Via Ex-Gay Watch…  Steven Fales was excommunicated from the Mormon church when reparative therapy failed (surprise, surprise) to make him heterosexual.  He divorced, was separated from his children, and then his church…

“When I was getting excommunicated, I found it so bizarre and fantastical, I could not believe what was happening,” Fales says after a recent rehearsal of "Mormon Boy" alongside his Tony-winning director Jack Hofsiss.

“Part of me as a man of the theater was like, ‘This is a good story,’“ he says. “And the budding activist in me, who was starting to get it, was like, ‘You know what? This is happening to all kinds of people—someone needs to write about this.’“

The theater also proved to be therapeutic, offering him a “soft place to land” after being excommunicated, which he calls “a medieval, barbaric practice.”

“What do you replace the church of your birth with? That’s how fragmenting it is to be no longer Mormon,” Fales says. “It’s a cult tactic used to control and suppress, and if you buy into that mind-fuck, then it can really do a number on you.”

Thankfully, theater offered Fales a new sense of communion.

No offence to my readers of different faiths, but this is why I am eternally thankful I was born into a Baptist household, and one that believed, as Baptists always used to believe, in soul competency, and the primacy of the relationship between the individual believer and God.  It’s not that you cannot be excommunicated from the Baptist faith, it’s that the concept itself is utterly meaningless.  At worst you can be tossed out of your local church, which can be traumatic enough; but you are always free to find another, more welcoming congregation.  A Baptist does not regard the church as an instrumentality of God.  It is a community of believers, important in it’s own right, but not an instrumentality.  There are no instrumentalities.  There is only the personal relationship you have with God which is always direct and intimate.  No one can take that from you.  No one.  No one can stand between you and God.  No cleric, no church, no authority of state or church, no one, nothing.  That is bedrock.  Or used to be anyway.  It’s what I was taught all through childhood, and though I no longer regard myself as a Christian (I have a hard time with forgiveness, otherwise today I might be a Unitarian…), I still believe it.

I have no idea what I would have done, what I would have become, if I had to face excommunication, and actually believed I was being separated from God.  I think it might have killed me. Fales is right.  It is medieval and barbaric.  I’d call it grotesquely arrogant as well.  He is one strong hearted soul.  I so much admire all the excommunicated ones who made it to the other side of the pit of heartbreak, still holding on to their humanity, and their spirituality.  It speaks so much to the strength of the human spirit.

Fales’ blog is here. 

Via Pam’s House Blend, via Muskrat Hunt…  Here’s what unleashing religious passions against a minority accomplishes, in case you missed hearing about the Holocaust, and were wondering…

Note the death threat side by side with the statement of religious belief.  And we have an election coming up…don’t we?  Time for another round of…this perhaps…?

Who on the republican side of the isle, wants to step up to the plate and take responsibility for the dead homosexuals later this year?  Nobody, of course.

The beltway kool kids are starting to stand up for same sex marriage rights.  Well… Speak Up…

As we approach our own 40th anniversary, we believe in marriage more than ever. It might not be right for all people all of the time, but it’s right for most people most of the time, whatever their sexual orientation, and friends like Kevin and Grant have convinced us to alter our views and support gay marriage.

We’ve always supported civil unions, which give same-sex couples certain legal rights. But we shared the concerns of our good friend, Rep. Barney Frank, an outspoken gay leader, who worried that America was not ready for gay marriage.

His fears are still justified in many parts of the country. And we don’t think religious institutions should be forced to perform or recognize same-sex ceremonies.

But the trend line is clear. According to the Gallup poll, 39 percent of Americans now approve of gay marriage, an increase of 12 points over the last decade. Despite all the over-heated rhetoric about gays “undermining” marriage, real-world experience tells a very different story.

Same-sex unions have been legal in parts of Canada for three years and that country has hardly collapsed into social anarchy. Even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has adapted, assigning gay couples near each other. Jason Tree, a Mountie who is marrying his partner this summer, told the Washington Post: “Just look at the last 10 years to see how far we have come in Canada. I’m hoping some day soon this will all die down.”

So are we. Virtually every American has gay friends (sometimes without knowing it). Vice President Cheney has a gay daughter, who says the Republican Party should “wake up” and recognize the growing tolerance for same-sex relationships. Like Kevin and Grant, she deserves to marry her own partner and create her own family. And be boring.

And that’s really swell, except that the party you folks have been carrying water for these past couple decades cannot win elections without the bigot vote.  So what happens when the next election cycle rolls around and Karl Rove is once again demonizing homosexuals and darkly warning the swing state voters that if they vote democratic their bibles will be banned and same sex marriage allowed?  If you’re going to keep helping them fan fear and hatred toward gay Americans like Kevin and Grant for votes, then just what is your support for their marriage actually worth?  It’s weight in gold?

Remember that GMC Electric Car exhibit at the Smithsonian…?  Oh…missed it did you …

Smithsonian removes electric-car exhibit

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — Just weeks before the release of a movie about the death of the electric car from the 1990s, the Smithsonian Institution has removed its EV1 electric sedan from display.

The National Museum of American History removed the rare exhibit yesterday, just as interest in electric and hybrid vehicles is on the rise.

The upcoming film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" questions why General Motors created the battery-powered vehicles and then crushed the program a few years later. The film opens June 30th.

GM happens to be one of the Smithsonian’s biggest contributors. But museum and GM officials say that had nothing to do with the removal of the EV1 from display.

A museum spokeswoman says the museum simply needed the space to display another vehicle, a high-tech SUV.

The Smithsonian has no plans to bring the electric car back on view. It will remain in a Suitland storage facility.

[Emphsis mine…]  Nothing to see here people…  Just another proud American institution of science and history kowtowing to the political realities of our times.  Move along…move along…  Perhaps you’d like a nice trip to the Grand Canyon gift shop…?

Imagine you’re a columnist. You decide to write something about how the National Park Service is allowing a creationist book to be sold in their Grand Canyon stores, over the protests of its own geologists, who point out that NPS has a mandate to promote sound science. Hawking a book that claims that the Grand Canyon was carved by Noah’s Flood a few thousand years ago is the polar opposite of this mandate. So what do you write? Well, if you’re Republican consultant Jay Bryant, and you’re writing for the conservative web site Town Hall, you declare that this as a clear-cut case of Darwinist atheists censoring freedom of speech in a desperate attempt to squelch Intelligent Design.

They’ll be closing down Cape Canaveral soon, because sending rockets up into space might break the crystal spheres the planets and the sun orbit around the earth in.

Seems that Jack Burkman, republican stratigist, defender of Ann Coulter’s attacks on 9-11 widows, lobbyist for the relgious right, critic of The Lesbian Agenda For Kids In Our Public Schools…

CNN Interview With Jack Burkman, Dan Perez

Aired June 20, 2003 – 14:34   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Barbie? A lesbian? Well, that’s the message on a T-shirt worn by a middle school student in Queens. And now the girl’s mother is suing the city of New York over what happened after her daughter showed up for class. Glen Thompson of affiliate station WPIX fills us in.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GLEN THOMPSON, WPIX CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 14-year-old Nicky Young shows off the "Barbie is a lesbian" t-shirt that got her in hot water at Middle School 210 in Ozone Park, Queens. Nicky, who is openly gay, says the school’s principal also took offense at her gay pride beads.

NICKY YOUNG, MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENT: I went to school with a t- shirt that said "Barbie is a lesbian," and they held me in a room for two hours and they said, it’s not appropriate to wear, I should take it off and I didn’t have any other clothing. So I told them, I’m not going to take it off.

THOMPSON: After being held in the principal’s office, Nicky’s mother had to come get her after she was suspended for refusing to take off the shirt.

YOUNG: Everybody should be treated equally, and I think that I was treated differently because of my sexual orientation, and I don’t think it was fair and what they did was kind of rude, and to me it was childish.

THOMPSON: Nicky says she was only goofing on Mattel’s widely popular Barbie doll and didn’t mean to offend anyone. Her lawsuit against the school system claims she had a right to wear the t-shirt. The Department of Education isn’t commenting.

