Seen on Twitter: “Family of four sitting in the patio furniture section of Costco eating picnic lunch made up entirely of samples. #theamericandream”

I remember as a kid, listening to mom’s tales of the Great Depression.   Little did I know those stories would prepare me for life in 21st century America…

Sullivan posts…

Tasneem Raja reports on brogramming, “a term that seeks to recast the geek identity with a competitive frat-house flavor”

Oh what a perfect match…frat boys and the computer nerds they used to beat up in grade school. Why has no one thought of this before now I ask you?

…apparently it’s real enough for social-media analytics company Klout: The high-flying Silicon Valley startup came under fire last month for displaying a recruitment poster at a Stanford career fair that asked: “Want to bro down and crush code? Klout is hiring.”

Brogramming.   Brogramming.

That daydream of mine to retire to Key West someday, spend the trailing edge of life lounging by the shore, under the starry night sky, with a margarita, and a cigar, whilst enjoying a bonfire of burning computer books, is looking better and better every year.

Via Joe. My God., I see someone is having conniptions visualizing gay sex…

“Permit me to clarify the definition. Sodomy is one MAN inserting his genitals into the mouth or anus of ANOTHER MAN. Say it again. Say it out loud so your ears hear it. Picture it in your mind. Picture Barney Frank and Elton John in action. Barney Frank putting his genitals into Elton John’s. That is what they want to tell us is normal€¦no wait€¦tell our children is normal. Into that ‘union’ they are asking permission to place children. Would you let them put YOUR grandchild into a sodomy-based family? Why would you let them do it to someone else’s child? Have normal people lost their minds?” -Crackpot “Coach” Dave Daubenmire.

Normal people don’t obsess about the sex their neighbors are having Dave, particularly when it’s sex that turns them off.  You on the other hand, clearly can’t seem to get it out of your head.

You have issues Dave. Let me try to address one of them.  If you think opposite sex couples wouldn’t do anything that grosses you or “normal” people out then you really don’t know much about what other people are up to. Perhaps that’s for the best. All in all, I wish sometimes I didn’t know myself.

See Dave…when I was a young gay man, back in the early 1970s, there weren’t many places I could go to get my weekly copies of The Washington Blade or The Advocate. You may of course assume these are gay porn since they’re gay publications and we homosexuals don’t have lives, we just have sex. But they’re newspapers, classifieds and ads for various sexually graphic other publications notwithstanding. And being a young gay man living in a world which at that time was loath to admit that such as I even existed, I needed a source of news and information for my community.

Back then there were no gay publications to be found at the local bookstores and newsstands, let alone the public libraries. There was no Internet.  If you were a gay American back in the early 1970s and you wanted news and information concerning your community you didn’t have a lot of choice.  Luckily for me growing up in the Washington D.C. suburbs, there was Lambda Rising. But to get there I had to borrow mom’s car and drive downtown. The Metro subway system wouldn’t reach out to my suburban neighborhood for nearly a decade.

So I was always on the lookout for a place closer to home where I could find my gay newspapers. One day, running errands for mom, I drove past a small strip shopping center near Wheaton Plaza, and I glimpsed a sign: ADULT BOOKS.

Well we all know what “adult” means don’t we? So working up the nerve (and I must have driven around that block several times…) I parked the car nearby and strolled in. I think I had just turned 21 but I might have been only 20 and in any case in Maryland then I only needed to be over 18.

The bookstore was small, a tad rundown, but neatly organized.  There were a few customers inside.  The front area of the store was your usual newstand layout with various magazines and newspapers on the shelves.  As you moved toward the back you saw more and more straight skin magazines of the Playboy/Penthouse sort.  Your usual softcore men’s magazine stuff.  I don’t think Playgirl had yet started publishing.  There was a door in the back with a sign over it that said You Must Be 18 or Over To Enter and a nice older lady sitting at a counter beside it. It took me a few minutes of wandering close, pretending to look at the other magazines before I worked up the nerve to enter that door. I’m certain the old lady at the counter had seen first time customers doing that dance many, many times before and she wasn’t fooled. She knew where I was headed.

