So I’m dallying around the web and I come across This SLOG Post asking what the various Stranger writers were doing ten years ago, New Year’s Eve. Yes, yes…ten years is a long time. I suppose. And what was I doing? Well lessee… Ten years ago was the…ah…Millennium! Yes. And I decided to celebrate it…alone as I usually am on the holidays…at my childhood vacation spot, Ocean City, New Jersey. I figured it would be fun, and not rowdy since OC is a dry city. That’s “dry” as in, no alcohol. You can’t buy it, you can’t be served it, you can’t drink it in public. You can drink all the booze you can truck in to your hotel room from just across the city line where a convenient liquor store is conveniently located. But otherwise, you go without. Keeps the orangely tanned Jersey shore riffraff away. No beer cans everywhere, no broken bottles, no smell of urine in the parking lot, no blood on the sidewalks. I figured I’d celebrate there.
I got a bonus. OC put on a really magnificent fireworks display at the stroke of midnight, that even Atlantic City across the harbor couldn’t touch. Because they didn’t even bother. No sense giving people a reason to leave the casinos.
I had a great time. I was able to stay at a hotel I could only dream about staying in when I was a kid…the Port ‘O Call, which is the only high rise hotel right on the boardwalk in OC. Most of the boardwalk treats were open that night, and I had lots of fun. Then came the magic hour when the calendar rolled from 1900s to 2000 and the fireworks lit the sky and I was on the beach taking it all in and marveling how much my life had changed since I was the geeky little kid who used to love playing by the shore and on the boardwalk there.
I saw a movement behind me and I turned to look. Two young guys turned towards each other, and while the crowd around them was looking up at the fireworks, embraced and gave each other a loving kiss.
I was dumbfounded. Then delighted. Yes, thinks I, progress is being made. I was happy for them. Maybe when this new decade is over, I thought to myself, the next will find me in the embrace of my own soulmate. And at the stroke of midnight we’ll embrace and give each other a kiss just like those two did. That can’t be too much to hope for. Could it?
It was.
But don’t ask yourself if there could be anything worse the next decade could tell you then that you’ll still be single and lonely and ten years older on top of that, because there is. You could find out that the friends you trusted would help you if they could, think that you’re wasting your time pining for a boyfriend because you are just not boyfriend material. People who look like that want people who look like that… They will look you in the face and tell you that your only hope is to find a trick for the night and get used to having an empty bed the next morning…and they’ll think they’re being kind to you by telling you this.
Ten years later, I really didn’t need to know that. Not that I would believe it, but that they would tell me that. Strangers can bash you…they can take your life away from you…but only friends and family can chew your heart up and spit it back out. That is what the last decade taught me.
The great photographer Margaret Bourke-White once averred she became positively irrational if she couldn’t get a shot she wanted. I know the feeling, but I guess part of the reason I never became a professional photojournalist is I am too polite about it.
Case in point: I’m driving home from Orlando, up I-95, in the lost, lonely mood I usually am after vacationing in a spot where I’m likely to run into a lot of happy couples. It’s the morning after New Year’s Eve and it’s gray and cloudy and looking very, very somber, and I am driving back north away from the sunshine and warmth of Orlando and Disney World and back into the Baltimore Maryland cold. So I’m not feeling exactly cheerful.
As I drive through North Carolina, I see an abandoned motel to my right, that oddly has its front walls entirely removed. What you see is just the shells of the rooms behind the wall, like a lot of post office boxes with their doors torn off. The effect is of a stark hollowness.
No… I think to myself. It’s too obvious… But I can’t get the image out of my mind. I’m driving north and the miles are piling up and I just want to get back home and back to my nest and sulk for the last few remaining days of my vacation and maybe do a little housework. But I can’t get the damn thing out of my head. I even know Exactly the shot I want to get. I can picture it in my head clearly…picture exactly where I need to stand and what angle to shoot at and what my camera settings are.
No…no…it’s too obvious. And…I don’t want to go there. I’m feeling down enough as it is right now. Do I need to make myself feel worse? I think not. Damn…the sky is just right for that shot though. I’ve never seen a place with just its front wall torn off. Why the hell did they do that? It’s so damn odd… Be nice to just wander around it a bit. No…it’s probably fenced off. I’ll bet they have No Trespassing signs plastered everywhere. Do I want to get arrested in North Carolina? Seriously. Just let it go. Damn the sky is just right… Those gray clouds…just the right amount of sunlight up there. That scene really wants to be low contrast. I should just keep going. I don’t need to go there. I’m feeling miserable. Damn that sky is just right. If I stop some other trip it won’t be right. They might have the rest of it torn down by then. I should just keep going. There will be other shots like that one. I’ve never seen a place with just the front wall torn off like that. Do I really want to be wandering around a derelict building all by myself? It might be dangerous. Some thug might see me pull up in my Mercedes-Benz and decide to shoot me for my car and my camera and nobody would ever know what happened to me. Too dangerous. Why the hell did they just take down the front and leave the rest of it up? It’s so damn perfect. It’s like its bearing its empty heart to the sky. All those people who stayed inside, found warmth, shelter for the night, maybe a moment or two of love, and eventually they all left without a second thought and now it has nothing. The front wall was its face…and then the people left and its face fell away and all that’s left are the empty rooms open now to the sky. I should keep going. I don’t need this. I should turn around. Do I really want to go there? Darn it…I can’t let that one go… How far to the next exit…
Which by then was about 3 miles ahead of me and the motel in question about 12 miles behind. I did a loop back and on the way looked for some other possible shots in the landscape. And I found a few, which made me feel better about loosing travel time. There were two service roads paralleling the main Interstate where some lonely restaurants and strip shopping seemed to be barely holding on. I figured after I took a few shots at the abandoned motel I could drive up one of the service roads and get a few more of other stuff by the highway.
