Darkside Rainbow

Some time ago, I said that I didn’t quite understand the outrage in Tuscany over an anti-discrimination ad featuring a photo of a newborn baby. I thought the ad was clever, to the point, and extremely effective. I didn’t once stop to think that using the knee-jerk human reaction to anything involving children in such a way constituted some rather underhanded and manipulative tactics, right from our side of the gay vs. anti-gay war. I thought it was all right, because it got the point that I wanted to make across. I didn’t realize that I was setting a double standard.

I realized when I read an article about New Jersey anti-gay campaigners who’ve launched a series of radio ads using the voices of children to denounce gay marriage.

The ads begin with an announcer saying “If we change the definition of marriage..” but is interrupted by a child.

“Grandma, my teacher said if grandpa was a girl that’s ok, you can still be married,’” the voice says.

The announcer then returns to say: “Our kids will be taught a new way of thinking: ‘God creating Adam and Eve is so old-fashioned.’”

“Thinking the unthinkable: ‘If my dad married a man, who would be my mom?’”

I started frothing. “This is wrong,” I snarled to myself. “It’s dirty, it’s underhanded, it would take a bunch of sleazy rats to use children to prey on people’s reactions just to spread their propaganda–”

And that’s when it hit me.

I was being a damned hypocrite.

I was being just like every other narrow-minded, hot-headed political mudslinger who flings words like “liberal” and “conservative” around as insults, points fingers, and accuses the other side of every atrocity known to man. I was condemning them for tactics that people on my side of the argument used, and following the very same mindset: it’s reprehensibly wrong if they do it, but it’s permissible if we do it because we’re right, damn it. It doesn’t matter which side you define as “us” or “them”. In the end they aren’t so different.

In the end, I became what I loathe most. I lost my rationality, my objectivity, my sense of fairness. I succumbed to bias.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been that disgusted with myself.

No, it isn’t all right to use manipulative tactics like that to spread your propaganda - and no matter what side you stand on, to someone your beliefs will be considered propaganda. It’s not right for us, it’s not right for them, it’s not right for you, and it’s not right for me. If I’m going to condemn conservatives for using such methods, then I have to condemn anyone else who does as well, even if I agree with their message.

You can’t call it “fighting the good fight” when you fight dirty. Some may say that you do what you must to win; I can’t say that I agree. Just because one side fights dirty doesn’t mean that you must sink to those levels to win. Don’t set a bad example, and don’t follow one, either; rise above, and set the standard for your opposition to adhere to. Both sides would benefit if we fought fair, fought cleanly, and met each other face to hard, ugly face. That includes facing our own hypocrisies, and recognizing our own double standards. It means understanding that we often loathe things in others that reflect what we hate most about ourselves. It means respecting the opposition…and making ourselves worthy of their respect, in return.

Only then will these battles of human rights come to the table of negotiation, and be settled fairly with no further blood shed.

new jersey, gay marriage, radio ads, national organization for marriage

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…nnngghhh. [insert entirely graceless faceplant into a pillow here] It’s morning already? Sweet honkin’ Jeebus, why is it morning already? Here; read this while I go make some mother-snortin’ coffee.

US Set to Deport Gay Iranian - ZNet/ZMag

President George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not agree on much, but tragically they may find common ground about the disposability of Hassan Parhizkar’s life.

Since November 7, a mild-mannered 40-year-old gay Iranian businessman from Rockville, Maryland has been sitting in jail in the Frederick County, Maryland Detention Center, housed with common criminals, in the living hell of limbo between the freedom he has known since he came to the United States as a young man 17 years ago and the certain persecution, imprisonment, or worse that will be his fate as a gay man if he is sent back to Iran.

A deportation order to send him back to Iran has been issued, and any day he could be put on a plane back to Tehran, where he was born.

“I am very afraid, and so very frustrated,” Hassan Parhizkar told me in a truncated, collect telephone call from jail.

“My asylum request has never been before an immigration judge. I just don’t know what to do, I just don’t know what to do…” he added in a voice choked with tears.

“I work hard, I pay my taxes, and I live a quiet life without bothering anybody,” Parhizkar told this reporter.

Done reading? Good; I’m done brewing (and even marginally awake now).

The article goes on to tell such a deliberate tearjerker of a story that I had to stop and Google the validity of the source (and I still have my doubts; why isn’t this being covered anywhere else?). Hassan has been preyed upon by a man falsely representing himself as an attorney, arrested by the morality police in his own country for having a relationship with another man (but homosexuals don’t exist in Iran, do they, Mr. President?) and now, after struggling to make a life for himself as a business owner, faces deportation to a country that will likely make sure that he doesn’t bring that gay census count from 0 to 1. No doubt adding one more to the body count is seen as less heinous than allowing a known homosexual to make a liar of Iran’s president.

I can only hope that he won’t be deported once he’s had a fair hearing. The U.S. has standards set in place for situations such as this, in which if the illegal immigrant faces undue punishment, torture, the death penalty, etc. then the U.S. will grant them asylum. It’s a public relations nightmare, after all, for a country’s immigration services to say “You’ve been living here illegally? Nope, back home to the noose you go, we’ll send flowers for your grave.” No, I’m not going to go off on a Bush-bashing tirade assuming that of course he’d want to send the man back to Iran to die because he’s evil, homophobic, uneducated, thick-headed, the usual rhetoric. Bush probably doesn’t even know what the man’s name is yet, but if it gets to the point where the issue’s brought to his direct attention then he’ll pretty much have no choice about granting asylum lest he stir up one hot mess. Even if you trust Bush to be stupid, trust his advisors not to be that idiotic. So honestly, especially if this picks up more media coverage, I’m not too worried about Hassan Parhizkar. I do feel sorry for him, though.

If you want to do something about his situation, there’s a petition going around to grant him asylum. This may be my sleep-deprived, I-am-a-b*tch-in-the-mornings state talking, but it’s fairly useless beyond making people feel better about themselves. Stick your name on the petition, pat yourselves on the back. The power of petition just isn’t as strong as it used to be, especially at the federal level. But hey, go sign it anyway. Better to do one tiny, useless thing than to do absolutely nothing at all.

My cranky butt is out of here.

Hassan Parhizkar, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran, homophobia, anti-gay sentiment, illegal immigration, asylum, deportation

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Since Doug over at Current Events Watch snitched the topic I’d intended to froth at the mouth over today (we apparently rank below animals, so I suppose there’s nothing wrong with acting like a rabid dog, now is there?), I thought perhaps we here at DR might wind down with a little humor.

Ladies and Gents, I’m going to clue you in to the most beautiful thing about men: the second that you begin to agonize and worry over whether you should or should not be flirting/dallying/doing whatever with us, we will choose that opportune moment to say just the right thing to ensure that you’ll never want to again. Gay, straight, young, old, we are a self-resolving problem. It’s convenient, it’s efficient, and as prevalent as it is, it’s a miracle that any of us manage to maintain viable social interaction. Give us enough verbal rope, and we will eventually hang ourselves.

