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?”

I updated my depressing blog post of yesterday to include something that strikes me as an extra added burden on late fifties gay male dating. It’s a situation that will hopefully be done with, or mostly so, beyond my generation of gay folk. It’s better now for gay people in a lot of ways and especially for gay kids, even accounting for the fact that bullying still takes a frightful toll.   But millennials who reach their fifties and suddenly find themselves tossed back into the dating pool should be in one that is mostly as full as it should be of randomly available older gay singles. That isn’t the case with my generation.   A lot of gay guys in the general vicinity of my age are still deeply closeted because that’s what they felt they needed to be in order to survive when they were young men back in the 70s.

Being a homosexual back when I was a gay teenager was worse then being a murderer, worse then being a rapist, worse even then being a communist. A lot of us took that to heart and never found the inner strength to live openly and honestly because the risks were just too much, the pressure was just too much.   So a lot of us put on a mask of heterosexuality back then. It was a matter of survival. And as they grew older they lived that life even if it wasn’t the life their soul was meant to live.

Now some of them have wives, some have kids, and they just can’t leave that life without doing a lot of damage to a lot of people around them.   And if at this late stage of that one chance for a decent life you get, they find themselves looking in a mirror and knowing it could have been different…harder, more of a struggle initially, but better, more honorable, more decent…they have to ask themselves if getting their self respect back, their honor back, is really worth the toll it is going to take on a lot of people, not just themselves.   And a lot of them are simply going to choose to go to their grave wearing that mask and I can’t find it in my heart to judge them for it.

And what that means for those of us of this generation who took the risk and lived honest open lives is our dating pool is a lot smaller then it should be and if we are still single at this age we’re basically fighting against really horrible odds on top of the fact that gay males are a minority to begin with. And that can’t be helped. It just is what it is.

Millennials…don’t be looking at lonely older gay guys like me in fear that this is your future.   I am not your future.   I am your past.   For gay guys of my generation it will always be a time before Stonewall.

I am grocery shopping and paused between isles with my shopping cart, when a middle aged (I think…I didn’t get a good look at her) woman strides quickly past and says “Nice ass”. Startled I snap out of my hunter-gatherer mindset and look up. She doesn’t look back, just walks quickly away and down another isle. Well I’m gay, so I don’t follow.

It’s nice to be reminded from time to time that a guy physically like me can be desirable…at least to some small segment of the human population. Once some years ago while I was waiting to be seated at a restaurant in Kayenta, a young Navajo (I think…Kayenta is in the Navajo reservation) woman actually put a hand on my butt as she walked quickly by. Had I the kind of love life other people have I’d probably take offense. But starved as I am at this late stage in my life for any kind of romance, burdened by the kinds of doubts about my desirability you would naturally have in the autumn of a life spent single, I take some heart when I get those, like the starving man suddenly presented with a dry loaf of bread. I see how others get complements on their desirability and I know I get them a lot less, and there are just more heterosexual women out there then gay males so it isn’t unusual that I’d hear it more often from that direction then the one I’d really thrill to get it from. But it’s a two edged knife. On the one hand it’s a comfort to know your Use By date isn’t past just yet. On the other, you’re still single and you have no prospects.

I’m gay. As perfect a Kinsey 6 as they come. What seems to confuse a lot of my gay friends is I am not about über masculine guys, which is unfortunate in that the only time I ever seem to get that “nice ass” complement from another guy it’s a bear and I am not about bear. I’ve had gay friends ask me outright if I’m not actually Bi because…well you’ve probably seen the random sketches of beautiful guys I’ve posted here. Here’s one I did recently that I put up on Facebook…

One gay friend cracked about this one…

…that he was one estrogen shot away from a job a Hooters. Thing of it is, I thought I was sketching a fairly butch sort of guy. Gay obviously, in the sense that a straight guy would never call attention to his body in the same way a gay guy does let alone strike that kind of pose.   But as far as I can tell I drew a guy there.   Ah…but his hair…   Yes…it’s a tad long isn’t it.   Must be a girly boy then.   Maybe I relied too much on the basketball shirt with the University of Maryland insignia on it to make the attitude of the subject plain.   On the other hand, there is a strain of human male…I’ve seen them both gay and straight…that seem to feel nothing but contempt for other males who aren’t 200 percent über masculine. Get A Haircut you goddamned fairy…

Here’s the thing: that period of time when we walk out of adolescence into our young adulthood really leaves its mark on your libido.