I actually had to drive past it again and loop back to find the correct exit. What apparently happened was a new highway was built nearby, cutting off the old exit by the motel, which killed its drive-by business. I had to go back to an exit a few miles in the other direction, and find the place where I could access the service road that led to it. There were few other surviving businesses along that road. A collection of self storage bins. Some odd pumping station whose purpose I had no idea. There were some empty highway billboards and a junk yard/auto body shop that looked like it had been picked over until nothing of value was left. Yet it seemed to still be in business. I wondered who got their work done there. Close by the motel was a trailer/RV park that actually seemed to still be doing a reasonably good business. It was called Sleepy Bear.
I have no idea what the abandoned motel next to it was called, but it was clear that its current owners wanted nobody getting near it. There was a huge, and I mean huge NO TRESPASSING sign right in front. The building itself was only partly fenced in however. Anyone could just walk onto the property from the street.
The service road dead-ended just past the motel, where the old highway interchange had been closed off. I wasn’t about to park in the lot. But there were some pull-offs just down the street that were off the property and I stopped Traveler there and popped the trunk. I took out the new camera, popped off the lens cap, adjusted the hood, switched on and checked my settings. I took a quick light reading. Then I wandered over.
Damn…that sign is big…
Okay…fine. They didn’t want me trespassing. I looked the site over to see if I could get the shot that had been so fixed in my mind the moment I laid eyes on the motel, without setting foot on the property.
Yes…I can do this…
But I was beginning to get the creeps. It was deathly silent all around me…gray and overcast and a tad chilly. Even the Interstate just a few dozen yards away was quiet, due to it being early New Years Day. All the revelers were sleeping it off. Only us lonely travelers on it now…just the occasional sound of a car going by was all there was.
I walked up to the fence along one side of the motel. I couldn’t take my eyes off the building. In a creepy sort of way it felt like it was looking back at me, through empty eyes…
Damn…they really did just yank the front walls off of everything here. WTF…???
I began to wonder if trespassing meant don’t go beyond the fence or if I was trespassing by simply walking up to it. I decided to just get my shots and skedaddle. This is why I am not a professional photojournalist. I am way too timid. The spirit of Weegee laughs at my timidity.
I couldn’t shoot through the fence…the chain link was too much in the way. So I raised my camera above my head and started shooting. The nice thing about a digital camera is you can see your shots instantly and know if your getting it. Every time I clicked the shutter the LCD display on the back of the camera showed what I had just taken. So I could adjust the camera angle a tad and take another…and so on until I had it. At one point, I knew I had the one I wanted…the one that said it. Whenever that happens, it’s like a little electric current goes through me from the camera. I swear.
I backed off and looked around some more. I felt something tempting me in. But I wasn’t going to risk getting arrested. I’d seen a little house down a private driveway next to the motel, and there were certainly people over at Sleepy Bear. As I walked back to Traveler I saw a truck towing a nice vacation trailer behind it drive away. I wondered if the driver noticed me. I walked briefly to the front of the motel again, near the sign but well on what I thought was its good side.
Damn…that sign is Big…
I fired off one more shot of the front of the motel and tarried with the idea of wandering around the front some more to see if there were any other good shots I could get from outside the fence. But something about that sign kept creeping me out.
They really mean it…
So I got back into Traveler, started upand headed back toward the Interstate. There were a couple other shots I’d seen as I made my way to the motel and as I approached one of them, a sign that said simply “Units Available” in front of a long lonely row of cookie-cutter identical self storage bins, I wondered if I could just stop my car in the middle of the road and take it from out the window, because it didn’t look like there was any usable shoulder to the road there. I didn’t want to get stuck. I was about a quarter mile away from the motel.
Suddenly I saw a police car coming at me from the opposite direction. It blew right past me and if it wasn’t doing at least 90 I am no judge of speed. There was nothing in the direction it was going, except Sleepy Bear, the little house behind the motel, and the motel, and the end of the road.
Damn! Damn! Did someone see me taking pictures and call the cops??? I wasn’t about to hang around and find out. Good thing I didn’t stick around… I decided to forgo getting my other shots and politely asked Traveler for triple digit velocity. Traveler happily obliged. I don’t think Das Auto likes being confined to American highway speeds. I had a couple tight curves to navigate but Traveler hunkered down over them and didn’t even flash the Electronic Stability Program light at me, and there wasn’t anyone else out on the roads just then except me and Mr. Policeman.
