 19,000 cases have been reported in more than 75 countries; deaths have only been reported in Africa.
“We know very clearly that one of the main modes of exposure for this particular illness is through direct contact, close contact, skin to skin contact, possibly even face to face contact, exposure to droplets or virus that may be in the mouth,” Dr. Rosamund Lewis, WHO’s technical lead for monkeypox, said.
Andy Seale, a WHO adviser on HIV, hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections, said experts have determined the current monkeypox outbreak is “clearly transmitted during sex,” but he said they have not yet concluded whether it’s a sexually transmitted infection.
Dr. Hugh Adler, who treats monkeypox patients in the U.K., said monkeypox was being transmitted during sex and that sexual networks and anonymous sex with untraceable partners were facilitating its spread.
“It’s just as likely that monkeypox was always capable of transmitting and presenting like this, but it hadn’t been formally reported or so widespread before,” he said.
Last week, British authorities issued new guidance advising doctors that people with just one or two lesions might be infectious with monkeypox, potentially complicating efforts to stop transmission.
The European Union’s health commissioner urged the bloc’s 27 member nations Wednesday to step up their efforts to tackle outbreaks in the EU, which she called “the epicenter of detected cases.”
In a letter to European health ministers obtained by The Associated Press, EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides called for a “reinforced, concerted and coordinated action.”
“There is no time for complacency and we need to continue working together to control the outbreak,” she wrote.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a new state law that will stop police from arresting people for loitering for prostitution, an issue that divided sex workers and advocates during a rare nine-month delay since state lawmakers passed the bill last year.
“To be clear, this bill does not legalize prostitution,” Newsom said in a signing message. “It simply revokes provisions of the law that have led to disproportionate harassment of women” and transgender adults, he said, nothing that Black and Latino women are particularly affected.
The bill will bar police in California from arresting anyone for loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution. Sen. Scott Wiener and other supporters said such arrest decisions often rely on an officer’s perception.
While Newsom said he agreed with the intent of the repeal, “we must be cautious about its implementation.” He said his administration will track crime and prosecution trends “for any possible unintended consequences” and, if so, work to correct them.
“For far too long, California law has been used to profile, harass and arrest transgender and gender-nonconforming people simply for existing in public spaces,” Tony Hoang, executive director of the LGTBQ rights group Equality California, said in praising the repeal.
The measure also will allow those who were previously convicted or are serving sentences to ask a court to dismiss and seal the record of the conviction.
Similar legislation became law in New York last year in what Wiener said is part of a broader effort to end violence toward and discrimination against sex workers.
“Everyone — no matter their race, gender or how they make a living — deserves to feel safe on our streets,” Wiener said in a statement thanking Newsom.
Wiener, Newsom’s fellow Democrat, used a parliamentary maneuver to delay Newsom’s consideration for months after the bill passed the Legislature in September. He hoped the pause would give proponents time to build more support, including by signing an online petition.
Opponents like the California Family Council countered with their own online petition as part of a monthslong tug-of-war.
The American Civil Liberties Union of California sought the legislation along with several groups backing transgender sex workers and others in the sex industry. It has support from public defenders, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and numerous criminal justice reform groups. Voters recently recalled Boudin amid a campaign labeling him as soft on criminals.
The loitering law allows police “to criminalize otherwise legal activities like walking, dressing or standing in public,” the ACLU said.
Moreover, workers who fear arrest for loitering “are more vulnerable to exploitation and violence, and face greater barriers to accessing safe housing and legal employment,” the group argued.
The nonpartisan National Center on Sexual Exploitation took the opposite view, saying that ending the law would make it easier for traffickers and sex buyers to exploit vulnerable people.
Clela Rorex, a former Colorado county clerk considered a pioneer in the gay rights movement for being the first public official to issue a same-sex marriage license in 1975, has died. She was 78.
Rorex died Sunday of complications from recent surgery at a hospice care facility in Longmont, the Daily Camera reported.
Rorex was a newly elected Boulder County clerk when a gay couple denied a marriage license elsewhere sought her help in March 1975. She told The Associated Press in 2014 that she saw a parallel with the women’s movement and found nothing in state law preventing it.
The then-31-year-old agreed and, in the end, issued a total of six licenses to gay couples before Colorado’s attorney general at the time ordered her to stop.
State and federal law didn’t recognize gay marriage at the time. Rorex recalled that she had little public support and didn’t challenge the attorney general.
A recall effort was launched against Rorex, a single mother and University of Colorado graduate student. Suffering from chronic migraines and dealing with hate mail, she resigned halfway through her term.
Colorado legalized gay marriage in 2014 after a state court and a Denver federal court struck down a 2006 ban enacted by state voters. A 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision recognized the fundamental right nationwide.
Jared Polis, Colorado’s first openly gay governor, paid tribute to Rorex upon learning of her passing.