I came of age in a period of time in America when guys felt free to wear their hair long and their jeans tight to the body and low around the waste and be sexy and show off in a way they just can’t now without being terrified of getting labeled GAY, and I guess I just glommed onto that look as an ideal of male beauty.   But there was more then just eye candy to it because with that look usually came a mindset that I found very agreeable to the soul.   The über masculine guys my age back then were all either dumb jocks or Nixon republicans who I didn’t want anything to do with.   The longhairs more often then not, struck me as beautiful on the inside as outside.   Some of them made my heart skip a beat.   In high school I hung out with the longhaired art geeks for half my day and the longhaired techno geeks the other half and it was bliss.   That was my perfect world.   But it didn’t last.

And I think regrettably my libido is still living in that world that does not exist anymore.   And really, when I think about that time logically and rationally, I would not want to go back.   It wasn’t the best place for a gay kid.   Lots of eye candy yes, but you didn’t dare tell anyone you found them desirable or you’d get packed off to a mental ward.

I find myself thinking often at night now, alone in my house, that if only that world had been as accepting of gay kids, as incomplete and spotty as acceptance nowadays is, as this one, maybe I wouldn’t still be single.   You see, I was always about finding The One and the problem is the longer you go without finding them the more your social group becomes people who are still in the singles scene because that’s where they always wanted to be and they just don’t get you.

A few years ago I found myself at a new bar my gay friends down in D.C. decided to try out as a change of scenery. With us was a guy who was somewhat new to the group…”D”.   D was someone I was always happy to see join us. I wasn’t attracted to him in a romantic sense and I figure neither was he to me or else he’d have probably said something. But at a deep down in the heart place I sensed we were two of a kind.   Well practically the moment I walked into that bar my jaw dropped at the sight of one of the bartenders.   The friends I’d socialized for decades with simply sat and watched my rapture and confusion as they always did, waiting I guess for me to finally get up and do something about it.   D, seeing my eyes never left this guy did something no one else had ever done for me before.   He stood beside me at the bar and ordered something from the beautiful bartender and asked him his name where I could hear it given.   And once given D looked aside at me with a smile and a nod…

There you go…

It was enough. Instantly I struck up a conversation with the guy. Well, nothing came of it, but it was a chance, small as it was and I was touched by the gesture on the part of D. It wasn’t until some time later, heartbroken at how longtime gay friends let an opportunity for me to meet a guy who, it was said, might actually have been a very good match for me, wither on the vine and die like my desperate loneliness mattered not one wit to any of them, that I really saw that moment with D in that bar for what it was.   D and I really were two of a kind.   He eventually found his soulmate and dropped out of the happy hour group and I miss seeing him.   But I’m happy for him too.   And I understand what has happened to me a little better now.   For romantics like myself, the social opportunities at this late stage in life are mostly with other singles who are just fine in the singles scene and that’s why they’re still there, not why you’re still there.   And thus time passes, the universe expands, and you end up older, less desirable, searching for love in a rapidly depleting dating pool situated in a minority of a minority, surrounded by a lot of very very nice people who just get a little confused as to why, if you’re attracted to some guy you see, you would need to know his name.

What…you’re not on GRINDR? And so they won’t get his name for you when they see your jaw dropping or even bother trying to introduce you or get the two of you together because the mindset is you just go over to him and say “My place or yours” and get it on and be done with it and then on to the next guy and if that guy turns out to be The One all well and good but if not no bother here comes the next guy.   They just don’t get how that love thing mixes with that libido thing inside of you and how that keeps you behaving differently from how they would when they see an attractive guy.   They just don’t get how you don’t simply walk up to someone who is making your heart skip a beat and offer them a quick fuck in the backroom because that is simply how it’s done in the singles scene.   And don’t try to tell me it’s any different for heterosexuals either because I’ve watched that singles scene too and the only difference between them I can discern is the gay singles scene is less hypocritical and more to the point. Backrooms instead of cheap motels then.   It saves time and money.

