While we, the homosexual community, may be the self-proclaimed queens of fashion, a gay fashion statement by an unwitting teenager turned out to be a faux paus as disastrous as the latest (hideous) handbag offerings from Juicy.
A Spencer, N.Y., student was sent home from school last week for wearing a T-shirt that denounces homophobia.
Heathyre Farnham, 16, said she was not trying to be inflammatory by wearing the shirt that says, “Gay? Fine By Me.”
“I had worn it two or three times before, and all of a sudden it’s inappropriate,” Heathyre said in a statement Wednesday.
Principal Ann Sincock declined to comment on particulars of the incident at Spencer-Van Etten High School, where Heathyre is in 10th grade, the Ithaca Journal reported.
[...]“She said I was advertising my sexual preference and that was offensive, which makes no sense because I’m straight. Maybe she herself was offended by it,” Heathyre said.
You know, I’m rather inclined to agree with Heathyre. That seems a bit of a knee-jerk reaction; since when does saying “I’m okay with homosexuality” equate with “I’m gay”? Not to mention that saying she was “advertising” makes it sound like she’s characterizing Heathyre as a young miss of questionable intentions, loitering on a street corner and advertising for something else…
Anyway. I can sympathize with her, though. Dress codes in schools have always been restrictive, even if they’re growing tighter now; when I was in high school (back in the 20th century, oh my), several of my friends were sent home just for wearing band t-shirts with ambiguous logos. I was asked to remove a rainbow bracelet that I wore one day, because other students “might think I’m gay”. (No, really?)
Schools have turned into little whitewash factories. I know that a lot of the regulations, such as the regulation about not wearing anything disruptive or inflammatory, are to keep from causing problems with bullies, interruptions of lessons, etc…but they jump a little too fast and a little too far on some things, and at this rate they might as well put everyone in uniforms if they’re going to regulate so strictly. (Hell, some schools do, and it works.) In this case, the school’s actions were entirely self-defeating; no one really seemed to care about the girl’s shirt one way or another until she was sent home because of it - at which point even students who are against homosexuality said that they thought she shouldn’t have been sent home over it. The school’s actions themselves caused a disruption, while the girl did not.
Sounds to me like the principal had a personal problem there. Even if Heathyre was a lesbian…don’t you think it’s a bit insulting to tell the girl that being honest about it is “offensive”?
(Washington) Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, caused a stir at a Senate hearing Wednesday when he said he believes homosexual activity is immoral and should not be condoned by the military.
[...] “Are there wonderful Americans who happen to be homosexual serving in the military? Yes, [...] We need to be very precise then, about what I said wearing my stars and being very conscious of it,” he added. “And that is, very simply, that we should respect those who want to serve the nation but not through the law of the land, condone activity that, in my upbringing, is counter to God’s law.” [...] Pace said he would be supportive of efforts to revisit the Pentagon’s policy so long as it didn’t violate his belief that sex should be restricted to a married heterosexual couple.
“I would be very willing and able and supportive” to changes to the policy “to continue to allow the homosexual community to contribute to the nation without condoning what I believe to be activity - whether it to be heterosexual or homosexual - that in my upbringing is not right,” Pace said.
Anyone want to take this one before I get started? Can I see a show of hands? No? All right then, here I go.
My gut reaction to this was angry, disgusted, and rather inflammatory. I had to stop myself, take a step back, and try to see some good in these statements. So I’m going to give you that now, in the interests of being fair and balanced.
To be fair: Pace believes any sex before marriage to be immoral; he’s not discriminating, he’s just old-fashioned to the point of being Amish. I can understand and accept that; some people just don’t like the way times have progressed in terms of sexual openness, and if you don’t want to condone others’ sexual freedom, that’s your choice…as long as you don’t try to restrict it.
Another point of fairness, albeit a lesser one: the implication from this speech is that Pace doesn’t openly condemn homosexuals and acknowledges our right to exist without being branded demonspawn…as long as we aren’t actually engaging in gay sex. Not…the best approach to it, but at the very least it’s better than “You were born gay through biological circumstances beyond your control, and no matter what you do, you’re going to HAY-ULL!” (Accent and emphasis mine.)
With that out of the way…
Are you out of your @*$#%! mind?!
I won’t even go into the immorality thing; I’d be here for days ranting on about things that were considered immoral in the days of the Bible, but that are fine now. Shaving is considered immoral by some who adhere to the Bible strictly, so what’re you going to do about all those clean-cut soldier boys sinning with their nice, smooth skin?
No…instead I’m going to address this idea of allowing the homosexual community to serve without condoning our activity. The basic idea is that hey, it’s okay to be gay as long as you’re willing to sacrifice your life to protect and serve a country that doesn’t do much to protect you - that, in fact, openly condemns who you are, and will scorn you if you openly proclaim yourself. Just another facet of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”.
I don’t think so.
I’m sick of this; I really am. You know, I almost went into the military. Yeah, that’s right, in my testosterone-fueled boys’ daydreams, I wanted to be a Marine. Some of that came from watching too much Space: Above and Beyond, and a lot of it was youthful naivete about being a warrior, but I did want very much to serve this country. I even met with a recruiter, but two things prevented me: my health, and the fact that I am openly gay, yes I do want to have a life and liasons with another man, and no, I’m not going to go into hiding or wholly reject my lifestyle over something that should be a non-issue as far as relevance to military service.
If we’re expected to serve this country equally, then this country should serve us equally. There’s no compromise there, no loophole. That’s simply the way it stands. Don’t feed us little scraps from the table and expect us to be grateful that we got anything at all; that’s not slow progress, that’s downright insulting.