Oh look…another room…I think I’ll have a look inside… Inside the door was another room about the same size as the front one.  The light in there was a bit harsher and the shelves seemed starker somehow. Nearly all the titles were wrapped in plastic, presumably to make people pay to enjoy their contents.  But the covers…oh gosh…

As I said, I was 20, maybe 21 and I thought I knew everything there was to know about how to have sex.  Well…no.  As it turned out, there were Lots of other ways.  Lots and Lots and Lots of other ways.  Being a gay guy I felt somewhat enlightened and tolerant by the fact that the thought of heterosexuals getting it on really didn’t bother or gross me out.  But clearly what I had been imagining was only the Reader’s Digest version.  Here before my eyes was the unabridged, and little Baptist boy me was horrified.  No…I won’t go into details.  The details aren’t important.

Eventually I worked my way clear to the back where, in a corner, was the Much smaller gay section. Once more I beheld a universe of sexual possibilities I really had absolutely no interest in, and many of which to be perfectly honest grossed me out considerably.  But I must also honestly admit there were some magazines back there that definitely tweaked my interest. Unsurprisingly these were the ones that matched the imaginings of sex I’d had since my hormones started percolating. Some of the guys in them were beautiful. During later visits I would actually buy a few of these.  But that wasn’t my goal just then.  Mostly I just wanted to see if I could get my newspapers and be out of there.  And sure enough, right at the very bottom of one of those shelves, were copies of the Blade and The Advocate, and nearby, a couple gay softcore titles I’d never seen before.  Playboy could sit in the front, but gay softcore had to sit with the straight hard core porn because…well…it was gay after all.

I much preferred going to Lambda Rising, but for about the next decade, when I couldn’t get downtown, I made the trek to ADULT BOOKS and got my newspapers.

So…dig it Dave…for almost a decade I had to walk a gauntlet of heterosexual pornography just to get my damn newspapers.

I am so sorry for you.  I mean…a coach for goodness sakes…and here you are like a freshly minted teenage boy so fascinated, so completely preoccupied with sex, and yet blissfully naive about it all.  How did that happen to a guy your age?  The thought of one man having oral sex with another grosses you out does it?  I could tell you things that heterosexuals do that would curdle your milk Dave.  You poor sorry soul.  I have a suggestion.  Never…Never…order up one of those adults only channels next time you’re on the road without your wife.  You might have a heart attack.

[New And Improved!]

I’ll endure a lot of things, but after I’ve worked so hard to earn a person’s trust a thin skin isn’t one of them.

So I see Gideon Sundbäck, the inventor of “Hookless No. 2”, essentially the modern metal zipper, was born today. And everyone who hits Google this morning will learn that fact too. Well most everyone. There will be some out there just as discomposed about it all as I and never work up the nerve to pull on that zipper.

I sat there for several minutes staring at the Google doodle not sure what to do, looked around to make sure none of my office mates could see, then finally went ahead an unzipped it, slightly embarrassed about the whole thing. Laugh at me, I was raised in a Baptist household. I never touched the zipper on Sticky Fingers either when they were real ones, deeply embarrassed that I was even tempted by it.

[Update…] The Christian Science Monitor reports that the zipper had a hard time catching on and notes…

Despite the devices attributes, the public was not receptive,” writes fashion historian Ronald Knoth. “The pulpit decried, ‘The Hookless Fastener’ as ‘the Devils fingers,’ [because it made it easier] to remove clothing with autonomy.

Saw it coming did ya?   And so as the years went by, the sound of zippers unzipping began to play in the background of every adolescent’s daydreams…

As I often do, I posted the last couple sketches here onto my Facebook page with a brief explanation…

I’m finding suddenly that technical pencil and a graphite stick work pretty well for me on these sorts of sketches. If I tweak the contrast up in Photoshop they almost look inked but they aren’t. Just pencil and graphite drawn on layout paper, then scanned in.

The models for these are mostly taken from fashion spreads I find here and there online and in magazines, like Out, Details and GQ. I have a filing cabinet folder full of poses I tore out of magazines I use as a reference. When I get in the mood to do one of these sorts of sketches I dig up a pose I like, do a rough sketch of the body, then just add whatever face, hair and clothes to it that come to mind.