The simultaneously best and worst example of this?

The dreaded pickup line.

To paraphrase Alex Hitchins, it takes a great deal of courage for a man to spot an attractive member of his preferred gender and take on the burden of approaching them, knowing that the first words that come out of his mouth with most likely determine whether or not this person will smile at him or throw their drink in his face. With that in mind, you’d think we’d take better care with the things we say. You’d think we’d try our best to be straightforward and engaging, rather than making sad attempts to be clever and witty even though we know we’ll fumble and fail at every turn.

We hardly ever learn, though. I’ve been victim to a number of cringe-worthy pickup lines myself, from the Harry Potter guy and his magic wand to the admittedly attractive woman (yes, women do it sometimes, too, just not as often - don’t think you’re off the hook, ladies) who approached me in the line at the movie theatre and, without so much as a hello, told me to meet her by the side of the building by the blue Camaro and she’d take me back to her place and we could…well. You get the picture. She walked off before I could say a word, leaving me gaping. I can’t help but wonder if she actually waited there, and if so, for how long.

You can’t even escape it online. I still have my membership on OutinHouston.com, created during the experiment that led to The Steve Incident, and now and then I check my e-mail on the site. Just yesterday I ran across this lovely gem, dated 11.16.07:

“ha baby wanted to know would you like to hook up an mess around alittle an if so when because I would like to taste that juice **** 4 its milk but i dont swallow but like to taste it all so let me know baby mike..”

Censoring asterisks mine, typos his. Not…that censoring really does much to lower the ESRB rating of that little gem, nor would proper grammar and punctuation make it any more appealing.

But Mike, you see, is a persistent one. Since I never answered his first e-mail, yesterday he sent me another, this time with a picture attached:

“ha guy lov the photo of you an wanted to know would you like to hook up an mess around at my place if thats ok with you are i can cum to you as well baby me lives on the southwest 59/hillcroft an love to suck on a sweet **** today if thats ok with you baby mmm ..mike”

Oh, Mike. You and your homonyms! So witty. I truly admire your dogged determination. It takes quite a bit of courage to view a total stranger’s profile online, read their commentary, and gather the balls it takes to honestly think that anyone would be impressed by that approach, let alone by getting it twice. Mike, you and I need to have a little talk about subtlety. Really. And while we’re at it, here, let me lend you my little pocket edition of Webster’s handbook of grammar and style…

Can’t fault the man for knowing what he wants, though.

I have to say that my most memorable experience with a bad pick-up, though, happened in a gay bar where another ex, Arturo, used to bartend. We were dating at the time, naturally, and I dropped by the bar just to see Arturo and say hi to the owner, as he was an old friend as well. It was a busy night, so I found a spot on the bar and stayed out of the way, amusing myself by watching the typical drunken non-complexity of the night life. I wasn’t particularly projecting an air of availability, but I suppose this fellow was just drunk enough to give it a shot. He was actually rather handsome; dark hair, eyes in a particular color that I have a weakness for, and just a trace of a sexy English accent. I might have entertained the idea of flirting with him to pass the time if he hadn’t stumbled over, grinned at me with a touch of inebriated charm, and said,

“Is that a cucumber in yer pocket, luv, or are ye jes’ ‘appy to see me?”

Cue the expected raised eyebrow and flat look. “Neither.”

He just grinned wider, though, and at this point I could tell he was building up to something. “Got a nice big cucumber in me pocket for ya.” He patted his hip, and against my better judgment I glanced down. Sure enough there was a long, large, clearly-outlined bulge in his rather tight pants. At that point my brain broke; I didn’t even know how to process that, but he wasn’t done yet. He snickered and said, “No, really, it’s a cucumber.”

He wasn’t lying. He stuffed a hand into his pocket, rooted around a little, and dragged out a genuine lean and green cucumber, already starting to wilt from being shoved in there for so long. He waved it under my nose, nearly giggling.

I cracked up laughing.

It turned out his name was Rick, he actually wasn’t so bad, and yet I still made him promise to never use that line on anyone again. He gets points for ingeniousness, but dear gods…how drunk do you have to be to think that stuffing a cucumber down your pants is a good idea?

I could probably deluge you with stories both hilarious and horrifying all day, but I think you get the idea. I’m sure you’ve all got plenty of stories of your own. Bad pick-up lines, funny come-ons that ended up as epic failures…we’ve all experienced them. I suppose it’s universal, and honestly with such a legacy I’m surprised that gay men and straight men don’t get along better. We all suffer from the same foot-in-mouth syndrome, after all.

We’re just lucky that there are a few people out there who find that struggling awkwardness cute.

relationships, romance, dating, bad pick-up lines, flirting, horror stories

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I’ve officially been single for over a month now. It’s been slow, adjusting to thinking of The Ex as just a friend, adjusting to not having him in my life anymore, figuring out what to do with the time that used to be ours. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes not, but my life has settled comfortably and I’ve continued walking on; yet in that time, I’ve noticed something that I’ve rarely had occasion to before.

Since I was eighteen I’ve been in and out of relationships, never single for more than a few weeks. I’ve always had a boyfriend, most often someone who worked out for anywhere from six to sixteen months before we went our separate ways - sometimes as friends, sometimes as bitter enemies, sometimes as if we’d never met. There was always a queue of anywhere from one to seven men waiting to fill the spot. I was never without a date, no matter where I went.

Only now, I am. Some of the “shelf boys” are still there, hoping I’ll pick one of them next and yet knowing I won’t because I hate the odds of losing a friend should he become an ex-boyfriend. Some have moved on to other happy relationships. And here I am, drifting in limbo, smiling and shaking my head when I’m asked out on a date, turning down offers for one-night stands because I’m just not into that, enjoying a little flirtation here and there before curtailing it before it goes beyond a certain point. I have no problem going out to a film or dinner alone, or with a few friends. Why?

Because I’m happy being single.

And in the past month, I’ve noticed that no one really believes that.

There’s a certain stigma associated with maintaining a doggedly single state, especially in the gay community - and showing up somewhere without a date is only the first mark of your stigmata. When all your friends have dates, you’re the odd man out. They restrain public affection in front of you because they don’t want to make you feel left out, uncomfortable, or lonely. When talking about couples’ activities they’ll often break off in the middle, give you apologetic looks, and change the subject. They ask if you’re all right, and don’t believe when you smile and say it’s not necessary, you’re fine. If they find out that you and the ex had a chat, just keeping up with each other and remaining friends, they worry that you’ve left the encounter traumatized and achingly aware of your single state.

