The say you shouldn’t publish your stories online because then legitimate publishers won’t want to touch them later, but that model is getting less and less attractive to new authors, a lot of whom just go ahead and self publish these days anyway, and in any case I don’t think I’m bestseller material. I just have a story I’m having writing and which I want get out there. So I’m going to serialize it here on the blog and maybe…maybe… self publish it later.

On one of my previous trips to Disney World I stayed outside the park next to what I thought was a very creepy abandoned office building (I later learned it was a hotel that just looked like a run of the mill office building). I’ve written about it previously here. I’d never seen anything creepier in my life. Even in broad daylight it looked grimly watchful. At night it seemed positively haunted.

It occurred to me then that I’d never seen a ghost story about an ordinary sort of office building and my imagination took flight. Below the line is the first chapter of the result.

The first chapter is very brief…basically just an introduction to the story. So I’ve included the second here which introduces my two main characters, a same-sex couple who get dragged into a reality TV ghost hunt because one of them thinks they need the money. The third chapter sets the scene. Forth chapter is almost done. I’m still working on the rest of it so don’t expect it to be a weekly or even a monthly installment thing. I am not a natural born writer. But hopefully it’ll be worth your time if you like this sort of story, and hopefully I won’t leave people hanging for months at a time waiting for the next chapter.

Read the rest of this entry »

The headline I was expecting…came as expected.

NC voters approve amendment on gay marriage

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment on Tuesday defining marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman, making it the 30th state to adopt such a ban.

Thirty states.  Thirty states.  Oh…and it’s more then simply a ban on same-sex marriage. That amendment was an all out attack on same-sex couples having any legal rights that heterosexuals are bound to respect.

I have reflected often on the fact that the only reason I feel free to explore my country, take the long cross-country drives I love, is that I am single.  The saving grace of it is that the side of my family that approves of constitutionally kicking their gay neighbors in the teeth all live in states I couldn’t visit anyway were I happily coupled. Should that day ever come, it will save me a lot of excuse making. Tell you what…you come visit us. We’d love to have you over!  And your marriages are valid here so don’t worry.

Sullivan links to the following…

Walter Russell Mead looks ahead:

Hollande now has a delicate few weeks. French legislative elections are scheduled in June, and Hollande must steer between twin dangers. On the one hand, if it turns out that all his talk about reform and growth was just so much election verbiage and once he’s in office he plans to continue French policy more or less as before, then disillusioned voters could turn on him next month. On the other hand, if he pushes against Germany and the financial markets too forcefully, a crisis of confidence in France and in Europe could develop in the markets.

Note the turn of phrase we’ve been hearing a lot lately.   A Crisis In Confidence…

I’m a little fuzzy… They talking about loosing confidence in the ability of working people to deliver goods and services, or are they talking about loosing confidence in the ability of financiers to keep squeezing working people dry?

Yeah, yeah…rhetorical question. I’m just full of them.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach would like gay people to know that we’re making reconciliation very hard for people like him…

I am saddened that Richard Grennell, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesman, resigned over what the press is saying was pressure from the far right because he is openly gay. Who cares? He had a distinguished career as a spokesman for four United Nations Ambassadors and was widely respected. It is particularly disconcerting to learn that religious groups criticized Romney for appointing him due to his homosexuality.

As an Orthodox rabbi with a gay Orthodox Jewish brother, I have endeavored mightily to reconcile the dictates of my faith with the most human, loving and respectful approach to homosexuality. I have counseled hundreds of gay men and women of faith who seek to find their place in G-d’s love amid a gay lifestyle.

But such efforts at reconciliation are undone by the gratuitous hate-filled bigotry of people like Dan Savage…

Okay…stop right there. Never mind what you’re calling Savage’s bigotry others would say was simply a case of looking into a cesspool and calling the stink out for what it is.  Never mind that what you’re calling his hate anyone without an ax to grind would agree is more a case of eminently justifiable anger toward a class of people who simply cannot seem to rest so long as gay people have any rights at all, let alone the right to marry.  Never mind all of that.  Reconciliation is unlikely to occur so long as people posturing as bridge builders insist on this kind of transparently self-serving false equivalency. Comparing Savage’s behavior, however insulting it may have seemed to anyone in his audience the day those Christianist kids walked out, to what their gay peers have to endure on a daily basis, usually from the likes of the same kids who walked out, is sickening.

