In commemoration of the Black Cat raid of 1966, celebrate this New Year’s Eve with a radical act. Kiss him "on the mouth for three to five seconds."
You should immediately go read his entire post about a page of gay history I hadn’t known about…
It all began exactly forty years ago this New Year’s Eve, on Sunset Blvd., in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, in a small bar called the Black Cat. There were some sixty or seventy patrons gathered during those final moments of 1966, counting down the last few seconds to midnight. Couples gathered and stood next to each other, and as the countdown approached zero, they leaned into one other, and, amid the shouts of “Happy New Year!” and the opening strands of Auld Lang Syne, they did something all couples do all around the world.
They kissed.
And immediately at least six plainclothes officers who had infiltrated the gay bar began viciously beating and arresting the kissing offenders. As the melee widened, several people tried to escape to the nearby New Faces bar. Undercover officers followed and raided that bar as well. One of the New Faces workers was beaten so badly by police that they cracked a rib, fractured his skull and ruptured his spleen.
Six Black Cat kissers were tried and convicted of “lewd or dissolute conduct” in a public place, conduct that consisted of male couples hugging and kissing. According to one police report, one couple had “kissed on the mouth for three to five seconds.” Apparently, three to five seconds are what constituted “lewd or dissolute conduct” among the LAPD.
If I’ve heard bigots say once that they don’t care what we do "in our bedrooms" just don’t "flaunt it" in front of them, I’ve heard it a thousand times. And what is this "it" they’re so afraid of seeing? It isn’t that we’ll suddenly start having sex on the sidewalk in front of them. They’d care a lot less about us doing that even, then doing the one thing they simply don’t want to see, don’t want to know: that the objects of their hate are human after all. That we don’t simply rut, that homosexuality isn’t a lower form of lust, but that we are whole people, who not only desire, but love, and are loved.
If there is anything the bigots hate seeing us do more then holding the hand of the one we love, it’s kissing them affectionately, simply, lovingly. They’d hate us a lot less if all they ever saw in us was desire, because that would validate their ignorant barstool conceits that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. You want to really get them pissed off, make them see red, make the veins in their pasty foreheads start throbbing, let them see the slightest hint, the smallest sign, that you actually love your intimate other. Because that makes you fully human and that’s the last thing they want to know. What was the first thing the bigots started babbling about after the supreme court overturned the sodomy laws? Not that suddenly a lot of homosexuals would start having sex, but that acknowledging that we had a right to sexual intimacy, might lead to giving us the right to marriage too. Marriage was the First thing they started yapping about.
That says it all. That really nailed down what this fight is really about, what it was always about right from the beginning. It isn’t about sex. It has nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with our human spirit. Homosexuals cannot have love, we must be denied it at every turn, every door to it must be slammed shut in our faces, it must be beaten out of us if necessary, because to allow us love, is to acknowledge that we are human beings, with human souls. And so long as we must play the roll of scapegoats for the moral failings of heterosexuals, that cannot be.
Burroway concludes with this, and I couldn’t agree more…
Forty years after the Black Cat raid, men still cannot be seen kissing each other, unless ratings are tanking during the final season or one of them dies.
And yet, what are two lovers supposed to do?
And when two lovers woo
They still say, “I love you.”
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by.
Go read the whole thing. And when the New Year rings in, if you’re lucky enough to have found your other half, or even just a happy partner for the moment, take them into your arms and kiss them…
Kiss him for all of those who were not allowed to kiss. Kiss him for those who were beaten and arrested for kissing, and for those who fought back to defend that kiss. Kiss him for those heroes who declared an end to the shame of kissing. Kiss him because now you can; because today your greatest freedom is in that kiss. Kiss him on the mouth. And for good measure, kiss him for much, much longer than three to five seconds. Kiss him hard and long, with a kiss of forty years and still counting.
Somehow, I’ve no idea how or why, I’m able to keep my common sense when I’m completely wasted. I may not be able to stand up straight but I know better then to fall for items seven through 2. But item number one has actually made sense to me when I was badly drunk. Regrettably.
