Darkside Rainbow

Since when is this news?

Ah…right. Since homosexuality is not only a choice, but a sin and an abomination.

I’m grateful to the scientific community for working so diligently to validate homosexuality as a natural and acceptable thing, but I have about as much hope that that information will be accepted by the mainstream public as I have that a die-hard creationist will accept the theories of evolution.

Moving on: I’m in the mood to be ten different kinds of catty today, and thankfully I’ve got Roseanne Barr’s big fat mouth to take it out on. Who’s up for a little celebrity snarking?

I’m sure we’ve all heard about her little debacle on that California radio station.

Oh? We haven’t? Well, let me give you a little taste of what she said. In a rant worthy of Trashy Celebs, Roseanne spewed,

“Never once in my 54 years have I ever once heard a gay or lesbian person who’s politically active say one thing about anything that was not about them. They don’t care about minimum wage, they don’t care about any other group other than their own self because you know, some people say being gay and lesbian is a totally narcissistic thing and sometimes I wonder.”

Well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle fat - oops, I mean black. I don’t know who poured sand in her va-hoo-hoo, but maybe someone with a gay pride bumper sticker cut her off in traffic on her way to the radio station.

While I’m not surprised that Roseanne’s been mouthing off - she made a career out of it, after all - I am a little disgusted to hear that coming from her mouth after she received the Trevor Project’s Annual Life Award. I hope she’s never manning those suicide hotlines. She might just tell them, “Oh, just shut up about yourself and go on and do it, kid. Remember it’s down the road, not across the street.”

Roseanne made the domestic goddess famous - a figure that was once expected to stay behind closed doors, do the laundry, mop the floor, and not expect to be noticed for her hard work. Roseanne didn’t quite demand acknowledgment, but she gained it anyway through her hard-edged, bluntly honest and humorous portrayal of the life of the modern American housewife. Roseanne made a career out of talking about herself, basically. She brought the domestic goddess out of the closet and the laundry room.

So explain to me how the efforts of gay activists to be recognized in the same way are narcissistic, and yet her shtick isn’t?

Oh? It’s comedy? Sure, it’s comedy, but it made her famous. It put her in the limelight where everything could be about her (hello, self-titled sitcom). She has no right to talk about someone else’s narcissism. Nor is she particularly well-informed enough to do so; she may want to spend a bit of time perusing this list of gay politicians, followed by this list of lesbian politicians. Look at those rosters of both elected and appointed officials, look at their accomplishments and agendas, and tell me that they focus only on themselves and their sexuality. Tell me that they don’t have other issues on their political platforms. Women’s rights. Abortion. Public schools. Minimum wage. Taxes. Welfare. All the major issues that matter to voters, no matter the state or country. Look at those people, see them as people and not as generalities falling under the gay and lesbian label, and tell me that they don’t care about anything but themselves. I dare you.

You can’t, can you.

It’s nice that sometimes you wonder, Roseanne. Sometimes I wonder, too.

I wonder how the world looks through the eyes of someone suffering from such a severe case of rectal-cranial inversion.

Well! I feel better now. Who’s up for coffee? Anyone? Promise, I only used three cups of grounds for the pot today instead of the typical ten. The lining of your stomach is safe. Stop by, sit down, have a cup. I’d like to have a chat anyway. In fact, I’ve been thinking about instituting an “Ask Adri” feature - maybe once a week, maybe more, depending on if anyone…well…asks Adri anything. Think of it as a gay Ann Landers, only with a little more spice.

Need advice? Curious about something? Just feel like setting yourself up as a target for a little good-natured snarking? E-mail me at adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net with the subject line “Ask Adri Question” or use the contact form on this website to send me a message.

Well, that’s it from me for today. ’scuse me if I vented my spleen a little.

roseanne, roseanne barr, roseanne arnold, celebrity gossip, celebrity trash, gay-bashing, gay science, gay genetics

I only remember three dates on a regular basis: payday, my birthday, and the day that income taxes are due. Payday isn’t for another ten days, my birthday’s today, and income tax filings are due in a week. Guess which one’s the most prominent on my mind?

Unfortunately, it’s not where I’ll be having martinis tonight with a select group of friends (translated: the smallest number of people that I, as an antisocial cynic, can get away with). The due date is seven days away and I’m still sorting out the 1099s from my various freelance writing gigs, working out how much I owe the government in self-employment taxes, and stubbornly refusing to write out a check to H&R Block so they can tell me that I have to write out a much bigger check to good ol’ Uncle Sam.