Good thing I didn’t have the camera hanging out the window… I figured the cop, if he was called out for a trespasser at the motel, would first check the area and only then would the thought cross their mind that perhaps the perp was in the car that they’d shot past like a bat out of hell. By then I’d be well down the Interstate and it would be a fifty-fifty shot at guessing whether I was going north or south, if I was even on the Interstate to begin with. I didn’t think anyone could have gotten my license plate, and at a distance all I would have seemed to be driving was a white compact car of some kind.
I slowed to legal speed when I got on the Interstate. I wasn’t about to get caught in a radar trap either and I had noticed a lot of them already that morning.
Probably they’d have let it go when they discovered the trespasser had left the scene. Why bother, right? Except…do you blast down the road like a bat out of hell just to nail a trespasser at an abandoned motel?
I wasn’t trespassing dammit. I stayed behind the damn fence. What is it with that place…?
I stressed about it all the way to the Virginia boarder. I took the memory card out of the camera and hid it so I could plausibly say, What…Who…Where…Huh if cornered. Except that people who wear their hearts on their sleeves like I do don’t make excellent liars.
The spirit of Weegee mocks my timidity. Did I take some pictures? You talkin to me? Yeah I took some fucking pictures…
Oh well. I got my shot and it was worth it…
Abandoned Motel – Lumberton, NC.
Dang…I wish I could wander around that site and get a few more shots. But I don’t think they want to let me…
I just upgraded to the very latest WordPress…so if you notice any odd things happening around here please let me know. I think I have everything running smoothly again…but you never know…
I have these arguments online from time to time with nutcases who feel this world would be just peachy keen if everyone were made to live according to the dictates of their particular religion. You get to a point where the argument becomes why do I want to trample all over their religious freedom. Because for instance, I’d like to marry someday and their religion says homosexuality is an abomination, and if I can marry a same-sex partner then…somehow…that means I’m trampling on their religion and I need to respect their deeply held religious beliefs. My argument is they need to respect American Cultural Values of liberty and justice for all because that is what is making it possible for them to practice their religion in the first place.
But a lot of people who have absolutely no respect for the cultural values that make American religious freedom possible, just love appropriating little bits and pieces of it when it suits them, without any regard for the culture that made that which they find worthwhile possible.
I’m working on a blog post about a column by Rod Dreher in the Dallas News, which has prompted me to scan his blog on BeliefNet, and I came across this…
What’s needed is a full-fledged effort to cultivate "Whole Foods Republicans"–independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. These highly-educated individuals appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes; they like living in walkable urban environments; they believe in environmental stewardship, community service and a spirit of inclusion. And yes, many shop at Whole Foods, which has become a symbol of progressive affluence but is also a good example of the free enterprise system at work. (Not to mention that its founder is a well-known libertarian who took to these pages to excoriate ObamaCare as inimical to market principles.)
What makes these voters potential Republicans is that, lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion. There’s no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness. Nor do highly educated people have to agree that a strong national defense is harmful to the cause of peace and international cooperation.
…rides his bike to work… Oh yes…let’s hear it for libertarian road rules, where everyone gets to decide for themselves what safe speeds are and what safety equipment needs to be on their cars and whether the bicycle has the right of way or they do because they’re in a bigger more powerful vehicle and placing limits on how automobiles behave in mixed traffic is just a way of Big Brother penalizing bigness and success. Let the marketplace of traffic decide who the winners and losers are. That’ll make all those Whole Foods Republican cyclists happy I’m sure.
Yes…buying food made by companies who think selling people crap just because they can is immoral is so very nice isn’t it? How wonderful it would be, if corporate America had to behave like that, if the law held them accountable for selling food that damaged people’s health…
Two years ago, Orville Redenbacher soared from the graveyard and announced in weeks of TV ads that his popcorn was now free of diacetyl. That’s the chemical in artificial butter flavoring that has been blamed for sickening hundreds of workers, killing a handful and destroying the lungs of at least three microwave popcorn addicts.
Almost every other popcorn maker followed suit.
But now, government health investigators are reporting that the "new, safer, butter substitutes" used in popcorn and others foods are, in some cases, at least as toxic as what they replaced.
Even the top lawyer for the flavoring industry said his organization has told anyone who would listen that diacetyl substitutes are actually just another form of diacetyl.
So what is the Obama administration going to do about it? Nothing meaningful, at least for a year, it said this week, stunning unions, members of Congress, public health activists and physicians who have pleaded for government action to protect workers and consumers from the butter flavoring…
…When diacetyl trimmer is in the presence of heat and water, it will release diacetyl. And butter starter distillate is not a substitute for diacetyl because it contains high concentrations of diacetyl. However, it is considered a natural material, which is a boon to companies that wish market their food items with the "natural" label, Hallagan said in an interview from Colorado.
Hallagan said that his trade association discouraged using these materials and calling their products "diacetyl-free."
But he added that his group "is not a regulator and has no legal authority to prohibit their use. That’s up to the food manufacturers."