It’s good to know where your failure points are. Take heed of them when partying tonight…
When you have to return home all the same, to 30 degrees and forecasts of snow, visiting the Florida keys for a few days probably isn’t a good idea after all…
From our Department Of Unsurprising Things… The judge who issued a restraining order preventing Oregon’s Civil Unions law from taking effect, was a Bush appointee whose nomination had stirred up some controversy due to his views on the status of gay people. Emphasis below are mine…
WASHINGTON—What once seemed like a slam-dunk nomination for the federal judiciary in Oregon could turn into a test of political wills for Oregon’s two senators, Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Ron Wyden.
Michael Mosman, the U.S. attorney in Portland, is Smith’s choice for a vacant district judgeship and is still regarded as a favorite of the Bush White House. But recent revelations of Mosman’s views on gay rights, first expressed in 1986, have delayed his selection and what otherwise would likely be easy Senate confirmation.
…
Mosman, 46, emerged as the top candidate in January after Ray Baum, a lawyer for Smith’s family business, withdrew. But controversy erupted in March, when Basic Rights disclosed Mosman’s role in a pivotal 1986 case, Bowers V. Hardwick.
The group uncovered and presented to Smith two “bench memos” that Mosman had written as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. Mosman urged Powell to uphold Georgia’s anti-sodomy law against a claim that police invaded a man’s privacy by arresting him in his home.
Memos to court’s tie-breaker
Mosman prepared the memos in March and June 1986, as it became clear Powell would be the court’s tie-breaking vote. He wrote that striking down the Georgia law would lead to an unwarranted expansion of privacy rights under due process.
Such a ruling would leave “no limiting principle” against prosecution of other sex crimes such as prostitution, Mosman wrote. It also would jeopardize rights that society previously had reserved to heterosexuals.
“Without belaboring the point, I am convinced that the right of privacy as it relates to this case has been limited thus far to marriage and other family relationships,” Mosman wrote to Powell. “So limited, the right of privacy does not extend to protect ‘sexual freedom’ in the absence of fundamental values of family and procreation.”
Mosman has declined requests by The Oregonian to discuss the memos. But in a recent book about gay rights and the Supreme Court, Mosman is quoted as saying that his feelings about homosexuality were secondary to his concerns about the law.
“The battle was really about . . . what direction the court was taking on due process,” Mosman said in “Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court.
Mosman added: “The (sodomy) issue could have come to the court as an equal protection case and would have had a better hearing. I would have been more receptive to it.”
…which is not to say he’d have been in favor of overturning the sodomy laws anyway. After all…having sex is a right that society had reserved to heterosexuals.
For Smith, the nomination could become a test of his credibility as an advocate for gay rights within the Republican Party. Smith won an important endorsement from Human Rights Campaign after supporting hate-crimes legislation, helping his re-election last year.
In a recent interview, Smith downplayed the significance of the Powell memos and suggested that given the opportunity, Mosman could explain himself to the satisfaction of critics.
“This is a decision that was rendered in 1986,” Smith said. “Isn’t it possible that Mike Mosman could also have an evolving view on these issues? I think Mosman is an outstanding legal scholar and an extraordinary U.S. attorney for Oregon.”
But let’s not lay this debacle entirely at the feet of the ersatz "gay friendly" republican. I think we all know by now that there is no such animal. But wait…there was a democrat involved in this too…
The stakes could be higher for Wyden. Although his party controls neither the White House nor the Senate, Democrats are regarded as the chief defenders of gay rights. If Wyden endorses Mosman, his decision could be second-guessed by colleagues, including a handful of Democratic senators running for president in 2004.
Democrats have threatened to filibuster high-profile nominees, and they might be emboldened to take on others if they succeed, said Moore, the analyst. In that case, Mosman’s nomination also could be held hostage to political concerns.
“It depends on what happens with the other filibusters going on,” he said.