I’m also remembering last year, when I knew exactly how the couples mentioned in this 365gay.com article felt:

(Washington) Gay and lesbian families pay higher federal income tax than their opposite-sex married counterparts. Once again the Internal Revenue Service is warning tax preparers, businesses and state governments that same-sex couples legally married in Massachusetts, who have had civil unions in New jersey, Connecticut or Vermont, or who are registered as domestic partners in states such as California must file separate income tax forms. [...] “Each tax season, same-sex couples sit at their dining room tables and are forced to live a legal lie by checking single despite their decades together - arbitrarily dividing up their joint households income, expenses, and dependents,” said Molly McKay, a spokesperson for Marriage Equality, a group that represents gay families.

At this time last year I was engaged to be married to the man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. And as I checked off that ’single’ box on my tax forms I couldn’t help wondering: what’s the point? What’s the point of marrying him when for the rest of my life I’ll probably be lying and checking off that ’single’ box anyway because the U.S. government won’t ever recognize our union? What’s the point of any of this when sometimes, all it amounts to is a self-delusional farce that lets us play at legitimacy?

I know, I know. The point would be to marry him because I loved him. Love. Hell, I still loved him when I dumped him a couple of weeks ago. And although we’ve figured out that our relationship really cannot work…if gay marriage became legal at the federal level tomorrow, I’d marry his butt (and the rest of him) in a heartbeat, to have and to hold, ’till death do us part. Simply on principle.

Simply to stake my claim as something other than a second-class citizen.

One of the simultaneous safeguards and pitfalls of U.S. law is that federal law trumps state law almost every time. In this case federal laws are telling us that even in states where the people have voted to finally acknowledge our right to legal unions, the government will override the will of those people and tell gay couples that their union doesn’t really exist outside their state’s borders. The government is sticking their heads in the sand, saying “we refuse to see this”. And then they’re shoving our heads in the sand whether we want them to be there or not, and trying to convince us that the dark little patch of grit filling our eyes is the only place where we’re legitimate, while the rest of the beach just doesn’t acknowledge us - even if the rest of the beach is welcoming us with open arms.

All right, the analogy’s getting a little out of hand. The point is…last I checked, the phrase was “for the people, by the people” (and let’s not forget “with liberty and justice for all“). So what gives the IRS the right to completely veto decisions made by the people to give married gay couples the same rights and benefits as married straight couples? Oh, right, I forgot. That lovely little flag they love to wave around, the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. Thank you, Mr. President, for signing that one into life and providing a way to circumvent Full Faith and Credit.

As much fun as it is to point the accusatory finger at George W. for everything these days, responsibility for that one lies on Clinton’s shoulders. Dubya’s just responsible for being a hell of a lot louder in his drum-pounding for the - wait for it, wait for it - protection of the sanctity of marriage. If he keeps forging on the way he is, he’ll be responsible for a hell of a lot more, like his precious Federal Marriage Amendment.

When all else fails, abuse presidential power and try to amend the Constitution to suit your personal bigotry. Ah, the fun of being president: not only do you get to have shiny toys, your shiny toys let you take away other people’s shiny toys whether it’s fair, just, or right.

…that sentence used the phrase “shiny toys” far too much.

Over the decades, but increasingly over the past two presidential terms, a key fact has been forgotten: Dubya’s role, and that of all presidents, is not just that of a leader. It’s that of a public servant - and whether our current president and the jackals at the IRS wants to admit it, every member of the GBLTQ community is a member of the general public just like any other.

Serve us. Not yourself.

Serve not only the people who put you in office, but the people who keep you there with their levied taxes.

Don’t punish us for being who we are. Don’t reward others for discriminating against us.

Remember your place, President Bush.

And serve us.

gay marriage, irs, taxes, civil unions, gay rights, gay and lesbian couples, tax benefits, defense of marriage act, full faith and credit, federal marriage amendment

There’s a plethora of topics that I could start with for my first post of the week - such as the proposed repeal of the law blocking gay marriage in Massachusets, the probable veto of California’s gay marriage bill, or the Federal ruling on a Florida school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. I probably will discuss these things later, when I feel like tackling what feels like the same old news in the same old fight with nothing changed but the names, cities, and states. I know we need to fight the good fight and always stay informed, but sometimes I think we all get tired of fighting. Sometimes I think we even forget why we’re fighting.

So as I look at a fresh start to a new week and mull over a mug of coffee so dark it borders on lethal, I can’t help thinking of why I feel the need to speak out openly for equal rights, and remembering my own story - partially prompted by reading Lyndsey’s story over on Lez Keep it Real. She told of how she came out as a lesbian, and reminded me of a news story I’d glanced over last week, bookmarked for possible later discussion, and then slid on past.

Dodd asks: What if your child were gay? - Yahoo News

CONCORD, N.H. - Democratic presidential hopeful Chris Dodd told high school students Wednesday that people debating gay marriage should ask themselves just one question: What would you do if your child were gay? Dodd said anyone who would deny a gay child the right to be happy isn’t being honest.