Let’s hear it for the invisible hand of the marketplace. How the hell did we ever expect to get meaningful healthcare reform done when we can’t even make the food companies sell food that doesn’t kill people? The alternative food marketplace evolved from an eminently liberal-progressive disgust with how big business treats its customers and is allowed to get away with it again and again by government that allows itself to be influenced by big business money. If people who shop in that marketplace "view big government with great suspicion" it’s more likely because they can see how corrupted it’s become by corporate interests every day the current health care debate goes on, then that they’re all just waiting for someone to tell them they’re republicans.
In fact, a lot of them probably aren’t shopping at Whole Foods anymore. I know I’m not…
Since no one at Whole Foods Market Inc., can tell CEO and co-founder John Mackey just how bad he screwed up, I will. Mr. Mackey, your extremist views on employee benefits and unionization have, lucky for you, mostly flown under the progressive radar to date. Which is why pushing that luck with this screed on healthcare suggests you are either out of your flippin mind or have suffered a lapse in business acumen not seen since New Coke. And in the WSJ no less:
While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.
Mr. Mackey, I’m not sure if you understand who it is that shops at your organic grocery chain: a lot of progressives, vegetarians, professional and amateur athletes, and others who care so much about the environment and what they eat that they’re still willing to shell out three bucks for an organic orange, even in the midst of the worst recession in sixty years. I was proud WFMI was based in my hometown of Austin, and defended it against most of the conservatives I knew growing up there, many of whom still hold your entire business in utter contempt. Some of them ridiculed me for shopping at Whole Foods, with all the "tree huggers and granola eaters and hippies" who, incidentally, made you a millionaire.
Mr. Mackey, you just shat all over your best customers. Given the years of pseudonymous postings on Yahoo finance slamming a competitor you were quietly trying to acquire at the time, double talk and unethical behavior arguably seems to be becoming a habit for you. So I will never, ever, shop at your stores again, unless you retract that op-ed, apologize for stabbing us in the back, or resign. In this day and age, it’s just too easy to locate competitors. Until then, well, judging by the Whole Foods community forum, not to mention the discussion in Hopeful Skeptic’s and Aptoklas’ diaries, you’ve finally managed to universally piss off everyone. I predict the next few weeks of your life are going to suck, immensely.
Dreher here, and his pal at the Wall Street Journal, are trying to drum up support on the right for their union busting Randian friend, since he had the regrettable stupidity of telling his customer base that his store’s progressive facade is just that. Not quite as deceptive as a box of microwave popcorn claiming to be diacetyl-free, but more like that doughnut shop in Pittsburgh with the name Peace, Love and Little Doughnuts with a hippy love peace theme that’s owned by a religious right nutcase who hates gays and liberals and democrats and writes on his blog that…
This crowd will not rest until Homosexuality is mainstream; until the Second Amendment is done away with; until abortion on demand is as common and accepted as going to the dentist; until sexual images and strip clubs line our streets and suburbs; until government education is started in the womb; until disagreement with their political party is “hate speech” and becomes a crime; until they pass the Fairness Doctrine and rid the county of Conservative talk radio; until they transfer our sovriegnty to the UN, etc. etc. etc…
Right. Whatever. There is money to be made by marketing to urban progressives obviously, or the con artists wouldn’t bother with branding scams like Peace, Love and Little Doughnuts. But at least they’re honest liars. Mackey’s Whole Foods is to grocery stores, what a lot of high end native American trading posts are in the southwest. He sells the best items he can find, without the slightest regard for the culture that brought them forth. He is it for the money, not to cultivate the culture that made what he sells possible, knowing full well that enough of his customers won’t care as long as the goods keep coming.
But what do you make of a bunch of free market republicans who would rather buy their food in the alternative food markets progressives created so they could have something fit to eat and feed their children, then buy from the big food factories they’ve set free, free at last from the chains of government oversight? You call them practical. A Whole Foods Republican is someone who doesn’t want to eat from the table they set for everyone else. Ezra Klein writing in The Washington Post about Mackey’s Wall Street Journal said…
Food is more like health care than it is like cable television. We worry if people don’t have enough food to eat. We worry quite a lot, in fact. So we have a variety of programs meant to ensure that people have sufficient food. If you don’t have much money, you rely on these programs. As of September 2008, about 11 percent of the population was on food stamps. It’s probably somewhat higher now. Millions more rely on the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program, and reduced-price school lunches.
The insight that people need food has not led us to simply deregulate the agricultural sector (though that might be a good idea for other reasons) or change the tax treatment of food purchases or make it easier for rich people to donate to food banks, which is what Mackey recommends for health care. It’s led us to solve, or try and solve, the problem directly by giving people money to buy food. And that works. These programs, as every Whole Foods shopper knows, haven’t grown to encompass the whole population or set prices in grocery stores. If you have more money, you shop for food on your own. And if you have a lot of money, you shop at Mackey’s stores. That’s pretty much the model we’re looking at in this iteration of health care reform. We’re also laying down some rules so grocery stores — excuse me, health insurers — can’t simply refuse to sell you their product, or take it away after it’s already been purchased.