DAN PEREZ, ATTORNEY: The First Amendment doesn’t stop at the school house door, and students have the right generally to wear a variety of clothing that contains social and political commentary, as well as engage in symbolic speech.

THOMPSON (on camera): Nicky’s lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in monetary damages and an injunction preventing the school system from suspending her if she ever wears the t-shirt again. I’m Glen Thompson, for the WB11 News at 10.

(END VIDEOTAPE) PHILLIPS: School and city representatives have declined to comment on this, but Natalie Young’s attorney, Dan Perez, is talking, and in Washington, attorney Jack Burkman has agreed to look at this from the school district’s point of view. Gentlemen, thanks for being with me.

Good afternoon. Dan, let’s start with you. Mom — I’m looking at the charges here. Mom is saying that her daughter suffered emotional and psychological injury, but she seems very confident about being gay, coming out and saying that she’s gay and addressing all the cameras and the press.

PEREZ: She does. She is a very self-assured young lady. She came out when she was 12 years old. In fact, lots of people are comfortable with who they are from a sexual orientation standpoint far earlier than that. Lots of straight people come out and realize that they like girls if they’re a guy or they like boys that they’re a girl by the time they’re 12, so there’s nothing — there’s nothing about that that’s particularly remarkable.

PHILLIPS: Jack, what do you think? Does Dan have a case here?

JACK BURKMAN, ATTORNEY: No, he doesn’t and he knows it. It’s a entirely frivolous suit, Kyra. The thing with this, this law is well settled. There have been 70 or 80 cases over the years. The Supreme Court has ruled on it. All the circuits have ruled on it. You know, there’ve been cases with girls in the see-through t-shirts and the halter tops and the hair and the jewelry. Schools have fairly broad discretion to enforce the kind of values they want. If people don’t like that, the way you change that is to vote out the school directors. If you think gays are being discriminated against, vote out your school directors, vote out your congressman.

But look, schools from a family values perspective, that’s the legal — I think what the school district is doing is morally right. We shouldn’t have an atmosphere where gay values are encouraged in schools. I think it’s wrong. I think for too many years particularly up there in that area we’ve had a culture where there is a difference between, I don’t support discrimination against homosexuals, certainly not, but at the same time, schools should not create an atmosphere and allow an atmosphere to flourish where gay values will be encouraged.

PHILLIPS: So you’re saying family values — Jack, are you saying that family values means that being gay is wrong, it’s not good family values?

BURKMAN: It’s not that it’s being wrong. There’s a fine line between tolerating and encouraging. If you let this kind of behavior go, Kyra, what happens is more and more children — you know, for years in this country, let’s face it, the media has overstated the number of gays. You have a left-wing culture in schools that begins in grade school, goes to high school, goes to college, and children are told that being gay is OK and they’re almost pushed in that direction. And I think this is an example where a school district wants to put its foot down, and do the right thing, but again, you don’t have to take my word for it. If the public up there doesn’t like that, vote out those school directors. A lawsuit is not the way to handle this.

[Emphasis mine…]  …seems to have thing for Lesbians himself…actually (via Wonkette):

It’s getting so that a couple nice young girls can’t drive up to DC for the Pride parade without getting openly propositioned by Republican Strategists who give them their real names and business cards these days. Take, for example, the MySpace blog of one such lady, whose sordid tale is reprinted (as a warning to the well-endowed) below:

The initial proposition:

afterward, we got a snazzy hotel room at the mayflower downtown. on the way over there, this really hot business man in a pinstriped suit walked past me, said hello, and doubled back. he asked me my name and introduced himself (jack burkman, government relations strategies), asked where i went to school, etc, gave me his card, and asked me to call him. i later texted him and never could get rid of him again. he thought he talked to me on the phone several times, but he never did. i always made kat or kristin be me. he told kristin about how he really enjoyed my outfit (TITS GALORE) and that i was beautiful, etc. by the end of the night (5 am or so), he was offering to pay for our room and give us a thousand dollars if two of us would fuck him. oh, jack burkman. his card is my DC souvenir.

GOP Campaign Manager Guilty of Corruption of Minors

ABC News’ Andrew Katz and Fiore Mastroianni contributed to this report.

A man convicted of "corruption of minors" after being accused of having sex with two teenage girls is working as the campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Congress in Arizona, according to documents obtained by ABC News.

Steve Aiken, a former Quakertown, Pa. police officer and self-proclaimed reverend, was convicted of two counts of corruption of a minor stemming from his 1995 sexual relationships with two teenage girls. He served almost two-and-a-half months at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.

Aiken is listed as campaign manager for Randy Graf, a Republican in a five-way primary for the Congressional seat in Arizona’s 8th district.

Aiken told ABC News he had been "falsely accused and convicted" of the two misdemeanor counts.

Aiken says the candidate, Graf, was fully aware of the conviction when he was hired as campaign manager.

"What he did was no more serious than providing a teenager with beer," Graf told ABC News.  "I believe Steve when he says he was falsely accused."

The "corruption of minor" violations in Pennsylvania did not require Aiken to register as a sex offender.

Aiken advertises himself on his website as a leader of conservative thought, displaying photos of himself with leading Republicans including former President George H.W. Bush, Tom Delay, and Pat Buchanan.

Since his conviction, Aiken also has worked as a spokesperson for the Traditional Values Coalition, a Washington lobby group that represents over 43,000 churches.  A spokesman for the Coalition would only say, "He is no longer with us."

The self-proclaimed reverend met the underage teens in Pennsylvania through YouthQuest, a Christian counseling agency.

According to testimony by the victim, reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aiken "came into her room while she was asleep, undressed her and began to rub her breasts."

Aiken reportedly forced himself on the girl about 15 times in the course of four months, according to the Inquirer.

Aiken says the girls "made up the charges" because he had kicked them out of the YouthQuest program.

According to the Allentown Morning Call, at his sentencing hearing in June 1996, Aiken said, "Steve Aiken’s days of helping kids are over."

In addition to his political activities, Aiken also hosts a weekly radio program on KVOI in Tucson. Aiken’s website includes a "help wanted" page seeking high school or college students to work as volunteer interns on the radio program.

On the show he espouses American traditional values and the abolition of "hate crimes" punishments.

The man who ran the phone jamming scheme for the republicans in New Hampshire blames the culture of Win At Any Cost, Even If It Means Trashing America in the republican party.  As if we didn’t know…

WASHINGTON — For nearly a decade, Allen Raymond stood at the top ranks of Republican Party power.

He served as chief of staff to a cochairman of the Republican National Committee, supervised Republican contests in mid-Atlantic states for the RNC, and was a top official in publisher Steve Forbes’s presidential campaign. He went on to earn $350,000 a year running a Republican policy group as well as a GOP phone-bank business.

But most recently, Raymond has been in prison. And for that, he blames himself, but also says he was part of a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters.

Raymond, 39, has just finished serving a three-month sentence for jamming Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire during the 2002 US Senate race. The incident led to one of the biggest political scandals in the state’s history, the convictions of Raymond and two top Republican officials, and a Democratic lawsuit that seeks to determine whether the White House played any role. The race was won by Senator John E. Sununu , the Republican.

In his first interview about the case, Raymond said he doesn’t know anything that would suggest the White House was involved in the plan to tie up Democrats’ phone lines and thereby block their get-out-the-vote effort. But he said the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race.

"A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people," he said. "I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody."

I’m a uniter, not a divider…  Remember that?  You know how you can tell that George Bush is lying?  His mouth is moving.  America is today so bitterly divided against itself, because the republicans want it that way.  It wins them elections.  Garrison Keillor was right when he said that they are republicans first, and Americans second.  They want power, and they don’t care what they have to destroy in order to get and keep it.  Our constitution …

They came for the tenth amendment in the name of expansive federal powers.  I didn’t speak up because I am not a terrorist.  Also, I don’t grow wheat.  Or weed.

They came for the ninth amendment in the name of expansive federal and state powers of law enforcement.  I didn’t speak up because I am not a criminal.