While I admire Dodd for his perspective, I have to shake my head at his naivete. The man’s a lovely idealist, and unfortunately idealists tend to have their hopeful spark crushed out like a cigarette butt in the ashtray of dirty mainstream politics. “They may grow up as a different sexual orientation than their parents,” Dodd said. “How would I want my child to be treated if they were of a different sexual orientation?”

I think that he’d be horribly surprised by the answer that many parents might give him - parents who have thrown their children out, disowned them, cursed them, even abused them or endorsed abuse towards them for being gay. I’ve heard coming-out stories that could give him nightmares (heck, they give me nightmares) and leave a few ugly scars on that beautiful idealism.

My own coming-out story isn’t particularly gruesome, but it was harsh enough to destroy my idealism at a fairly young age. Growing up gay in the south, even in a more “liberated” metropolis like New Orleans, was rather like being in the military: people might or might not like what you did behind closed doors, but they wouldn’t ask as long as you didn’t tell. It was the same with my parents - heck, my entire family. They’d always known that I was going to be “just a bit off” somehow, but as long as I didn’t end up on America’s Most Wanted, they really didn’t want to know. Sometimes I didn’t want to know; it would have made things easier if I hadn’t the faintest inkling that I was just a little different from most of the other boys.

Instead it was like living in a glass cage - able to see out, able to be seen, and yet never able to reach through and touch. The wonderful and horrible nature of glass was that it was invisible until the light reflected off it just right…and often I wondered if anyone saw the light from my cage, both feared and hoped that they did. I peered through the transparent bars and hoped to see those refracted bits shimmering around others, hoped that somewhere I’d find someone who carried the same terrible secret that rested so heavily on my shoulders. I was terrified, you see. Terrified to say a single word, terrified to even ask, because I was afraid that my friends, my family, the entire world would reject me.

I suppose that began with my parents. They weren’t bad people, certainly weren’t bad parents despite my mother’s bipolar temper swings that early on taught me how to move like a small animal in the undergrowth, creeping past a sleeping wolf. But they weren’t particularly accessible people, either. They weren’t parents that you could talk to, parents that you could turn to for emotional support. They were parents who would do anything for their kids…anything but deal with them as people.

Conversations with my father usually consisted of me babbling while he smiled vaguely and watched television. My mother wouldn’t even make any pretense of listening; she’d work her mouth angrily and stare at whatever she was doing until I got the hint and went away. She rarely spoke back save for to tell me that I was wrong. Wrong about what I wanted to be when I grew up, wrong about who I wanted to play with as a child, wrong about who I thought I was. When I tried to talk to her about my budding sexuality, tried to tell her that I was confused and needed guidance, I got the equivalent of a “shut up and don’t ever bring this up again”.

Don’t ask, don’t tell. Not even with your family.

And don’t even get me started on my older sisters.

Needless to say I was a miserable and brooding child, who turned into a miserable and brooding teenager (is there any other kind?). Because I couldn’t understand myself I couldn’t relate to other people very well, and found shelter in books. Like many an outcast I took refuge in fantasy worlds, where people were explained as tidy packages that made sense, all spelled out in neatly-arranged letters. I was afraid to make friends; with my parents the threat always loomed over my head that if I finished the sentence that I never had the courage to start, some terrible punishment would descend. Banishment. Rejection. That fear of rejection extended to my almost nonexistent social life; even when others reached out to me, I thrust them away, rejected them before they could reject me. Then I dealt with my mother’s snide commentary on my limited circle of friends, and how socially maladjusted I was. I lived in an environment of constant criticism, which didn’t exactly help my shrinking-violet nature. Nothing I ever did was good enough, down to the clothing that I chose - neat, simple, but just not masculine enough for my mother. Even when refusing to acknowledge that her son might be gay, she was trying to keep my secret. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she’d make me straight. I’m sure she hoped so.

It sounds like a broken record to blame my mother for everything, doesn’t it? My mother instilled my fear of rejection that’s survived to affect my relationships even now; my mother made me bitter at a young age; my mother gave me low self-esteem. On one hand, that’s a cop-out. On the other hand, the hand that rocks the cradle is the one that can affect you the most strongly in your life. When you’re a child, mother is god. Mother is the Madonna, mother is the angel, mother is protector and punisher all in one. Mother is loved with a blind adoration, and her smallest frown can make it rain. Any child wants to please his mother. I was no different. On the surface I hated her with a viciousness that made us clash from the moment my smart-mouthed little self learned to speak. Underneath, all I wanted was for her to love me - if not as this thing that she was ashamed of, then as whatever she needed me to change into to be worthy of her love.

Without even meaning to, she made me deeply ashamed of being gay. It’s no coincidence that despite numerous secret relationships in high school that left me feeling as if I’d hidden a dead body rather than kissed a boy, I didn’t come out publicly until I escaped my mother’s influence to attend university several states away.