It’s probably not as good as sketching from life would be but it’s the best I can manage. If I had it to do all over again I’d move mountains to be able to afford art school.

A friend there responded that I could always hire a model. But that doesn’t fit into how I work on these.   When I do a political cartoon I do almost the entire thing in my head before I even touch pencil to paper.   I know with a pretty good certainly what I want to see on the paper when I begin drawing it out.   But these drawings of beautiful guys are more like daydreams.   As I said in the previous post, the wistful daydreams of a single guy, who has been single just about all his life.

I wouldn’t know where to even begin with a professional, or even an amateur model. What I have are file cabinet folder full of pages I’ve torn over the years from fashion spreads in magazines like Out, Details and GQ.   I use those as a reference when I sit down to a little sexy sketching.   I do a rough of the body in the photo, and then I work on it, firming up the lines, moving them a tad here and there to get the body shape I want.   I add face, hairstyle and clothes purely from my imagination. I have done this for so long now I have no idea how I would work with a model.

When I was a lot younger…about the age of the guys you see me drawing here, I had a small group of friends I would hang out with and I would snap photos of them.  But I don’t have anyone that age in my local group of friends now, for pretty obvious reasons, and even if I did, they’d be of their own time and place and I strongly doubt I could talk any of them into dressing like they’d just stepped out of the 1970s. So those days are gone to me and with them I guess pretty much the last opportunities I would ever have to draw from life in a way that would be both helpful and inspiring. I might see spontaneous things and snap away with my camera, or if someone was patient enough, I’d ask them to pose. But that isn’t the life I have.   If I’d had a boyfriend I’d have probably driven him nuts by now with all my sudden requests to pose while we were out and about. But that wasn’t the life I had.

My art sketches, as you can plainly see, are mostly young twenty-somethings. If you look closely what you see is they’re from a time when I was that age too. I’m stuck. I think this is what happens when you don’t connect, miss out on that chance for first love. You get stuck in a passage of life you were always meant to move on from. That dating and mating thing is part of the maturity process and when you fail at it a part of you gets stuck in that younger mindset, that once upon a time frame. Yes, a part of you does go on to some sort of maturity. You get a job, you enter the workforce, you start earning a living on your own, and accumulate responsibilities in the normal course of life. And you learn to fulfill those responsibilities, be dependable, because others at your workplace depend on you. You earn trust, you manage your finances, you gain various kinds of life experience and it grows you inside. All but one life experience. All but one so very vital life experience. And so a part of you does not get that chance to grow.

And yes, it’s not a completely dire fate. Keeping that youthful mindset keeps a part of you inside awake that too many adults let go to sleep. You ask questions the middle age guy might shrug off. You stay curious, open to new ideas, willing to turn the box upside down, never mind think outside of it, just to see what happens when you do that. So many of my generational peers are still afraid of computers and the Internet and the new technologies, so afraid of being left behind, and to me the fact that the world is constantly changing before my eyes, growing, getting bigger, is the same feeling it always was back in grade school. Something I have learned from being stuck, is that there is no such thing as growing up…there is only growing.

And if you’ve gotten on with the business of life with your eyes open, both to the inner and outer world, then you know well that a younger lover would not get you unstuck. What I need is someone my own age, or nearby. Someone who remembers what the world was like when John Lennon was still alive, before personal computers, cell phones and the Internet. Before cable TV and twenty-four hour cable TV news and over the horizon line was a beautiful tempting mysterious other world only expensive long distance phone calls could penetrate before the six o:clock news or the morning newspaper. Back when cars had lots of chrome and the teachers passed out assignment papers that smelled of mimeograph fluid and Jimi Hendrx played on the radio, not Rush Limbaugh. I could be a kid again with that guy. I could find my way to the rest of growing up that I missed out on.

Maybe then my artwork would grow up a little too. Or go in some different direction that I would have never known or suspected was even there had I not, finally, found my lover, and had my eyes opened to things I’d only imagined before, but never really knew anything about.