Don’t get me wrong; if I felt that America was directly threatened enough to require my enlistment, I’d go if they’d take me, and if I had to deal with “don’t ask, don’t tell” I would - grudgingly - put up with it for the sake of protecting my home. But on a day-to-day basis, as a matter of policy in a time in which our nation is not in serious danger and there’s no need to discuss theoretical ideals of “what if you were directly threatened”, the current state of affairs is reprehensible, it’s dehumanizing, and it’s downright wrong. And what if I was directly threatened? I’d still feel a lot better going into combat knowing that in earlier times, my nation protected me and my freedoms in the same way that I’m expected to protect it and its freedoms.
So tell me: why should we fight for you when you won’t fight for us?
Columbia University, New York, NY (USA) Today [9/24], President of Iran, Ahmadinejad spoke to faculty, staff, and students at Columbia University in New York, NY . Amid quite a bit of protest, this controversial speaker not only questioned the legitimacy of Jerusalem , argued for the proliferation of nuclear armaments and even denied that gay men and lesbians exist in an Arabic state. During the speech, a questioner asked him why does his country deny women and homosexual’s rights. His answer was not only startling in this day and age, but it was disgusting:
QUESTION: Mr. President, the question isn’t about criminal and drug smugglers. The question was about sexual preference and women.
(APPLAUSE)
AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country.
(LAUGHTER)
We don’t have that in our country.
(AUDIENCE BOOING)
AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.
Since the year 1979, over 4000 gay men and lesbians have been put to death in Iran.
No one will deny that the culture of a foreign country will be markedly different from that of your homeland. You’ll find everything from different religions to different clothing - traits as superficial as different spices in the food, or as telling as an entirely different set of physical characteristics.
What you will not find, though, is a deviation from the basic tenets of human existence. Bipedal, four fingers and an opposable thumb, one head, two eyes, two genders…and diverse sexuality among those two genders.
So for the president of Iran to boldly state that Iran has no homosexuals would be like President Bush standing in front of the population of a nation and declaring proudly, “We have no idiots in America.”
Where there are humans, there will be idiots. (Some days I’m one of ‘em.) And where there are humans…you will find homosexuality. Let’s face it, homosexuality occurs in nature; it’s been documented in countless species of animals and even finds its place in the social hierarchy of the pack/herd/flock/etc.
We are animals. Evidence grows almost daily to support a biological trigger for homosexuality, whether it’s wired in genetically from the start or some chemical released by the brain. It happens in every country; to claim that it doesn’t happen in Iran is like saying that Iranians are somehow more human than human (hello, White Zombie) and evolved beyond natural occurrences of homosexuality. Of course there are homosexuals in Iran; I can’t believe I even have to state this as an obvious fact. In fact, if you do a Google search right now, you’ll find recent documented evidence of gay Iranians in many venues. You can’t just say that they don’t exist.
Unless you intend on proving that true by executing them all. 4,000 dead gays and lesbians…
Even though I’m not particularly flamboyant, people usually pick up on the fact that I’m gay. I don’t really know what my tell-tale markers are, honestly; my mannerisms and body language are pretty gender-neutral. Maybe it’s the hair, or something about my style of dress; maybe it’s the rose sunglasses (which, believe it or not, I wear to cope with painful photosensitivity and not for style), or the piercings - though the latter I doubt as plenty of straight men wear earrings now, too.
Maybe it’s that I can occasionally be caught giving a second glance to a guy whose aesthetic catches my eye. Maybe it’s that I generally don’t even give a first glance to the classic magnets to the male eye: the nearest T&A. Hell, maybe it’s just pheromones and chemistry.
Either way, there’s some signal that I give off well before I even let a “my boyfriend” slip in conversation that sets off people’s gaydar with that distinctive little blip. I suppose I’m so comfortable with myself that it’s wholly subconscious, but some people are a bit more deliberate - and a bit more wary. Some people have their own personal code of body language and carefully-chosen words, subtle ways of letting people know that they’re gay, carefully feeling out the territory around them…while others may be out and loud, proclaiming themselves proudly to anyone who’ll listen and making sure that everyone who even glances their way can tell in an instant that they’re fabulously queer. The hanky code isn’t so popular anymore…but we’ve all got our own ways about us, and different signs that work in different situations. We’ve all got our way of waving our little gay flag.
So if you’re gay…how do you out yourself? Do you let it all hang out, or maybe feel your way tentatively along, throwing out careful phrases like “my partner” to test the waters in your social environment before edging slowly out of the closet? Do you not out yourself at all, carefully covering your tracks to make sure that no one can figure it out? Or do you, like me, not even think about it unless it somehow accidentally comes up as part of regular interaction?
And what signs do you watch for in others? Say you’re wondering if that hottie is gay and maybe just keeping things on the down low; what signs do you watch for to try to tell even in the most “straight-acting” of girls or guys?
Hell…what is “straight-acting”, anyway? I’ve known straight guys who could flame me right out of the water.
This has been your daily interrogation, coming from a very sleep-deprived and coffee-deficient Adri. Let me know if you make any sense out of it, because I sure can’t.
I’ve heard the phrase “It’s different when it’s your own” a dozen times, mainly related to my adamant refusal to ever breed. I don’t have the patience or mindset required to raise children; they can be cute, and I don’t mind the little monkeys as long as I can give them back to their rightful owners at the end of an appointed time, but I don’t want any of my own. I’d make a bad father, and so in the best interests of any potential children, I shall not be siring or adopting any offspring who might be traumatized by my poor childrearing skills - ever. And yet when this comes up in discussion, proud parents always tell me, “I felt the same way that you did, but it’s different when it’s your own”. Sometimes I feel like they’re trying to convert me to the dark side, or with their insistence, drag me into the Hive collective. “We are Borg. Resistance is futile. It’s different when it’s your own.”