In university, more came out than just my sexuality. My entire personality blossomed; I learned to laugh, I learned to joke, I learned how to walk with my head held high rather than hunched down between my shoulders. I dressed to be attractive, rather than to be as plain and unassuming as possible. I flirted. I enjoyed myself. And I joined a GBLTQ foundation on campus. The moment I signed that membership roster was the moment that I became openly gay.

I have a friend to thank for that. For the sake of privacy we’ll just call him S; he was an older student, one that I talked to sometimes in classes but more at night, chatting online on AIM. I’m not even going to pretend that S was sane. I still don’t think S is sane; that boy’s got problems that make my middle-class sexuality issues look as trivial as a mosquito bite. But he made me feel as if it was okay to share my secrets; if he could confide his rather twisted thoughts to me, why would he possibly care if I happened to say, in the safe and toneless text of an IM window, that I was gay?

Nonetheless, it took weeks of conversation before I told him. I choked, I stalled, I fidgeted, I backspaced, and finally I said, “I’m gay. Is that okay?” Even then I felt as if I had to ask permission. As if I was kneeling at my mother’s feet, waiting for the axe to descend.

It was almost anticlimactic when S only said, “I knew that already.” Anticlimactic, terrifying, and relieving all at once. He’d known? How many other people knew? How obvious was I? But he knew - he knew, and yet in all this time he’d still hung out with me, still talked to me, still confided his secrets in me. He probably also knew that I had a small crush on him despite the fact that he was straight, and yet…he didn’t care.

He didn’t care.

I think that I needed that more than I needed anyone’s gushing acceptance. I needed to know that it was so commonplace, so normal, that my friends didn’t even care that I was gay, so neither should anyone else. I needed to stop feeling like a leper hiding under the skin of a normal boy, and just relax.

I still avoided him in real life for a week, until he hunted me down and told me to get over it.

And I did get over it. I got over it, I came out, I moved on.

Then I went home for spring break.

Bitter memory and skewed perspective said that my mother saw the new confidence in me and wanted to crush it before she could no longer control me. I’m old enough to know now that that wasn’t entirely true - but nonetheless the barrage on my self-esteem started the moment I walked in the door. What had I done with my hair? What was I wearing? What was that rainbow pin on my messenger bag? Did I want to disgrace the entire family?

No. No, I didn’t.

But I sure as hell didn’t want to fall out of grace with myself, either.

Telling my mother in no uncertain terms that I was gay started a fight that lasted for four years, a war fought with weapons of barbed words that hurt us both, terrible things said through grit-toothed smiles even as we put on the pretense of being a single family unit, us against the world. No conversation could go by without one side or the other tossing in a veiled accusation regarding it. That hatred for my mother festered and swelled until I was nearly bloated with it; I had convinced myself that she didn’t care about me as her son, only as a representative of her precious image, and despite the fact that I was a fairly good child - intelligent, creative, drink and drug free, and responsible for less than a fifth of the wild antics that each of my older sisters had managed to get into - I was worthless as long as I was publicly gay and supposedly tarnishing her reputation. To my credit, I refused to back down. I was out, and I was staying that way.

It didn’t stop me from crying myself to sleep nights after every last one of those fights. It didn’t stop me from hating myself, thinking that I was worthless, stupid, talentless, and unattractive, constantly needing affirmation from others to remind myself otherwise and yet too ashamed to even seek it. No matter how much I told myself that I hated her, I still needed her to accept me more than anything else.

The war finally culminated in one last grand battle, a few months after my graduation from university. I was staying with my family while I looked for a job after uni, and in such close quarters after years of separation things finally came to a head. I don’t even remember what sparked the final fight; it wasn’t anything to do with my sexuality, but by the time it was over and I finally told my mother what I’d been aching to say to her for years - something best not repeated in polite company - that old horse had been dragged out and beaten into dog food.

And I was on my way out the door, not to speak a word to a single member of my family for almost four years.

In that time I moved back to Texas, found work, grew up a little, blitzed my way through a few bittersweet relationships, and started to get over things. Started to get over her, mainly by forgetting my mother and anyone else with any kind of blood tie to me save for my grandmother, the most beautifully loving and wry woman on the face of the earth. As bitter as it was, it was actually good for me; it gave me a chance to start over as myself, rather than this hybrid of who I was and who my family wanted me to be or told others that I was. No expectations other than my own; no belittling influence that could cut me down just as well over the phone as it could in person. Everyone in Houston knew me on my own terms, rather than on my family’s terms. It allowed me to settle, grow comfortable enough in my sexuality that it was no longer an issue that affected how I presented myself to others, and finally stop being afraid that everyone who met me would find something lacking in me and eventually reject me.