[Edited a tad for clarity in a few spots…]

Here’s a little something for the (according to my server logs) fans of my sketches of cute guys in cutoffs. They’re just wistful daydreaming on my part…I had no idea anyone really liked these. But while I was on vacation my web site got Google hits from people specifically looking for my name and cutoffs. Wow. I may be no Tom of Finland (whose males I never found attractive but I was in awe of his skill with a pencil) but I could do worse then be known for drawing beautiful guys in cutoffs.

Normally you Google for images of nice looking guys in cutoffs and what you get are a lot of pictures of guys who really shouldn’t be wearing these at all, which people post as a way of ridiculing cutoffs…or at any rate, cutoffs on guys. Yes, yes…you need the physique for it…but lotsa guys have that and in any case the ridicule isn’t about guys who have no fashion common sense, it’s about reenforcing the male fear of looking too sexy below the waste because that’s teh gay.

When I was a young adult this look wasn’t uncommon even on straight guys (though admittedly straight guys didn’t usually wear them quite This short…) and I guess my emerging libido just glommed onto it. But damn I like this look and I reckon I’ll just keep drawing it…

If this means I’m stuck in the past so be it. As I said, these are just the random wistful daydreams of a single guy. If you like them then I’m happy. If you think they’re ridiculous then go away.

Every now and then, like yesterday morning I run into a fellow American who has spent time in Germany.  When I tell them I want to visit there someday they all tell me I should definitely go.  They always say Germany is a really great place and their time there was just wonderful.  And if some of their time was spent in Bavaria, I always ask them what Bavaria is like compared to the rest of Germany.  And the first thing they always say about Bavaria is that it is a Very Conservative part of Germany.  Also, generally very expensive to live in.  But Very Conservative is always the first thing that comes to their minds, when it comes to Bavaria.  Not just conservative, but Very Conservative.

So I’m guessing it would probably be hard to be a gay kid there.  Or to be a gay kid whose family is from there.

On the other hand, it’s hard for gay kids here in the U.S. too, in some states.  The mostly rural conservative states anyway.  You see a lot of them who have fled to the more liberal, tolerant states or cities to get away.  But it’s hard to get away from your family.  Those kids, they always have the most difficult time of it, even when they’re out and proud and living in the gay ghettos.  What happens is they just learn to live with the stress of family relationships and move on with their lives.  Because one way or another it’s going to be hard.  Everyone who comes out of the closet does so knowing what is on the other side of that closet door.  So you might as well just be yourself.  You can’t please everyone.  But you can be real.

That’s something I learned ages ago, ironically well before I entered adolescence and found myself having to deal with being gay.  See…mom’s family positively hated dad, and dad’s family.  After my parents divorced when I was about two, mom moved me back across the country and I grew up here in Maryland instead of California (which I will probably go to my grave regretting except for the fact that I met you).  And since I had dad’s face, I got a lot of flack growing up just for being his son.  Stinking Rotten Good-For-Nothing Garrett Just Like Your Pap was grandma’s favorite name for me (where mom couldn’t hear it), even though I was a pretty well behaved kid.  But I had his face, and grandma hated dad, and I was handy.  So I caught the flack.  And gay people catch a lot of flack too, simply because we are handy.

So you see, when I turned seventeen and came out to myself I’d already had a childhood knowing that some people would hate me just for something I was and couldn’t help being.  But I knew I was loved too.  Mom never let me doubt that.  So much as it distressed me, I just learned to live with the fact that grandma and others just didn’t like me because I was my father’s son and I would never change that, and I got on with my life.  Mom loved me.  I knew I was loved.  I knew I could be loved.  That was all I needed to grow up on.

Here’s what gay people know: strangers can gay bash you, beat the living crap out of you, take your life from you, but only relatives can chew your heart up and spit it out.  What we learn from it is this: your family are the people who love you just as you are.  That’s the real family you have.  Everyone else is just a relative.

Just a fact.

So Zimmerman is out of touch. Nobody could have predicted this obviously.   Here’s my two cents: What I have been seeing, admittedly from a distance and in second third and forth hand telling, is a man who is fundamentally stupid in some ways, has anger problems, but is remarkably quick witted.