But at least heterosexuals have a bigger potential dating pool, and live for that matter in a culture that for all its hypocrisy at least somewhat supports love and romance among heterosexuals, if not homosexuals.   It’s better now for younger gay guys, but you carry those first years of your dating life with you always it seems.   When I was seventeen and just coming out to myself it would still be a few more years before the APA decided kids like me weren’t mentally ill and decades before I could lie down with a guy I loved and not risk being thrown into jail in many states.   And a problem I run into time and again is a lot of very nice guys roughly my own age are either still in the closet or deep in denial, having spent a lifetime masquerading as heterosexual for that career, for that share of the American dream we were all told we could have when we were kids.   It’s what a lot of us had to do to survive.   And now they have wives and maybe kids and they’re in that life and there is no getting out of it without a lot of pain and damage to everyone around them and they have to ask themselves at this late stage in their lives is if it’s worth it, or do they just go to their grave wearing the mask.   When I was a young man I was determined to avoid that fate for myself.   I came out to friends who were mostly accepting, and in the workplace where I felt I could not be openly gay I simply refused to invent imaginary girlfriends let alone actually date girls and build a faux heterosexual life around me as a wall against my inner self. So now I’m in my late fifties and I can say I have always lived the honest life and I am proud of that, but I’m still single and consigned to a pool of other singles of my age group made smaller then it should be for all the guys my age who Still after all these years cannot bring themselves to live openly as gay for reasons I cannot find it in my heart to judge.   I feel some nights as if I never had a chance.   For gay people of a certain age it seems, it will always be a time before Stonewall.

So at the autumn of your life you are gay and single and your prospects are doubly limited because gay males are simply a minority and in your age group openly gay males are an even smaller minority, and your bar pals solution to your loneliness will always be to just get out and meet people but what they’re really saying is go out and trick because that’s meeting people for them.   And they just don’t understand and never will how meeting people is a slightly different process if what you want to come of it is a relationship and not a random fuck in the night with someone whose name you don’t need to know anyway.

The others, your kind, are mostly settled down now.   If you had a spouse the two of you could probably still socialize with them but as you are single you represent a world they understandably wish to keep at a safe distance.   So you are left to the “scene” and you don’t belong there and you never belonged there but in your youth it was all there was and now it is all that keeps you from going mad from total social isolation and so you keep going back, keep saying to yourself that maybe tonight I’ll find The One.   But you know he isn’t there and even if he was your friends would be oblivious and unsupportive.   And the “nice ass” you occasionally get from random strangers still elicits a vague hope within you that you are still in the game, but that hope is only an echo from a distant world whose ship you missed long, long ago.

[Updated a tad to clarify some things that I felt needed it.]

This is mostly a growl at a certain someone who bellyaches about how I overdo the packaging of the randoms gifts I send his way, which I am posting here (and on Facebook) even though he doesn’t bother reading my blog (So He Claims) or do Facebook (So He Claims) because I just need to vent about the unfairness of it all. I do not overpack and thereby “waste postage” as has been claimed.

So I bought two (count ’em) +1 diopters for my Nikon SLRs to replace one I lost at Disney World a few weeks ago.   If you’ve never seen a diopter for the old all mechanical film SLRs they’re about the size of a dime and they correct for…er…older eyes.   Nikon diopters, unlike the Canon diopters apparently, have this tendency to unscrew themselves and drop off the eyepiece.   If you’re lucky you hear the delicate little ‘clink’ as it hits the pavement and if you’re not you just walk blithely on without realizing you’re walking away from a piece of hardware that nobody makes anymore and is hard-to-find on the used market without which you will have serious difficulty seeing and focusing on your subjects.

So I was lucky enough to find and buy two (count ’em) more +1 diopters for my Nikons. I bought them both at the same time from the same online company. They came in separate packages, one of which was a small bubble pack envelope which was about right for something the size of an SLR diopter. The other one came packaged as follows…

Now stop complaining about how I pack things. In the grand scheme of things I am actually very sensible about how I pack gifts I’d like my friends to have.   Particularly when it’s breakable…like a couple of latte mugs.   I appreciate and share your waste not, want not attitude, (though probably not to the degree a German would) but if you’d opened a box from me that was full of broken glass you might have gotten the wrong impression.