I thought I’d be happy never speaking to a single person in my family again, until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Even as I dialed frantically I told myself that I only cared because of my grandmother; that my grandmother’s line wasn’t working, so I had to call my mother, my father, anyone who could tell me that she was all right. When I couldn’t get through to anyone, I panicked.

When my mother actually called me - not knowing that I’d been trying to reach her - from her refuge at my uncle’s in Baton Rouge, I cried from relief. Not just that my grandmother was all right, but that my mother, the woman that I swore that I hated, the woman that made me ashamed to be gay, was alive. Some ties you just can’t break, even when you want to.

In the time since then we’ve started talking more regularly. It’s hard for both of us. It’s difficult for her to accept me as an adult, and as someone other than the person she decided that I was. It’s also difficult for her to accept me as gay, but she will try to talk to me about it, occasionally. I try to be considerate and not bring it up too often so as not to make her uncomfortable, but there are times when I refuse to avoid saying “my boyfriend” in a sentence just because she can’t handle it. She still makes snide comments, sometimes even nasty ones. Sometimes I take the high road and brush them off. Sometimes I’m regrettably human and I fire back.

I don’t hate my mother anymore, even if I don’t particularly like her. But I refuse to let her make me feel shame anymore.

The fact that I can accept myself now doesn’t mean that she can accept me on more than limited terms, and I get the feeling that she’ll be making her nasty little comments for the rest of her life. That’s okay. I don’t have to let them bother me anymore. And strangely enough, I know that she loves me even though I’m gay. What bothers me is that she loves me despite the fact that I’m gay, rather than loving me regardless of it. There’s a difference.

But the point, and a lesson for Chris Dodd, is that sometimes parents can be as cruel or crueller than outsiders. Some parents can and do reject their children for being gay, and don’t care if we have equal rights or not, as long as we’re not around embarrassing them.

It’s sad, but it’s reality.

When looking at it that way, I wish that I could have a touch of Dodd’s idealism. I don’t, and I can’t remember when I did.

But I do remember why I fight. I remember why I speak up for myself. I remember that no one can or will make me ashamed of who I am - and I remember that we have to be strong enough to support ourselves when even our own flesh and blood abandons us.

I remember who I am.

And I remember that I’m worth fighting for.

gay life, gay rights, coming out, gay stories, homosexuality, gay in the south

In case you don’t know, last night the “Happy Birthday, Elton” show, commemorating Elton John’s 60th birthday and 60th performance in the Madison Square Gardens, aired on The Network Formerly Known as UPN–also called My Network TV, the channel that people watch when they don’t have cable and can’t find anything else on. After suffering through two hours of badly-sequenced concert footage interlaced with clips of celebrities spouting the equivalent of a verbal handjob for Sir Elton John while set against backgrounds that looked like a bad acid flashback, I can see why the overly long tribute ended up on My Network TV. It’s the only place fitting for something so camp that even deliberately camp shows cringe in embarrassment.

I willingly admit, I’ve mostly missed the boat on gay pop culture. I’m geek-gay, not trendy-gay. I don’t watch much TV, and my tastes in music range over many genres and many decades rather than sticking to the pop-culture icons that make the “fabulous” list. You’ll find me reading Slashdot before I read Perez Hilton, and frankly while I like Tori Amos’s music, I don’t understand why she’s worshiped as diva and goddess to the mainstream gay man.

And so I don’t understand why Elton John is such a sensation as a gay icon, despite his outrageousness–which admittedly, in its time, was actually something novel instead of the commonplace scene that the strange and outré have become now. I don’t find his music or even his voice particularly appealing save for in one or two songs, and I don’t understand how he came to be the tubby gay Elvis of the twenty-first century. Maybe I’m just not cool enough to get it.

What I do get, however, is that he’s done remarkable things for the gay community simply as a hardworking individual, and with his HIV/AIDS foundation. With that in mind I could easily see a half-hour-long special, even an hour, discussing his life and his achievements. I’d watch, I’d smile, I’d say “Good man, he deserves it”…

…rather than wishing, more than anything, that I could have back the two hours I spent slogging through that droning, ill-produced mess.

The only reason that I didn’t flip it off 30 minutes through was because I thought, for the sake of this blog, that I should watch the entire thing in case anything noteworthy happened. This is a gay blog, Elton John is a gay icon, therefore I had a duty to suffer through light displays that could induce a seizure, Kate Thornton wearing enough makeup to easily pass as a drunken prostitute, Jim Carrey’s usual unsuccessful attempts at spontaneous humor (while sporting my haircut, which I wear well and he, unfortunately, does not), and Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters declaring that a man who looks like a Troll Doll that got its hair chopped off by a lawnmower is a sex symbol.

There’s camp, and then there’s tacky. This crossed the line into tacky.