Consider: if he shot that kid after he had him down on the ground and the kid was crying out for help, and then told the first witness on the scene that he was the one crying for help, that says a lot.   A very disturbing lot.   Stupid people can still be very quick witted like that.   Especially if they’ve had a lot of practice at it.   My hunch is he’s been good up until now at getting away with things.   And this time his lack of internal brakes finally took him into a very bad place and he’s out of his depth and now he’s afraid.

This is what I see…from a distance…second, third and forth hand…take it for what it’s worth: He was never hiding from black anger.   He knew what he did that day.   He knew.   It’s been replaying in an infinite loop over and over again in his thoughts.   What he did.   What could happen to him if people find out.   The public posturing is that he is afraid of black revenge.   No.   He has been in hiding all this time from the law.   It isn’t black anger he’s afraid of.   It’s the Florida gas chamber. Remote as that possibility may be in actuality, because let’s face it, the kid was black and this is Florida, it’s been looming over him ever since he pulled the trigger.   Pulled the trigger on a teenaged boy who was crying desperately for anyone to come help.   He knows what he did that night.

This sudden escape…his attorneys backing out…I’m guessing there is evidence out there that is terrifying him right now and that these lawyers just don’t want their names remembered in what is to come.

[Update…] I’m reading now that Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey may charge Zimmerman as early as today.   This is interesting:

Corey has indicated in recent weeks that she might not need a grand jury to bring charges against Zimmerman.

My hunch here since Zimmerman’s lawyers announced they lost contact with him has been that there is evidence out there that he hoped or trusted the Standford police would simply ignore once he claimed a “stand your ground” defense.   Then the shooting of Trayvon Martin became national news and that evidence is still out there and it is terrifying him.   I think Corey saying she did not need a grand jury to press charges is indicative that she has that evidence. Of course I could be spectacularly wrong about all of this.   Like everyone else in the nation (except Zimmerman and Corey) I know what I know many steps removed from the actual evidence.   But this seems to fit.   Also this from Zimmerman’s former lawyers:

Lawyers Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig on Tuesday expressed concern about Zimmerman’s emotional and physical well-being, saying he has taken actions without consulting them. They also said they do not know where Zimmerman is.

“You can stop looking in Florida,” Uhrig told reporters. “Look much further away than that.”

At a guess…he’s no longer in the country.   His father is a retired judge.   Be interesting to know if Zimmerman’s former lawyers had any talks with the father before they bailed.

[Update…]   I’m reading now that in Florida you can’t charge someone with first degree murder without a grand jury indictment.   So whatever Corey has, or thinks she does, it seems it’s not enough for that.

Thing is…she would know what a high hurtle she is facing because of “stand your ground.”   If it’s not a serious charge with evidence to back it up then it may as well be no charge at all.

[Update…] He’s in custody so I hear, which means he didn’t flee so far after all.   Why is lawyers lost contact with him and one of them said “look much further away” beats me.   But he has a new lawyer who I’m hearing was calling “stand your ground” a license to murder just a few days ago.   But a good lawyer defends their client regardless of personal belief or they don’t take that client on.   Zimmerman is charged with second degree murder, which as I understand it in Florida is you didn’t plan it, but you did it deliberately nonetheless.   I’ve heard nothing so far about the evidence she has.

I’m wondering what the autopsy showed.   I keep hearing that Trayvon Martin was found face down on the grass.   The witnesses say they saw, unclearly, two figures, one on top of the other and then there was a shot.   One witness, who was later “corrected” by the police says she saw Zimmerman on top and then heard two shots.   So did the autopsy show that Martin was shot in the back?   Was the bullet found?   Was it in the ground below Martin or somewhere else?   Did Corey spend all this time knowing the evidence at least supported second degree murder but trying to find evidence to support first degree murder and she decided she could not successfully prove that much?

Roy Edroso writes gleefully about the argument Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher are having about what it means to be a good Christian. I won’t go into detail about it here, you should just go read Roy’s post over at Alicublog. But (since I can’t post comments over there because the JS-Kit commenting engine he uses is just too goddamned cranky) I want to just take note of one thing that leaped out at me. This is Dreher speaking…

It’s interesting how so many liberal Christians accuse conservatives of being obsessed with sex, yet so much of their own writing and activism focuses on sex and sexuality, especially homosexuality.