If you say you’re happy being single, you must be in denial. Are you bitter now? Are you too hurt to deal with another relationship? Or is there something wrong with you, and you’re afraid it’ll ruin the deal if you try with another man? Maybe you’re damaged goods. Maybe there’s some dirty secret. Maybe you don’t even realize there’s something wrong with you that kills relationships, and you’re to be pitied and avoided. Maybe it’s not that you choose to be single, but that you just can’t snag another man. It all contributes to this palpable air of pity when you’re around your predominantly non-single friends; they treat you as if you’re made of fine china and may snap at any moment.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen it. It’s just the first time I’ve experienced it first-hand. I’ve seen friends receive the same pitying treatment, that same careful sidestepping and, in some cases, eventual ostracizing. The couples would stop asking them to go places because they were the awkward extra and, even though the discomfort was all in their heads, made people uncomfortable. The singles were so desperate to avoid being left out of the loop that they’d hook up as quickly as they could and dive right back into the social circles, leaving the other unlucky singles behind. If you remain single for too long, the unspoken message is clear: We think there’s something wrong with you, and we pity you. Sometimes it’s not even unspoken. Sometimes the sardonic remarks are all-too-loudly heard, condescending and snide.

For some reason, we’ve developed this idea that having a boyfriend, a mate, is a sign of social status and one of the primary goals of one’s existence. It’s not something limited to the gay subculture; we’re just a bit cattier about it, but it’s prevalent through most of society. Without a mate you aren’t complete; without a mate you haven’t proven that you’re somehow worthwhile because someone else thinks you’re worth dating, loving, marrying, or just having wild, hot, indiscriminate sex with. You need a boyfriend or girlfriend to be a real man or woman. You need someone else at your side to be considered a viable member of society, and you can’t possibly be happy without.

And if you think otherwise, there’s obviously something wrong with you. You’re marked. You’re stigmatized. You are somehow unclean, and black-marked in your social circles.

The beauty of this is that once you reach the stage where you’re comfortable being single, you no longer care.

I admit, for the longest time I bought into the social stereotype. I needed to have a boyfriend, or people would think I was pathetic and undateable. I needed someone to give me love and attention before I could feel good about myself. I needed someone to want me before I felt attractive. I worried about what my friends thought if the man of the hour wasn’t demonstrative, affectionate, whatever. I was afraid that I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I was alone.

Then I made the hardest decision I’ve made in many years. I voluntarily stepped away from the man I’ve loved for the past four years, from the man with whom two attempts at a relationship just didn’t work. I walked away for my own good, and for his.

And I realized that alone, I’ll be just fine. Alone, I’m still the same talented writer that I was when I was dating someone. I’m still that cynical a**hole that makes people laugh even while they roll their eyes. I’m still that guy who can turn a head now and then, and who enjoys the occasion to make someone blush. I’m still that dork who can turn from brazen and confident to geeky and shy in a matter of seconds. I was all of those things before I was dating someone, and I will continue to be those things now that I’m single again and walking tall.

Accepting that has started to show in my demeanor. I’m no longer embarrassed by others’ attitudes towards “the single guy”; I no longer allow myself to be stigmatized. I respond with amusement, with confidence, and now when I turn down a date or a proposition people don’t look at me as if wondering what’s wrong me. They look at me with curiosity, and wonder just what it is I know that they don’t, that makes me able to smile and say “no, thank you” to men that others would kill to say “yes, god yes” to.

What I know is this, and it’s been a long time in coming: I don’t need a relationship to validate myself.

And no matter what the prevalent mindset of society says…neither do you.

being single, romance, gay relationships, single stigma, dating, gay social circles

A while ago I asked if you believed the claim of Anthony Fortunato, one of the men accused of killing Michael Sandy, when he said that he, too, is gay. I didn’t believe him.

Apparently neither judge nor jury did, either.

Anthony Fortunato, Ilya Shurov, and John Fox have all been convicted of second-degree manslaughter in the murder of Sandy, with the specific definition of manslaughter as a hate crime, with sentences ranging from 17 to 21 years. The fourth, Gary Timmons, only received 4 years in exchage for his guilty plea and testimony.

The clever attempt by Fortunato and his lawyer could have turned the entire trial on end; as it is, the case forced people to reconsider what defines a hate crime, and whether or not one has to hate someone for it to be considered a hate crime. In the end it was decided that whether or not the defendants hated gay men was irrelevant; it was sufficient that they had targeted Sandy because of his sexuality, thus qualifying the attempted robbery and subsequent murder as a hate crime.

Personally, I think that was probably the best course to follow. You can’t conclusively prove an emotion; you can prove intent with more success, although even that’s tricky. In truth I’ve always been uneasy with the phrase “hate crime”; the language is strong, inflammatory, and inaccurate. Most crimes labeled as hate crimes are less crimes of hatred than of prejudice, which - while related - are still two different animals. If you’re defining a crime by whether or not there was hatred motivating the criminal act, then that can cover just about any crime of passion. That label can be slapped on just about anything, further muddying the waters when the alleged criminals are brought to trial.

What would I call it? I don’t know. “Hate crime” rolls off the tongue easily and it’s simple, at least. “Prejudice-motivated crime”, not so much. It doesn’t matter, really. A stone is still a stone, no matter what word you apply to it. Changing the name of the crimes won’t change that they happen every day, and will continue to happen unless people are made to understand that prejudice-based crimes will not be accepted in our society.

While the sentencing of his killers won’t bring Michael Sandy back to life, it will send the right message out to those who would enact violence on others out of prejudice.

The law will stand for the downtrodden, as it was meant to. And those crimes will not go unpunished.

michael j. sandy, hate crimes, hate crime legislation, murder, john fox, ilya shurov, anthony fortunato, gary timmons, justice jill konviser-levine, seth lieberman, gerald di chiara, homophobia

As many of you know, yesterday was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, honoring the memories of transpeople killed because of their gender identity and violence against transpeople in general. I suppose it might seem a little trite when transfolk were conveniently left behind during the vote on ENDA, but it’s still important to show respect for transpeople nonetheless; a little extra recognition on one day can’t erase the prejudice they put up with year-round, but it can help to ease the sting just a little. I have several trans friends, and they held their own little TDR party to share their war stories of transition, their triumphs, and the overall experience with their friends, both gay and straight. (I ended up carrying one of them home drunk last night, poor guy).

I find it interesting, then, that this story cropped up in the news yesterday, right on the day of remembrance:

Losers: Transgender Candidate A Fraud - 365gay.com

(Riverdale, Georgia) Two people who lost to a transgender candidate for a seat on the Riverdale council claim Michelle Bruce committed election fraud by claiming “to be female.”

Bruce, who has never hidden that she is transgender was the incumbent in the Nov. 6 election for the Riverdale, Georgia City Council. She was the top vote-getter and advances to a runoff election next month.

But failed candidates Georgia Fuller and Stanley Harris have asked a judge to disqualify Bruce from the runoff.

[...]In their petition to the court Fuller and Harris refer to Bruce as “Michael Bruce” and ask the court to nullify the Nov. 6 results. [...] The paper reported that Bruce’s voter registration, her notice of candidacy and her driver’s license all identify her as Michelle Bruce, a white female.

She declined to say if she had had sex reassignment surgery.

“That’s private,” she told the paper. “The people don’t care about it.”