I mean, seriously. There were at least five montages of various celebrities, most of them former A-listers sliding quickly down the slope to B-listers, saying the same ego-stroking thing over and over in different words to the point where my eyes glazed over and I simply tuned them out. Then again, I did the same through Elton’s performances. It was either that or spend my time trying to figure out if he was drunk, had a speech impediment, or simply wasn’t singing in English–only some slurred pidgin language that happened to bear a passing resemblance to the mother tongue. And honestly, who needs to come parading out in a suit coat emblazoned with some unintelligible logo about 60 years while one’s name lights up in ten-foot-tall rainbow letters and Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and Bernie I-don’t-care-what-your-last-name-is lead the crowd in an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday”?

I don’t think anyone could deny that Elton John is a gloriously unrepentant diva riding on decades of egomania, but my gods, I’ve seen presidential tribute specials that ran shorter than this, with less repetitious grinding in of how spectacular His One-ness is–and if I’d seen one more shot of Elton’s oh-so-clever hands, his “I’m concentrating so hard I look like I need Metamucil” expression or various people in the crowd sashaying around yet again, I think I’d have gone off my bloody rocker. If I want to see (arguably) attractive men dancing badly I can go to one of dozens of local gay bars, where I can at least join in the fun of dancing with them. By about the second celebrity montage and the third camera cycle through hands-face-crowd-face-crowd-face-hands, it was a relief when Kate Thornton appeared to once again remind us what we were suffering through watching and that we’d be right back after commercials. Great.

Honestly, after thinking back I’m wondering if the commercials weren’t the sole motivation behind this spectacle. The show went to commercial break practically every five minutes (no doubt the reason for the length)–all of which looked as if their production budgets were twice as large as what was spent to hack that tribute together. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the airing of the show, although not the performance itself, was mainly to use the lure of Elton John’s name to attract as many people as possible before flashing as much product as the besieged eyes could tolerate at the spellbound viewers.

In that light, despite his grandstanding–which can kindly be called showmanship–the interminable dullness of the show can’t really be dumped at the feet of Elton’s ego. I’m sure he didn’t ask for the TV audience to be subjected to Simon Cowell’s sad attempts at dour wit, Celine Dion’s unintelligible babbling, or the minute that Mariah Carey spent focusing less on what she was saying and more on posing to make sure that the camera caught her breasts at the best angle. Heck, he didn’t even have to endure them, and he was still looking rather bored and impatient by the end of his performance. I got the distinct impression that he was getting just about as tired of the whole thing as I was.

So despite that sadly off-kilter excuse for a tribute: happy (one day late) birthday, Elton John. I’m glad you made it to 60 years, and I hope that after that show you went home to a quiet evening and a bottle of bubbly. I recognize your contributions even if I don’t quite understand your appeal, and I’m glad for what you’ve done for the gay community.

Now will you please tell your fan club to sit down and shut up about it?

celebrities, gay celebrities, gay icons, gay tv, elton john, happy birthday elton, elton john’s birthday

In a bit of a follow-up to this post:

“Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, the head of Italy’s bishops’ conference, was under police guard after “Shame on you Bagnasco” was spray-painted on the doors of his Cathedral of San Lorenzo over his comparison of gay rights to incest and pedophilia. He made the comments at a meeting of church workers over the weekend, according to a newspaper report.” - NY Times

Excuse me while I allow myself an immature little giggle and wonder if the spray-paint was pink.

Ahem. Yes. Now let’s put our adult caps back on and remind ourselves that vandalism is bad, kiddos. Very, very bad. So is saying such hateful things about homosexuals when one is supposed to be a representative of a faith that believes in one love under a benign God, but still. Vandalism is bad.

I’m really torn on what to say about this. Part of me feels a fiendish glee that Bagnasco now has a taste of what it feels like to be persecuted for his beliefs and/or lifestyle. I know it’s wrong to feel that way, and I’m shaking a stern finger at that devil on my shoulder even while it snickers at me mockingly. Mainly, though, I admire that someone had the courage to say something to the Archbishop, and that they chose to say something that had meaning–”shame on you”–rather than simply something vulgar and profane. It needed to be said–although I’d prefer that it had been said in the form of a letter or even a picketer’s sign, rather than through petty vandalism.

Nonetheless, someone needed to say it. Shame on you, Bagnasco. Shame on you for comparing the consenting love of two adults to acts of fornication that are lewd, obscene, and downright wrong. Pedophilia is a disease, my dear Archibishop. It’s a disease that causes unnatural and, most importantly, harmful desires. The actions of pedophiles can and do destroy the lives of children, and can affect them for the rest of their lives. Incest is a taboo act that may be somewhat acceptable in the animal world, but that has no place in the human world; at the very least, it’s wrong in the fact that generations of inbreeding can lead to deformities, mental retardation, and other defects caused by a closed gene pool with too many genetic similarities.

