Darkside Rainbow

It is so hard for me to even pretend to be a good person when the grand play of American politics loves to give me things to cackle over in malicious glee. Although frankly, on more sober reflection, that glee turns out to be short-lived.

Washroom Sex Bust Blow To McCain Campaign - 365gay.com

(Titusville, Florida) A co-chair of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign in Florida has been busted for trying to pick up an undercover male police officer.

State Rep. Bob Allen (R), a foe of LGBT rights in Florida, is charged with offering the cop $20 for oral sex in a washroom at Veteran’s Memorial Park in Titusville.

Police said that Allen, 48, was seen coming in and out of a restroom three times before approaching the officer.

Anyone else having flashbacks to Ted Haggard?

It never ceases to amaze me that those who protest the loudest are often the ones who have the most to hide. Wise up, fellas. You aren’t fooling anyone and you aren’t diverting attention away from you; instead you’re drawing yourself under more scrutiny, and that’s why you eventually get shown up as hypocrites in a fashion that brings perverse satisfaction to all of the people that you’ve unjustly reviled.

There’s an old saying whose source I can’t remember, but it’s something like “you are what you fear the most”. That’s certainly beginning to prove true for a growing number of conservative politicians and leaders who decry homosexuality. Illicit activities have ranged from soliciting teenage boys in chat rooms to the famous line snorted from the phallus of some boy-toy or another.

I’m starting to wonder if the reason that this same group of people can’t distinguish between homosexuality, pedophilia, and drug usage is because they lump all of their personal transgressions into a single sin and label it homosexuality. The politician who solicited teenage boys online (why can I not remember his name?) no doubt labeled his attraction to young males as representative of all homosexual behavior, rather than his own pedophilia laid atop homosexuality. Ted Haggard denounced homosexuality as a sin that led to indiscriminate, unsafe sex and drug use - when instead those were his own personal crimes that he tried to blame on homosexuality as the cause. It’s a case of “the devil made me do it”, where the devil is the otherwise harmless trait of homosexuality. Hell, some people are even buying into that and making some insane arguments about Big Sodomy as an evil akin to Big Tobacco.

The truth is that personal accountability is falling by the wayside. Everyone wants someone or something else to blame for their own choices. No one wants to step up and say “I did drugs because I was weak and gave in to temptation, and made stupid choices”. No one wants to say “I have a sexually transmitted disease because I had indiscriminate, unsafe sex with multiple partners even though I was well aware of the dangers”. Instead they’d rather say “The evil of homosexuality made me do it. The devil came to me and tempted me, exploited my weakness, and used homosexuality to lead me down the dark path into deeper temptation”. And what does that give them? More ammunition to vilify homosexuality. Instead of saying “this person isn’t nearly as moral and upstanding as he/she claimed”, instead they say “this moral and upstanding person woefully fell victim to the demon of homosexuality”. No personal culpability at all, as long a there’s a convenient scapegoat that suits one’s personal ideology.

It’s hard to separate the truth about one issue when it’s constantly being conveniently tangled with a million others, regardless of causation. When detractors of gay and lesbian lifestyles only present our lifestyle in conjunction with negative acts that were the choice of the person, not their sexuality, it becomes impossible for an observing general public to judge that lifestyle objectively.

Bah. Now Jim Naugle has ammunition to claim that if Republicans are soliciting gay oral sex in Titusville bathrooms, then we gays must be having hot, raunchy orgies in his bathrooms, too.

There’s a down side to everything.

And one of the down sides to being American is that sometimes you don’t realize just how sheltered you are, or how good you have it. No, our country isn’t perfect. Yes, we do still have a long way to go in the area of civil liberties for those of all walks of life. But at least in this country we have the right to speak out to demand equality. At least we can live openly with our natural sexuality, should we choose…and even if we may not have all of the equal rights that we want, we can still openly say “I’m gay, and this is my partner” without engendering more than a little discomfort among those uncomfortable, some jeering, and threats of physical violence that thankfully only erupt into real violence in rare instances (though I would be happier if “rare” was closer to “nonexistent”). We rarely have to fear anything this terrible, though:

South African Lesbians Tortured, Murdered - 365gay.com

(Cape Town, South Africa) LGBT civil rights activists in South Africa are calling on the government to do more to end the growing number of attacks on lesbians in the Black townships following the brutal murders on the weekend of two women.

Sizakele Sigasa, 30, an outreach coordinator at the Positive Women’s Network and a lesbian and gay rights activist, and her friend Salome Masooa, 23, were tortured and murdered in Soweto.

Sigasa was found with her hands tied with her underpants and her ankles tied with her shoelaces, with three bullet holes in her head and three in her collarbone.

Masooa also had been shot to death.

Even while you’re bemoaning what you don’t have, remember to be grateful for what you do have. Be grateful that you live in a country where your way of life may not be universally accepted, but you do have basic rights that protect you, as a human being, from this sort of violence. You have protections under the law that discourage people who might otherwise act out against you, or we might have far more hate crimes than the current statistics report. In America, ours isn’t a perfect world. But there’s something called perspective, and the fact that we have the freedom to complain so loudly about our lot without more than verbal retribution reminds me to keep my actions and my arguments for the fight for gay and lesbian equality in a realistic and mature perspective.

Apologies if this post has been a tad rambling and disjointed. I’ve been writing it in snatches between running four loads of laundry (it’s been far too long since I washed, and I may not be single but I still live like a bachelor and the sniff test is still quite effective), being mildly freaked out that I almost ate a rather large spider on the way to the laundry room, and trying to sort out various morning thoughts without the aid of coffee. I’m all out of French Roast, folks, and don’t have time to run get more right now. Let’s hope I make time before Monday’s post or you may be treated to another deluge of mental effluvium.

Here. Have an article on Holsinger’s review. Judge for yourself whether the leopard’s really changed his spots, as the man claims.

My weekend starts the second I hit “publish”, so I’m out of here. Have a good one, and see you Monday.

senator john mckain, florida state representative bob allen, prostitution, solicitation, ted haggard, jim naugle, bathroom sex, south african lesbians, sizakele sigasa, salome masooa, homophobia, hate crimes, anti-gay violence, big sodomy, james holsinger, surgeon general review