Now…correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s only fraud if there’s deliberate deception involved, and deliberate intent to defraud someone by gaining from their loss. The loss vs. gain argument doesn’t even work here because in an election, there’ll always be one winner and one or more losers, so of course the winner will gain from their loss. Michelle Bruce didn’t deceive anyone; not only is she legally recognized as female, but she was even open with voters about the fact that she’s transgendered.

I don’t see fraud here. I see two bitter losers latching on to something they think they can use to turn the tide in their favor. I also see a great deal of disrespect for Michelle and her transition, by referring to her as “Michael”. It rather reminds me of someone at my friend Karl’s job, who insists on referring to him as “Kelly” and who will be as nasty as possible about it. Fuller and Harris lost to the better - or at least the most popular - candidate, and lost fairly. They should just accept that gracefully, rather than launching an attack because they think Michelle Bruce somehow deceived voters.

Granted, the issue of deception can be a tricky one where transgenders are concerned, because much of the general public doesn’t understand the concept of gender identity and its differences from sexual identity. They view crossdressing as a sexual fetish that often has to do with being gay, when that’s hardly the case. I recall that not too long ago a transwoman who’d been living happily with her husband for many years was arrested because her neighbors found out she was trans, and called the police to have her arrested for attempting to deceive and defraud the community. To members of the GBLTQ community who accept transpeople and understand exactly why they need to act on their gender identity to live in a way that’s most comfortable for them, the entire notion of deception and fraud seems utterly ridiculous.

To the general public, who will go on complete mental lockdown if you ask them to try to reconcile a gender identity the total opposite of one’s anatomy, it’s not so ridiculous at all.

They don’t even mean to be malicious. Another friend of mine, Charles, deals with this on a regular basis at work. He’s pre-op, FtM, taking hormones. He looks very masculine, grows a beard, everything. Underneath his clothing, though, he wears a binder to flatten his breasts. He still has female anatomy, but to anyone who knows him, he’s very much a man. When he was first hired, the HR manager was made aware of the situation and she did her best to understand, and even if she didn’t she was at least very nice about making sure that no one else knew anything about it and he was hired on as Charles, not as Cheryl. One day he was outed in the employee bathroom, though…and once everyone knew he had female anatomy, they immediately began referring to him as “she” and “her”.

And they weren’t even trying to be mean. That’s just the way they’re conditioned; female anatomy means female, male anatomy means male, and anything else is just all in your head and should be dismissed. It’s almost a battle of generations, as current and upcoming generations tend to understand gender identity far more than their elders. We understand why it’s a matter of respect to accept transgendered people as their chosen identity rather than by their anatomy, because they couldn’t help the anatomy they were born with and in many cases either can’t afford to change it or, in the case of many FtMs, have less than desirable surgical options available and thus choose to make do with what they have. A lot of people don’t see that. They just say that you can’t possibly call yourself a woman or a man when you have the anatomy of the opposite sex.

Still, sometimes people can be educated into understanding. Many transpeople have had success educating their parents, so all hope isn’t lost. Even people like Fuller and Harris can be educated, if they’ll just listen and try to understand. It just takes time, patience, and a little understanding of your own.

And cases like these remind me of just why it’s so important that those of us who do understand show respect to our trans friends, so they know that there are those who do support them and appreciate them, and will help to hold them up while they deal with those who can’t.

riverdale georgia, michelle bruce, michael bruce, georgia fuller, stanley harris, transgender, transvestite, transsexual, crossdresser, crossdressing, mtf, ftm, m2f, f2m, male-to-female, female-to-male, gender identity, gender dysphoria, transition, transitioning, sex change

Guys, I’ll be posting a real update later after the coffee’s done brewing, but right now I need you to answer a question for me:

Does the little streaming radio plugin in the sidebar automatically start playing for you when you load the page, or does it not start until you hit Play or load the mms:// stream directly into your media player from the link? I’ve got autoplay completely turned off in the embedding code as I find it wholly obnoxious to load a page in which music is forced on me and I have to hunt for a way to turn it off. So far everyone I’ve asked except one person has said that it didn’t start until they told it to. I’m trying to figure out if it’s really auto-starting for her or if she’s just trying to be a special little snowflake.

Let me know what browser and OS you’re using, as well. I’m planning to use the streaming plugin for monthly events later (I’ll explain more soon, promise) so it’ll help to know just how it behaves in readers’ browsers.

Thanks, and I’ll be back in a bit with something actually topical.

~Adri

P.S. Stop laughing at me for having a playlist full of Asian pop and rock. I have a very broad spectrum of musical tastes, but kept to mostly international music or remixes or things from game and film scores to keep the RIAA off my butt and out of 451 Press’s hair regarding music broadcasts from any artists they “own”. This is streaming directly from my hard drive, so who knows what else I might deem safe to throw on there as I poke through my vast musical collection.

She’s confident. She’s drop-dead beautiful. She’s intelligent, capable, engaging, and frankly she doesn’t really need you or any other man - but you’ve caught her eye nonetheless. She glances at you in passing - then pauses, curious, and looks again. At this point you’ve noticed her looking, and realize that - gasp! - she seems to be interested in you. So when she walks over with a smile and stretches out a hand to introduce herself…

…you sneer at her and tell her to move along, because the kitty litter box is down the hall.

And then you wonder why she thinks you’re a prick.

Sound outlandish? It’s not. That scene took place in a cafe down the street from the Art Institute of Houston in late 2001, and I watched in disgust while my former friend and classmate, Jeff, sent a woman packing just for saying hello…then proceeded to smugly congratulate himself as if he’d done something noble and worthwhile.

It’s a pretty common occurrence. While we aren’t all guilty, gay men can be some of the most misogynistic jerks around. We act as if women are substandard just because we aren’t attracted to them. If a woman flirts with us we think we’re entitled to be catty to her, as if she should have known better even if we’re not walking around with huge “GAY - NOT AVAILABLE TO WOMEN” stickers on our foreheads. We pick at their clothing and call them skanks if they dare to dress like anything other than prudish Victorian schoolmistresses, for daring to subject our eyes to their female flesh. Even if we have close female friends, when they’re not around we make derogatory comments about how disgusting female anatomy is and mock the worst stereotyped traits of female behavior even as we unconsciously mimic them.

My question is: why?

Are we afraid of women? Are we so insecure in our place in society and our own self-worth that we need to somehow make ourselves feel superior to someone? Do we fear that, in entering into relationships with other men, we will be compared to women and thus wish to distance ourselves from them as much as possible? What is the point in acting as if we’re members of some elitist society, a no-girls-allowed club in which our childhood treehouses have been replaced by sprawling art-deco flats?

Regardless of the reasons, it’s entirely unfair. We shouldn’t act like it’s the woman’s fault that we aren’t attracted to her gender, and we shouldn’t treat her as anything less because of it. Straight people don’t treat members of the same sex that way; in fact, I doubt they even think to, as members of the same sex are simply viewed as comrades, potential friends - an attitude we should take more often with women. Women fought too damned hard to be recognized as equal members of society for us to undermine them that way, and they’re still fighting. In fact, they’re fighting the same battle that we are; they’ve just made more progress.