Everything’s different when it’s your own. Things that might be a killing offense are forgivable when it’s your own. The screaming apparently isn’t so obnoxious when it’s your own. The complete and total loss of free time doesn’t matter when it’s your own. The diapers don’t stink as badly when it’s your own.
Everything’s different when it’s your own, including how you feel about gay and lesbian rights for anyone’s children.
(San Diego, California) The mayor of the nation’s eighth-largest city abruptly reversed his public opposition to same-sex marriage late Wednesday after revealing that his adult daughter is a lesbian.
Mayor Jerry Sanders signed a City Council resolution supporting a legal fight to overturn California’s prohibition on same-sex marriage. He had previously said he would veto the resolution.
Sanders, a former police chief and a Republican, told reporters that he could no longer support the position he took during his mayoral campaign two years ago, when he said he favored civil unions but not full marriage rights for same-sex couples.
I kind of have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I’m glad that Mayor Sanders was open enough to his daughter’s sexuality to be willing to change his views over it. Many parents who oppose gay and lesbian rights will reject their children, often cruelly, no matter how much they love them. Sanders didn’t. Instead he took large steps in accepting and understanding his daughter, her sexuality, and her right to equal rights. You have to commend him for that.
On the other hand, I hate that human beings are so narrow that something has to affect us personally before we’re willing to consider how it affects others. Why should it only matter when it’s your child? Why are gays and lesbians only deserving of equal rights now that your child is among them? Jerry Sanders cares now that it’s his daughter - but every lesbian is someone’s daughter. Every gay man is someone’s son. We’d do well to remember that, when facing issues of equality in any arena, issues where someone is denied a particular right due to skin color, country of origin, gender, sexuality - issues of civil rights. What if it was our child, brother, sister, parent - would we feel the same way then that we do now, or would we change our stance because it directly affects someone that we care about?
[sigh] Maybe I need to stop being so cynical. After all, the man did have a change of heart - and from reading the full article, apparently a sincere one. I suppose sometimes it is different when it’s your own. When it’s your own, you fully understand the impact of your beliefs.
When it’s your own, you’re forced to care, whether you want to or not.
In 2004, a judge in Massachusetts tipped the balance - paving the way to same-sex marriage for the first time in history. But the governor of Massachusetts stood up, defending conservative values in our most liberal state. Governor Mitt Romney; he stood up for traditional marriage, and fought the activist ruling every step.
“The courtroom should be a place where laws are interpreted, not made.”
Now Mitt Romney is standing up for traditional marriage in Iowa, opposing the Polk County decision to permit same-sex marriage.
“The court ruling in Iowa is just another example of an activist judge trying to find things in the constitution that aren’t there. As Republicans, we must oppose discrimination and defend traditional marriage. One man, one woman.”
That’s why Mitt Romney is supporting a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution.
“Not all Republican candidates for President agree, but defending marriage is the right thing to do.”
Mitt Romney.
“I’m Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.”
Paid for by Romney for President, mittromney.com.
Think this sounds like a Democratic spoof of Republicans? If you ask me, it sounds like a Saturday Night Live comedy bit.
It’s not. It’s my own transcription of a one-minute radio spot that aired yesterday in Iowa - part of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign to advertise his support of traditional marriage and opposition to gay marriage rights. (By the way, I had no idea how many words you can fit into 60 seconds - and not even I can type that fast; you don’t want to know how many times I had to listen to this thing.) If you’d like to hear the original sound byte yourself, you can download it from here (the original NY Times article is here, if the direct link to the MP3 doesn’t work.)
It never ceases to amaze me how presidential campaigning can bring out the most manipulative side of people. Maybe some people actually believe in what Romney’s saying, but to me it just seems…oily, saying whatever’s necessary to trigger people’s emotional gag reflex - whether the response is positive or negative.
I find it deeply ironic that Romney is talking about interpretation of the law while he’s practicing his own subjective interpretation of the meanings of certain words, lending whatever slant is needed to paint the picture that he wants to present. I’m not even going to get started on how “liberal” and “conservative” have become dirty words representing the ugliest and most unrealistic extremes of opposing political viewpoints, slung as insults without meaning. But “activist” is starting to take on those same connotations, and that really twerks my nerves.
Pssst. Mitt. Over here, I’d like you to take a look at a page on Dictionary.com:
ac·tiv·ist /ˈæktəvɪst/ [ak-tuh-vist] –noun
1. an especially active, vigorous advocate of a cause, esp. a political cause. –adjective
2. of or pertaining to activism or activists: an activist organization for environmental concern.
3. advocating or opposing a cause or issue vigorously, esp. a political cause.
So…basically, all an activist is is a person who believes in a cause, strongly enough to advocate it and work for it. Er…isn’t Romney describing himself, then? He’s a traditional marriage activist. The term “activist judges” has been twisted to stand for judges who advocate change of the status quo, and paints that advocacy in a negative light even if the change is beneficial and needed. While we’re playing wordsmiths, remember, “amendment” means “change” - and yet I’d bet that a judge who supported Romney’s proposed amendment to the Constitution wouldn’t be hit with the insult of “activist”, now would they?
It’s a nasty game of loaded statements and deliberate skewings and misinterpretations. “Oppose discrimination and defend traditional marriage”, huh? Right now, it really seems as if those two can’t go hand-in-hand. If he’s defending traditional marriage as “one man, one woman” only, then he’s supporting discrimination against the gay and lesbian community. I suppose he’s trying to twist the argument back on us and say that by seeking federal recognition of gay marriages, we’re discriminating against the traditional concept of marriage.