They came for the eighth amendment in the name of extracting information from terrorists by any means necessary.  I didn’t speak up because I am not a terrorist.

They came for the seventh amendment in the name of binding arbitration.  I didn’t speak up because I don’t sue people.

They came for the sixth amendment in the name of protecting us from terrorists.  I didn’t speak up because I am not a terrorist.

They came for the fifth amendment in the name of protecting us from criminals and terrorists.  I didn’t speak up because I am neither a criminal not a terrorist.

They came for the fourth amendment in the name of catching criminals and terrorists.  I didn’t speak up because I am neither a criminal nor a terrorist.

They came for the third amendment in the name of preserving order.  I didn’t speak up because I am not a criminal.

They came for the second amendment in the name of stopping gang violence in the streets.  I didn’t speak up because I don’t own a machine gun.

They came for the first amendment in the name of supporting national unity and protecting national secrets.  I didn’t speak up because I no longer may.

…or our precious democracy itself…

Blackwell’s dual roles draw fire
Candidate is also top elections official

Columbus — Secretary of State Ken Blackwell’s dual roles as Republican nominee for governor and the man responsible for ensuring a fair and impartial election in November have subjected him to an avalanche of criticism this week.

Pilloried by voter-registration groups for drafting new rules that they say are intended to suppress the poor-, black- and Democratic vote, Blackwell also is being threatened with a lawsuit for Ohio’s failure to enforce the national "motor voter" law.

Viewing the battle from afar, the New York Times weighed in Wednesday with a lead edit orial titled "Block the Vote, Ohio Remix." The Times labeled Ohio’s election system "corrupt" and called for Blackwell to relinquish all duties pertaining to this fall’s election.

That’s not going to happen, Carlo LoParo, Blackwell’s spokesman, angrily replied. He ripped the Times and said Democrats and left-leaning voter-registration groups were hypocrites…
 

Dig it.  The man running for Governor, is also the man deciding how the election will be conducted.  Pretty nifty eh? 

…Blackwell’s latest ploy is couched in an extremely narrow interpretation of House Bill 3, a recently passed election reform measure. The bill, championed by Republican legislative leaders and signed into law by Gov. Bob Taft, purportedly is designed to eradicate vote fraud.

But Blackwell is using the new law to draft highly restrictive voter registration rules that tightly govern the work of groups engaged in mass registration drives. Registrars could be subject to felony prosecution for violations.

Most disturbing to many election activists is Blackwell’s insistence that completed registration forms be returned by the registrar directly to a county board of elections – and not to any of the legitimate organizations, like public libraries and the League of Women Voters, that regularly encourage voter registration.

Blackwell must stop acting in ways that leave the clear impression that he is trying to drive down voter turnout in the fall. Otherwise, he runs the risk of this newspaper and others joining the growing chorus of those calling for him either to step aside as secretary of state, or to hand over election-related duties to someone who will act in the best interest of all Ohioans.

Blackwell "must" eh?  Says who?

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted — enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush — and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush’s victory as nut cases in ”tinfoil hats,” while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ”conspiracy theories,”(1) and The New York Times declared that ”there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.”(2)

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots — or received them too late to vote(4) — after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment — roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush’s victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America’s voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ”We didn’t have one election for president in 2004,” says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ”We didn’t have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.”

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I’ve become convinced that the president’s party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) — more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio’s Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes — enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)

”It was terrible,” says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. ”People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct — it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I’m terribly disheartened.”

You’re terribly disheartened are you?  Well that’s why the republicans are getting away with it.  You should be livid.  Until democrats start acting like they give a good goddamn that this democracy survives long enough to pass down the promise of liberty and justice for all to the next generation, until they get blood in the face angry enough to fight the republicans for the fate of America, the republicans will do what they damn well please whether its legal or not, because they can, and we will loose our democracy.  Blackwell fixed Ohio for Bush, why shouldn’t he fix it for himself too?  Who says he can’t?

This is the MySpace survey I referred to in the previous post…

Remember 1996?

Well…yes as a matter of fact. I also remember 1986, and 1976, and 1966.

Body: Ten years ago today, it was June 16, 1996. Take this survey, post the results, and see how many things have changed since then.

Okay…I’m going to change the rules here a tad to suit myself. Let’s take a deeper look into the past. Twenty years ago it was June 1986. Thirty years ago it was June 1976. Forty years ago it was June 1966. I am not so old that I can’t look back into those days too. And an interesting trip it is too…

1) How old were you?
1966: 12
1976: 22
1986: 32
1996: 42
NOW: 52 (and I can still subtract 10 from a quantity)

2) Where did you work?

1966: I did chores around the house for a small allowance. I think it was about five dollars a week in 1966. But for a kid in 1966, five dollars went quite a long way.

1976: Infomatics General. As an office clerk. I didn’t like it, but I had the whole future in front of me, so I wasn’t worried. Someday, I would be just where I wanted to be, I just knew it…

1986: Self employed Architectural Modelmaker. But I was having to take on Manpower type jobs to make ends meet. Sometimes I mowed lawns for extra money. A few times I let construction contractors pick me up off the street for something ("Hey…you… You want to make a little money"?) I figured I wasn’t the hottest thing on two legs in cut-offs, so it probably wasn’t sex they were looking for…not that I would have picked up on it if they were. I figured my future was living on the poverty line, somewhere, hopefully, above the starvation line…

1996: Contract Software Developer, working at Becton-Dickinson. I was beginning to have some confidence that this business earning a living as a software developer wasn’t just another fleeting moment in my life, but something I could actually count on to make me a decent living. Maybe. Finally.
NOW: The Space Telescope Science Institute. Have I died and gone to heaven? Some days I think I must have…

3) Where did you live?
1966: Rockville, Maryland – two bedroom apartment I shared with mom and her mother, who didn’t much like me because I looked too much like my dad, and sometimes acted a bit like him.

1976: Ditto, but mom and dad were seeing each other again, and grandma had passed away, which made it a bit more safe.

1986: Ditto. But mom was going to retire soon, dad had passed away, and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life then…

1996: Cockeysville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, in my second one bedroom apartment. It was the apartment of my dreams. Solid concrete walls and floors to keep the sounds of my neighbors out, a full sized washer and dryer Right In The Apartment(!!!), and a nice quiet balcony with the loveliest view I could have ever dreamed of having: Four miles across Hunt Valley to a low ridge of hills in the distance. I could watch the weather forming up on the horizon, could sit and watch brilliant red and yellow sunsets. I’d lived in garden apartments all my life and this was the best one ever. I was beginning to think I’d made it after all.

NOW: Baltimore City, in my first house. I actually own a house now. Property. Land. Okay…a little noodle of land 110 feet long by 16 feet wide. But it’s mine. I still can’t believe it some days.

4) How was your hairstyle?
1966: Cut to my parent’s tastes.

1976: Long, randomly trimmed.

1986: Long, professionally layer cut.

1996: Long. Just…long. But Keith would soon dump me and I’d cut it all off as an alternative to taking the scissors to my throat. I have this fine baby hair, even now, and it took me six years to grow it all back.

NOW: Long. A tad gray. Well…more then a tad…

5) Did you wear contacts?
All Years: No

6) Did you wear glasses?
1966: No. I had excellent vision.

1976: No. Still 20/20, 20/14

1986: No. As above.

1996: Occasionally for reading

NOW: Always for reading. I can sense that I’m on the cusp of loosing my distance vision now too. Damn. I want my twenty-something body back…

8) Which of your pets were still alive?
1966: No pets of my own just then, but grandma had a canary named Goldie. Beautiful singer…I often took care of it.

1976: Ti, my green parakeet. But he would get cancer and die soon.

1986: Pepper, my black cat. I think I stopped wanting pets after he died in ’90. I don’t handle death very well.

1996: No pets

NOW: No pets.

9) Who was your boyfriend/girlfriend?
1966: I think I may have had a pre-pubescent crush on Mark. I know I drove a lot of my male friends nuts during that time with the intensity of my feelings toward them, because they later told me so. I was a high maintenance friend back then. But in my defense I was a completely devoted one. I would just get…well…jealous. And easily hurt. Friendships were always emotionally passionate things with me. Drove them nuts.