Mackey, playing to type, has offered a Whole Foods solution for health care: It makes the system even better for the rich and the young and the educated — the sort of people who shop at Whole Foods, in other words — and doesn’t do a lot for those who really need help. But the existence of a vibrant institution like Whole Foods within a broader system that considers it unacceptable — at least in theory — for the poor to go hungry, and so subsidizes their purchase of food, does have lessons for heath-care reform.
Emphasis mine. If you think Mackey is simply suffering myopia you are not paying attention. He’s a Randoid. Me…I buy from Trader Joe’s these days. It’s smaller then the Whole Foods down the street from me, but that Whole Foods used to be a Fresh Fields until Mackey gobbled our local natural food chain up. A lot of folks here in Maryland had bad feelings about that when it happened, but Mackey put on a good show for us right up until the Wall Street Journal editorial. Now we know what we’re dealing with. Now I have another reason not to shop there. I don’t want to be rubbing elbows with rich republican homophobes who support Proposition 8 but absolutely love the work their gay landscaper does around their house.
A bunch of stuff from OUTLoud, and a few others…all on the Political Cartoon Page. I’m continuing work on A Coming Out Story as well…and hope to have more episodes up by the end of the year…
So President Obama got his Nobel today. And a lot of people, including myself, were feeling more then a tad cynical that he’s gone to Oslo to receive it, right at the very moment his justice department is vigorously defending John Yoo …an act that seems to gut the very heart and soul out of the Geneva Conventions, and makes a mockery of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. Obama has greatly disappointed me in so many ways, and will probably keep on doing so.
And yet I am so very, very glad he’s president. The difference between him and the republican mob here at home was evident the moment he started speaking. Reliably, over and over, this man speaks to our hopes and aspirations, and not our fears.
Somewhere today, in the here and now, in the world as it is, a soldier sees he’s outgunned, but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protester awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what few coins she has to send that child to school — because she believes that a cruel world still has a place for that child’s dreams.
Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that’s the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.
Of course, we need to hold him to the ideals he takes his stand upon. But this is much, Much better then the alternative the republicans are offering. What kind of America do you want…one that’s constantly being jerked around by the things that frighten us, or one that is constantly being called home to its hopes and aspirations?
He does it, and not without being blunt about the kind of world we live in, and that our chances of complete success are slim. Oscar Wilde once said we are all living in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. I don’t for a minute think we are All living in the gutter. But if you don’t look at the stars beyond it you will never find your way out. Still, the gutter must be aknowledged. Because it is going to put up a fight to keep you and I and everyone from leaving it…and time and again it will win. The street-wise idealists are exactly the kind of leaders we need right now.
There has been much discussion concerning my decision to replace state Rep. Scott Lipke of Jackson as a committee chair. Legislative leaders in our region have urged me to explain my actions and clarify the situation.
The problem centers on Jessica’s Law that we passed last year. As chairman of the Committee on Crime Prevention and Public Safety, Lipke sponsored and handled this bill as it moved through the legislature.
Jessica’s Law was a great bill, which we needed to pass to protect our children from sexual predators. Regrettably, Lipke chose to use the bill to delete 14 words from our laws in order to repeal the gay sex ban in Missouri.
Thanks to that deletion, it is now legal to engage in deviate sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex here in Missouri. This law had been on our books for decades.
Well…yes…except the U.S. Supreme Court nullified all the state sodomy laws, so it’s not enforceable. But Jetton holds out hope for a brighter tomorrow…
After being confronted about his actions, Lipke told us it was "no big deal" because the Missouri law was unconstitutional. Unfortunately, it is a big deal, because now it is easier for gay couples to adopt children in our state.
Several members told Lipke how upset they were that he didn’t tell them about the gay sex ban and let them make up their own mind about repealing it.
Judges come and go, and Supreme Court decisions change back and forth. Who knows? These new judges may reverse that decision.
Yes…clearly Lipke had to go because now Missouri legislators would have to go to all the trouble to make it legal again to throw same sex couples into jail if the supreme court decides to let them start doing it again. And besides…this is also an issue of profound Moral importance…
I’m disappointed nobody caught those 14 words. But I think I know why. We all trusted Lipke and Jessica’s Law was a good law we needed to pass. We all wanted to vote for a good bill that would protect our children. In our rush to make a positive difference, we didn’t look over the 46-page bill close enough because we trusted Lipke.
That’s why I had to make a change in the committee chairmanship. The members of our Republican caucus have lost their faith in Lipke. They expect me to appoint chairmen who will keep them informed of controversial details that could cause problems.
I have fought attempts by liberals to repeal the gay sex ban for years, and I am now embarrassed to say that I unknowingly voted for the very thing I have been fighting against.
Lipke was removed as chair because his fellow legislators no longer trusted him…
After all…we just wanted to do something good for the children. And then we had to vote to treat the gay once decently too once they grew up and only liberals want to do crap like that and I’ve been fighting against gay loving liberals for years. I am married with three children and attend Methodist church regularly. I am a man of high moral values…
…former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton is facing assault charges for allegedly beating the shit out of his mistress while having sex. His ladyfriend had not uttered the “safe word,” probably because Jetton was beating her unconscious.