Wyden hopes to avoid a national controversy over the nomination, said Josh Kardon, his chief of staff. But first, the senator plans to meet with Mosman to discuss the concerns raised by Basic Rights and decide whether to support him.
“Mike Mosman is someone Senator Wyden has supported in the past and someone he would like to support for the federal bench,” Kardon said. “But legitimate questions have been raised that require thorough consideration.”
"President Bush made an excellent choice when he nominated Mike, and the Senate confirmed that decision with its unanimous vote," Smith said. "He has long served Oregon and the nation with distinction, and I have the utmost confidence that he will continue to do so on the District Court."
"I am honored to have this chance to serve," Mosman said. "I have been impressed throughout this whole process with the fair-mindedness of everyone involved. I am grateful to the president for nominating me, and to Senators Smith and Wyden for their confidence and support."
"Mike has worked hard to show his commitment to equal rights for all Americans," Wyden said. "I believe his sense of fairness and his long and outstanding experience as a prosecutor in our state will serve the District Court and Oregon well."
Can you see my smile? There’s a little space in the center of my door that I’ve been saving for one particular Christmas card, I wasn’t even sure would come. It hadn’t by the time I was on my way south. I was tempted several times to call the lady who watches my house while I’m gone and ask her if it had come. When I came home last night from Key West, the first thing I did was look through the stack of mail for it. And there it was. With a nice little note inside.
Thank you. And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours too!
lonernomore1…what was it about the words "If you have something to say to me about any of it, send an email" that you’re having trouble parsing?
Yes, everyone I write about here on the blog, knows that I write about them. I’ve told my ex about it to his face. I’ve told just about everyone I know about this blog and all they have to do to see what I’m putting up here is read it. It’s not hard for anyone who knows me to find. It shows up first in a google search of my name. Hell…its domain name Is my name. And you still seem to be a little fuzzy about what a blog is because you’re bellyaching about how pathetic it is for me to be putting my life up here online. Get a clue idiot…that’s what a goddamned blog Is.
Censorship? Actually censorship is a common practice most places. It’s just here in the USA that we have something like a first amendment guarantee of free speech. But that applies to Public Forums, which this blog, which I pay the hosting for out of my own pocket, is not, anymore then a newspaper’s Letters To The Editor page is a public forum. And mostly I Don’t restrict commenting here. But I said I didn’t want a public discussion of those particular posts and I’m terribly sorry if you find that inconvenient because you just gotta put your soapbox right on top of my heartbreak but…too bad. Feel free to come back and comment on any other post you like, where I’ve left comments enabled. Just not on those.
And here’s a wee thought experiment for you: do you know my ex’s full name? The name of his boyfriend? If you do, it’s because you know them personally. Actually, according to my server logs, you haven’t even visited the posts where I’ve said even his first name just in passing, so unless you know him personally, you don’t even know that. I am not plastering anyone else’s life up here but my own. Sometimes that involves the people I share moments of that life with, but I always try to draw a discrete curtain around their specific identities because…yes…it’s their right to decide how public they want their own lives to be. My old high school friends for example, may be fine with me sharing what we were all up to back in the 1970s with other old friends…but would they want their current employers knowing it too? Probably…not. So I don’t give details about the people I know here, and you haven’t read anything here about my ex and his boyfriend that would tell you a goddamned thing about them, really. You don’t know who they are, you don’t know where they live (though you might think you do because I keep referring to where he Used to live as though he still does live there), you don’t know what they do for a living, you know even less about them in other words, then you know about me and that doesn’t amount to crap. Unless you know them yourself that is. Do you? You’re in the same timezone as all of us.
No…misery does Not love company. What misery loves is friendship. Which I have. However misery also tends to attract jackasses who think they know all the answers to somebody else’s life problems and that’s exactly why I turned those comments off. No, I am not alone. I will never be alone don’t you see, so long as I have an entire Internet full of nitwits who can read my entire life story in just a few blog posts, and know me well enough to give me advice that is worth its weight in gold about my love life.
Believe it or not, I’m actually a much nicer person to people I know and care about. But if you were one of those you wouldn’t be hiding behind an AOL alias because you’d know that.