What We Talk About When We’re Dying

Kerry Egan, a hospice chaplain, admits that, much of the time, it’s not God:

Mostly, they talk about their families: about their mothers and fathers, their sons and daughters. They talk about the love they felt, and the love they gave.   Often they talk about love they did not receive, or the love they did not know how to offer, the love they withheld, or maybe never felt for the ones they should have loved unconditionally…

Why is it you might wonder, that thoughts of death and darkness seem to prevail at this time of year. The bitter eternal chill of wintertime?   The deathly silence of the long dark nights? Hahahahaha… No, silly. This is the time of year in which we pause before the graveyard of life’s most magical dream to try once more in abject futility to bury it once and for all. Valentine’s Day is coming!

The signs are Everywhere!

From: FTD Flowers <FTD@email.ftd.com>
Reply-to: FTD@email.ftd.com
Message-ID: <15857985932.1328433753103@dc1.prod>
Subject: SWEET! From $19.99: Roses with FREE Chocolates*

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*Exceptions Apply:

Don’t they Always?   Well I’m here to tell you, Nothing says Love more then a gift of free chocolates, unless its the text message from your soulmate informing you that they’re seeing someone else now, and would greatly appreciate it if you stopped leaving messages on their answering machine.

Will there be a Fifth Annual Casa del Garrett Valentine’s Day Poster Contest this year?   Well…I don’t know…   I mean…you’re very nice.   But…let’s think about it before we take it to the next level.   I’ll call you sometime.

[Cross posted over at Truth Wins Out…]

This post is going to repeat a lot of verbiage from a post I made here nearly two years ago, but it’s about a recurring theme I see in our struggle. That theme raised it’s head and laughed at me this morning, while reading a post over at Box Turtle Bulletin. There, poster Rob Tisinai writes about an email he got from Maggie Gallagher…

I got a fundraising email from Maggie Gallagher the other day. It’s unbelievably long (as in, I can’t believe she expects people to read this whole thing). One sentence jumped out at me before I gave up on the piece.

Are two men pledged in a sexual union really a marriage?

Personally I’d answer, No.

Which would be the correct answer from Gallagher’s point of view. Tisinai goes on to rephrase the question in terms that acknowledge same-sex couples might actually be in love, and avers that this is something she knows she cannot admit because it undercuts her entire argument against same-sex marriage.

I don’t think her argument is about same-sex marriage. I don’t think any of them really give a good goddamn about marriage. What they’re adamant about is that homosexuals aren’t really human…that Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. It isn’t about marriage at all. What marriage represents to the homophobes is the final barrier to admitting that homosexuals are fully human and capable of experiencing all the higher emotions of love and devotion and commitment that heterosexuals do…that we are not, as Dr. Laura once famously put it, biological errors, or as you can hear thumped from pulpits all over the bible belt, demon possessed hell bound abominations in the eyes of god.

Patrick Wooden Warns that Gay Men Shove Cellphones, Baseball Bats and Animals up their Anuses, Die in Diapers

North Carolina activist Patrick Wooden has become a favorite of groups like the National Organization for Marriage, the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, and most recently joined Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality at a rally denouncing the Southern Poverty Law Center. On a recent appearance on LaBarbera’s radio show, Wooden called homosexuality a “wicked, deviant, immoral, self-destructive, anti-human sexual behavior” and should make people “literally gag.” Wooden added that gay men have “to wear a diaper or a butt plug just to be able to contain their bowels” by their “40s or 50s” as a result of “what happens to the male anus.”

When you hear them yap, yap, yapping about the sanctity of marriage, what they’re saying is homosexuals are some sort of sub-human…things…that copulate with just about anything handy whether it’s a person or a horse or a cell phone. To lift what homosexuals do to the level of heterosexual love and commitment then, is a profane act of defilement. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Be it with each other or…cell phones.

Which is to say, we do not love. Love is something fully human individuals experience. The homosexual experiences no such thing. That is an article of belief more central to the faith of modern fundamentalists then the resurrection.