The Scott County court clerk confirms a felony complaint has been filed against former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton for an incident that allegedly took place Nov. 15 in Sikeston, Mo. […]
The complaint alleges Jetton “recklessly caused serious physical injury to ——- by hitting her on the head, and choking her resulting in unconsciousness and the loss of the function of part of her body.”
UPDATE, 3:50: The affidavit attached to the probably cause statement alleges Jetton went to the home of the victim Nov. 15, where he and the victim drank wine and watched a football game. The victim claims Jetton hit her on the face and choked her, leaving bruises that the police department photographed.
The affidavit claims the assault occurred during the night and into the morning of Nov. 16. It says Jetton and the victim agreed on a “safe word” “to use as a stop word during intercourse.”
The “safe word” is hard to utter when you’re being CHOKED TO DEATH.
Jetton and wife agreed earlier this year to a divorce settlement. So I guess her safe word was "DIVORCE". I have a hunch why…
Jetton went to the woman’s residence in Sikeston, Mo. with two bottles of wine, according to the report.
"(The woman) said she did not see him pour the wine because she did not follow him into the kitchen, but he returned to the living room and handed her a glass of wine. (The woman) remembers watching a football game and said once she finished the glass of wine, she began ‘fading’ in and out and remembered losing consciousness several times during the evening," wrote Detective Bethany McDermott in her report.
McDermott reports that Jetton and the woman agreed on a safe word of "green balloons" to use as a stop word during intercourse.
"(The woman) recalls Jetton hitting her on the face very hard. She then remembers waking up, lying on the floor and Jetton was choking her. (The woman) said she did not know what happened with her memory because she had been drunk but had never had the blank spots in her memory," McDermott reported.
"(The woman) said Jetton stayed the night with her and when he woke up he gave her a kiss and said, ‘You should have said green balloons.’ Jetton left the woman’s residence and had not returned," McDermott added.
McDermott reported that a Sikeston police officer reported seeing bruises on the woman, including on the outside of both thighs and around her breast.
The police officer observed the bruises to the woman and took photographs for evidence on November 18th.
Okay…all snarkiness aside…this is sick. How completely twisted up inside do you have to be to want to beat up the sex you are attracted to? How can you even think to take a fist to that which you desire? Yes…yes… I know that some folks are into S&M and B&D and all that. But couples who do that sort of thing do it together and they’re both into it and they’re both getting off on it. This wasn’t that. It was an attack. It was hate. Hate toward the woman…maybe toward all women…and maybe even toward his own sexual desire for them. The more he desired her, the more he hated her.
But among the culture warriors you see a lot of this sort of thing. The pathologies of hatred. Hatred of sex. Hatred of women. Hatred of minorities…foreigners…any smaller, weaker, Other. And fear. Fear of loosing power. And perhaps that is one reason why desire is the thing they hate most of all. The object of your desire has power over you, and it frightens them to loose control…frightens and disgusts them how easily others are willing to share power, give and receive, take and be taken, in the dance of desire. The author Mary Renault once said that politics like sex is a reflection of the person within. If you are mean and selfish and cruel it will come out in your politics and it will come out in your sex life when what matters is you aren’t the sort of person who behaves like that. Case in point: Jetton’s knuckle dragging prejudices against gay people are the least of his issues.
Wherein The Children Of Rand And The Children Of Marx Commiserate With One Another And Then Have A Round Of Drinks…
Smokin’ hot essay in this month’s GQ by John Ritter on Ayn Rand’s influence on college students, bankers, financiers, chairmen of the Federal Reserve, and other people who need to have their certainties smacked out of them from time to time for the good of the rest of us. I know, because I used to be one of them…
A weirdly specific thing happens with the books of Ayn Rand. It’s not just the what of the books, but when a reader discovers them—almost always during the first or second year of college. Rand grabs a reader at a time of maximum vulnerability and malleability, when he’s getting his first accurate sense of how he measures up in the world in terms of intellect and talent. The longing to regard oneself as misunderstood and underrated can be powerful; the temptation to project oneself as such, irresistible…
Sort of. Not everyone likes thinking of themselves as misunderstood. I sure didn’t. But I never blamed being taken for a weird little geek on being misunderstood because I knew I was one. Being raised in a Baptist household the first person you always blame for just about everything, let alone not fitting in, is yourself.
It was after leaving my church and coming out to myself as gay that I first read Rand. But in retrospect, clearly, all those days spent in church listening to fire and brimstone pulpit thumping had left their mark on me. I craved moral certainty, and admired the firebrand moralist who spoke to those certainties. If I have a weakness to this day that’s it. But at 20 the bible had long since lost its power as a moral instrument. It was still interesting in its echo from a distant time kinda way, but no longer authoritative. I wandered aimlessly in a kind of existential stupor, unwilling to rest my moral values on religious absolutes that I knew perfectly well were nothing more then the bar stool prejudices of various pulpit thumpers, but unable to find another moral compass to guide my way. Reason and morality it seemed, were two different things.