Awww…Now What Am I Going To Do With Those Sandals I Just Bought…?
Back home. And…damn…it’s cold outside.
I arrived home late last night, but I know it’s possible now to drive from Southern Georgia to Baltimore in one day. I didn’t hurry it…just kept driving knowing that even if I got home late, I would have a place to sleep. Sometimes when you’re on the road, you stop early for a motel room before they’re all booked up. I’d have loved to stay in Key West through New Years, but I didn’t realize it would be so expensive to stay down there and I basically ran out of hotel money for this trip. Next time I’ll be ready. Even with the price of gasoline being what it is now, the major cost of a road trip are the lodgings. I’m still paying off last year’s trip to Portland, which is another reason why I didn’t have much to spare to spend on this road trip. When I get everything added up, I’ll post the totals here. In the meantime, here are the stats according to Traveler’s onboard trip computer…
Miles Traveled: 2832
Hours Driven: 51.45
Average mpg: 28.7
Average Speed: 55mph
All that’s over the course of the entire trip, including driving around Hilton Head for a bit, around Orlando and the area around Disneyworld for a bit, and all the driving I did around the Florida Keys.
I actually got 31 miles per gallon driving back across the keys from Key West to the mainland! So now I know that my car with that big Mercedes v-6 engine in it will still do over 30 miles per gallon…if I drive it at an average speed of about 45 miles per hour over terrain that is almost totally flat. But I’ve discovered to my relief on this first big road trip, that it’ll do nearly 30 mpg if I drive it for extended periods at highway speeds. Typically my trip computer was reading around 29.3 to 29.8 mpg after a few miles down I-95. That’s Much better then I was expecting. I have compared the trip computer to my gas purchases and mileage, which I’ve been recording in a little notebook ever since I bought the car, and they match to within tenths of a gallon, so I’m pretty confidant that the trip computer is giving me an accurate account of miles per gallon as I go down the road.
I’ve put on enough miles now that I can go get my free first tire rotation. I’ll need to ask them to check out the area around my gas filler. I pulled over in a small town in North Carolina looking for gas, and saw that the Hess gas station had the good price so I went there and the pumps weren’t working right. The first pump I went to took about a minute to pump only a half gallon. So I closed out the transaction there and moved to a different one which was still slow, but not painfully so. But good thing I always stay near the pump while it’s working, because that one didn’t cut off when it had filled the tank and suddenly I had a massive overflow on my hands. It was scary…dripping all over the passenger side rear tire and down around the filler cap. I put the hose back on the pump, doused the area with water from one of the washer stations, and went inside to warn them that they had a dangerous situation with that one pump, and the clerk just nodded her head and said, "Oh yes, you have to watch that one or it’ll do that…"
Christ! The saving grace of it was it was raining and the roads were wet. I doused the area with water once again and then drove Traveler through several big puddles and then back onto I-95 where the tire could spray water into that wheel well that got drenched. Maybe I should have called the fire department on them too, but being by myself in a small southern town I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I knew they were thoughtless assholes. If they had a mind to, they could have accused me of damaging their pump somehow and then it’s that little northern faggot against the local boys and I might have ended up being the one in trouble.
So when I take Traveler in for its tire rotation, now I have to ask them to check around the area of the filler cap for damage. Gasoline is a powerful solvent. I’ve used white gasoline, the stuff you can buy for camping stoves that comes without all the additives they put into automobile fuel, occasionally for really tough chores like hardened brushes. But you can’t be too careful with it, and not just for the dangerous fumes, but also what it will damage if it gets dripped on. So I’m fretting a bit now about what that spill might have done to my new car.
One big reason I turned the comments off in those previous few posts here where I’m letting my heart bleed all over this blog, is that I didn’t want my friends and regular readers getting into it with the assholes I just knew those posts would attract. Like the one that sent me a longish missive last night about how he didn’t give a damn and didn’t see why anyone else should either, because having read my life story here, he could see so clearly that I’d brought all my problems on myself. And since I’d turned off the comments to the posts he was referring to, and he just couldn’t bear to send it to me in email like I’d asked, because then nobody else would have seen how profound his thinking on the subject was, he tried putting it on one of my other posts here with the comments still turned on. Let’s hear it for spam filters.