In case you missed it, Dreher is saying right there that whenever you talk about Teh Gay you are talking about sex. Equal marriage rights for gay couples? Sex. Protecting gay people from discrimination in the workplace? Sex. Anti-bullying campaigns in the schools to protect gay kids? Sex. The horrific rise in anti-gay violence in recent years? Sex.

But no, he’s not obsessed with sex.   He’s a bigot who can’t see the people for the homosexuals. He is a man who simply cannot grasp that homosexuals might have lives too, apart from their bedroom shenanigans, just like the heterosexuals do. Heterosexuals have lives, homosexuals have sex.

Remember, this is the guy who wrote an entire post off of a news story about a man surviving the home invasion massacre that killed his entire family, to vent about how shocked he was to discover “a bisexual culture” in East Texas.   No he’s not obsessed with sex, he’s a bigot. His hated other is that ingrown hair, that burr under his saddle, that itch he just can’t scratch. Everything he reads that even remotely touches on gay people, even the massacre of an entire family, becomes a story about sex because that is all homosexuals amount to.   He is not obsessed with sex.   He’s obsessed with homosexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexuals.

To the gentleman about my own age in the bar I was just in who got Very friendly with me while I was trying to enjoy my crabcakes and a drink: No, you are not the married man who has permission to hit on me.   And no, I don’t care if your wife is cool about it either.

I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated, “all my homosexual patients
are quite sick”, to which I finally replied “so are all my heterosexual patients.”
-Ernest van den Haag, psychotherapist

There is nothing wrong with homosexuals.   That is a simple statement of fact.   Not opinion.   Fact.   Well researched, well established, scientific fact. And it has been well established fact for quite a very long time.   If you were born in the 1960s or later, then this fact is older then you are.

Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin writes…

Study of 100 Homosexuals: 1957. There had been a string of high profile arrests of very prominent and well-known men in Britain in the early 1950s, including Lord Montagu, his cousin, Maj. Michael Pitt-Rivers, and journalist Peter Wildeblood,  all of whom had been charged and convicted of homosexual offenses. Their arrests opened the debate over whether homosexual acts between consenting adults should remain criminalized.

So in 1954 a study was convened under the leadership of Lord Wolfenden whose name would later be attached to a report recommending the complete decriminalization of homosexual relationships among consenting adults in Britain.   And how did they come to this conclusion?   Well they didn’t consult the bible, and they didn’t ask the prejudices of their day.   They did something positively unique for that day when it came to the subject of homosexuality.

They looked for evidence.

One problem with the published research on gay men was that virtually all of it was based on clinical or criminal populations, which Curran and Parr acknowledged would not necessarily be representative of the general population of gay men. In their report, they acknowledged that their sample would likely exhibit higher rates of psychiatric problems or criminal recidivism. But when they looked into the files of these 100 men who had been referred to their practice, the authors observed:

…[I]n spite of the probability that any group of homosexuals referred to a psychiatrist might be expected to be heavily weighted in the direction of psychiatric abnormality, no fewer than 51 % were considered to be free from gross personality disorder, neurosis, or psychosis during their adult lives. Only one was certifiably defective and none certifiably insane. They included a number of important and talented individuals of high integrity, successful, efficient, and respected members of the community. Only two had been on any criminal charge other than homosexuality. Very few showed the traditional “pansy” picture of homosexuals; indeed, only 21 were noted to have at all obvious homosexual personality traits, only one of these being a paedophiliac.

So in spite of their having difficulty recruiting a completely representative sample of gay men, in spite of their sample being weighted toward mental patents and criminals, they found less mental aberration then they would have otherwise expected. In fact slightly better then half their sample showed no signs of gross mental illness at all.

Only half the patients showed significant psychiatric abnormality other than their sexual deviation, and such associated abnormalities were often slight. Moreover, many of these abnormalities were explicable as a reaction to the difficulties of being homosexual. Symptomatic homosexuality was rare.