I can see where that could be a just a tiny bit valid. Look, I’m not blind. Although I believe that we fully deserve the right to enter into legally recognized unions with whom we please, I know that to some it feels like we’re attacking something that’s a fundamental part of who they are. We’re trying to change a belief system that’s been deeply ingrained for centuries, and that scares some people. I understand that, and understand where they might feel as if we’re telling them that what they believe isn’t good enough and they have to change it to accommodate us, when that accommodation is of no benefit to them.
That’s one reason that I rather wish marriage wasn’t really part of federal law; the concept of traditional marriage began as a primarily religious institution, and really has no place being governed in a nation that lives under the (illusory) ideal of “separation of church and state”. If you want to nitpick, drop the concept of marriage at the federal level entirely. For the sake of taxes, ownership, benefits, etc., couples - gay and straight - could register civil unions/partnerships, something that’s basically the exact same thing as marriage but without the religious trappings. Then, if straight couples want to go ahead and get married under the banner of their church (along with its rules), go right ahead; they’ll have their civil union to make it official in the eyes of the state, and their traditional marriage to make it official in the eyes of their god. That way everyone gets fair treatment, and the delicate toes of traditional marriage adherents haven’t been stepped on because their concept of marriage has been preserved - but its religious aspects have been separated from matters of the state.
Anyway - I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent like that. The point of this entire rant was that while to some, this ad spot may make Mitt Romney sound like a Messiah…to me, it just smacks of your typical dirty and manipulative politics, preying on people’s sensitivity and pushing all of their hot buttons to get a vote. Politics warp the perception of reality, until just about anything can be turned in your favor or twisted against you.
Mitt Romney says that defending marriage is the right thing to do.
I say that defending equality in marriage is the right thing to do.
The words aren’t so different…and yet they carry a wealth of different meanings, don’t they?
Back in June, we looked at the case of Michael J. Sandy, a gay man who died as the direct result of the actions of a group of men who targeted him through an online gay chat room and set him up for robbery. Today that case is still open for debate; three of the men involved have been tried, while the fourth, Anthony Fortunato, stands trial before the Supreme Court now. The last time we talked about this, I asked if hatred has to be involved for something to be considered a hate crime.
This time, I have to ask: do you believe this man?
One of the defendants accused of killing a gay man in Brooklyn last year because of his sexual orientation offered a startling courtroom revelation yesterday: He, too, is gay. [...] All along, homosexuality has defined the case. Prosecutors have used it as a sword, seeking heavier sentences for a hate crime.
As the trial began in Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday, Mr. Fortunato’s lawyer, Gerald J. Di Chiara, sought to use sexual orientation as a shield. [...] Not only was Mr. Fortunato gay, Mr. Di Chiara said, but so was the main prosecution witness, Gary Timmins, 17, who has pleaded guilty to attempted robbery in exchange for his testimony.
In fact, Mr. Di Chiara continued, Mr. Fortunato had planned to tell his friends of his sexual orientation on the night in question. Luring a gay man out to a secluded lot in Sheepshead Bay was part of that plan, Mr. Di Chiara said.
Right. Planning to rob a gay man was all part of a clever coming-out plan. So does that mean that Fortunato engineered the plan, and talked his friends (another of whom is also conveniently gay now) into going along with it all for the sake of this elaborate scheme to come out of the closet?
It just seems too opportune to me - that he’s trying to avoid the maximum sentence possible for a hate crime by saying “Oh, I’m gay too!” The entire argument presented (read the full article) seems shaky, flimsy, and wholly concocted as a last-ditch attempt to save himself.
The worst part?
You can’t really prove or disprove it.
The judge can’t force Fortunato to commit a witnessed act of physical intimacy with another man in order to prove his sexuality; to do so would be inhumane, not to mention that any straight guy will kiss another guy if he’s desperate enough and it’ll keep him out of prison. You can’t even look at Fortunato’s life in the past; how many gay men live in the closet, with friends and family none the wiser?
If you ask me, it’s just a clever ploy by Fortunato’s lawyer to try to reduce his sentence.
Not to divert too much, but it brings to mind the issue of airlines logging personal data such as religion and sexual orientation for the sake of national security. How do you verify something like that? Even polygraphs can be fooled; a clever person can lie right past one if they know the right tricks. Something that’s so personal, whose outwardly defining characteristics can change so drastically from person to person, can’t really be proven or disproven. It has no place in national security, and in this case, I really think it has no place in the Supreme Court - not when used this way.
Maybe if Fortunato had been openly gay, this might be believable, and valid evidence. I know, he can’t be blamed if he really is a closet case…and if I thought he really was, I wouldn’t be so skeptical. I just don’t think that’s the case. I think the sudden revelation about Fortunato’s sexuality is deliberate obfuscation.
If his sexuality can’t be proven concretely, his lawyer may hope to divide the jury, maybe even get Fortunato off on reasonable doubt. He’s sure as hell succeeded in confusing people, and distracting from the real issue of the trial: the death of Michael Sandy. Clever? Yes. Believable?
Clandestine meetings, senseless laws…this morning, browsing the news on 365gay.com made me feel like I had entered the Twilight Zone: a world where nothing makes sense. Nothing. “A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind”, as the old series says (the new series could never live up to that campy black-and-white horror).
(London) The leader of the world’s Anglicans reportedly with conduct a “secret” communion service in London for gay clergy and their partners.
The Times newspaper in an article to be published on Tuesday says that Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams will hold the service at St Peter’s, Eaton Square.
Well if the news is reporting on it, it’s not exactly a secret, is it?
They are being pretty cloak-and-dagger about it, though. The invitation is by event only, and those invited are forbidden from discussing details of the event with anyone. The invitation list, after approval, was shredded.
I understand the reasons behind the discretion, I suppose. The Anglican church is a mess right now, and doing this outspokenly would just rub salt in open wounds, possibly expose those attending to harm from protesters, and widen the rift. But really, since the service’s existence is known…how does it do anything to help heal the split in the Anglican church over gay and lesbian issues? it’s just going to rankle with opponents even more, because now it looks like the Anglican leader is trying to sneak things under their noses.