Two books shook me out of my moral fog then, almost one after the other. In retrospect, both were terribly flawed teachers. And yet they left me with concepts I still value to this day. The first was Robert Audrey’s African Genesis. I found a tattered copy of it in a corner of a warehouse I once worked in, wrinkled and discarded, and picking it up and reading the first page of it…
Not in innocence, and not in Asia was mankind born…
…I had to take the thing home. I absolutely devoured it. And from Audry I gleaned the idea that the forces that move within our consciousness actually are understandable and manageable…but only if we seriously study our evolutionary past. To construct workable human societies, and moral codes that actually and really benefit us, we need to undertake an almost brutal, unromantic, understanding of ourselves and that means looking also to the past which brought us forth. Not to do so would be akin to trying to build a bridge with no understanding of the nature of the materials you’re constructing it from…
We are not so unique as we would like to believe. And if man in a time of need seeks deeper knowledge concerning himself, then he must explore those animal horizons from which we have made our quick little march.
Yes. Yes. And Yes. I still passionately believe this is true. Let it be said that a lot of naturalists and anthropologists really hate Audrey for his overwrought image of humans as killer apes. But you can discard that part of it…our understanding of the human ancestors is much improved since he wrote that book…and still respect the basic idea. We are, each of us, in body and consciousness, living histories of millions of years of life on earth. To make a better life for ourselves in the here and now, we need to understand that history.
The second book was Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. As John Ritter writes…
The days during which that 19-year-old has Rand’s worldview vectored into his cerebral cortex are feverish and sleepless. Days of beautiful affliction during which the intransigence of others—roommates, a coed the patient has been hitting on, professors, parents, everyone—are shown to be the product of their shortcomings, their idiocy and sublimated envy of the patient’s intelligence and talent… One day you’ve got a bright young kid dutifully connecting the dots of his liberal-arts education; the next, he’s got Roark and Galt in the marrow and has become…an insufferable asshole.
Well…kind of. I never thought of my friends as idiots. But I suspect I did turn into a bit of a jerk because that’s what happens to people when they become True Believers. Suddenly everything made sense! The world was powered by the rational human intellect! Everything that denied the mind was anti-life! Capitalism wasn’t merely the most productive economic system ever invented, it was the only Moral one! To take possession of your own life and live it for the good of your Self was the highest virtue! Here was an ideology that appealed to my inner geek and my inner pulpit thumper both. I am certain there was a period in my life when I couldn’t speak two words without going off about Randian ideology. It’s amazing I still have friends from that period.
People wonder how it is that so many gays become Randians since Rand herself was a vitriolic homophobe. But Rand’s morality of sex, that enjoying sex for its own sake was not only moral, but was morally validated by a couple’s mutual pleasure in each other’s bodies, is very appealing to a people who are taught to feel ashamed of any hint of sexual desire in themselves the moment puberty hits them. I saw Rand’s morality as a reasoned and high minded rejection of the notion of original sin drilled into me all throughout my Baptist childhood, that our bodies, that our feelings of sexual desire, were evidence of humanity’s fallen state. And it seemed to validate any sexual relationship, gay or straight, that sprang from mutual appreciation of the best within each other, body and soul. Rand declared that sexual joy for its own sake, taken between two people who wholeheartedly and completely desire each other was a righteous thing. And a lot of gay people, myself included, said ‘Amen!’
But therein, for me at least, lay the seeds of discontent as well. Rand taught that human emotions were the unconscious sum of the workings of our rational mind. This led her to view homosexuality as the result of bad thinking…faulty premises as she liked to put everything that didn’t fit into her philosophy. It led her acolyte and lover Nathanial Brandon to suggest in one essay that gay men were gay because they’d been subconsciously made afraid of women from being taught to idealize them but not desire them. Huh? As any gay person knows, and especially any gay person who ever tried to psychoanalyze themselves straight, your sexual orientation isn’t something you think yourself into. Or out of. And here was Rand and her "collective" dispensing pop psychology crap about homosexuality that not only gay folk themselves, but actual researchers, had known for decades was claptrap. We don’t think ourselves into our sexual orientations, they just are. But that kind of thinking about human consciousness was anathema to Rand.
How I managed to embrace an ideology that regarded human consciousness as entirely the province of the rational mind after reading and embracing Audrey I cannot explain. But there it was. Eventually the ideas I gleaned from Audrey did come back to me. I think it was while reading a statement of Rand’s that she was neither a supporter nor denier of the theory of evolution. Well of course, because evolution throws a great big monkey wrench into her model of human consciousness which acknowledged only the human capacity for rational thinking. Rand’s human being was every bit the separate creation that Adam was in Genesis. And that is not what a human being is. The moment I read her statement on evolution it got me to thinking about all the other ways I’d had to forgive Rand for making pronouncements about this and that which just seemed…well…stupid.