How does homosexuality destroy lives? How does it cause birth defects, or other physical repercussions? Homosexuality is not a disease, and it doesn’t harm anyone any more than heterosexuality does. For a woman to say “I love you” to another woman is as valid and wholesome as it would be for her to say it to a man. For a man to kiss another man is no less a healthy, acceptable expression of love or desire than it would be were he to kiss a woman. Love is love, no matter the gender of the people that share it. As long as it’s between two consenting (and unrelated) adults, there’s nothing unnatural about it.

Shame on you, Bagnasco, for not opening your heart and mind enough to understand that.

gay marriage, politics, catholic church, separation of church and state, archbishop bagnasco, gay rights

Or so my Chinese ex-boyfriend tells me; I’ll have to take his word for it, considering that I only speak three words of Cantonese and only one of them is fit for polite company.

So what does tai hou lah have to do with anything?

Quite a bit when you check out Chinese website phoenixtv.com. (You may need to use a free website translation service like Babel Fish to navigate, or you could just load the English version of the site.) Starting tomorrow, Phoenix TV will be host to a new Chinese show called “Tongxing Xianglian” or “Connecting Homosexuals” - which, according to this CNN.com article, is “the country’s first show to focus on gay issues and the first with an openly homosexual host.”

Host Didier Zheng (left) is looking pretty fabulous himself, with his laid-back air of casual stylishness, that trendy little puff of disheveled hair, and a touch of James Dean in that “rebel with a cause” look. More than just a pretty face, though, Zheng is an educated activist and member of the Chi Heng Foundation.

Considering China’s history of tolerance (or lack thereof) towards homosexuality since the formation of the People’s Republic of China, this is a rather heartening step, and one taken in a relatively short amount of time since homosexuality was finally removed from the recognized list of mental disorders in 2001. I’m honestly not sure, considering the level of government censorship of media in China, how freely Zheng will be able to speak on his show…but I’ll be watching anyway and hoping to get my hands on an English-language translation (or a very patient ex-boyfriend) so I can follow along.

In the light of Zheng’s activist roots I’d like to hope that he’ll be able to make large steps in promoting public acceptance of homosexuality in modern Chinese culture as something more than a despicable influence of Western culture, but in truth I can’t help but wonder how long the show will last before it’s pulled from the ‘net. That’s not my rampant cynicism and pessimism speaking; that’s an unfortunate dose of realism when looking at the facts that 1. 2003 was the first time that gay rights were discussed openly when the proposition of allowing homosexual marriages was rejected, and 2. the Chinese government keeps a stranglehold on what’s considered acceptable for public internet consumption. One wrong word and the show could be culled in a heartbeat.

For now, though, I’ll swallow my cynicism and look on the bright side: people worldwide are taking steps to acknowledge homosexuals as accepted, functioning, and - most importantly - normal members of society. Even in places where free speech is often suppressed, we’ve been given a voice, and a chance to speak out on our own behalf.

I’d say that’s pretty tai hou lah, myself.

gay tv, didier zheng, china, Tongxing Xianglian, Connecting Homosexuals

Gay activists charged with trespassing at Covenant College in Ga. - Boston Globe

“TRENTON, Ga. –Deputies charged four gay activists including a Connecticut woman with trespassing at Covenant College, a northwest Georgia private school affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America. [...] Brad Voyles, dean of students at Covenant, said the Soulforce group had earlier refused a campus offer of meetings with student leaders, administrators and faculty in a designated room. Administrators refused to allow the group members to “roam campus and meet with anyone of their choosing,” according to a Feb. 8 statement on the college website.”

Now, I could start frothing at the mouth about certain parts of that article, such as the listing of homosexuality as a “sexual sin”. But I’m going to have to abstain (no pun intended) in favor of saying: what the heck, Soulforce? I know I’m probably swimming against the current here by not blindly supporting all activities of gay activists, but frankly I think that Covenant College’s campus administrators were perfectly justified in calling the police. Excuse me for not being so outrageously pink that my rose-colored glasses blind me to common sense.

This isn’t making a stand for gay rights. This is blatant, immature stupidity.

C’mon, guys, you’re making us look bad.

Let’s forget, for a moment, that we’re talking about gay activists here. Let’s say we’re just talking about a group of four random adults, whose intentions and backgrounds are only marginally known to the school’s administration. These adults want to wander unchecked among a host of students, speaking to them unsupervised, with or without faculty approval. It doesn’t matter what they intend to speak to them about; it doesn’t change the fact that their intentions and what they consider to be acceptable behavior are unknown. It also doesn’t change the fact that if they do something unacceptable, the school administration would be held responsible by the parents of the students.