The whole thing’s senseless, if you ask me. Religion makes things too complicated. Even more senseless, though, is the latest change in Singapore’s laws:
(Singapore) Legislation was introduced in the Singapore Parliament on Monday to repeal laws banning sodomy but the bill would specifically limit it to heterosexuals.
The new legislation is the first overhaul of the penal code in nearly a quarter century. It removes a section of the law making “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” a crime.
But it maintains a similar law, dating back to British imperial rule, forbidding sex of any kind between males.
What?
No, wait.
What?
Okay, seriously, I want out of this Twilight Zone mess. Let me get this straight: it’s okay to do a little butt-bumpin’, but only if it’s between a man and a woman? Why? What was the point of having a law forbidding male/female sodomy in the first place? And…and…
…just a second, a few of the broken pieces of my brain just fell out of my ear.
To repeal a law forbidding sodomy but to keep laws in place making sexual acts between males illegal…that’s just blatant government discrimination right there. I really don’t think any government, anywhere, has any right to dictate what takes place between the sheets - not for its people, not for anyone else’s. I can understand forbidding acts that cause permanent harm and could lead to death (no, I don’t mean BDSM here - most people in the BDSM community are more safety-oriented than most people outside that community). But strictly governing who can use which orifices for what…
…I just have these awful mental images of Singapore police running a sting on someone’s house, watching them through surveillance equipment to see just how they’re having sex. [headdesk] Honestly, I don’t think it would happen. It’s an imaginative extreme that has a place in movies and flights of paranoid fancy, but not something that most sane governments will resort to. I doubt it could happen in Singapore.
I keep remembering a story that I heard once, though, that makes me wonder if it could happen here.
As far as I know, it’s still illegal to sell and educate on the use of sex toys in Texas, though trust me, that doesn’t stop people. One of my friends in university used to work as a clerk in a sex shop that very thinly hid behind the veil of a magazine and cigarette accessory shop. You’d walk in, see a rack of outdated magazines (most of them adult) and comic books, and an L-shaped glass display case counter. The front part and the shorter area of the “L” had cigarette lighters, cases, wallets, wallet chains, etc. The longer part stretched into the back of the shop, and held the more expensive toys. An opening between the desk and the wall let customers pass into the main room, which held all the standard toys and adult videos. It wasn’t even curtained. My friend used to entertain me for hours with horror stories of the people he’d see in there.
The police pretty much looked the other way; that’s generally the case with such laws, and it was the case many years ago when it was illegal to even own sex toys. I can’t find a news reference to this, possibly because the story’s so old, possibly because it’s just urban legend - who knows. But the story says that police raided the home of a gay male couple, ostensibly because they were reported as being in possession of sex toys, and caught them in flagrant delicto only to arrest them for violating the state’s sodomy laws (which have since been overturned at the federal level).
Urban legend or truth…it’s the kind of thing that happens around here. A few years ago a woman was arrested for selling sex toys. A kiss between two members of the same sex can warrant a call to the police for public indecency, though rarely will police investigate the call. The U.S. is all about the business of regulating sex, telling you when you can have it, how you can have it, and with whom it’s permissible. Otherwise we wouldn’t have such rifts over homosexuality in the country right now.
In this country, we’re in the habit of pointing at other places, like Singapore, and saying “Those poor, backwards people with their poor, backwards laws”.
I don’t think we realize just how much people are pointing at us and saying the exact same thing.
It ain’t often that I read a story that makes me whip out the ghetto-fabulous side of my personality, but this mornin’ I had to do a double-take, snap, and an “uh-uh, oh no she di-in’t - is Adri gonna hafta slap the stank off a ho?”
Yeah. It’s that bad.
I’ve talked about the feuding between Dinah Matos-McGreevey and Jim McGreevey before. Last time I said I was a little ambiguous as to who was telling the truth and thus unwilling to take sides despite Dinah making a wholly unlikable shrew of herself, unable to even look past her own vengeful bitterness to think about her child - but this time I’m gonna have to come down on the side of “woman, puh-lease“.
The estranged wife of the nation’s first openly gay governor wants a judge to increase her monthly support nearly fourfold to $4,000 so she can live a lifestyle closer to that of New Jersey’s first lady.
Dina Matos McGreevey said she and the couple’s 5-year-old daughter live in a modest 3-bedroom house while her husband, Jim McGreevey, and his male partner live in a lavish 17-room mansion with gardens, according to court papers.
“In total, I need $11,162 per month to meet my expenses,” she told the judge. “This lifestyle by no means approximates the lifestyle which plaintiff enjoys, much less the lifestyle we enjoyed while plaintiff was governor.”
What’s that? I’m sorry, did someone say the word gold-digger? Seriously, who does this woman think she is, talking about how she needs to live a lifestyle closer to that of New Jersey’s first lady?
Who the hell needs $11,000 per month on top of her regular salary? What the hell kind of extravagant expenses does she have? Hell, I don’t make that much in six months; writers are on the bottom of the financial food chain, and yet I get by and can even afford little luxuries. Jim McGreevey was ordered by the courts to give her over a thousand dollars per month to look after their child; Dinah herself is no longer his responsibility. Her lifestyle is no longer his responsibility, and his lifestyle should no longer be her business.
Any sympathy I had for the woman is pretty much dead now; she has a well-paying job of her own, got more money for her book than most writers ever hope to see for any of their novels, and she is not in any way destitute or living poorly. This kind of bratty entitlement works my nerves to the bone. Matos-MacGreevey is now coming off as a spoiled, sulking brat more interested in harming her ex-husband and getting everything she can out of him than in her own well-being, or their child’s.