Maybe it’s that we’re jealous of that.

Regardless of that, it’s time to stop. We gripe and moan about the nasty way that people treat us, but sometimes we are the most hypocritical a**holes on the face of the planet. We act like it’s our right, granted by God or self or what the hell ever, to be as nasty to anyone as we want; in fact, we think it makes us cute.

Well, I don’t think it’s so cute. And frankly, no matter what’s been done to us as a group or how many creepy fag hags we’ve put up with, we aren’t owed the right to that kind of behavior as many seem to think we are - not on a daily basis, and most certainly not unprovoked.

Maybe if we weren’t so snotty and discriminatory so often, society in general would make more of an effort to accept us. For every story you hear of that nice gay couple down the street who helped rake the neighbor lady’s yard, you hear three stories about the b*tchy gay guy in customer service who treated a lady like trash for no good reason, about the snotty gay stylist who couldn’t be content with just trimming a woman’s hair but instead launched an all-out personal attack on her skin and clothing, about the hot guy in the cafe who called a woman a skank for smiling at him and told her that the kitty litter box was down the hall.

Enough already.

We erode our own right to equality when we refuse to grant equality to others.

So grow up, guys.

This is real life, and girls don’t have cooties anymore.

misogyny, bad behavior, gay male misogyny

Hey, guys. This is just a quick post to let you know I won’t be updating with any serious discussion today; I’m rather busy, working a lot on my other two jobs, and just a bit burned out on writing. I keep trying to start a post on a number of topics and then drawing a blank. Writer’s block is apparently kicking me in the teeth today. (No, NaNo’s not contributing to that at all, why ever would you ask?) I suppose sometimes you just get a little bogged down in your subject matter, and it’s hard to write about the same topic every day - as much as I enjoy this, enjoy the debates it can spark, and the conflicting opinions people post to offer differing perspectives. I just need a day off.

I may do a weekend edition post tomorrow (or even much later tonight) to make up for it so I won’t feel like I’m slacking on the job since I hate missing daily updates - but if I don’t, just look for me again on Monday with a new No Style comic.

As an aside, it is damned creepy to be recognized in your local grocery store by someone who occasionally reads the comic. Seriously.

Quick update on the 1,000 Comments Contest before I go:

…just to give this post something of substance, after all.

We’re currently at 922 comments - just 78 more to go, down to the double digits. That’s the home stretch, kids. I definitely think we can make 1,000 by the end of the month (especially with all the weird link farming sites giving me pingbacks; what the heck is up with that?). Remember, the prize is a Kingston 1GB USB Flash drive and a cameo spot as a character in No Style. If you can think of another prize you’d rather have, let me know and I’ll see if it’s within my means.

I’m gone for now; have to get back to work. Have a good weekend.

~Adri

Every day we hear stories of the pain caused by discrimination and prejudice against the gay and lesbian community. The news is filled with them: stories of families broken, friendships abandoned, jobs lost, public and private humiliation, personal injury…sometimes even lives lost. We’ve all read the stories. We’ve all been those stories, at one point or another. Some of us live them every day; some of us have managed to insulate ourselves until it’s a far-distant thing that we look upon with pity and sorrow. And sometimes…sometimes, those stories come knocking on our doorsteps.

A close friend of mine - we’ll call her Mirela for the sake of privacy - is dealing with her own story right now, and dreading its outcome. Mirela is a lesbian, and her family has always had trouble coping with that. Her father is openly derisive, while her mother has struggled to accept her and reconcile the fact that her daughter is a lesbian with her own personal beliefs. Mirela’s mother is also a teacher at the Catholic school where Mirela endured a miserable nine years as an outcast - the unpopular girl; the girl who was snickered about because she didn’t have the right hair or jeans or shoes; the girl who always hid her nose in a book so she wouldn’t have to hear about the things the other girls were doing without her, and the activities she was excluded from. I know how she felt; I was that boy, Catholic school and all.

Now, though, Mirela is a college student ready to start her career; over the years I’ve watched her fight through so many insecurities and difficulties and always come out strong and fighting on the other side of every battle. She’s got a wonderful girlfriend now, and Mirela isn’t at all ashamed to be open about her sexuality. She even has a LGBT support banner on her formerly public MySpace page.

I say formerly, because now she’s had to set it on private to try to avoid embarrassing her mother - but the damage has already been done.

Sometimes all it takes is one little thing to utterly change the flavor of your life. In this case that one little thing was Mirela’s mother bringing up Mirela’s MySpace page in a class of 13-year-old girls, to demonstrate just how public personal information can be so the girls understand the dangers they pose to themselves by posting their pictures and information on the site. Mirela’s mother ended up becoming the lesson as the girls burst into giggles at the sight of the LGBT banner - and now the woman has become the laughingstock of the entire class. Even worse, Mirela has become the laughingstock of the school for the second time in her life, when she’d thought she’d be able to leave that place behind forever. All of this just because she’s the teacher’s daughter, and she’s a lesbian.

Mirela’s mother has to deal with that every day, now. The whispers; the snickers; the looks. The loss of respect from her class. Even worse, there may be more severe repercussions, as word spreads to the parents. Mirela has had first-hand experience with how intolerant the parents who send their children to this school can be, and worries that her mother will face reprimand or may even lose her job if they decide that she might be a corrupting influence on her child. The hardest part for her to deal with, though, is that her mother might be ashamed of her - or if not ashamed of her, at the very least publicly shamed because of her. As hard as her mother has struggled to accept her, Mirela never wanted to bring public humiliation upon her, never wanted to do anything that might in any way embarrass her, but now it’s too late.

And all because of a group of small-minded children.

I don’t wholly blame the children. Mostly I blame the parents for not teaching them that another person’s sexuality isn’t something to be mocked or derided - but really, this is more indicative of a problem within society in general. Children will always be cruel towards those who are different; that’s just the way children are. But it wouldn’t have been such a big deal - and they wouldn’t be openly disrespecting an adult - if society hadn’t made it quite clear that hey, it’s perfectly all right to make fun of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the transgendered…anyone who isn’t 100% hetero and fitting the norm. Derisive gay jokes are more common than derisive straight jokes and are among the first “taboo” things that children learn to snigger about behind their hands in the bathrooms and lunchrooms, as they try out words like “fag” and “fudgepacker” and, if they’re feeling really daring and dirty, “cocksucker” and “rugmuncher”. They’ll fling these words at each other as insults with no real idea of what they mean beyond the fact that they’re related to being gay, and being gay is both funny and worthy of ridicule.

Laying blame, though, doesn’t change what’s already happened - and doesn’t change that now Mirela’s relationship with her mother is once more strained as she carries what she feels is her burden for embarrassing her mother.