Actually nitwit, you Do give a damn…otherwise you wouldn’t have written that long, rambling, misspelled, babbling, incoherent message. Someone who really didn’t give a damn wouldn’t have bothered. They’d have just…you know…not given a damn. I’d never have heard from them.
But I heard from you. And in the spirit of cheap barstool psychoanalyzing someone you only know from a few words on a computer screen, methinks you protesteth too much. What I wrote got under your skin didn’t it? Seems to me like there’s probably someone in Your past, with a wound on Their heart with Your name on it, and you’ve been spending the rest of your life ever since you put it there trying to convince yourself that it wasn’t your fault and you don’t have to give a shit.
Fine. We all have our coping mechanisms. And they say a lot about who we are inside. I appreciate the "tough love" stuff and all guy, but you know, there are fates sadder then the one I was contemplating back there. I’d rather care too much and bleed myself to death then stop giving a damn and end my life as an asswipe whose companionship is like drinking turpentine.
If my bleeding heart emotionalism really really irritates you…good. That means there’s still something human left inside of you. Try to find it someday.
Oh…and you were wondering if the people I write about know that I’m writing about them? Duh…it’s a blog… Everyone can read it. If they don’t know, it’s because they don’t give a damn, which is what you said they were supposed to do.
Photo taken at the southernmost part of the U.S., near the southernmost hotel in the U.S., by the southernmost house in the U.S., of the southernmost gay American, the southernmost computer geek, the southernmost shutter bug, the southernmost cartoonist, the southernmost longhaired male, and the southernmost Mercedes-Benz owner, wearing what was at that instant the southernmost American smile.
If you’ve ever been there, you’ve seen how that one little corner of Key West has a thing for southernmostness.
You can almost see it there in that photo, how the waters of the Atlantic right there were the color of my turquoise bracelet. The waters around the Keys are just absolutely the most beautiful stretch of ocean I have ever seen.
It felt…good…that first time I checked into a hotel this trip, and wrote "Mercedes-Benz" on the registration form where it asks you for the make and model of your car.
Traveler, my new Mercedes c300, has been a pure pleasure to drive on this first road trip with it. If I could have dreamed up the ideal touring car I couldn’t have done much better. It’s not as sumptuous as an E or S class, but sitting in one of those I might not want to be eating road munchies or drinking from my stainless steel Mercedes mug either. Do they even put cup holders in the S class…?
Traveler is just a pure pleasure to drive down the road. It hugs the pavement with that perfect balance of smoothness and tight-to-the-road feel that I have always admired in Mercedes suspensions. I have a good view of the road all around me, and all the car’s controls are within easy reach. The driver’s seat is comfortable enough to spend hours driving in and the automatic climate control handles everything from Baltimore’s winter chill to the Florida Keys hot sunshine with ease. It’s been a few years since I’ve been to south Florida, and the intensity of the sunlight down here always catches the northerner by surprise the first time it hits you. I started feeling it beating through Traveler’s windows when I got down to Fort Lauderdale. Traveler has sensors that detect which side of the car is getting hit by direct sunlight, and by gosh when I make a turn and the Florida sun starts busting through the front window and right onto my chest, the car adjusts the vents and ramps up the fan speed to keep me cool and I don’t have to touch anything.
The car’s various safety and security features give you a nice sense of confidence on the road. Going through several sudden and heavy Florida downpours on the way from Orlando to Key Largo, I got a chance to use my fogs…not so much for the forward view, I don’t think fogs are much help in a downpour, as for that nice little rear facing extra bright tail lamp you can switch on to hopefully let the guy behind you know you’re there in low visibility conditions. I noticed one other Mercedes in the traffic bunch had done the same. And I don’t fret so much while strolling around unfamiliar territory with Traveler parked somewhere, because the TeleAid service will call my cell phone if the car’s alarms go off.