“Her certification of same-sex marriages (until the Attorney General shut her down) was a pivotal moment in the long struggle for marriage equality that led to Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which legalized marriage equality nationally,” Polis wrote on Facebook. “So many families, including First Gentleman Marlon Reis and I, are grateful for the visionary leadership of Clela Rorex, a woman ahead of her time.”
Glenda Russell, a retired writer and LGTBQ community historian, told the Camera that Rorex faced significant backlash after issuing the first license.
“Nationally at the time, most people didn’t take it too seriously because they didn’t worry about it happening again, but in Boulder, the reaction was forceful and mean spirited. She got hit with all the homophobia and heterosexism that the LGBTQ community was facing,” Russell said.
In later years, Rorex advocated for gay and lesbian rights, speaking in schools and expressing exasperation with the slow pace of change.
According to Out Boulder County, an LGTBQ advocacy organization, Rorex was born in Denver on July 23, 1943. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Colorado before running for county clerk and recorder. After resigning as clerk in 1977 she obtained post-graduate degrees and served a legal administrator for the Native American Rights Fund.
A celebration of life was planned for July 23, Out Boulder County said.
The county courthouse in Boulder where she issued the licenses has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
World swimming’s governing body effectively banned transgender athletes from competing in women’s events on Sunday.
FINA members at the organization’s extraordinary general congress voted 71.5% in favor of its new “gender inclusion policy” that only permits swimmers who transitioned before age 12 to compete in women’s events.
“This is not saying that people are encouraged to transition by the age of 12. It’s what the scientists are saying, that if you transition after the start of puberty, you have an advantage, which is unfair,” James Pearce, who is the spokesperson for FINA president Husain Al-Musallam, told The Associated Press.
“They’re not saying everyone should transition by age 11, that’s ridiculous. You can’t transition by that age in most countries and hopefully you wouldn’t be encouraged to. Basically, what they’re saying is that it is not feasible for people who have transitioned to compete without having an advantage.”
FINA’s new 24-page policy also includes proposals for a new “open competition” category. FINA said it was setting up “a new working group that will spend the next six months looking at the most effective ways to set up this new category.”
Pearce told the AP that the open competition would most likely mean more events but those details still need to be worked out.
“No one quite knows how this is going to work. And we need to include a lot of different people, including transgender athletes, to work out how it would work. So there are no details of how that would work. The open category is something that will start being discussed tomorrow,” Pearce said.
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The members voted after hearing presentations from three specialist groups — an athlete group, a science and medicine group and a legal and human rights group — that had been working together to form the policy following recommendations given by the International Olympic Committee last November.
The IOC urged shifting the focus from individual testosterone levels and calling for evidence to prove when a performance advantage existed.
FINA said it recognizes “that some individuals and groups may be uncomfortable with the use of medical and scientific terminology related to sex and sex-linked traits (but) some use of sensitive terminology is needed to be precise about the sex characteristics that justify separate competition categories.”
In March, Lia Thomas made history in the United States as the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. She won the 500-yard freestyle.
Other sports have also been examining their rules.
On Thursday, cycling’s governing body updated its eligibility rules for transgender athletes with stricter limits that will force riders to wait longer before they can compete.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) increased the transition period on low testosterone to two years, and lowered the maximum accepted level of testosterone.
James Rado, co-creator of the groundbreaking hippie musical “Hair,” which celebrated protest, pot and free love and paved the way for the sound of rock on Broadway, has died. He was 90.
Rado died Tuesday night in New York City of cardio respiratory arrest, according to friend and publicist Merle Frimark.
“Hair,” which has a story and lyrics by Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot, was the first rock musical on Broadway, the first Broadway show to feature full nudity and the first to feature a same-sex kiss.
From third left, James Rado, Diane Paulus and Galt MacDermot with cast members during the opening night curtain call for “Hair” at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in New York on March 31, 2009.Walter McBride / MediaPunch/IPx via AP file
Tributes came in from the theater world, including André De Shields, who tweeted “Rest in power, James Rado,” to playwright Michael R. Jackson, whose “A Strange Loop” just won the Tony Award for best new musical. He tweeted “rest in peace.”
“Hair” made possible other rock musicals like “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Rent.” Like “Hamilton,” it was one of only a handful of Broadway shows in the past few decades to find its songs on the pop charts.
The so-called “American tribal love-rock musical,” had its world premiere at the Public Theater in New York City’s East Village in 1967 and transferred the following year to Broadway, where the musical ran more than 1,800 performances. Rado played Claude, a young man about to be drafted and sent to the war in Vietnam.
Clive Barnes, theater critic for The New York Times, called the show “the first Broadway musical in some time to have the authentic voice of today rather than the day before yesterday.” The New York Post said it had “unintentional charm,” contagious high spirits and a “young zestfulness” that “make it difficult to resist.” Variety, however, called it “loony.”