And then it gets down to brass tacks.   Is homosexuality a disease?   Is this even a problem?

If homosexuality is a disease (as has often been suggested), it is in a vast number of cases monosymptomatic, non-progressive, and compatible with subjective well-being and objective efficiency. In our series, both practicing and non-practicing homosexuals were on the whole successful and valuable members of society, quite unlike the popular conception of such persons as vicious, criminal, effete, or depraved. Only one-fifth were at all obviously ” pansy,” and we found no reason to regard most of the patients as physically, intellectually, or emotionally immature (unless the basic criterion for ” immaturity” is that of being homosexual-a circular argument).

What they’re saying here is that if homosexuality is a disease then its one that has only one symptom (homosexuality) does not get worse if untreated, and does not negatively impact the overall health and well being of the individual who has it.   Really…can you even call it a disease in that case?

This is similar to what American researcher Evelyn Hooker in her 1957 paper The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual found: well adjusted homosexuals are clinically indistinguishable from well adjusted heterosexuals. From her Wiki entry…

She gathered two groups of men: one group would be exclusively homosexual, the other exclusively heterosexual. She contacted the Mattachine Society to find homosexual men. She had greater difficulty finding heterosexual men. She also had to use her home to conduct the interview to protect people’s anonymity…

Hooker realized that all extant science on homosexuality consisted of studies conducted on homosexual men who had already been committed to mental institutions or imprisoned for sexual offenses. Her experiment was simple and elegant and beautiful in the way all great science is simple and elegant and beautiful.

She recruited two groups of sexually active young men, one gay and one straight.   From both groups she eliminated anyone who had ever been in therapy or trouble with the law.   Then she gave each group a battery of what were then standard clinical psychiatric tests…

Hooker used three different psychological tests for her study: the TAT, the Make-a-Picture-Story test (MAPS test), and the Rorschach inkblot test.

She used trained professionals who were skilled in administering each of the tests.   The testers did not know whether they were testing a homosexual man or a heterosexual. When she got the results back she further anonymized them so nobody looking at the tests could tell who administered the test.   Standard double-blind technique.

Then she did something simple and beautiful…

After a year of work, Hooker presented a team of 3 expert evaluators with 60 unmarked psychological profiles.

…she passed the results out to the experts and asked them if they could identify the homosexuals.

No one could.

First, she contacted Bruno Klopfer, an expert on Rorschach tests to see if he would be able to identify the sexual orientation of people through their results at those tests. His ability to differentiate was no better than chance.

Then Edwin Shneidman, creator of the MAPS test, also analyzed the 60 profiles. It took him six months and he too found that both groups were highly similar in their psychological make-up.

The third expert was Dr Mortimer Mayer who was so certain he would be able to tell the two groups apart that he went through the process twice.

The three evaluators agreed that in terms of adjustment, there were no differences between the members of each group

Well adjusted homosexuals are clinically indistinguishable from well adjusted heterosexuals.   This was what the Wolfsden researchers also found.   And this is what everyone who objectively studies gay people has found ever since.

The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, demonstrates that most self-identified homosexuals are no worse in social adjustment than the general population

When you study sick homosexuals, people who have already been committed to mental institutions or sent to jail for sex crimes, then what you find are sick homosexuals.   But if you did the same thing with heterosexuals, only studying those in mental institutions or jail,   you would also conclude the same about heterosexuals and nobody does that.   The Christianist web site Lifesite tries to downplay Hooker’s study thusly…

Despite the fact that  the purpose of the study was ostensibly to examine the possibility of mental instability in homosexuals, individuals who showed signs of mental instability were  removed  from the groups, which further predetermined the study’s  conclusion.

But that was the point.   If homosexuality was the result of mental dysfunction, as NARTH and their companions in the anti-gay industrial complex insist, then removing the individuals who showed signs of mental instability would have made not a whit of difference in the outcome. The experts Hooker contacted to evaluate her test results would have still been able to identify the homosexuals because homosexuals are mentally unstable, whether they show it outwardly or not.   That the experts could not identify the homosexuals with those mentally unstable individuals removed proved decisively that the old models of homosexuality were wrong.