My only regrets are that its trunk isn’t as big as the one in my Honda Accord, and that it takes only premium gasoline, which is running 3.60 a gallon right now down here in Key West, and 3.30 a gallon back in Key Largo, closer to the mainland. But everything is more expensive here in Key West, especially the hotels. The upside to Traveler’s taste for premium is that its appetite isn’t as bad on the highway as I thought it would be. I was getting 29.7 miles to the gallon on the drive from Washington to Hilton Head, and averaging about 28 miles to the gallon on the rest of the trip so far.
As far as the trunk goes, I’m still experimenting how to pack it. In theory there’s enough space in there, but barely, for two sets of luggage. But I tend to pack along lots of camera equipment. And let’s face it…I’m gay guy and gay men tend to pack more clothes along. And I’m a techno geek so double that for all my little gismos. I have a white noise generator for noisy motel environments. I packed a sleeping bag along because it’s winter back north and you need to be prapaired in case you get stuck in a snow or ice storm…like I almost did driving to Hilton Head Christmas week of 2004. Also, the sleeping bag makes a good comforter if your motel doesn’t give you enough blankets and heat. I tried…I really tried to keep it down for a simple weeklong trip, and I’m Still using Traveler’s rear seat area for storage. If I ever find a boyfriend, I’m going to have to buy that roof mounted storage bin so there’ll be enough space for both our things.
Despite its expensive taste in gasoline, it’s Really Nice having that Mercedes v-6 under the hood. It moves the car effortlessly at legal highway speeds and makes a very satisfactory German motorcar roar when passing slowpokes, which it also does quite effortlessly…serenely even. And that even though it’s feeding torque to an automatic transmission. That seven speed auto is sweet. If I’d driven automatics like it back in the 70s I might not have grown up hating them. This trans just doesn’t feel anything like those old slush boxes did. It does highway shifts smoothly and solidly. But where I’m really coming to appreciate it is in stop and go city traffic. The bumper to bumper, stop and go shuffle in old town Key West with its tiny little streets was no sweat which is really remarkable because I Hate being stuck in traffic like that. Not any more. It may not be an E or and S class I’m sitting stuck in traffic in, but it’s damn luxurious all the same. I just relaxed in my seat, turned up the Harmon-Kardon stereo, let the climate control system do its thing, and just let the car creep forward in drive whenever traffic moved a tad.
This car is pampering me. A friend who owns a C class warned me that the car would change my sense of what ‘normal’ is. I think it already has. I need to reward it with a nice bath when I get back on the mainland.
…taken just a few moments ago while I strolled around the area by my hotel just before dawn. And brought to your computer through the magic of digital photography and the World Wide Web. Seriously…an old friend of mine called me on his cell phone late last night as he was driving south through Wilmington Deleware, and there I was chatting with him on my cell phone while I was strolling around U.S. Route 1 in Key Largo and you have to appreciate that we both grew up in an era when telephones had wires connecting to them to the wall and a long distance call to just the next state over was a lot of money, and there we were chatting to each other with little devices that just fit in our pockets, he in Wilmington and I in Key Largo. And we haven’t really lived all that long.
I could swear I turned comments off for the last few posts… Sorry. It’s taking me a lot of nerve to write some of this and make it public like this. If you have something to say to me about any of it, send an email. I’m not looking for a public discussion of any of this.
A few moments spent in the arms of someone you love can bring you back. Even if a few moments is all you get, it can bring you back. At least, for a while.
Those little moments when a little voice starts telling you, You shouldn’t be alone now…? I have them occasionally…maybe you do too. But alone is my default condition. So when those moments come it usually goes something like, Yes Bruce, you shouldn’t be alone now…but you Are alone… So I cope the best I can with whatever it is, and obviously I always have because I’m here typing this blog post right now. And hopefully everyone who knows me won’t suddenly discover one day that I couldn’t cope with it that one time.
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