Or as Christian author John Shore, said, “Theirs was not an act born of suffering. It was a proud show of disdain.”

Reconciliation.  In just a few days righteous upstanding North Carolina citizens will be voting on whether or not to cut their homosexual neighbor’s ring fingers off.  And from the pulpit right on cue comes this sort of thing:

“So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok?

So I suppose if I call that man a gutter crawling maggot for telling parents they have a duty to break their gay kid’s wrists and punch them out I’m making reconciliation very difficult. You may want to keep in mind the words of Malcolm X: If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound… Proudly walking out of a talk because the speaker challenged your right to throw the Leviticus death threat into the faces of your gay classmates isn’t even pulling the knife out a little. Let alone thumping your pulpit that others might punch bruises into gay kids hearts that they will carry for life.

[Slightly different from what I posted in response at Huffington Post, because my words have a little more room to breath here then there]

Once again, via Joe. My God…

According to poll workers and a freelance journalist who was present, the wife of the author of North Carolina’s Amendment One says that her husband wrote the bill to “protect Caucasians.”

Chad Nance, a Winston-Salem freelance journalist who is currently active in electoral campaigning, says poll workers outside the early voting site at the Forsyth County Government Center in downtown Winston-Salem reported to him that the wife of NC Sen. Peter Brunstetter remarked today that her husband sponsored legislation to put the marriage amendment on the primary ballot “to protect the Caucasian race.”

When I read that headline I assumed it would be some crackpot bullshit about the birth rate.  But no.  The article goes on to quote her saying that…somehow…protecting the Caucasians from same-sex marriage involves protecting their state constitution from activist judges.

If you’re not sure how opposing same-sex marriage protects Caucasians don’t worry…it doesn’t have to make sense to you.  To the bigot everything is about the war against the hated other, whether it’s gays, people of color, other religions, people who speak funny languages…whomever.  They have a lot of racism down there and I’m sure somehow this makes sense to all of them.  Opposing same-sex marriage is about protecting the white race.  Probably opposing daylight savings time is too.

Via Joe. My. God…

Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church on Glensford Drive, said he does not advocate hitting children and wishes he could take back a remark encouraging fathers to punch boys who act effeminately…

…and let’s just forget completely about that part about cracking their wrists…

…But he defended his belief in the need to reinforce traditional gender roles in children. “If I had to say it again, I would say it differently, no doubt,” Harris said Tuesday. “Those weren’t planned words, but what I do stand by is that the word of God makes it clear that effeminate behavior is ungodly.”

Preaching at parents that they need to break the bones of their gay kids however being the epitome of godliness.  So long as you say it differently.  As the twig is bent so grows the tree…so parents I give you special dispensation to crack those dear little twigs back into Straightness when you see them going limp…

Coming Soon To A fundamentalist Church Near You! Pat downs for recording devices, and petitions to make taping anti-gay child abusive rants in church a class one felony punishable by stoning…

This via Jeremy Hooper who tweets: “I was once a scared gay boy in the south. This is the climate that made that so.”

Video: Amendment 1 pastor gives parents ’special dispensation’ to use violence against LGBT kids!!!

TRANSCRIPT: “So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.
Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”

Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.”

[Emphasis mine...] So here is a man behind the pulpit, pastor (sic) Sean Harris Senior Pastor of the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, telling fathers to break the bones and beat up their gay sons, and “reign in” (like the way this guy suggested perhaps?) their gay daughters as a way of making them heterosexual. Loving the sinner. It doesn’t get more authoritative then that. The way you deal with homosexuals is you beat the crap out of them, especially if they’re your own flesh and blood. The guy behind the pulpit says so and he speaks for God.

This is how gay people get killed. This is why gay kids kill themselves, why so many end up homeless and on the streets. Harris, that wasn’t a born again experience you had way back when, it was your soul withering away to nothing shortly after you took your conscience around behind the barn and shot it.

Maggie…here’s what your war on loving same-sex couples has once again wrought. Picture a gay kid in that church, sitting in those pews, hearing this. Picture the fear it puts into them. Yes…I know…you’re fine with that.

Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin quotes a little Michael Heath…

During my lifetime I have witnessed the descent from Playboy into the abyss of online porn…

Okay…That’s about all I need to read.  If you think the human, let alone the American fascination with pornography started with Playboy Michael, and the mass consumption therein, then you have been very grievously misinformed.  Google Tijuana Bible Mike.  No…that’s not a translation for Spanish speaking Christians.

My own fascination with pornography ended pretty soon after it began, when I eventually figured out (don’t laugh) that there is very little romance in it. The few porn magazines I bought back in the day all had images of guys being affectionate as well as sexual.  That was my turn on.  No matter how hot I thought the guys were, if it was just sex I got bored if not a tad turned off.  There had to be affection on display too.  The more affection the better.  But affection of that sort between males was a pretty radical thing to portray in any form back then, back room magazine rack or mainstream movie house.  In some ways, and in some venues, it still is.

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating because it really says it all.  Back in the day an old high school friend of mine told me about taking a college course on human sexuality.  The course, he said, included a number of films which you might expect to find in an Adult Entertainment store rather then in a university classroom.  And so naturally most of the college students who signed up for that course did so, according to my friend who probably did also, just to see those films.  What they didn’t bargain for was also having to watch a bunch of sex they didn’t much like.  This was after all, a course on human sexuality, not a course on pornography.  In addition to the hot young babes there was also footage of folks old enough to be their own parents having sex.  Then there were the sections on geriatric sex. You can imagine how well that went over with a bunch of college students.  But it was the section on gay male sex that bothered some the audience most of all.  And it wasn’t the sex specifically that offended them.  In fact, the sex really didn’t bother that group much at all.  According to my friend, when the gay male sex scenes came on screen the ignorant jock types in the class burst out laughing and mocked the couple.

But then images of that couple being affectionate with each other came on screen and the jock’s attitude changed.  Those scenes of that male couple being affectionate, kissing, holding hands, being in love, completely offended the jocks my friend said…far more, far, Far more, then watching them have sex did.

What pornography is, to my mind at least, is it just pushes your sexual buttons and nothing else.  That’s all it’s for.  That’s all it does.  Empty button pushing.  But that’s all some folks want it to be.  Oh well for them I guess.  What I discovered about myself, and had I not the freedom to at least look the stuff over I might not have figured this out about myself, is that I am about romance, affection, playful fun, when it comes to sex.  I like to be teased.  I like the friendly smile and the longing look.  And the kiss.  Especially the kiss.  I am not much about just having my buttons pushed for the sake of pushing them.  There has to be more.  There has to be love.  There has to be the kiss.  So what my little private collection of erotic art began to consist mostly of as I grew older, is that.  Sex yes, but not always that specifically and always in the context of romance.  Body and soul together.  I love that.  It turns me on.

Your mileage may vary.  That’s fine.  I’m pretty sure in any case that your definition of pornography Michael is almost certainly a lot broader then mine.  Anything having to do with same-sex couples even if it’s just a kiss probably counts as pornography in your book.  No…Especially if it’s just a kiss.  Because homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. But here’s the thing Michael…most of us just look the other way when we’re grossed out or disinterested.  When I found out there wasn’t much in pornography that interested me, at least of the hard core sort, I stopped looking. But you can’t for some reason.

Don’t you think that puts you in the same ugly peep show stall that the people you’re railing against are stuck in?  Well…except they seem to be enjoying themselves and you’re not.  And what is offending you most of all Michael, isn’t the sex gay couples are having.  It’s the affection.  It’s their joy.  It’s the kiss…isn’t it Michael.  You’re calling it “sodomy based marriage” now…it’s your new slogan that you seem to honestly think is a winner but it’s merely your way of turning kisses into pornography.  Because that’s how they seem to you.

You begin your email to supporters with a little rant about pornography, but it’s all about same-sex marriage with you, not pornography, not sexual decadence.  And that’s because it’s the kiss that offends you, not the sodomy.  Marriage is about love and devotion, about body and soul together as one, and same sex couples are fighting for access to marriage, because they love, because they are devoted, because they are one in body and soul.  And you see it don’t you.  Yes…yes you do.  And it bothers you massively doesn’t it.  And you can’t look away.  Why is that Michael?