It lost the Tony in 1969 to the more traditional “1776” but won a Grammy Award. The show was revived on Broadway in 1977 and again in 2009, when it won the best revival Tony. It was made into a movie directed by Milos Forman in 1979 starring Treat Williams and Beverly D’Angelo.
The “Hair” Broadway cast album spawned four top four singles on the American pop charts, including the No. 1 hit “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” by the Fifth Dimension, which won the Grammy Award for record of the year and best pop vocal performance by a group in 1970. Others included “Hair” by the Cowsills, “Good Morning, Starshine” by the singer Oliver and “Easy to Be Hard” by Three Dog Night. The cast album itself stayed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for 13 weeks
“Hair” tells the story of Claude and Berger, best buddies who find freedom in the late 1960s. Between draft-card burnings, love-ins, bad LSD trips and a parade of protest marches, the two wander through a New York filled with flower children, drugged-out hippies and outraged tourists who don’t approve of the wild goings-on. In one song, Claude poignantly sings, “Why do I live, why do I die, tell me where do I go, tell me why.”
Will Swenson, who played Berger in “Hair” in the 2009 revival, on Twitter called Rado a “crazy, wonderful psychedelic visionary” and said his show ”changed my life. The tribe is forever.”
The show is playful and chaotic, but there’s also a sense of outrage in its protests against war, racism, sexism, pollution and the general hypocrisy of an era dominated by the American involvement in Vietnam.
“I’d still like ‘Hair’ to be about what it was about then,” Rado told The Associated Press in 1993. “‘Hair’ had a spiritual message, and it has a mystical message I hope is coming through — there’s more to life than the way it’s been devised for us, explained to us, taught to us.”
The songs of “Hair” have been used in everything from the films “Forrest Gump,” “Minions” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” to TV shows like “Glee,” “So You Think You Can Dance” and “My Name Is Earl.” Billboard magazine lists “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” at No. 66 of all-time top 100 songs.
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Some stars who had roles in “Hair” include Diane Keaton, Joe Mantegna, Meat Loaf, Keith Carradine, Donna Summer, Tim Curry, Elaine Paige and David Patrick Kelly and Charlayne Woodard.
At one point there were 14 companies running simultaneously all over the globe, including a London production which ran for nearly 2,000 performances.
In 2019, the original 1968 Broadway cast recording was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden deemed “these aural treasures worthy of preservation because of their cultural, historic and aesthetic importance to the nation’s recorded sound heritage.”
Rado was born in Venice, California, and raised in Rochester, New York, and Washington, D.C. After serving two years in the U.S. Navy, he moved to New York and studied acting with Paula and Lee Strasberg.
Rado was part of the ensemble of the Broadway play “Marathon ’33” in 1963 and played Richard Lionheart in “The Lion in Winter” in 1966 opposite Christopher Walken. He met Ragni when he was cast in the off-Broadway musical “Hang Down Your Head and Die.”
The two were interested in birthing a new kind of show and focused on the hippie scene. They wrote the script while sharing an apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey. Rado originated the “Hair” role of the draftee Claude on Broadway.
“Hair” met resistance across the country. In addition to the use of four-letter words, the flouting of authority, sexual references and gross-out humor, the end of Act 1 had the entire cast strip naked to “Where Do I Go” and there was what many believed was desecration of the American flag.
There were church pickets in Evansville, Indiana. Municipal officials in Chattanooga, Tennessee, denied a request to stage the show, determining that it would not be “in the best interest of the community.” In Denver, police threatened to arrest anyone who appeared nude onstage. A Boston visit was challenged in court on the basis of flag desecration.
The original Public Theater production had cut the nude scene, but the creators wanted it back for the Broadway debut. Under the law at that time, New York City allowed nudity onstage onstage as long as the actors weren’t moving, which is why the whole cast of “Hair” stood together in a row, nude and perfectly still.
After “Hair,” Rado wrote the music and lyrics of the off-Broadway show “Rainbow,” co-authoring the book with his brother, Ted Rado. He later teamed up with Ragni to create the book and lyrics for the show “Sun.” Ragni died in 1991. Rado wrote a new show called “American Soldier” with his brother.
In 2009, Rado, MacDermot and Ragni were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., of the group The Fifth Dimension, were joined onstage by the Broadway cast at the time for a finale that brought the ceremony’s approximately 1,000 guests to their feet. MacDermot died in 2018.
Rado told the Hudson Reporter in 2009 that none of the show’s creators anticipated that it would have such an enormous impact. “We thought we’d stumbled on a great idea, and something that potentially could be a hit on Broadway, never thinking of the distant future.”
He is survived by his brother Ted Rado, sister-in-law Kay Rado, nieces Melanie Khoury, Emily DiBona and Melissa Stuart, great-nieces and a great-nephew.