No one should ever have to be embarrassed by their sexuality, for any reason. No one should ever have to fear that their sexuality will create an uncomfortable situation for a relative or a friend, or that it might somehow reflect negatively on those in their personal circle. In an ideal world, this situation wouldn’t have even been an issue and those girls wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at the banner.

But this isn’t an ideal world. This is reality, and reality is an ugly thing that will only change if we work at it - if we educate one another, and practice the tolerance that we preach. One day we may reconcile social perceptions of homosexuality with the reality, and gain acceptance to the point where we’ll become nearly commonplace. That day is not today.

But with hope and hard work, it may be one day soon.

gay and lesbian families, anti-gay discrimination, prejudice

Dear Adri,

I have a friend (let’s call her Kate) who I am pretty sure is gay. Being ridiculously curious (and also harboring a slight crush on her) I would love to know if I’m correct or not. However, she’s remained very tight-lipped about topics of a sexual nature - she’s never mentioned any crushes she’s ever had and I’m know she’s never dated or even kissed anyone before (we’re college students, by the way, which makes that a little more unusual). Kate has recently been telling me about someone else we know (Molly) who is pursuing her pretty aggressively, and while Kate has made it clear she’s not interested in this other person, she hasn’t said “because I’m straight” or “because I’m asexual” or anything, just that Molly is “kind of freaking her out” because she keeps showing up in Kate’s suite uninvited.

Recently one of her suitemates, someone who I think is even closer to Kate than I am, mentioned to me that none of the suitemates know whether Kate is gay, either. (She said this to me in the context of telling me about how Molly showed up in their suite one day and asked Kate’s entire suite whether Kate was gay when Kate got up to go to the bathroom!) Is Kate’s clear avoidance of the subject a sign that I should let sleeping dogs lie? Is it possible that she just doesn’t know whether she’s gay or not? I’ve had people tell me to “just ask her!” but I get the feeling she might not respond well to a direct “You sure like the Indigo Girls a lot! So, are you gay?” type question since she’s so private, but it seems like the only way to get a straight (ooh, ignore that horrendous pun) answer out of her. I’ve tried to sneak it out of her with leading questions such as (I think this was my most recent attempt): “Wow, Kate! Your Halloween costume is so hot, who are you trying to seduce? It would totally work.” but she just laughs and says “No one!” or something else equally vague. I also haven’t told her that I’m bisexual - could that be a good lead-up to some sort of let’s-all-confess-our-attraction-to-girls talk of some kind? Whether or not I figure this out, I like her enough so that I don’t want to make things awkward.

Wondering in Worcester

Oh, honey, I know it’s probably driving you nuts to sit on your feelings and your curiosity this way, but asking Kate directly is definitely not the way to go. You’ll end up making her as uncomfortable as that creepy stalker-child Molly (who sounds like she needs a few lessons in common courtesy, tact, and social graces - preferably from my grandmother, who’d happily enforce them with a wooden spoon across the knuckles).

I can’t really hazard a guess as to which way Kate might lean just based on the described behavior, as actually she sounds a lot like one of my sisters - who’s 100% hetero, but for the longest time was extremely reserved and uncomfortable around men to the point of being defensive and wouldn’t talk about anything related to sex or sexuality in any capacity. She didn’t date in high school or in college because she didn’t know how to act with boys, and remained staunchly single until her late twenties, when a close male friend made the first move and approached her carefully enough not to make her skittish. (She’s a very intimidating munchkin. Very intimidating. And yet she’ll bolt at the first sign of aggressive male attention.) People wondered if she was a lesbian, too, and she deflected the question because it embarrassed her. So the fact that Kate hasn’t had a boyfriend by now, or those other behavioral signs, may not really mean much.

At the same time, as you said, she may not be sure of her own sexuality. She may have just started to question; college is an environment that lets you explore these ideas that may not even have occurred earlier on in life. If she’s at that stage she’s probably doing a lot of thinking, and wrestling with herself internally. She won’t be willing to openly admit anything until she’s really sure that she wants to take that step.

But yet again, she may know quite well that she bats for the girls’ team and just doesn’t want to expose herself. She may have many reasons for being discreet; they could involve family, her potential career, even fear of losing her friends. Sometimes people want to stay in the closet for a while, so even if your suspicions are correct, she’ll deny them until she’s good and ready to come out.

There are so many possible interpretations for her behavior, and I don’t want you to get your hopes up because you’re seeing what you want to see and hoping that maybe, just maybe, she might be open to your advances. Don’t press her; you may end up losing a friend and getting slotted into a category with a crazy woman. You’ve already given yourself the best advice anyone could give; let slip about your own sexuality in a relaxed, non-aggressive way so she knows you’re supportive if she wants to come out to you, but don’t beat her about the head with the issue. Let her take her time.

If you really have to, if it’s just eating you up inside…you can even tell her about your crush, but don’t tell her about any assumptions you’ve made about her. Don’t pry at her to return the sentiment, or even tell you definitively if she’s remotely interested in girls. I wouldn’t even ask her to tell you yes or no on whether she’d date you just as a hypothetical; just tell her you wanted her to know how you felt, that you’re not expecting her to do or say anything about it, and that you’re not expecting anything to change because of it. If you really feel brave enough to put yourself out there and risk potential rejection, then it’s all right to reveal information about yourself as long as you don’t make her feel cornered or try to drag information out of her. That way you aren’t pushing at her personal boundaries too much.

I know “just leave it alone” isn’t the advice you wanted to hear, but that’s honestly the best thing to do. Find subtle ways to let her know you’re open to the idea if she wants to talk about it, but beyond that just let it rest. If she wants you to know, she’ll work up to telling you. Otherwise, just respect her privacy. I’m sure it wouldn’t make her feel very good to know that her sexuality is a common subject of gossip.

Best of luck to you,
~Adri

P.S. Sorry this is late, everyone. I wrote this last night and set it to drip today, and apparently WordPress didn’t publish it. I, being a stupid sod, didn’t notice until this afternoon.

ask adri, gay advice column, coming out

We are taking a swerve away from the GBLTQ spectrum today; if you’re here for your daily dose of GBLTQ news and rantage, go spend some time with Lyndsey or have a gander at a few of the latest headlines - or come back tomorrow, when things are back on topic. I’d like to take a moment to discuss something that I believe deserves a few moments of my attention - and yours. Its potential effect is primarily on US college students and future students, but even those who don’t reside on American soil or aren’t currently entrenched in our education system may want to be aware of this turn of events and the sickening precedent that it could set.

Apparently the MPAA now thinks it can push legislation that will affect whether or not a school will receive federal funding for financial aid, based on whether or not said school complies with the MPAA’s demands regarding technology aimed at preventing P2P filesharing on campus networks.

The worst part?

The Democratic majority are all for it.

Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else - CNet News

The U.S. House of Representatives bill (PDF), which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill. “We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing,” said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

According to the bill, if universities did not agree to test “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity,” all of their students–even ones who don’t own a computer–would lose federal financial aid.