Some might suggest that it’s because you’re a closet case yourself.  I honestly doubt that you are in that particular sort of closet.  There’s another, darker, colder one your sort lives their lives in.  There is a marvelous scene in Mary Renault’s The Fire From Heaven, where Alexander’s father Philip, punishing his son and his son’s lover for a transgression, knowing that the punishment of his lover will hurt Alexander more then his own punishment, thinks, “…between contempt and a deep secret envy…The man does not live that I could feel that for, or the woman either.” There you are Michael.  There’s why you can’t look away.  There’s why you need their kisses to be empty.  There’s why you hate them.

[Update...] After I cross posted this over to Truth Wins Out I checked out some of the other posts there and found This One from Evan Hurst concerning Peter LaBarbra’s post also referencing the rant of Coach Dave Daubenmire that I riffed on a few posts back.  Remarkably, it contained this image from an episode of Glee, tastefully censored to prevent cases of the vapors in the kook pews.  I’ve captured the full context from Pete’s site….just look at this would you…

…blocked for decency’s sake… Oh make my case for me why don’t you?  Christ almighty…Pete…listen…there is something seriously wrong with you.  If the image of two guys in love kissing is enough to motivate you to start up the image editor of your choice, load that image into it, and take the time to carefully black out (white out?) those two dear little pairs of lips locked like they were mashing genitals instead of kissing, you have problems. Seriously…get help.

This from Steve Benen on the Rachel Maddow blog…

The problem of ‘working from different facts’

If you didn’t catch “Meet the Press” yesterday, you missed a lively conversation about, among other things, women’s votes in 2012 and the policy controversies that have put women’s issues at the forefront of the political landscape.

As you’ll see in this clip, around the 5:20 mark, Rachel noted the pay disparity between men and women in this country, which prompted some unexpected pushback (and incessant interruptions) from Republican strategist Alex Castellanos.

Unexpected?  Like the incessant interruptions?  Golly it’s almost as if they wanted to just shut you up woman…

The angle to this to keep in mind is that the Republicans on the panel, Castellanos and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), simply reject the available facts on the wage gap. Despite ample evidence that shows women make less than men for the same work, Castellanos chooses to believe his own version of reality in which that’s not the case.

…

There’s simply no shared foundation of reality, which in turn shapes the policy debate in unproductive ways. The left sees gender-based pay disparity and looks for mechanisms to address the problem; the right rejects the existence of the disparity and sees no use for the solutions because, to them, there is no problem.

If I may…no. Just…no. You’re giving the right way too much credit for making a good faith argument here.

The problem isn’t that they don’t think gender pay disparity exists. They know damn well it exists.  They don’t think that’s a problem.  It is instead but a simple The Way God And Nature Intended Things To Be truth.  Women just don’t belong in the workplace, let alone the family planning clinic.  Giving them equal pay diminishes the rightful status of men and encourages women to abandon their role as child bearers and housekeepers.  That said, the right also knows that in this day and age, at least here in the decadent west if not in many areas of the righteous middle east, people are generally sickened by caveman attitudes toward women.  This is part of what they see as the decline of civilization.  It’s getting so men can’t drag their women around by the hair anymore! So rather then give people their honest reasons why discrimination against women is a good thing they’re spreading a line of propaganda to the effect that there is no discrimination.

Wage discrimination?  No such thing!  So nothing to see here people….move along…move along…

Now can we get back to preventing insurance from paying for contraception…?

They’re saying Dan Savage has stirred up a hornet’s nest…

Dan Savage Speech Controversy: ‘It Gets Better’ Creator Offends Christian Students

Dan Savage offended some Christian teens when he told them “We can learn to ignore the bull—t in the Bible about gay people.”

…

After many students walked out of the speech, one of whom appeared to be crying, Savage said, “It’s funny, as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back.”

Right on cue the usual suspects wing up the noise machine…

Fox News reports that Savage’s comments upset the executive director of GOProud, a gay conservative group.

“Dan Savage should apologize for his comments and should apologize to the high school students in attendance whom he called ‘pansy-asses,’” Jimmy LaSalvia told Fox. “It is ironic that someone whose claim to fame is fighting bullying would resort to bullying tactics in attacking high school students who were offended by his outrageous remarks.”

There is so much to unpack here.  Firstly, the headline.  This is that right wing propaganda everyone has bought into over the years, that the only authentic Christians are the right wing bigots and everyone else is just faking it.  How many of the kids who stayed to hear what Savage had to say, regardless of what they thought of it, also identified as Christian?  We don’t get that information in any of the mainstream news stories I’ve seen on this.  No, no…it was Christians, capital ‘C’ who walked out and who Savage tossed a going away insult at.  Those were the only Christians in that auditorium that day.