I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated, “all my homosexual patients are quite sick”, to which I finally replied “so are all my heterosexual patients”…

“If homosexuality is a disease (as has often been suggested), it is in a vast number of cases monosymptomatic, non-progressive, and compatible with subjective well-being and objective efficiency. In our series, both practicing and non-practicing homosexuals were on the whole successful and valuable members of society, quite unlike the popular conception of such persons as vicious, criminal, effete, or depraved”…

“The three evaluators agreed that in terms of adjustment, there were no differences between the members of each group”…

Understand this if you understand nothing else about the anti-gay industrial complex: this is knowledge that is over a half century old now.   There is nothing new here.   Most of the people reading this post will have been born after modern science clearly and unambiguously established this fact: there is nothing wrong with homosexuals.   This has been understood in the science for over half a century.

I’ve been meaning to post this since I saw it back in January…

Memories of a gay man’s suicide loom over Fremont Presbyterian Church

On July 23, 1992, Thomas Paniccia, an Air Force sergeant, announced he was gay on national television. On the anniversary of that day 15 years later, Paniccia drove to an undeveloped cul-de-sac in Roseville several blocks from his home and waited to die.

Paniccia, 43, had swallowed an overdose of prescription pills and placed a three-page letter on his dashboard.

The Rev. Donald Baird, pastor of Fremont Presbyterian Church, was one of the people who received copies of the letter. Baird was his mentor, friend and pastor…

Pastor. Mentor. Ahem. Yes. And such a good one.

Fremont, the largest Presbyterian congregation in the Sacramento area, has faced the biggest crisis in its 129-year history: the decision to leave the national church. Fremont leaders believe the national church has strayed from biblical teachings, and they decided to break ties after the denomination approved the ordination of openly gay clergy.

During the debate and following that decision, some church members raised Paniccia’s name. What about Tom, they asked. His death three years ago reminded them that the decision they made would affect people who called the church home.

Despite Paniccia’s struggle, he had felt accepted. They didn’t want that welcoming and inclusive environment to change.

Welcoming. Inclusive.

Outside of a small circle, Paniccia’s story has never been told, yet has weighed on many of those making decisions about the church’s future. They remembered a gay man who loved his church.

“He wasn’t open about it. It didn’t matter anyway,” said Donna Cavness, who was a friend and had worked with Paniccia. “He had a lot of wonderful gifts. He was good to be around.”

Paniccia’s close friends said he was conflicted about his faith and sexuality.

David Larson rented a room in his home to Paniccia and knew him for more than a decade. He also received a copy of Paniccia’s suicide note.

“As a close personal friend, I unfortunately realized Tom’s inability to accept being gay combined with his religious views is what I believe led to his suicide,” Larson said.

Welcoming. Inclusive. Now let’s talk about what it means to be a friend to a gay man…

Baird does not believe Paniccia’s struggle to reconcile his faith with his sexuality drove him to suicide and said that Paniccia would support the church’s decision to leave the national denomination.

Since the October vote, longtime members have left the congregation. As pastor, Baird has received hate mail. Church members may have to pay millions of dollars to the national church to keep the 5-acre church property across from California State University, Sacramento.

And next week, local Presbytery officials will call for an investigation of the Fremont vote to determine whether there are enough church members opposed to the split and who want to stay with the national denomination.

Still, Baird said Fremont must leave.

Following Christ is not supposed to be easy or convenient, he said. “If a church loses its integrity, it ceases to be a church,” Baird said. “The world changes. God’s word doesn’t.”

The pastor said Paniccia believed the same. He was committed to the teachings of his faith, Baird said. “Tom had the same beliefs, he understood.”

He sat in his office looking at a photo of Paniccia in the church directory.

“He was like a son to me.”

Consider for a moment, the horrifying possibility that this is true. Some parents of gay children throw their kids into the street with undisguised contempt. Others buy them the poison, the bottle of pills, buy the rope, hand them the gun, lovingly gift wrapped with a little card that says, I Love You Very Much…

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Dead air.”

“Dead air who?”