Back in April of 2010, I read this by then newly out Christian musician Jennifer Knapp back in an interview in Christianity Today…

Q: So why come out of the closet, so to speak?

Knapp: I’m in no way capable of leading a charge for some kind of activist movement. I’m just a normal human being who’s dealing with normal everyday life scenarios. As a Christian, I’m doing that as best as I can. The heartbreaking thing to me is that we’re all hopelessly deceived if we don’t think that there are people within our churches, within our communities, who want to hold on to the person they love, whatever sex that may be, and hold on to their faith. It’s a hard notion. It will be a struggle for those who are in a spot that they have to choose between one or the other. The struggle I’ve been through—and I don’t know if I will ever be fully out of it—is feeling like I have to justify my faith or the decisions that I’ve made to choose to love who I choose to love.

[Emphasis mine…] The problem after all isn’t sex, it’s love. But asking people to acknowledge that same-sex couples love is precisely the problem. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex… People sitting in the pews side-by-side with their gay neighbors aren’t asking them to choose between their love and their faith. When they look at same-sex couples they don’t see love at all…merely sex. They are “struggling with homosexuality”. The bedrock prejudice insists, absolutely insists, that is all there is to same-sex couples. Empty, barren, transient lust.

As NOM board member Orson Scott Card once said, gay couples are just playing dress-up…

“However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were…”

“They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won’t be married. They’ll just be playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes…”

-Orson Scott Card, Homosexual “Marriage” and Civilization

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be… There’s the problem. Look at it if you have the nerve. This isn’t about sex. That empty barren, perverted lust is not what makes them angry. What makes them angry is any suggestion that homosexuals do, in fact, experience love the same way heterosexuals do. And it makes them absolutely livid.

It’s often argued that gay couples cannot rise to the level of marriage because they don’t produce children, and marriage is mostly about family life. But this argument is a sham. And it mirrors another sham argument often heard in conservative religious communities, that being homosexual is not a sin, only engaging in homosexual acts is. If only the homosexuals just didn’t have sex, they could be welcomed into the kingdom of Heaven too…just like the rest of us. But heterosexual couples, medically incapable of having sex, are as welcome to marriage as they are the Kingdom and nobody in either group is saying that same-sex couples can marry as long as they don’t have sex.

The heterosexual couple who stick together even if they are denied a sex life are seen as vindicating the power of love. That is why sterility among heterosexuals is no barrier to marriage. But same-sex couples somehow defile the institute of marriage with their very presence, whether they bring children into it (via adoption) or not, whether they can have sex or not. And that is because homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.

It’s not about children. It’s not about family life. It’s not even about heterosexuality. What homosexuals steal from people like Orson Scott Card is the idea that only heterosexuals love. All arguments to the contrary, what this fight is about, Exactly, is love, and who can be allowed to love and be loved, and who cannot. Marriage is love’s sanctuary, a sacred place where lovers can find shelter, protection, support. Letting homosexuals, who are incapable of love, into it defiles that sanctuary, turning it from a sacred place into a brothel.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be… In 1983, Sharon Kowalski suffered severe brain injuries in a motorcycle accident leaving her unable to care for herself. Her lover, Karen Thompson, with whom she had exchanged wedding bands and shared a house, had to fight a long and bitter legal battle with Kowalski’s parents, who refused to allow Thompson any contact at all with their daughter. When Sharon, with difficulty, typed her wishes to go back home with Karen on a keyboard provided by a doctor, her parents took the keyboard away. At one point, Donald Kowalski, Sharon’s father, asked a reporter in exasperated frustration “What does that woman want with my daughter…she’s in diapers!” For almost nine years Thompson fought it out in court with Kowalski’s parents, refusing to let the woman she loved be condemned to life in a nursing home where she would be kept isolated from the world outside and denied any therapy that would have allowed her to communicate her wishes to be taken back home to Karen. When she finally won, Donald Kowalski called her an animal.

What does that woman want with my daughter… A same-sex couple who cannot have sex would be, if unrepentant nonetheless, ineligible for the Kingdom, let alone marriage. It’s not about the Act, if not engaging in the Act makes no difference. Their crime is that they love, and love is not permitted to homosexuals.