1976: George (a crush I was circling around, but didn’t have the nerve to actually ask for a date)

1986: Dale (another crush I was circling around, and eventually got around to mustering up the nerve to ask for a date. He said no.)

1996: Keith. He said yes. Then he said no. Then he said yes. Then he said no. Then he said yes. Then he dumped me.

NOW: No boyfriend. Single. Lonely as hell. Thinking maybe this is how it will always be…

11) Who was your celebrity crush?
1966: I think…I was too young for that then. But I remember being riveted at the TV screen whenever a Bomba movie came on…

1976: Peter Frampton. I had a thing for him ever since I saw him in Humble Pie.

1986: Robbie Benson. A couple years previously I’d sat in a movie theater in stunned jaw hanging open amazement watching "Harry and Son"…and…those…cut-offs. Man oh man. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it since. Oh…and the movie was good too.

1996: The Nelson Twins. They were (and still are) beautiful, they could sing, I had their posters all over my apartment.

NOW: Gil Ofarim. Not so much a crush as "Damn boy…I wish I’d known someone like you when I was a twenty-something…" He’s better looking then in the Wikipeda picture. But I’m probably a tad too old to be hanging posters of twenty-somethings on my walls now. Robbie Benson is still a fox too. So are the Nelsons. Haven’t seen any recent pix of Peter Frampton. Man…Leif Garrett didn’t age well did he? I hear that heron and cocaine will do that to a guy. What a waste.

13) How many piercings did you have?
1966: Well…that summer I stepped on a rusty nail and had to have a tetanus shot. But that’s probably not what you meant…

All Other Years: None. I’ll do a lot of things in the name of fashion, but poking holes in my body isn’t one of them.

14) How many tattoos did you have?
All Years: None. I am a canvas only metaphorically.

15) What was your favorite band/singer?
1966: The Beatles. The Four Tops.

1976: Pink Floyd. Led Zeppelin. Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. Weather Report. Shostakovich.

1986: I listened to classical and film scores mostly during this period. Some Michael Nesmith. Some David Gilmore. Shostakovich. Bruckner. Ralph Vaughn-Williams. Rachmaninoff. Jerry Goldsmith. John Williams.

1996: Swing Out Sister. William Ackerman. Glen Miller. Benny Goodman. Ralph Vaughn-Williams. Jerry Goldsmith.

NOW: No particular favorites. Some big band swing. Some Trance. Ralph Vaughn-Williams is still a favorite classical composer. I’m rediscovering my old Motown favorites. You may think from this that I don’t listen to music all that much, but I listen constantly, and my collection is huge and varied. I just don’t listen to one particular thing obsessively like I used to. Well…except Vaughn-Williams… I think Vaughn-Williams has become the background music to my life. But I listen to a lot of other stuff as well.

16) Had you smoked a cigarette?
1966: Me and some friends found an unopened pack in a construction area behind our apartments and passed them around. I took one toke and swore I’d never do that again as long as I lived. I never have.

All Other Years: No. But let me rephrase this question…

16b) Describe your cigar habit
1966: Enjoyed the smell of cigars when adults around me were smoking them, but would never want to smoke one myself. I was later to discover that dad liked a good cigar.

1976: Experimental.

1986: Making regular trips to the tobacco store.

1996: Own a nice geeky sort of humidor and stock it with expensive cigars I can afford because I only smoke one a week or so, or daily when I am under deadline pressure at work.

NOW: Cutting back. Maybe one or two in a quarter year now. I have to remind myself to maintain the humidor’s humidifier. I still enjoy a good cigar, but my body rebounds from the nicotine high badly.

17) Had you gotten drunk?
Let me adjust this question a tad…

17b) Had you gotten drunk or high or just messed with your head in general?
1966: Could not fathom why adults did that to themselves.

1976: Yes. With friends often. Alone and pondering the Big Questions, every now and then.

1986: Not nearly as often, and never alone. This was a low point in my life and when I am miserable I do not get high.

1996: Maybe a few times.

NOW: Not this year so far. Got kinda buzzed at the office Christmas party last year. Good thing I can walk home…

18) What kind of car did you drive?
1966: A Schwinn (okay it was a bike, but I was only 12) that I technically wasn’t supposed to have, but which I fished out of a junk yard and put back into service as best I could and hid in the bushes behind our apartment. See…my parents had this fear that I was going to break something if I had a bicycle. So I just wasn’t allowed. My secret bike got stolen eventually and I was heartbroken for another few years until I found another junker and restored it. By that time I was old enough to insist I could own a bike I’d restored with my own two hands and they let me keep it in the apartment at night. When I got my first car I gave the Schwinn away to a neighborhood kid.

1976: ’73 Ford Pinto. My first car and I’d bought it new on the income I had working at Industrial Photo. It was my ride for the next 11 years, establishing a pattern of holding onto a car until it was undrivable. I did nearly all the servicing on it myself, including brake and clutch changes and got 135k miles out of it. This was back when getting better then 70k out of a Pinto was considered an achievement.

1986: Too poor to own a car. Borrowed rides a lot.

1996: ’93 Geo Prism.

NOW: ’05 Honda Accord.

19) Favorite place to be?
1966: A certain hillside behind our apartments where I could watch the sky, and sunsets.

1976: Ocean City New Jersey.

1986: Taking a walk or a hike somewhere, usually around Great Falls. Sometimes around Sugarloaf Mountain.

1996: Sitting on my Balcony looking over Hunt Valley.

NOW: On the road, seeing something I’ve never seen before.

20) Looking back, are you where you thought you would be in 2006?
Let me adjust this question a tad…

20b) Looking back, where did you think you would be in 2006?
1966: I thought I was going to be an artist and my cartoons would be in newspapers and my oil paintings would hang in galleries and homes all over the world.

1976: I thought I was going to be a professional photographer, with a few photo books published, and my photos and oil paintings in galleries all over the world.

1986: I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.

1996: I was beginning to think that maybe I wouldn’t die poor and on the streets after all.

NOW: Looking back…I needed a bit more nerve earlier on. I should have gone to art school after graduation. I should have told TA how I felt about him sooner. I should have treated dating after high school more like gorilla warfare then Harlequin Romance. I should have kept my cameras second to my easel. But then I wouldn’t be here. Here is good. Here is very good. I just feel sometimes like there’s this big hole in the middle of my life, most of the 1980s, that seems wasted. There are pieces missing. Maybe that’s just the way it always is. Life is one damn leap of fate after another. Sometimes the landings are hard. And it’s not always "pick yourself up and go on"…sometimes it’s "stagger away and regroup". Life will enrapture you, then break your heart, then enrapture you again. It doesn’t care. I think that means that we have to. Love yourself. Love your neighbor. Love life, even when it doesn’t love you back. Make the leap of fate worth it.

Another one of those MySpace surveys came around my friend’s lists, and it got me to looking back into my past…a risky thing as I think I do that far too much as it is.  The survey was, "what were you doing ten years ago, compared to now", and it ended with a question: "looking back, are you where you thought you would be…?"  I decided to rephrase the questions on it, to compass 10, 20, 30 and 40 year time slices of my life.  Looking at the answers I gave, one thing stood out pretty starkly: 1986 was not a good time in my life.  But then I knew that.

I entered the 1970s figuring I would end up making a living as some sort of graphic artist…either a painter and possibly political cartoonist, or a photographer who produced other graphic art on the side.  But I was sure the artist’s life was for me.  All my life until then I had been painting and drawing, as though from some inner hunger to get my feelings out that I could never really explain.  I was, and am, painfully shy, so any notice my work got always led to embarrassment.  But I had to do it.  By the mid 1970s I was comfortable enough in my sexual orientation to make a few tentative forays into the Washington D.C. gay scene and try to find myself a boyfriend, and hopefully a lover.  Of course, being a shy little dweeb was a bit of a handicap in the dating and mating game.  But it was also not good for an aspiring artist either.  You have to promote yourself, and I was just happy to get any sort of notice at all.  So throughout the 70s I had scant little success at either an arts career or in love.  But I wasn’t worried.  I was young, and the future seemed infinite from where I stood.  Except it wasn’t.