I wouldn’t care if they were Girl Scout troop leaders bearing an armada of fiendishly addictive cookies; I wouldn’t let them on my campus unsupervised, either. Ever heard of CYA? When you’re responsible for a large body of students you worry about covering your bottoms and theirs before anything else, or you could risk far more than simply being labeled a bigot.

It should tell you something that even the students warned the representatives of Soulforce that they could be arrested for trespassing. This isn’t a matter of discriminating against Soulforce for advocating tolerance of homosexuality; if that were the case, then they wouldn’t have been invited to make their presentation to a select audience when they first declared their intention to visit Covenant. They’d have been told in no uncertain terms to keep off campus, period. This is a case of willfully ignoring warnings and trespassing on private property.

Soulforce had the opportunity to make their case to student leaders, faculty, and administrative staff, and passed on the chance to establish a basis for further relations to instead make a public display that basically amounted to “We’ll have it our way or no way at all”. Considering that administrators were willing to hear them out and give them a chance to get their foot in the door, actions like this don’t help the activist movement; they harm it by showing reckless disrespect for common courtesy and basic boundaries of authority that should be respected by all regardless of sexuality. Now that’s a door that they’ve slammed in their own faces.

I’m a strong advocate of both peaceful protest and (of course) ending discrimination against members of the GBLTQ community - the basic principles that Soulforce stands upon. But there are ways to institute peaceful protest and make your message heard without stepping on so many toes that your message is ignored in favor of criticism of your behavior and lack of respect.

Diplomacy, kids. It’s not just the Dictionary.com word of the day.

Better luck (and better sense) next time.

Then again, if they didn’t learn after the Baylor University incident…

gay activism, gay rights, hello stupid, soulforce

…called separation of church and state.

I suppose it’s nice to know that the U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly on ecclesiastical interference in matters of state, but in this situation I hardly find it comforting. According to this New York Times article,

“A directive by Italian bishops telling Roman Catholic politicians that they have a moral duty to vote against gay rights legislation has prompted fresh charges of Vatican meddling in parliamentary affairs.”

Am I the only one sick of hearing that argument?

Moral duty. As the debate over gay rights rages up one hemisphere and down the other with little ground gained or lost to either side, we constantly hear these arguments trotted out to the point where they’re becoming as trite as the over-used phrase sanctity of marriage. We have a moral duty to oppose gay marriage, gay equality, gay everything. A moral obligation, to be precise. Homosexuality is immoral and must not be allowed.

What we don’t hear is why. If God loves all equally, why does God not love gays? How can God love the person picketing with a sign that says “When a fag dies, God smiles” and yet he cannot love a gay man or lesbian woman for wanting to join in sacred union (and even more sacred tax benefits) with his or her chosen same-sex partner? How is proclaiming hatred more moral than proclaiming love?

The answer, kids, is that it’s not. And if you’ll take a look at the definition of moral, you’ll see that nowhere in that rather lengthy breakdown of the word does it define specifics of morality beyond a distinction between right and wrong.

Right and wrong are relative, and too often what’s “right” is determined by those in power. This is why interpretation of the First Amendment demands a separation of church and state, so that those in power are not unduly influenced by morals that may vary from faith to faith and thus create instability in the process of government. Instead their morals rest on objective determination of right and wrong based not on faith, but on human rights and precedents set by past legislation. The right to life, the right to fair treatment–

–wait, what’s that you say? Fair treatment? Sure, back then fair treatment only applied to moneyed white males, but we’ve come a long way since then. We’ve established premises for fair treatment regardless of ethnicity, and regardless of gender. Men, women, black, white, Asian, Native–no matter the sex or the race, people are guaranteed fair treatment under the law…as long as they aren’t gay.

Why? Every homosexual is either a man or a woman, and belongs to some ethnic classification. Does a matter as simple as sexual preference strip away the rights to fair treatment given to every human being?

Under the principles of moral duty, yes, it does. Because we have a moral duty to discriminate against others over matters that, frankly, are none of our business. We have a moral duty to force our beliefs on others through legislation, when mere word-of-mouth discrimination will no longer work. We have a moral duty to treat others in a hateful and dehumanizing fashion in the name of God’s almighty love.

If that’s my moral duty, then I choose to be immoral. I choose to be immoral in advocating tolerance for all–yes, even tolerance for those who’d condemn me for loving another man. I choose to be immoral in believing that my love is as sacred and pure as a man’s love for a woman, or her love for him in return.

I choose to be immoral in standing up for my rights as a human being.

Moral is not perfectly synonymous with right, no matter how often we’re told that it is. Morality is wholly subjective from one individual to the next, and if we were to operate on the idea that what is moral is also unequivocally right, then only one person could be right at any point in time because no two individuals’ morals are exactly the same.

Life doesn’t work that way. So tell me: do you believe in what’s moral?

Or do you believe in what’s right?

gay marriage, gay rights, morality, separation of church and state, politics