Yes, you read that correctly. We’re dealing with a multibillion-dollar war that is failing ever more spectacularly with each day; we can’t even get our legislature for GBLTQ rights straight; our government is suggesting that we voluntarily forfeit our right to privacy…and the House is wasting 747 pages and valuable time on harmful legislature that no one will actually read, and will probably sign without realizing what it entails because it’s part of a bill with a pretty name like “College Opportunity and Affordability Act”, which has to be good, right? Hell, that’s halfway how the Patriot Act got through. 300+ pages of tl;dr and a spiffy title that can easily be turned against any politician who protests it by saying “So you’re against patriotism?”

I’m against this damned legislation. This will cripple the American education system - and it’s already limping and floundering - over an issue that shouldn’t even be related to student financial aid. Government bodies should not damned well be answering to the MPAA or the RIAA! Students too poor to even own a computer, let alone afford to attend university without financial aid, could find themselves out on the street because the entertainment industry is overstepping its bounds and taking deliberate malicious action involving punishment far above and beyond any committed “crimes”. Media piracy and copyright infringement are not worth sweeping pulls of financial aid.

I don’t really advocate media piracy. I’m a fence-straddler; I use low-cost subscription services like Vongo to watch legally downloaded movies, and if Vongo doesn’t have what I want to watch on demand then I’ll go buy the DVD later when it’s no longer $20 a pop. I cringe at spending $10 to see a movie on the big screen, but will do it if my friends drag me. I don’t buy overpriced CDs, but I don’t like my music DRM-laden (I don’t even like having DRM-enabling technology on my machine, such as Windows Media Player 11) …so I’ll spend 99 cents per song at Buy.com or some other music sale service that doesn’t require monthly subscriptions or annoying software, download the DRM-burdened version of a track just to say I paid for my music, and then turn around and download a non-DRM version off Shareaza so I don’t have to go through a load of BS to copy it between my computers, cellphone, and my various portable media devices.

Basically, I’ve found an economical way to avoid piracy without paying what I feel are wholly unreasonable prices for media. I think that the entertainment industry has grown far too bloated and greedy, and current tactics of “pay for our overpriced drivel or else” border on extortion. I don’t think that downloading and sharing music for free constitutes harmful theft as they’d have us believe, but I also don’t think it’s the answer to getting around the problem that they present. What it most certainly is not, however, is a crime worthy of the exorbitant RIAA shakedowns that take place on a regular basis - and it’s definitely not a crime worthy of nearly shutting down entire schools for lack of federal funding because one student’s decision to download a movie from The Pirate Bay could potentially affect the entire campus.

It’s a situation where two wrongs don’t make a right, but in this case the entertainment industry is climbing up a vast, towering pillar of wrongness that far eclipses anything a filesharer might have done. It’s no secret that politicians wallow in the pockets of various industries, whether it’s big oil or the entertainment industry. Puppets on strings - but the MPAA isn’t even trying to hide that they’re pulling the strings anymore. It’s exorbitant, it’s disgusting, it’s blatant extortion, and I hope the bill dies amidst derision on the House floor.

Thank you, Democrats, for reminding me of why I refuse to align with any particular party - and for reminding me that no matter the label, a politician is still a politician and can be bought by just about anyone. Maybe if I had more money than the MPAA I could divert your attention from this and get you to spend a bit more time focusing on gay marriage and GBLTQ rights, hm?

The MPAA and their supporters in the House of Representatives are threatening current and future generations of students, all so they can line their pockets and feed a few more gasping breaths into a dying business model that isn’t equipped to handle current information sharing technology. They should be adapting to current technology, not trying to force the technology, under pain of torture, to suit the old business model. It’s a case of the punishment not fitting the crime, and of treating your own customers like criminals. The consumer is the enemy, and must be subjugated under corporate rule.

We have veered horribly off the path and forgotten not the letter, but the spirit of the law and its processes, and this fiasco is only one small symptom of the many horrible abuses of the legislative process that take place every day.

I feel like I’m watching Pirates of the Caribbean. “Take what ye can; give nothing back.”

Only it’s not the so-called “media pirates” following that guideline.

media piracy, copyright law, copyright violation, mpaa, riaa, copyright infringement, p2p networks, file sharing

Er. Hi. It’s a little late, isn’t it? I didn’t run away; I just got caught up in work and writing this morning. Mainly writing. Hush. I’ll behave myself again after NaNoWriMo’s over.

There doesn’t seem to be much explosively new going on on the news front this morning, anyway. People are b*tching about ENDA, churches are still screeching about allowing GBLTQ parishioners to have certain freedoms or even say anything, and election BS is keying up to levels so high I’m starting to wonder where I left my thigh-high boots.

In other words, to quote Stephen King yet again: SSDD. Same sh*t, different day. Sometimes I wonder if anything’s really ever going to change, or if we’ll be fighting the same battles and having the same petty arguments all our lives.

In browsing the ‘net, though, I ran across something that rather baffled me: an article discussing statistics on a failed HIV vaccine. The article notes that out of test groups of people given the vaccine (synthetic HIV genes tucked into the good ol’ common cold, intended to stimulate the body to fight off HIV as it fights off the cold) vs. people given a dummy vaccine, a higher percentage of those given the vaccine actually went on to contract HIV.

It doesn’t say why.

It says they were more likely to contract HIV through sex or other risky behavior, but the details are still woefully skimpy despite a multi-paragraph article. Did these people engage in more risky behavior because they thought the vaccine would protect them? Did they deliberately ignore the fact that sex partners or others they shared bodily fluids with were HIV positive, because of the vaccine? Or did they go about their normal behavior, and likely would have ended up infected with HIV anyway with the vaccine only slightly increasing their risk?

The article is just entirely puzzling and vague, and it raises another question that wasn’t addressed: could they have been infected with HIV from the synthetic genes alone, rather than just lowering their resistance to it so they were more likely to be infected with the virus when exposed to it “in the wild”?

This sort of testing makes me extremely nervous, honestly. I’m all for developing preventative measures to help defend against HIV/AIDs, but this is a deadly disease with no cure and limited treatment options. You’d think they’d be a bit more certain of what they were doing to their test groups before they forged on ahead.

Something about this just doesn’t sit right with me.

And that’s all I have to say for the day. See you Monday with another page of No Style (with actual drawings this time).

HIV/AIDS, hiv vaccine, failed hiv vaccine

Lyndsey had her rant about this yesterday; I suppose today it’s my turn, ’cause we done gone and done it, kids. ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act intended to protect people from discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity, has passed the House - without the trans-inclusive language.

And according to surveys, the majority of us are all right with that.

Do you know what the LGBT community (oh, excuse me - the LGB community) just did?

We just pulled a W.

That’s right, we took a page out of the rulebook of the man that many of us despise as one of the worst presidents in the history of our nation.

Remember “No Child Left Behind”?

Uh-huh.

Now remember the recent presidential veto of a bill that would have provided healthcare for thousands of children who don’t currently receive care?