I entered the 1980s having lost all track of my dreams.  I was single, lonely, with no prospects for any kind of graphic arts work, and utterly unsure of what I was going to do with my life.  I figured I would end up spending it mostly at the poverty level, hopefully somewhat above the starvation level.  But my dreams had all fled. My dreams of finding success, or at least a place in the world as an artist.  My dreams of finding love.  In the 1980s I found myself staring at the fact that probably none of it would happen for me, and without those anchors in my life I began to drift aimlessly, and then hopelessly. 

My artistic output actually shot up during the 80s, but it was the storm before the quiet.  My head was a mess of lost dreams and longings, desperate hopes and dark, very dark, musings about life and existence.  I did a  series of charcoal and ink drawings on the theme of First Love, which was mostly done out of hopeless longing.  But it is still some of my best work…

The Old Gate

For every finished one I still have tons of rough ideas sketched out that I’d like to finish someday…

Given my profession (software engineer), and all the time I spend at my drafting table, and my age, I should probably not enjoy deep fried food as much as I do.  But done right, deep fried ranks just above bar-b-que in my table of delights.  The City Place cafe downtown makes a deep fried crab cake dinner that is decadent. 

My love affair with battered fish fry began with a fast food chain that you don’t see much of, at least around Maryland, anymore: Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips.  I’d only vaguely heard of the British thing for Fish and Chips, but never had any until the chain came into town and I was instantly hooked.  But then they went the way of Burger Chef, Roy Rodger’s and Boston Market and eventually I got tired of trying to find an acceptable substitute.  Neither Popeye’s nor Long John Silver’s do it to my liking.  So, having my own kitchen by then (prior to my working as a software developer, I lived in rented rooms here and there), I decided to try my own hand at it.

It was risky business because at the time I was really not much good in a kitchen.  I could do a TV dinner and a few routine sandwiches, and that was about it.  The year I got my first kitchen, I made myself a Thanksgiving feast and learned how to make mashed potatoes (you…uhm…slice them, boil them, and mash them.  A little half and half and butter helps…).  Obviously I got the turkey ready-made  I’m still not all that good in the kitchen, but I’m learning that the trick to it is, at least for me, focusing on stuff you really like so much you’re more then happy to clean up the mess afterward.  I bought a good deep fryer, and hunted around the Internet for recipes that looked similar to what Arhur Treacher’s was doing.  When I found a few, I began to play around a bit.  I also bought a ready-made fish fry mix from Zatarain’s for comparison, and studied the ingredient list.

I tried one thing and another.  A little of this seasoning, a little of that.  Dry rolling first, then batter second.  Whole wheat flour verses all purpose.  Eventually I started getting something I enjoyed.  The year I moved here to Casa del Garrett, my neighbors had a 4th of July cookout, and I did a previous version of my fish fry (the current one is only slightly different).  Everyone loved it.  Next year it was "Of course you’ll do your fish fry…"  I was floored.  It’s been like that ever since.  Now…I could get my cartoons published in gay community newspapers…I could have them praised by professionals whom I deeply admire…I could have people from all over the world come to read my blog even though I don’t advertise it, and complement me on my writing…I could become a software engineer for the Hubble Space Telescope…but I would never in a million years ever dream that anyone would like anything I cooked.

Last year, just prior to one of the worse sets of layoffs we’ve had at the Institute, our branch had its annual picnic and I desperately wanted to score good will points with my co-workers.  Of course such decisions aren’t made on the basis of what you bring to a picnic, and of course I was working furiously on the job to make sure my presence was regarded as necessary to the team.  But by god if my fate ended up in the balance somewhere, I was going to make goddamned sure I had every little brownie point on my side I could gather.  So I took a chance, because I’m such a freakin wall flower at these kinds of events, and offered to do my fish fry.  I can tell you at our picnics food is plentiful and excellent, so the best I hoped for my fish was to be noticed a tad, and looked upon with kindness.  Well…Every last friggin bit of it disappeared…and for days afterward I was getting complements on it, along with "Of course you’ll bring it next year too…"

Darn tootin’!  Last year it was desperation…this year it was pride.  They like my fish fry…they can have all they want…  We had our picnic just yesterday and it was worth all the mess and hassle to see how well it was enjoyed.  I bought twice as much fish as last year, and it still vanished pretty quickly.  Every last bit of it.  Except the three pieces I ate myself.  I am still my own best customer.

Summer is upon us, and it’s cookout time.  You can smell the food on weekends coming from all the grills in my rowhouse neighborhood and it’s lovely.  So…I want to share.  Here is the recipe I commonly serve now.  I still love to tweak it, but this is the favorite.  For the picnic I doubled the portions here, and had plenty.

Deep Fry Batter #5

Ingredients:

Fry Batter

• 1 Egg, Jumbo or Large
• 1 Cup White Baking Flour
• ¼ Cup Corn Starch
• 1 Teaspoon Sea Salt
• 1 Cup Yuengling Lagar
• 1 Tsp Paprika
• 1 Tsp Cayenne Pepper
• 1 Tsp Garlic Powder
• 1 Tsp freshly ground Black Pepper

Other

• Lemon Juice for dipping (enough to fill small bowl).
• Fresh Hake fillets as needed (I buy at Whole Foods).
• Peanut oil for deep fryer

Make Fry Batter:

• Put flour and cornstarch into holding bowl (Sift if needed)
• Beat egg, salt, pepper, other seasonings and Yuengling in mixing bowl until smooth
• Mix in flour and cornstarch. Batter should be somewhere between runny and thick.  Add more Yuengling if needed, but easy does it.  A little goes a long way.
• Let stand at least 30 minutes. An hour is better.  Stir again before use.

Prepare to fry:

• Heat peanut oil in deep fryer. I usually set the heat to 355 degrees.  Never use a deep fryer that doesn’t regulate temperature as they’re too dangerous a fire hazard.
• Fill small bowl with lemon juice.
• Cut hake into friable size portions and wash.

To Fry:

• Dip Hake in Lemon Juice.
• Dip in fry batter. Get it thoroughly coated.
• Put in deep fryer for 3-4 minutes until golden and floating.

Notes:

• Don’t skimp on the quality of the spices. Get the best, most aromatic ones you can find. Whole Foods has a good selection. McCormick’s "gourmet collection", which you can find in most stores alongside their regular, is good too.
•  I use an unbleached "all natural" all purpose flour, free ranging undrugged chicken’s eggs and sea salt. Not sure how important those are in the grand scheme of things though. Any old store brand of peanut oil seems to work fine.
•  I use a small pair of hotdog tongs. If you just plop the fish in the fryer it can stick to the bottom, so I gently lower it in. Whatever implement you use will need to be wiped off frequently.  Be careful…the oil will burn you.
•  Some batter flakes off while cooking and you will think you’re making funnel cakes after a while. You will need something to scoop off floating batter crumbs while you’re working.
•  Be careful. Remember hot oil is dangerous stuff.

Bruce Garrett
July 2006
Baltimore, Maryland

[Edited a tad…  I’m not sure why bullet formatting looks so bad in Firefox…] 

Via my friend Bob Cutler, who lives far too close to the Rotting Crypt Keeper…

I’m going to get smacked for not posting this sooner…but if you’re in the mood to give Fred a piece of your mind, it’s happening tomorrow, right at his doorstep:

This is about the protest against Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.

So, Gay, Straight, Soldier, Soldier supporter, and those concerned about the Tide of Hatred Are welcomed and encouraged to show up.
 

They call it the Valley of the Gods. 

You can suppose from my banner, and if you’ve been following this blog for a few years and know how often I go there on road trips, that Monument Valley is a recurring theme in my life.  I spent the morning of my 50th birthday in the heart of Monument Valley, timing it just so I could be there, looking up at the stars, during the hour of my birth.  If any physical place on earth could be said to be my spiritual center, the cathedral of my heart, it is there.  I knew it the moment I first set foot in it back in 1974.  It draws me to it in a way nothing else on earth does.  The Navajo rightly regard it as sacred.

