Anyone Know This Woman?
From the NY Daily News:
- A New York artist known for her colorful canvases of drag queens and gay pride parades gave $1,000 to help pass California's ban on same-sex marriage.
Maureen Mullarkey, 66, made her sizable contribution to the National Organization for Marriage's "Yes on 8" fund in June, a Daily News review of campaign records found.
The Westchester County woman was one of tens of thousands who poured a total of more than $40 million into the coffers of Proposition 8 support groups - money that helped convince California voters to overturn an earlier court decision granting gays the right to marry in the Golden State.
Questioned outside her home in tony Chappaqua - the same town where Bill and Hillary Clinton live - she refused to discuss her donation last night.
When asked how she could have donated money to fight gay marriage after making money from her depictions of gays, she just said, "So?"
"If you write that story, I'll sue you," she said.
On her Web site, Mullarkey says gay parades are a "marvelous spectacle" and "assertion of solidarity."
"It is an erotic celebration loosed for a day to keep us all mindful that Dionysus is alive, powerful and under our own porch," said Mullarkey, a former art critic for the now-defunct New York Sun.
Gay activists felt betrayed at word of Mullarkey's donation.
"If I were a buyer of her work, I wouldn't buy it anymore," said Charles Leslie, co-founder of Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in Manhattan.
Leslie stopped short of calling for a boycott of Mullarkey's work, but the threat of boycotts was part of the reason supporters of Proposition 8 asked a judge to keep secret the names of most donors.
The federal judge denied the request last Thursday.
PS: I just found a link to the paperwork documenting her donation of $500 to the Swift Boat Veterans. She's a real cookie.
PPS: Is that a painting of Daddy Dynell?
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