Honey, stop trying to play the martyr. I can understand that you’re bitter about the way your marriage ended, but damn, have a little class and decency. Acting like a money-grubbing harpy isn’t hurting anyone but you.
Sorry to be updating so late today, but I’m technically on a working vacation - meaning I’m keeping a pretty loose schedule here. In keeping with my five days of stress-free life, today we’re going to lay off the heavy, politically debatable news topics and instead relax with a submission to the “Ask Adri” column.
Hey
May seem a bit of an odd thing to be asking, but…
I’ve found that in addition to being bisexual in terms of who I’d like relationships with, I’ve got an odd kind of bi-sexual body image as well. I’m naturally female, but don’t want to be just that. Not that I want to be male. I don’t like having to be either, I do a lot of androgyny with suits and ties and formal footwear to create a sexless effect. I want to be both, or neither. When I have attempted to explain why I do my androgyne look, people either don’t seem to get it or assume I mean I’d rather be male.
I don’t really have much experience with the gay community, finding it to be too brash and busy being ‘fabulous’ to be useful to my sombrely suited self. So I don’t know if it’s a common thing with Queens or the equivalent Kings or whatever they may go by. Is my wish for sexlessness particuarly odd? Are there many others who’d far rather be hermaphroditic or asexual then have to be male or female?
Love the comic, by the way. Long time habit of politics watching, so the links are often useful.
- El
El, really, what you’re feeling isn’t so abnormal; androgyny’s been around for a long time, and wasn’t just a popular fad that produced such 80s icons (and nightmares) as David Bowie, Annie Lennox, and Boy George before fading away. It really has nothing to do with your sexuality, or even with your gender identity; you’re not a Queen or a King, and thus really shouldn’t worry about defining yourself by any terms outlined by an overly-flamboyant (and I’m a bit on your side there) gay community.
Modern-day gender roles themselves are really quite outdated, and it’s quite surprising that they’ve held out for as long as they have. Rigid gender-based behaviors began eons ago out of a need for organization and safety to preserve and further a species of primitive hunter-gatherers divided by those who bore and raised children, and those who provided for and protected the child-rearers and their offspring.
We’ve evolved far from those needs, and since men and women now fulfill pretty much the same roles in society - women protecting and providing for their families, men staying home with the children, and vice-versa - it’s time to abandon the ideas of what men should wear and what women should wear as entirely separate things, and abandon these ideas that who one is is strictly defined by one’s gender. Hormonal influences from gender may affect some personality traits, but in the end you are who you are, and your attachments (or lack thereof) shouldn’t change that.
Just because you have a penis or a vagina doesn’t mean you have to fulfill this preset concept of what a boy or a girl should be. I know, you probably wish you could get rid of your sex-defining anatomy altogether, or else double-up to be both - all or nothing, as it were - but when you can’t do that, the least you can do is ignore societal norms and focus on your own comfort with how you present your genderless (or dual-gendered) identity to the rest of the world.
In a way, you’re just ahead of the times. Yes, many people are socialized into accepting that because they’re male or female, they should act certain ways, desire certain things, wear just these clothes - and they’re comfortable with that, because they don’t even stop to think that it could be any other way. But there are plenty of people who will completely ignore their assigned gender role, recognize that just because society is binary doesn’t mean that they have to be, and will quite contentedly choose their lifestyle based on what they like and how they feel, rather than whether or not their choices fit their gender. They both disdain gender and fluidly embrace it, ignoring its rules while enjoying its every aspect, at once being sexless and yet dual-sexed.
I’m one such person.
No, seriously. Keeping to the topic of clothing alone (so I won’t be here all day boring you), my wardrobe is a mixture of men’s and women’s clothing; when it’s time for me to get new clothes, I wander both sections of the department store looking not for just this type of men’s clothing, but looking for anything that appeals to me regardless of where it happens to be hanging. If I can find women’s jeans that don’t squeeze uncomfortably in the wrong places, I’ll buy them because I love the low-slung hip-huggers, boot-cut to the point of almost being bellbottoms…and yet at the same time I’ll pair those with men’s muscle shirts and some rugged men’s boots. I wear them together because I like the overall androgynous look, not because I’m trying to be masculine or feminine or even balance in between - and I can promise you that I don’t want to be female, even if I’m not so deeply attached to my masculine identity, either. It isn’t about any of that for me; it’s about my own personal style and comfort.
I wear my hair long and like to comb it across my face to accent my eyes prettily (vain, I know), but at the same time think I look silly if I don’t have at least a little rough stubble dotting my jaw; quite often people have to do a double-take with me and check my flat chest to figure out if I’m male or female, which is pretty much how I like it. My behavior patterns range between strict definitions of masculine and feminine, and I don’t care. I can’t even really identify which traits fall where, because to me, I’m just acting like Adri, and Adri would be Adri regardless of anatomy. It has nothing to do with me being gay, either; as the wide range of gay male behavior - from butch to femme and all along the road in between - will tell you, sexuality really has nothing to do with masculine or feminine behavior. But then you already know that quite well, being you.
Basically what this whole mess boils down to is that you aren’t alone in feeling this way, and there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, in my eyes you’re more normal than any promotion of strict behavioral separation by gender. If you don’t want to be a boy or a girl, don’t be either. You can’t change your anatomy, but you don’t have to let it guide how you act, how you dress, or how you feel; make the best of what you have. Just be El, enjoy being El, and to hell with everything else.
Hope this helped at least in some way, even if half of it was just a little commiseration from a similarly-minded person.
I really don’t know how I missed this story from late August, reporting on the deaths of three men in the home of Republican political consultant Ralph Gonzalez - apparently a murder-suicide.