Wil Wheaton tipped his readers off on his blog recently, that a NASA "picture of the week" was a composite 3-D image of Monument Valley as seen from high overhead.  According to the NASA site, it was "created by draping ASTER image data…over digital elevation data from the U.S. Geological Survey National Elevation Dataset."  An experiment in planet rendering then.  So here is planet Earth, in one of its surreal moods:

Click on the image to go to the NASA site and download the full resolution image.

It kinda blurs some of the features of the rock formations, taking the strangeness out of them (see my banner for a better view of one of the formations in this image).  But in this composite you can better grasp the general way the area formed.  As NASA says, it isn’t so much a valley as a low plain, the last remenants of a region of sandstone layers formed from massive sand dunes created at the edge of an inland sea millions of years ago.  The dunes compressed over time into sandstone, which was later covered with several more layers of harder gravel and agates, and then the entire area was uplifted and volcanic activity covered it over yet again with an even harder layer of lava.  It’s that hard rock over soft that creates the odd erosion shapes you see throughout the Valley.  The whole thing has eroded over tens of thousands of years, leaving behind this vast desert space, framed by distant plateaus and rises, and punctuated by the most surreal buttes you have ever seen. 

To get an appreciation of the massive forces involved in the region’s uplift, enter the valley from the north and the little town of Mexican Hat, so named for a huge balancing rock formation that looks just like an upside down Mexican hat perched on a tall pillar of stone.  You can literally see these massive layers of rock all around you taking these sharp bends from horizontal to near verticle, as if they were clay in some giant’s hands.

In the NASA image you are looking somewhat to the south.  The center of the Valley is in the foreground and you can almost make out the road that winds to Kayenta.  The platau in the distance is the southern edge of the uplift zone.  I think I can make out Church Rock there in the distance.

Somehow, I don’t know why exactly, this place is where my inner compass points.

Fred Clark tells us that years ago, back in the stone age gamer days of Pong and Space Invaders, there was a text only version of the Left Behind game you could play on your Commodore 128.  Kinda like Zork…but with more sacred violence.

(I think Fred’s being a bit sarcastic and maybe even a tad bitter here…)

You are in Manhattan. There is an infidel here.
>Convert infidel.

The infidel does not want to be converted.
>Convert infidel.

The infidel does not want to be converted.
>Convert infidel.

The infidel does not want to be converted.
>Witness to infidel.

The infidel does not want to be converted.
>tell infidel about Hell

Such language!

You are in Manhattan. There is an infidel here.
>tell infidel about eternal suffering and gnashing of teeth in the lake of fire

The infidel does not want to be converted.
>shoot infidel

You raise the BFG-9000 and fire, raining divine judgment on the infidel in a righteous hail of molten lead. The infidel falls over, dead.

Score: 105 out of 500.

You are in Manhattan. There is a dead infidel here.
>examine dead infidel.

On the body of the dead infidel you find more change for the pay phone.
>get change.

You are in Manhattan. There is a dead infidel here.
>make phone call

You have to find a phone first!

You are in Manhattan. There is a dead infidel here.
>n

Well that beats Zork any day.  On a more serious note, one of Fred’s commenters urges us to check out the Left Behind Games FAQ.  You should, but only if you can handle the occasional peek down into the Pit…

Does anyone get killed in the game?
People do perish in our game just like some do in the book series. This is a real strategy game, so the gamer controls his forces just like you do in chess game.

Why does this game have to contain violence at all? Why is it necessary for a fun and successful game?
Violence is not required to make a fun game. However, it is required to make a game about the end of the world in the Left Behind book series. We have taken great care to make certain that there are real consequences for poor gamer behavior, unlike most games in the market. For instance, unnecessary killing will result in lower Spirit points which are essential to winning.

I especially liked this one: 

What distinctive features differentiate LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces from other RTS games on the market?
Parents need a substitute for the degrading moral values of games like ’Grand Theft Auto.’ We’re giving the industry an RTS game that is fun to play as well incorporating inspirational content.

And let’s face it, there’s very little in this life more inspirational and conducive to a wholesome moral childhood then making the streets run red with the blood of the infidel for spirit points.  I hear promotional copies have been handed out in a few megachurches.  You can imagine parents tucking them alongside their bibles in their laps, reading the cover blubs on the ride home and after playing a few rounds with the kids, perhaps, walking calmly to the bathroom, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, peering in, and asking the face on the other side what the hell they’ve let themselves become.

I came across this article at Seed Magazine about the work of Joan Roughgarden, author of Evolution’s Rainbow. It’s a good read for people who might not realize just how prevalent in the natural world, homosexuality actually is:

Joan Roughgarden thinks Charles Darwin made a terrible mistake. Not about natural selection—she’s no bible-toting creationist—but about his other great theory of evolution: sexual selection. According to Roughgarden, sexual selection can’t explain the homosexuality that’s been documented in over 450 different vertebrate species. This means that same-sex sexuality—long disparaged as a quirk of human culture—is a normal, and probably necessary, fact of life. By neglecting all those gay animals, she says, Darwin misunderstood the basic nature of heterosexuality.

Male big horn sheep live in what are often called "homosexual societies." They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males "effeminate."

Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in "penis fencing," which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.

As this list of activities suggests, having homosexual sex is the biological equivalent of apple pie: Everybody likes it. At last count, over 450 different vertebrate species could be beheaded in Saudi Arabia. You name it, there’s a vertebrate out there that does it. Nevertheless, most biologists continue to regard homosexuality as a sexual outlier. According to evolutionary theory, being gay is little more than a maladaptive behavior.

Roughgarden has a particular bone to pick with Peacocks…

Darwin’s theory of sex began with an observation about peacocks. For a man who liked to see the world in terms of functional adaptations, the tails of male peacocks seemed like a useless absurdity. Why would nature invest in such a baroque display of feathers? Did male peacocks want to be eaten by predators?

Darwin’s hypothesis was typically brilliant: The peacocks did it for the sake of reproduction. The male’s fancy tail entranced the staid peahen. Darwin used this idea to explain the biological quirks that natural selection couldn’t explain. If a trait wasn’t in the service of survival, then it was probably in the service of seduction. Furthermore, the mechanics of sex helped explain why the genders were so different. Because eggs are expensive and sperm are cheap, "Males of almost all animals have stronger passions than females," Darwin wrote. "The female…with the rarest of exceptions is less eager than the male…she is coy." Darwin is telling the familiar Mars and Venus story: Men want sex while women want to cuddle. Females, by choosing who to bed, impose sexual selection onto the species.

Darwin’s theory of sex has been biological dogma ever since he postulated why peacocks flirt. His gendered view of life has become a centerpiece of evolution, one of his great scientific legacies. The culture wars over evolution and common descent notwithstanding, Darwin’s theory of sexual selection has been thoroughly assimilated into mass culture. From sitcoms to beer ads, our coital "instincts" are constantly reaffirmed. Females are wary, and males are horny. Sex is this simple. Or is it?

Indeed, biology now knows better. Nobody is hornier than a female macaque or bonobo (which mount the males because the males are too exhausted to continue the fornication). Peacocks are actually the exception, not the rule.

Roughgarden first began thinking Darwin may have been in error after she attended the 1997 gay pride parade in San Francisco, where she had gone to walk alongside a float in support of transgendered people. Although she had lived her first 52 years as a man, Roughgarden was about to become a woman. The decision hadn’t been easy. For one thing, she was worried about losing her job as a tenured professor of biology at Stanford. (The fear turned out to be unfounded.)

After living for a year in Santa Barbara while undergoing the "physical aspects of the transition," Roughgarden returned to Stanford in the spring of 1999 and decided to write a book about the biology of sexual diversity. In particular, she wanted to answer the question that had first surfaced in her mind back in 1997. "When I was at that gay pride parade," Roughgarden remembers, "I was just stunned by the sheer magnitude of the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] population. Because I’m a biologist, I started asking myself some difficult questions. My discipline teaches that homosexuality is some sort of anomaly. But if the purpose of sexual contact is just reproduction, as Darwin believed, then why do all these gay people exist? A lot of biologists assume that they are somehow defective, that some developmental error or environmental influence has misdirected their sexual orientation. If so, gay and lesbian people are a mistake that should have been corrected a long time ago. But this hasn’t happened. That’s when I had my epiphany. When scientific theory says something’s wrong with so many people, perhaps the theory is wrong, not the people."