…how many children do you think were left behind there, hm?

So what happened to our solidarity? What happened to human rights and civil rights organizations, LGBT/GBLTQ foundations, lawmakers, representatives, lobbyists, all so loudly protesting the removal of trans-inclusive language from ENDA? Somewhere along the way it died down to an abrupt and pathetic murmur, and the T in LGBT got left behind while the rest of us sailed on merrily ahead. I know we’re all tired of having to fight for every last tiny thing we get, but is that any reason to roll over and show our bellies and accept the little table scraps we’re given with hardly a fight?

Are we really so selfish that we’re willing to say, “Well, let’s just take it this time and make sure we’re covered, and we’ll worry about the transpeople later”?

Not acceptable, people. Not acceptable. There’s a reason we call ourselves the GBLTQ/LGBT community - because we are a community, no matter how much we snipe at each other from within. It’s like family; you may not always like each other, but you pull together in the end and support each other even if you don’t always approve of each other.

There comes a time when you have to pick your battles, and be satisfied with the small victories. This is not one of those times. If we start letting transpeople be pushed aside…

…who’s next?

ENDA, employment non-discrimination act, GENDA, workplace protections, house of representatives, house speaker nancy pelosi, transgender, transvestite, transsexual, crossdresser, crossdressing, mtf, ftm, m2f, f2m, male-to-female, female-to-male, gender identity, gender dysphoria, transition, transitioning, sex change

I probably shouldn’t be doing an “Ask Adri” column in my current mood. You can’t see me right now, but I’m making my pain face. Why? Because I’m in pain. I don’t know what I did to my right arm yesterday, but I woke up this morning feeling as if a few members of the WWE had been using it as an illegal blunt object in the ring. With it still attached to my body. So I’m kind of cranky. But the news is alternately boring me or pissing me off with arseheaded reports that now the LGBT community is pushing for a non-trans-inclusive ENDA (what the hell happened to solidarity, people? I bet we wouldn’t be so willing to ditch them if it was the G or L getting left out), and this letter’s been sitting in my inbox for a couple of weeks now, so I really shouldn’t neglect it any longer. (Also, to two people who e-mailed me asking for private responses: I’m not ignoring you. You’ll hear from me some time tomorrow.)

Hello Adrian.

I am 37/gwm/FL. [Note from Adri for those who don't do netspeak: He's a 37-year-old gay white male who lives in Florida.] My wife and I have three lovely children. I am gay. I knew I was gay when I married her but I thought I could live a normal married straight life. I have been happy with my children and I love my wife, but I am very unhappy with myself. I can no longer pretend attraction to my wife and would like to explore my homosexual side. I do not want her to find out. I would like to have a relationship on the side with another man. How can I meet men without coming out publicly? We live in a small town and if I go to the gay bars nearby I will be recognized. Someone will tell my wife. I need to meet a man who can be discreet. Can you tell me how I can do this?

Sincerely,
Frustrated Florida Fag

Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute. Hold up and slow your roll, Holmes. Are you asking me to help you figure out the best way to cheat on your wife with other men?

Oh, I don’t think so.

Let me tell you something, son. You are going to do this right, rather than in the way that’s the most comfortable for you. You are going to inform your wife, properly and politely, of this particular turn of events in your life. You are going to take responsibility for the years of your marriage, and you are going to make this as easy for her as possible, because none of this is her fault and she’s going to feel hurt and betrayed, almost as much as she would if she caught you cheating. I know this isn’t easy for you, either, and I feel for you, I really do - as while some of this situation is your fault, not all of it is. But you are not going to make it worse by being a reprehensible human being and sneaking around behind your wife’s back like a dog, do you hear me?

You and your wife are going to talk about this. She may leave you, but for the sake of your children, she may not. If she stays with your sorry behind, she may even be willing to come to an agreement. You stay married as parents, but not as sexual partners, and then with her permission you can slip around on the sly all you want as long as you don’t bring your sexual partners home and trip the kids off as to what’s going on. It’s not an ideal situation, and later when the children are older and not as likely to be affected emotionally by their parents breaking up (for whatever reason, sexuality has little to do with how kids are affected by divorce), they will need to be told the truth. Frankly I don’t like the idea of hiding your sexuality from your kids, but it would just be too confusing for them to understand, in their formative years, why Mommy and Daddy have separate bedrooms and Daddy brings men home to spend the night.

And you know what? Your wife may take the kids and leave you. There’ll be a custody hearing; it may be ugly, it may not, but as long as you’re not declared unfit then you’ll get to spend plenty of equal time with your kids. You can even come out publicly and explain a few things to your kids, about how Daddy is gay but Daddy’s still Daddy and still loves them, supports them, etc. - and yes Daddy still loves Mommy, just not in certain ways.

Or you can stomp down your urges, stay miserably in the closet, and keep your family exactly the way it is. It’s an unfortunate situation, and there is no easy answer, no right answer, and no answer that’s going to make everyone happy.

Except you screwing around behind your wife’s back, and that you will not do. Not with my help, anyway. When you get caught, I want no part of this.

And you will get caught. Men always do; I know this from experience, not from cheating myself, but from dealing with cheating men from ex-boyfriends to my own father. You always get caught.

And when you get caught, those hot messes that I described above will be ten times worse.

So just don’t do it.

I know I was a little stern there. You needed it. You need a hard look at the reality of what your decision entails, from an outside perspective. This entire time you’ve probably been focusing on your own misery, and your own potential happiness. When you create a family, you can’t just think of yourself alone anymore. Your decisions deeply affect other people, and you have to consider that before every choice you make. I know you feel trapped by a decision you made years ago, and wish you could go back and undo it. You can’t. Unfortunately, part of adult life is living with the consequences of your past actions, and sometimes there just isn’t a way to wipe the slate clean and start over blameless.

Unless you’re Catholic, but don’t even get me started on that.

Despite my harsh words, I do wish you the best, and I hope that the difficulties along the road ahead are eased by mutual understanding between you and your family. You have a lot of tough choices to make. Good luck with them all.

See this? This is my problem with the whole “sanctity of marriage” crap. Heterosexual marriages break up all the time, for just about any reason; it’s not uncommon for someone to go through two or three spouses on average in their lifetime. How sacred were those marriage vows again?

But this situation in particular, oh, this one gets under my skin. If homosexual marriages were acceptable and legal, this man might not have felt the need to get into a heterosexual relationship and later marriage, in order to conform to the pressures to live the picture of the societal norm. He might have married a man and lived happily ever after, while the woman who - in this alternate future - is not his wife would have married a different man and moved on to have several fat, shiny babies. Instead we’ve got a tangled mess in which the husband is miserable, the wife is oblivious and just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the children could very possibly have a previously happy home torn apart.

Oh, but that marriage is between a man and a woman, so hey, it’s just fine.

George W. Bush, you can suck my middle finger.

ask adri, gay advice column, coming out, sanctity of marriage, gay marriage, heterosexual marriage, ENDA