We cannot be human beings, we must be animals.

Pastor Ken Hutcherson Compares Marriage Equality to Horse-Fucking

Antioch Bible Church pastor Ken Hutcherson didn’t sit in the same room as two gay people to debate marriage equality. But he did call into the Seattle Channel studio where gay people were present for a debate on same-sex marriage.

And of course, Pastor Hutcherson went there: “If this law is passed, what is going to happen? Now ask your guests in the studio. Do they believe that if they change the definition of marriage being between one man and one woman, what is going to stop two men one woman, two women one man, one man against a horse, one many with a boy, one man with anything?“

We must be animals. Not sinners in need of salvation, but animals. Why? So we can be their scapegoats. The right wing politician who goes hiking the Appalachian trail with his mistress while his wife and children wonder where the hell he went. The religious right preacher who gets caught visiting prostitutes. The conservative moralizer who gets caught gambling. The problem isn’t that we are moral cheats, the problem is acceptance of homosexuality. Homosexuality is destroying the family and society, not our own failures of moral character. Probably it is also responsible for earthquakes and hurricanes.

Jennifer Knapp didn’t choose love over faith, but love over fame because there was no other way. Karen Thompson fought for nine years to free her beloved because there was no other way. The gay civil rights struggle is not a fight over scripture. It has nothing to do with faith. It is not about sex. It is a fight over the right, the essential human need, to love and be loved. Because love can overcome any obstacle, endure any hardship, hold on to any hope no matter how distant and faint. Because love can move mountains. Because the one thing you never want the scapegoat to do is move mountains.

Newt Gingrich says yesterday that same-sex marriage is paganism. Presumably unlike having a wife and a mistress.

A few days ago Martin O’Malley, the governor of Maryland, submitted a bill to the legislature to legalize same-sex marriage. Hate groups like NOM have been preparing for this day. So, in our own way I suppose, have my fellow gay and gay supportive Marylanders.

I do not look forward to the brutal, bitter, torrent of hate mongering that is to come. I sure don’t look forward to having to know, as the signs start popping up on front lawns and the bumper stickers appear, which of the neighbors on my block want to cut my ring finger off. My neighbors are generally a good sort of folk I’ve found in the years I’ve lived at Casa del Garrett. Generous and neighborly…at least to my face. But just because someone takes a somewhat liberal stance on a range of issues, does not mean they can see the people for the homosexuals. Take for example the president of our state senate, Mike Miller…

The Democratic President of the Senate in Maryland is urging “Evangelicals, Catholics, African Americans” to oppose an upcoming gay marriage bill, and to vote against one if it ever came to a public referendum. Senator Mike Miller on a radio program said that while he didn’t want to sound like Republican presidential hopefuls, “I’m a father married for 50 years, I got 5 children, I got 13 grandchildren, I’m a traditionalist.” Miller said he wouldn’t stand in the way of a vote, and if there is a vote, as expected, in the Senate, it would again pass. But Miller’s suggestion to minorities and the religious right to oppose an equal rights measure is patently offensive and divisive, and smacks of a Maggie Gallagher move.

Miller, in explaining his opposition, however, did sound like a Republican presidential candidate, saying, “I’m a historian and I look at civilizations, I study civilizations, I read history every night. And I see it’s an attack on the family, I think it’s an attack on traditional families. That’s the way I see it.”

Dig it. He doesn’t want to sound like a republican, but just so you know, homosexuals are a threat to families and to civilization. This is what we’re in for, for the next year or so if this bill becomes law and NOM fires up its mighty Wurlitzer to insure that Marylanders fear, loath and hate their gay and lesbian neighbors enough to deny them equal rights in marriage. But I have a question: has any nation or civilization ever collapsed because its people loved each other too much?

Behold, the human cesspool of righteousness…

Tennessee Lawmaker Compares Homosexuality To ‘Pedophilia, Prostitution, Murder’

The so-called “license to bully” bill…would allow students to share any “religious, philosophical, or political views” that are “unpopular,” regardless of their consequences to the learning environment, and limits educators’ ability to curb such harassment.