Like Roughgarden, my own sexuality has forced me to think about Darwin and natural selection, and why homosexuality exists. I think most gay people go through this process of questioning our existence, in part because the culture we grow up and live in keeps telling us that at best we’re some sort of very strange anomaly that needs explaining, if not some kind of curse on civilization that needs wholesale eradicating. Mary Renault’s wonderful same sex romance, The Charioteer, set in England during world war II, contains a scene where a group of gay British soldiers ponder the question in ways that were typical of those times. One of them says…

"In the first place I didn’t choose to be what I am, it was determined when I wasn’t in a position to exercise any choice and without my knowing what was happening. I’ve submitted to psychoanalysis; it cured my stutter for me, which was useful as far as it went. All right. I might still be a social menace, like a child-killer, and have be be dealt with whether I was responsible or not. But I don’t admit that I’m a social menace. I think that probably we’re all part of nature’s remedy for a state of gross overpopulation and I don’t see how we’re a worse remedy then modern war, which from all I hear in certain quarters has hardly begun."

The overpopulation theory of homosexuality was popular back in the middle 20th century. It seemed to become ingrained in the popular culture after someone did a study of overpopulation in rats which seemed to reinforce the notion that it was packing huge numbers of people together in close quarters that caused all the ills of modern city life…crime, violence, and homosexuality. It was an explanation that explained nothing. If city life caused such maladaptive behavior in humans, then why do humans persist in bunching themselves together all the same? And if homosexuality is a side effect of squalid urban living, then why do homosexuals exist at all in rural communities? Ask gay people in the trendy urban gay zones where they came from, and a lot of them will tell you they fled to the city from the sticks.

But the heterosexual premise is hard to get past.  Everyone is heterosexual by default… For years scientists have simply ignored evidence that homosexuality is both common and natural in species. The thinking has always been that it needs some kind of special explanation, that it exists apart from the natural world in some way, because it is maladaptive on its face.

Roughgarden’s first order of business was proving that homosexuality isn’t a maladaptive trait. At first glance, this seems like a futile endeavor. Being gay clearly makes individuals less likely to pass on their genes, a major biological faux pas. From the perspective of evolution, homosexual behavior has always been a genetic dead end, something that has to be explained away.

But Roughgarden believes that biologists have it backwards. Given the pervasive presence of homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom, same-sex partnering must be an adaptive trait that’s been carefully preserved by natural selection. As Roughgarden points out, "a ‘common genetic disease’ is a contradiction in terms, and homosexuality is three to four orders of magnitude more common than true genetic diseases such as Huntington’s disease."

For Roughgarden, homosexuality exists to re-enforce bonds between members of a group. I’m with her there, but I think there is more to it. We are a sexual species…that is, we reproduce sexually. So that dating and mating urge is hard wired into us at a very low, a very ancient and primative level. And for creatures such as we, whose offspring have very long childhoods, sex is plainly not only for producing children, but also for reinforcing the intimate bond between a couple. But why would natural selection care that couples who can bear no children, also experience this sexual gratification?  And yes, nature patently does care that they do.

Consider the humble prostate gland. You can bring a human male to orgasm by massaging it, which is what happens during a certain kind of male to male sex. Tell me what other glands in the human body produce a sensation of pleasure when you to that to them. Rubbing most of them I think, will produce pain not pleasure. But that one particular gland, located in that one particular spot in the male anatomy, is very different in that regard. Why? That’s a question I think biologists need to look at carefully, because it isn’t overpopulation that did that, nor loose sexual mores nor rampant godlessness. It was millions of years of adaptive evolution that gave that to human males, even the ones who have utterly no use for it at all. So clearly there is something that makes same sex coupling worthwhile enough, that nature has given all human males a special adaptation to make it pleasureable for them, whether or not any given individual male actually makes use of it.

Homosexuality is certainly not harmful to the individual, nor is it necessarily harmful to the species. In the first place, homosexuality does not equal sterility. But more importantly, survival of the species involves just a tad more then reproduction. Giving birth to a zillion offspring isn’t going to help the species survive, if they all die before they mature. You see in species all the time, that some individuals will forgo reproduction in favor of helping the rest survive. In fact, in some species of insects, like honey bees, nearly none of the individuals in the group reproduce. Most of them work to insure the survival of the whole. Most honey bees don’t have sex at all in their lifetimes, yet honey bees are a very successful form of life on earth. You would expect people comfortable with the concept of evolution to acknowledge that simple staringly obvious fact. Reproduction alone isn’t everything.

Humans can’t win the battle of survival, or even hope to stack the deck, by reproducing like insects. Human individuals just aren’t capable of having that many children, and human offspring have a long childhood, during which they need a lot of attention. So the mating game for humans can not be merely single minded gene shopping. It must also be about looking for families and tribes that can best raise and care for our young, and ourselves. Your family, your tribe, can make you a lot more desirable then you all by yourself are. Evolutionists have a term for this. They call it "Kin Selection".

This isn’t rocket science. Let’s say we have two eligible human male bachelors in their physical prime. Bachelor ‘A’ is a perfect genetic specimen. Tall, muscular, and beautiful. You take one look at this guy and you know he’s never going to be sick a day in his life. Bachelor ‘B’ on the other hand, isn’t horribly ugly…he’s just not dazzlingly attractive either. He’s an average Joe. Not very well muscled, but not sickly. A little flab around the gut, but not too much. A weak jaw, but a good back. He’s already starting to loose a little of his hair. Seems obvious which one of the two will get the most dates, right? But add another set of facts into the mix. Bachelor ‘A’s family are dirt poor. Bachelor ‘B’s are billionaires. Now who gets the most dates?

It seems cynical, but there’s something else at work there besides pure greed…something very, very old. You see it at work over and over again in the natural world. Mates are selected not only for their own desirability, but for their family’s, or their tribe’s.

And here’s where the peacocks come back into the picture…

Why Do Peacocks Stick Together in Avian `Singles Bar’?

By MATTHEW FORDAHL, AP Science Writer
Copyright ©1999 Associated Press

Groups of peacocks strut their stuff in hopes of attracting the finest peahens, but only a few lucky guys will find a willing mate in the wild kingdom’s equivalent of a singles bar.

Scientists have long wondered why the unsuccessful peacocks stick around the same group year after year when the hens tend to select the same few males each breeding season.

Research published Thursday in the journal Nature suggests a sound evolutionary reason: Many of the bird buddies within individual groups are brothers. By working together, the brothers are increasing the odds that their genes will be passed to another generation.

"By helping your relatives to attract mates, your genes are spread," said Marion Petrie, a researcher at Britain’s University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The research sheds light on why some peacocks seem unconcerned with sex and are content to be hangers-on in the animal singles scene: Larger groups of peacocks attract more females, so some of the peacocks are there just to make the group bigger.

"The benefits of helping closely related dominants to attract more females may outweigh the subordinate males’ own meager mating opportunities," said Cornell University researcher Paul Sherman in an accompanying Nature commentary.

Petrie and her colleagues studied about 200 free-ranging peafowl in Whipsnade Park north of London. Using DNA fingerprinting, the researchers found birds inside the strutting groups are more likely to be related to each other than those outside the group.

But how do the related birds find each other? That’s unclear, but it is not because the peacock brothers grew up together.

In fact, the researchers found that when peacock brothers were separated before hatching, and then were released into Whipsnade Park when they were yearlings, the brothers still tended to group together.

The mechanism by which the birds found their relatives is unclear. It could be by odor, feather patterns or the sounds the birds make.

"There is some way in which kin can be associated, which doesn’t require learning or environmental clues," Petrie said. "They didn’t know their fathers or mothers. They could not possibly learn who their brothers were. They had no reference points to where they were born, but they still found each other."