Secondly, Savage didn’t stir up anything…that bubbling open sewer that calls itself the moral majority needs no stirring, it is always on the boil.  This incident wouldn’t look more like the usual case of right wing manufactured outrage if those kids were wearing t-shirts that said “We Are Here To Take Offense At Anything You Have To Say”.  I am expected to believe that none of the kids in that group who walked out knew who Dan Savage was or what his positions were on sex, gay sex, and the bible am I?  Right.  Pull the other one.

Suddenly it’s We’re Not The Bullies, Dan Savage Is The Bully, Because He Insulted Us!!! Yes.  Yes he did.  And a well earned insult it was too.  In the Twitter fury that followed, LOLGOP Tweeted: “I’ve not yet met one conservative Christian who is considering suicide because of bullying as thousands of LGBT youth do every day.”  Just so.  It is grotesque to watch the right wing noise machine compare Dan Savage’s crack about the kids walking out of his talk to what gay kids deal with every day of their lives, usually at the hands of kids like the ones who walked out.  This from The Christian Post:

The 17-year-old California student, whose name was not given, told CitizenLink’s Karla Dial that Savage said people using the Bible to justify their views on homosexuality being a sin often cite Leviticus and Romans in saying that “being gay is wrong.”

“Right after that, he said we can ignore all the ‘B.S.’ in the Bible,” the student told CitizenLink, which is affiliated with faith-based organization Focus on the Family.

The student said she suddenly reacted by blurting out “That’s bull!” before storming out of the auditorium along with several other students. Savage reportedly called the students pansies upon noticing their exit.

That passage in Leviticus Savage was telling them was BS, and which the student there is righteously affirming, calls for homosexuals to be put to death, adding “Their blood is upon them”.  Yes, we can throw death threats at our classmates and we’re just quoting the bible, but if you call us pansies you’re a bully.

Look at what this tells you about the mindset here.  It was a rash of gay kids killing themselves at the beginning of the previous school year that prompted Savage to start his “It Get’s Better” campaign, which has never gotten anything but raspberries from the wingers.  Yet now they rise in a righteous howl of anger at a small group of fundamentalist kids being called pansies.  Look at it.  No…really look at it.  These are people who just can’t figure out why tormenting gay kids to death would be such a big deal with anyone other then it’s some kind of political posturing. The way they see it we’re posturing so they get to posture too. That gay kids are being made so miserable by the torrent of hatred being directed at them that they want to kill themselves just doesn’t seem like it should be such a big deal to the wingers.

And the reason for that is simple, obvious, and sickening.  The way the right wing sees it, if the kid is gay then being treated like human garbage is what they should expect.  Because they are.

Think I’m engaging in hyperbole there?  When did you ever see the kind of outrage on the right toward the tormenting of gay kids that you are seeing now being directed at Dan Savage after he called the fundamentalists who walked out of his talk “pansies”.  When have you ever heard a winger get upset at gay kids being called that?  Cut me a break.  They call gay people that and worse all the fucking time and they don’t particularly care if gay kids get called names or not.  Who is fighting tooth and nail to prevent anti-bullying campaigns from specifically protecting gay kids from being bullied?  The same people who are bellyaching about what Dan Savage said to a group of fundamentalists, that’s who.

How often do I have to see this before I’m allowed to call it what it is?  The way the right wing sees it, the way fundamentalist bigots see it, it is only natural to treat gay kids like human garbage.  Because they are.  God hates them.  My bible tells me so and if yours doesn’t you are not a Christian.  Make no mistake, the outrage here isn’t entirely manufactured, but if you think it’s out of sympathy for the kids Savage insulted you are still not getting it.  The problem isn’t that Dan Savage insulted a group of fundamentalist kids.  It’s that he told them to leave their gay peers alone, using language they routinely use against their gay peers.  He stood up for the gay kids.  There’s where the anger is coming from.

Brutalizing gay people is one of their most cherished religious sacraments.  You mess with that and you will hear the gutter scream like they are being crucified.

[Update...] “Theirs was not an act born of suffering. It was a proud show of disdain.” – Christian author John Shore.

Do not seat these two together at the same table.