Equality advocates lodged an email protest campaign against the measure, but were particularly surprised by the reaction of state Rep. John Ragan (R). In a long letter to one opponent of the bill, Ragan replied that gay “feelings” can be controlled by “mentally healthy adult human beings,” and concluded by stating, “Should society avoid disapproving of pedophilia, prostitution, murder, etc., because practitioners of those behaviors may commit suicide at higher rates?”

(Emphasis mine) What you have to understand about the human gutter is it has no bottom. Here is a man who wants to enable the very bullying that causes gay kids to kill themselves, saying the fact that gays are more likely to commit suicide is proof that there’s something wrong with them. Nice way to prove a point huh?

No bigot, there’s something wrong with you. Something profoundly, terribly wrong with you. Mentally healthy adult human beings? I’m laughing in your face. What do you call an adult who can abuse kids, can create a climate where kids can be easily abused, and does not see anything wrong with what they’re doing?

In Tennessee they’re now considering two bills that would do little more then put another knife into the hearts of gay kids in the Tennessee public school system. The Don’t Say Gay bill is back again, along with another, even more insidious if that’s possible, which would allow a religious exception to the current anti-bullying codes. A perfect excuse then, for kids to torment their gay peers to death under the guise of freedom of religion. If you can’t make gay kids hate themselves to death, then obviously your religion is being discriminated against…

This cracks me up…

In the current issue of the center-right policy journal, National Affairs, former Bush domestic policy adviser Tevi Troy worries about the decline of Washington think tanks into partisan messaging operations.

Stop…stop…you’re killing me.   Seriously, on what planet were most beltway think tanks, and especially AEI and Heritage, ever not partisan messaging operations?

Yes, yes, liberal “think tanks” exist, but how many global corporations and multi-billionaires are going to fund a think tank that starts from an ideologically liberal economic position?   Right wing and conservative “think tanks” basically rule the beltway discourse and you always know what their conclusions will be, and which party will happily benefit from them.   Their non-partisanship is a farce.   They are think tanks like Intelligent Design is science.

There’s a rule of thumb about think tanks: If you already know what the conclusion is before you pick up the paper and read it, it is not a think tank. Rand is a think tank.   Let me explain by this example from Wiki:

In 1958, Democratic Senator Stuart Symington accused the RAND Corporation of defeatism for studying how the United States might strategically surrender to an enemy power. This led to the passage of a prohibition on the spending of tax dollars on the study of defeat or surrender of any kind. However, the senator had apparently misunderstood, as the report was a survey of past cases in which the U.S. had demanded unconditional surrender of its enemies, asking whether or not this had been a more favorable outcome to U.S. interests than an earlier, negotiated surrender would have been.

See how that works.   They asked a question they didn’t already know the answer to and set about to answer it.   No ideology, just answers. AEI and Heritage, to name two, begin with the answer in the form of an ideological position (unconditional surrender is always the most favorable outcome) and try to figure out a way to message that for the benefits of republicans.

What these organizations do is tactical rhetoric, not thinking.   Thinking is where you search for answers, not fashion attractive political battle flags.   Thinking takes you into undiscovered places.   That’s not allowed in organization like AEI, which Frum found out when he got the boot for not towing the line.   These are party instruments, nothing more nothing less.   They exist precisely to discourage thinking.   You are told what to think.   Or at any rate, what to say that you think.

Witness the decline in American governance.   We can’t confront the real problems that exist because our institutions of government are mired in ideologies which demand fealty over everything else.   Facts don’t matter, only the party matters, and free thinking is treason to the party.   And so our ability as a nation to grow and prosper into the 21st century is limited to what the ideologies in power will allow, and that isn’t much.   We were promised a shining city on a hill.   What we got were factories closed, wages devastated, pensions lost, entire neighborhoods in foreclosure and state and local governments teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.   Yet the ideologies that promised us that shining city are never held to account.   For all the think tanks in Washington, not a whole lot of thinking is actually going on.