If you don’t pass on your genes, but you help your siblings pass on theirs, your family genes get passed on, and that’s good enough as far as natural selection is concerned. If you help make your family, or your tribe look desirable, then the genes in that pool, which likely include a good many of yours too, get to go a few more rounds. If a trait is recessive, not everyone in the group needs to express it, for it to get passed along too, with all the others.

How do Gay people fit into this? Well again it isn’t rocket science. Our child bearing years are also the years of our physical prime, for fairly obvious reasons. Let’s say you have two groups of humans, one in which all the members in their physical prime are preoccupied with caring for their own offspring, and one in which a small minority isn’t. And if that small minority is welcomed and accepted by the rest, their nurturing and protective instincts can become attached not to their own offspring, since they don’t have any, but to the group as a whole. So here is a small group out of the whole, who are in their physical prime, intimately bonded to one another, looking after, and taking care of the needs of the whole.  (You can make a case that the narcissism gay people are often accused of today, happens when they are not accepted by their families, and their community and those nurturing instincts turn inwards.)

Question: which group of humans is going to have more resources to take care of its members during times of stress? Which tribe has the better resources to take care of its old? In preliterate times, your old people are your history books. They know where the game went when the last big drought came, and where the water could be found. They know how the tribe over the hill was defeated the last time they came to raid your territory. They know how sickness was cured, how disease was avoided. Who can be there to look after them while the others are caring for their young? Which tribe can better care for its and sick, and provide for the orphaned? Who can spend the most time manning the defenses, watching for predators, or predatory humans, without also having to worry about their own young? Which tribe, over the long haul, be better able to weather bad times, and prosper in good times? Whose members then, will look the most desirable?

For social animals, homosexual members of the group provide a survival edge for the group as a whole.  It may not be a big one.  But it is enough of one that the trait, far from being selected out, has been adapted for.  And you see it everywhere in the animal kingdom.  The trait survives today in nearly all animal species that reproduce sexually, and live and raise their young in groups.  It is present today in the human family, as it almost certainly was in the families of our pre-human ancestors.  They would have needed it more.  The African plains of our birth were I am told, not a very friendly place for the human line.  There were times we almost didn’t make it.

Agriculture and industrialization sweep the demands of our tribal past away…a person can now take care of both their own young, and the needs of the whole without having to choose between them most of the time. You can become a policeman or a fireman or a doctor or a scientist. Civilization gives us the means to take care of our community and our families both without overgreat burden. Yet that tribal past is where we came from. It made us what we are. For good and for ill, as when our tribal instincts cause us to separate each other into groups of ‘us’ verses ‘them’, that tribal past is the bedrock upon which we make our modern lives. We live in the twenty-first century, but we were born in a prehistoric past, long gone over our horizon. It made us what we are. To understand ourselves, we must look to those ancient times from which our kind began its walk to the present.

Natural selection not only allows for a homosexual minority in human societies, you can make a good case that it actually predicts one.

[Edited a tad…] 

Stroke is actually no laughing matter in my family.  On mom’s side, it’s pretty much what happens to the males.  I’m hoping I take more after dad’s side of the family in that regard, but I reckon it’ll be hard to know until I ether get my first stroke, or die without having had one.  So I suppose I shouldn’t be so anxious to know. 

What I’m finding out though, is that the age I live in gives a fella many more ways to experience a stroke then my elders had. I can experience a system crash while debugging a program and loose all the work I was busy with that moment.  I can loose half the data on one of my file server’s hard drives.  Bang…there goes my banking data, my address book, my emails, and god only knows what else.  This morning I nearly lost all the data I’d entered into my Palm/cell phone since I backed it up last.  And I haven’t been as good a boy as I should have been about that.

[Geek Alert]

My cell phone is a two year old Kyocera Smart Phone.  It has a built-in Palm pilot that I joke holds about half my brain, in terms of keeping track of my calendar, contact info, and random this and that I can stuff in it’s notepad and to-do lists.  It basically holds tons of day to day trivia that I need just to get on with my life…like frequently used phone numbers, business account numbers and data, appointments, scheduled meetings, and a reminder to fill out my damn time sheet at the end of the day and sign it at the end of the week.  Yes…I need to be nagged about stuff like that.  When I go traveling it holds my hotel info and if flying my ticket info too.  There is just so damn much of this stuff I need to have ready access to at random moments of my day, and I can’t possibly keep it all in my head.  I used to use a DayTimer book, but paper calendars won’t nag you to look at them.  I can set an alarm in my Palm for stuff I need nagging about.

When I made ready to leave for work this morning, I took my phone out of its cradle and noticed that it was giving me the low battery signal.  Ack, thinks I, I forgot to plug the damn thing in.  But it was.  So I unplugged and replugged it’s charger.  Nothing happened.  I tried jiggling the connector at the phone end.  Nada.  I examined the powerstrip.  It was still on, and serving power to some other peripherals.  I remembered I hadn’t backed up the Palm since…when was it?  I opened my hot sync software.  Last backup, March 27.  But I’d made a bunch of entries since then.  I set the phone back in its cradle and tried to hot sync.  The phone didn’t even have enough juice to laugh at me. 

I will not panic…I will not panic…  Either the Phone wasn’t accepting a charge or the charger had suddenly gone bad.  If it was the charger, I might be able to make due with one of the others I had squirreled away.  I have a box full of these little AC/DC transformer things.  I got my multimeter out and tried to test the charger, and realized that its plug was not a standard size.  It was tiny.  I couldn’t get any of the meter’s probes into it…I couldn’t even get a bent paper clip into it.  That also ment that I couldn’t easily use one of the spare transformers I had.  A quick inventory showed that none of their plugs would fit into the phone.

It was getting late and I had to get into work.  So I left the phone slowly bleeding out the last of its battery, certain that I was going to loose everything I’d entered into it since March.  On the way to work I tried to recollect what I’d probably entered into it since then.  Of course I could only vaguly recall one or two items.  I just can’t keep that stuff in my head anymore.  It’s all the work I can manage just to keep pointers to where data is in my brain now, never mind the actual data.

When I got back home I saw the phone was still showing a low battery warning, which meant it wasn’t completely dead yet.  I went down to the basement tool zone and fished out mom’s old sewing box, which I’d  inherited a few years ago. She had a really impressive collection of sewing needles and I selected large, thin one and inserted it into the business end of the phone charger.  It fit inside…just, but I was able to get a voltage reading off the needle with the multimeter.  The charger was producing the correct voltage after all.  I double checked the jack at the phone end.  It was clean and the pin inside of it wasn’t bent out of shape.  I tried inserting the charger plug again.  It fit snugly, but the phone would not charge. So either the battery had gone bad and wouldn’t take a charge anymore, or the phone’s internal circuitry was damaged somehow.

I was afraid to pull the battery, but I didn’t see I had any choice now.  It was either the battery or the phone, and either way I was going to loose my Palm data.  So I opened the battery door, and noticed the battery was a bit loose.  Oh well…  I yanked the battery, wiped the contacts, and reinserted it.  Then I tried the charger.  Immediately the phone lit up and began to charge the battery.

I flipped open the phone and it made me go through the Palm stylus setup.  When the main menu came up I tried the address book.  Everything was still there.  Whew!

Thank goodness you decided to wait until I got back from my vacation before you got cranky on me… 

There are my internal brain cells and there are the external ones.  The nice thing about the external ones is that they can be backed up and restored…a thing we can’t yet do for our organic brains.  Be nice if we could someday.  But then we’d probably get lazy about that too…

"Why’s Bruce so unhappy?"  "Oh…he had a brain crash the other day and we discovered he hadn’t backed up his brain since October 1999.  So we did the restore with what we had.  Then we had to break the news to him that Bush won.  Twice."

Nature gave Pride month this year a lovely beginning, with a spectacular circumhorizon arc rainbow in the skys over the Idaho-Washington border…

Happy Pride Days, whenever they are, wherever you are.   Your dreams are out there, waiting for you.  Walk proudly into them.