Well…no, I know how. I have a bad habit of skimming for only gay news and sometimes missing the mainstream media headlines, and while this story appeared under gay-related headlines for a while, just about every column that mentioned such a connection between the dead men pulled or edited their stories before I even saw them. Even mainstream news coverage has been a bit lackluster, though, - but bloggers, on the other hand, have been quite interested in the case. Pam’s House Blend actually digs into the story with ferocious teeth:
* the bodies of Republican political consultant Ralph Gonzalez, 39, president of The Strategum Group, his roommate David Abrami and “a friend,” Jason Robert Drake, were found in the house of Ralph Gonzalez.
* Gonzalez served with the Republican Party of Florida’s House Campaign Division and executive director of the Georgia Republican Party and counted the Alabama Republican Legislative Committee as a client, producing an anti-gay flier accusing a Dem candidate of supporting marriage equality.
* A newspaper, Florida Today, initially reported that there were signs of a struggle, printing “Lovers’ fight may have sparked three deaths” as its headline. The paper later scrubbed any references to a love triangle.
* BradBlog has shown the ties between Gonzalez and Florida’s vote-tampering congressman, Tom Feeney. From Pat Go Bye Bye:
Gonzalez, who was out to his friends, had ties to Ralph Reed when he took over the Georgia Republican Party and used unethical tactics to beat Senator Max Cleland. He was also the campaign chair for the ethically-challenged Tom Feeney’s congressional campaign as well as his state rep campaign after which Feeney became house speaker and got involved in a software-buying scandal involving Yang Enterprise. Feeney is best known for his vote-rigging scheme (which has ties to an unexplained death of a Florida state investigator in Valdosta GA), Jack Abramoff, and a variety of unethical smear tactics against Democratic candidates.
* Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry has ties to Gonzalez and Drake, the latter was determined to be the shooter in the murder-suicide.
* McHenry’s office initially denied knowing Drake but confirmed later that McHenry did know him, but didn’t specify the nature of the relationship.
* Drake was also allegedly tied to a gay escort service in Virginia; the prostitution angle — and who it extends to — is very murky at this point, with few sources on the record.
You can read more about her exploration of the subject by clicking the link above; she’s got pages of listed facts regarding the case and Gonzalez’s ties. It’s really quite interesting; some of it may be a bit of a stretch and honestly, I’d be willing to believe that the murder-suicide had nothing to do with any kind of sexual relationship between the men (it’s a case of everything having more than one possible and plausible explanation, and not always deciding that the one you want to believe is fact), but the evidence supporting the theory is rather compelling.
I feel rather bad that a dead man’s private life is being used as political fodder to help expose Republican hypocrisy about homosexuality - but if they weren’t such hypocrites it wouldn’t be an issue at all, now would it?
You don’t have to be a genius - or even moderately clever - to guess how I feel about ex-gay “therapy”. I find it disturbing, a chilling violation of the self, and don’t think there’s anything particularly therapeutic about it at all.
True, I can’t be wholly critical of people who make the choice to deny their homosexuality under their own influence. I think it’s sad and I feel sorry for them, but they’re doing what they think is in their own best interests. I may not agree, but I can’t deny them the right to try to live as comfortably as they can. One’s sexuality isn’t an easy thing to come to grips with, and for some people it’s just safer and less painful to run away.
The people that bother me the most are those who advocate ex-gay therapy…and even more, those who administer it. The fundamental psychology of someone who takes it upon themselves to assist in changing another’s sexuality would probably make an interesting study, and I’m sure someone more well-versed in psychology than I could write one hell of a paper. I just can’t help but wonder what kind of mind it takes to say, “Your sexuality is wrong - but not only will I tell you why, but I’ll aid you in changing it…through force, if necessary.” Ex-gay therapy often involves dangerous practices of electroshock therapy, deprivation, imprisonment, psychological manipulation…and in one case right here in Texas, sexual molestation.
The Fort Lauderdale based group [Worthy Creations] operates under the spiritual umbrella of the “ex-gay” movement, which uses reparative therapy to purportedly rid homosexuals of same-sex attraction. [...] This past week the ex-gay movement made headlines again after one of its “ex-gay” counselors in Texas — who employed “touch therapy” with clients to cure them of their homosexuality — was convicted of sexual assault.
According to court documents, Christopher Austin counseled ex-gays at Church of Christ South MacArthur in Irving. He was first arrested in 2002 after a patient claimed his techniques included nude sessions and physical intimacy, including oral sex. News coverage of the case led to other victims coming forward who alleged the ex-gay leader “unlawfully, intentionally and knowingly caused penetration.”
One of the comments on the Miami New Times blog wonders if the victims were male or female. I can’t help but wonder that, as well. I don’t know which would be more reprehensible - that Austin was sodomizing gay males as part of his “touch therapy”, all the while claiming what they were doing was wrong and punishable…or that he was forcing himself on lesbians as if physical intimacy with a male would somehow make them start to desire men. I can feel my gorge rising just thinking about either.
Behavior like this is the sign of a deeply disturbed individual with control issues. Considering that he’s not the only one to apply the sort of techniques mentioned above, how often has this kind of behavior taken place while the victims remained silent, the actions of their self-appointed “therapists” possibly even condoned?
I don’t really think that these ex-gay therapists are doing this for their misled patients. I think they’re doing it for themselves, and that they derive some sort of pleasure from manipulating people this way. Granted, tomorrow I may cool down and be willing to revise my opinion and speak more fairly, as I’m sure that some really do think they’re trying to help and are just grossly misinformed. Right now, though, I’m speaking from the revulsion welling deep within my gut, and the horror shaping words on the tip of my tongue…and I couldn’t be more disgusted. I’d rather be gay and reviled by the rest of society for a healthy expression of love between two men than be someone disturbed enough to cause that kind of harm to other people for the sake of “conversion”.