Today Gawker reminds me that this whole Gay Community thing is a very iffy concept…

The Secrets Gay Men Don’t Want Straight People to Know

As gay men and lesbians get closer and closer to the mainstream they’ve often traded in their image as the queer radicals who started the Stonewall Riots for the milquetoast assimilationists who want to get married and have kids and put HRC bumper stickers on their cars. That doesn’t mean we’re still not queer radicals. It just means we’re hiding it from you…

If this list amounts to what it means to be a queer radical then my gay friends would say I hide it very well too.   Even from them. No, no…this is a lot of horseshit, and it’s been getting static from…well…gay folk all over the net already.   But the writer could have expected that if he’d ever looked more closely at the lives of gay people then his regular night out with the boys at JR’s (or whatever his city’s equivalent is…).   Here…let me have my swing at it…

Bottoming Is Fun

I suppose it is if you’re a bottom. Some of us are not that however, and what is more some of us are “Versatile” and some of us don’t like the anal thing At All.

This is a very superficial way to look at sex. Yes, yes…getting fucked is supposed to be some sort of dire insult to a guy’s manhood and we all need to push back on that.   Especially since some straight guys enjoy being the bottom to their girlfriend’s Top (I’ll leave you to figure out the mechanics of that. Or just go ask Dan Savage).   The point is what needs to be understood isn’t that some gay men like to be fucked and that’s okay, but that sex isn’t something one person does to another.   It’s something both partners do Together. Active/Passive…Top/Bottom… Seriously, these are kinda useless terms if we’re supposed to take them literally. They don’t really mean anything.

Poppers Are Awesome

And maybe it’s the drugs telling you that.

Cocksucker Is Not an Insult

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Neither is “Queer” I suppose. See above Re: Bottoming. Also George Carlin’s line about how “Fuck You” should really be “Not Fuck You” because fucking is a good thing.

We Have Our Own Celebrities

I have a question: would you still like your celebrities if I took your poppers away?

We Want to Fuck All the Hot Straight Boys

No. Just…no. Here…let me explain…

“It’s even better when you help…” Best movie line ever. See…straight boys don’t help. Yes, yes…they can be very easy on the eyes. Hot even. But…seriously. They’re straight. They’re not into guys. And I don’t particularly want to be fucked by someone who is weirded out by gay sex. I’d rather not end up after it feeling used and dirty. Perhaps you’re into that sort of thing. To each his own. I don’t want to fuck someone who isn’t as into it with me as I am into it with them. It’s even better when you help.

Not All Gay Couples Are Monogamous

You don’t say? Here…let me tell you a secret: not all heterosexual couples are either. Think about it. What would country music singers have to sing about if their girlfriends were faithful? Oh…right…their trucks…

We Can Have Sex Anywhere at Anytime

So can straight guys. It’s been called the world’s oldest profession. Nowadays its called Craig’s List.

We Don’t Love Drag Queens As Much As You Do

Speak for yourself. But I could have just said that at the beginning of this post and left it at that. Oh look…JR’s is half off on the house tequila. Hurry! I’ll be you can find some poppers there too. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life sober do you?

[Update…] Just so I’m not mistaken for a gay conservative crank because this guy’s list of radical queer baggage is full of crap, let me reiterate something I’ve droned on about over and over again here. You want to be a gay radical? A militant homosexual? Listen: A militant homosexual is a homosexual who doesn’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual. A militant homosexual activist is a homosexual acting like they don’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual.

That’s it. That’s all it takes. Really. When a gay person loves their other half with all their heart and soul and feels not the slightest shred of guilt or shame over that fact, when the fact of their love lifts them both to a higher place body and soul and makes them both feel that life is good and sweet and full of joy…they have become militant homosexuals in the eyes of the haters. When a gay individual reacts to an attack on their sexuality, on their capacity to feel love and desire the same way as any heterosexual would, they become militant homosexual activists.

Top or bottom doesn’t cut it. Poppers don’t make you anything but high. Oral sex, who you want to fuck, whether you are monogamous or not…it doesn’t matter. What makes you a radical queer is you are fine with yourself. Don’t believe me? Listen to how the haters talk about us a little more closely. They’re not pissed at the sex we have. They’re pissed because we don’t hate ourselves anymore.

And finally…something I used to put on my Sig line back in the Usenet days: I do not speak for the militant homosexual conspiracy. I only work here.