Ex-gay therapy helps people, huh? About the only thing Austin helped anyone realize was that they didn’t need to be anywhere near his sort of “therapy”.
It’s a mess, a tangle that’s almost impossible to unravel, and all I’m doing is sitting back and watching like a good little media voyeur to see what’s going to happen. At this point, what else can you do other than shake your head? (Though I swear, if any of you callous monkeys start yattering on about being happy that Kennedy is dead in the same way you did about Falwell…bloody inhuman wankers.)
I will say this regarding the last article: I wish we could leave sexuality out of the workplace wholly. While we should never have to bite our tongues when referring to our husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, regardless of our own gender…we go to work to work. Our sexuality and whom we’re involved with are a part of our private lives; that goes for gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, whatever. There’s nothing wrong with knowing “Oh, Bob over there is married to Sue, while Trish is dating this nice girl Mary”, but it really shouldn’t go any farther than that. It shouldn’t matter, either way. It shouldn’t be something that we need to proclaim at the top of our lungs, but it also shouldn’t be something that our employers need to consider when dealing with issues of employment.
Work. Leave your personal life at home, and let your employees leave their personal lives at home. The gender of one’s partner has no impact on how well one performs a job.
Anyway…I’m done with that little rant. Instead I want to wander away a bit and take a poll of my readers. I often mention the Kinsey Scale as a way to measure degrees of hetero-and-homosexuality, and I’m curious, so comment and tell me: where do you think you stand on the Kinsey Scale?
The Kinsey Scale
Rating
Description
0
Exclusively heterosexual
1
Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
2
Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3
Equally heterosexual and homosexual
4
Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5
Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
6
Exclusively homosexual
X
Asexual
Okay, so technically X isn’t a number, but you get the idea. I’d say I’m a definite 5. How about you?
I freely admit, with a bit of sheepish pride, that I’ve “turned” a few boys gay. By “turned” I mean they were already gay and in the closet, and I just fluttered my pretty lil’ Southern-boy lashes at them until they couldn’t take it anymore. I suppose a little flirtation is nothing particularly reprehensible, until you consider the fact that a couple of those boys were my sisters’ (ex) boyfriends. Still, it’s harmless, and may even have helped those boys comfortably ease out of the closet when otherwise they might not have ever ventured forth - and at least I didn’t flirt with all my sisters’ boyfriends.
I left the straight ones alone, naturally.
The point I’m making here, other than that sometimes I act like a shameless hoyden? You can’t really “turn” anyone gay, or bisexual, or straight; all you can do is encourage them to act on their natural tendencies. They’re attracted to the sex they’re attracted to, period, and no act of seduction or coercion is going to change which chemicals in their brain get tripped off by which gender. Which is why, on a more serious note, today’s news is entirely reprehensible, and downright disgusting:
(Hillsboro, Oregon) An Oregon man has been sentenced to 25-years behind bars for raping his step son to get revenge on the boy’s mother.
Following his arrest William Gerald Collins, 44, told police he wanted to force the boy into being gay so that his ex-wife would not have any grandchildren.
According to court records Collins told police he sought revenge after the ex-wife forced him out of the house and sought a divorce from him.
Collins pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree sodomy and eight counts of first-degree sexual abuse.
Six counts of sodomy and eight counts of sexual abuse.
All so he could use this boy, who’d done nothing to deserve this (what would deserve this?) to cause harm to his mother, out of some sick and twisted view that not only can you force someone to be gay, but rape is the best way to do it.
I’m glad I haven’t had breakfast yet today; last night’s dinner is already trying to come back up just from imagining what the boy must have suffered. That’s not revenge, a**hole, that’s child abuse and rape, and I can’t imagine the kind of malice it takes to deliberately do that to someone with a specific purpose in mind.
I often criticize the American judiciary system, and the permissive and corrupt nature of the courts. Not today. Today I’m glad that the system took action against this man, and handed out far more than the minimum sentence. Twenty-five years behind bars and a lifetime on the sex offender registry will hopefully teach Collins about the results of his actions, before he does it yet again, as he threatened to do to another.
Am I hoping that he receives the same treatment? No, although I’m sure that’s what many are thinking; he raped a boy, and now he’ll be afraid to drop the soap in the shower and it’s probably what he deserves, right? …no. What I’m hoping, instead, is that prison teaches him the value of another’s life by placing him in a less secure situation where he no longer has the power to harm others. Changing someone’s perspective and removing their secure footing without physically harming them can often do a great deal to alter their understanding of their acts. You can make them understand the fear of the victim, without actually making them a victim.
At the very least, he’s got a great deal of time to think things over. I hope remorse finds him at some point in his time behind bars, because I find it hard to believe that anyone can do that without even the slightest shred of guilt.
You can’t turn someone gay, just as you can’t turn someone straight. Period. All you can do is cause them intense physical and psychological harm in the effort, and the end result will never be what you want, and will never be good for them. Then again, I suppose Collins did get what he wanted; even if he didn’t turn the boy gay, he’s left him physically and mentally scarred, something his mother will have to deal with and probably has been dealing with without knowing it in the years since it happened.
I hate that. I hate it - that even if he was punished for his crime, he still succeeded in causing harm to people who didn’t deserve it, even if the outcome wasn’t what he intended. That boy is going to need therapy for years, and it’s too bad this wasn’t discovered earlier, for his sake; his self-esteem is probably a wreck, and he’ll probably consider himself damaged goods even if, in my opinion, there’s no such thing as ‘damaged goods’ - just victims who need help getting past the view of themselves fostered by a traumatic experience.
Congratulations, William Gerald Collins. You’ve fractured a boy’s life.
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