And that was how I found my way out the door to her church. The one thing I took from her that I still keep close to my heart to this day is the idea that morality must be reason-based. It must withstand the test of truth, conform to the evidence, logically and objectively work to benefit our lives. Oh that Rand herself had held to this idea, when championing her notion that unfettered capitialism is the only moral system.
Unfortunately…for all of us…she didn’t. And neither have her intellectual heirs…
This is because there are boys and girls among us who have never overcome the Randian infection. The Galt speech continues to ring in their ears for years like a maddening tinnitus, turning each of them into what next year’s Physicians’ Desk Reference will (undoubtedly) term an Ayn Rand Asshole (ARA). They constitute a relatively small percentage of Rand readers, these ARAs. But they make their reading count. Thanks to them, the Rand Experience is no longer limited to those who have read the books. It’s metastasized. You, me, all of us, we’re living it. Because it’s the ARA Army of antigovernment-antiregulation puritans who have spent the past three decades gleefully pulling the cooling rods out of the American economy. For a while, it got very big and very hot. Then it popped. And now the rest of us have to spend the next decade scaling the slippery slopes of the huge suppurative crater that was left behind.
Feeling fisted by the Invisible Hand of the Market lo these past fifteen months? Lost a job lately? Or half the value of your 401(k)? Or a home? All three? Been wondering whence the too-long-ascendant political and economic ideas and forces behind Greenspanism, John Thainism, blind Wall Street plunder, bankruptcy, credit-default swaps, Bernie Madoff, and the ensuing Cannibalism in the Streets? Then you, sir, need to give thanks to Ayn Rand Assholes everywhere—as well as the steely loins from which they sprang.
Reading Ritter’s GQ essay gave me a feeling (yes Ayn…a Feeling…) reminiscent of that moment gay folk experience when they discover they’re not the only ones like themselves. Well…if even Alan Greenspan can admit now, while standing there in the center of the wreakage of our ecomony, that perhaps he was wrong about all that deregulation stuff, maybe we’ll see some other big names come out of the closet as ex-Randian. We could be in for lots more fun denunciations of Randian claptrap.
There is a third book I discovered well after Audrey and Rand, which I still hold dear to my heart. Jacob Bronowski’s Science and Human Values. Bronowski clarified for me how knowledge, being a Process of discovery and refinement of models, was also at its core a deeply personal and creative act. He brought me to an understanding I really needed, about how the work of both scientists and artists had the same creative root, thereby bringing my inner techno geek and my inner art geek finally to some degree of peace with one another. But more importantly, he showed me how to get past my need for certainty. There is no perfect God’s eye view to be found, either in the bible or in Atlas Shrugged. Our knowledge exists in an area of imprecision we can never fully eliminate. Call it the Uncertainty Principal or, as Brownoski suggested in The Ascent of Man, the Principal of Tolerance if you like, but there is no God’s eye view. Quantum physics has proven that literally. But that does not mean we can never really know anything. It means we have to always bear in mind that area of uncertianty always tied up in our understandings, and that knowledge is a process of test and refinement, and not a thing we can safely stop questioning. We have to always take care to ask ourselves what we know, and how we know it. Always.
If I had to point to one thing that sums Rand up in her entirety for me it would be this: She wrote in Atlas Shrugged, "I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. FIRE, a dangerous force, tamed at his finger tips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come out from such hours. When a man thinks there is a spot of fire alive in his mind – and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression." Thereby turning cigarettes into a symbol for fans of her and her philosophy. It is a beautiful, eloquant image…the act of thinking, the hand holding fire. In 1974 Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer, quit smoking at that time, and never once for the rest of her life warned her readers about the dangers of cigarettes. When someone gives you, the artist, their love wholeheartedly, you need to love them back.
Several months ago I had an absolutely horrible visit from of some kind of stomach virus and I have never spent six hours of my life sicker. It was awful. I won’t go into detail because you might be eating as you read this.
So this flu season, never mind the Pig Flu that’s scaring everyone, I’ve been especially wary. Every time I get the urge to rub my eyes I flash back a couple months to when I was collapsed on the floor of my bathroom wondering if I was going to die and I try to remember when I last washed my hands.
Where I work we typically get offered a flu shot every year around this time. Considering we work on a university campus with students coming here from all over the world it’s a good spiff. They have signs posted at the doors to the student union eatery telling the kids to stay the hell out if they feel sick. But this year our flu shot is delayed because the vendor can’t get enough of it. Swell.
I’ve been washing my hands like crazy, and keeping a hand sanitizer spray with me everywhere and trying to keep my hands from complaining too much by using a moisturizer at night. Every time I pass by one of the hand sanitizer stations they’ve installed at work I spritz my hands with some of it. Then I’m reminded of the taunt from the IRA that the British Government had to be lucky every day while they only had to be lucky once. I don’t mean to trivialize horrible acts of terrorism, but the relentless logic of germ warfare is like that. The damn germs only have to be lucky once.
It has been fascinating watching the response, city by city, where the advertisement that says "Not religious? You’re not alone" has gone up. We’ve seen bus drivers refuse to drive buses with that ad on them (and get fired for it). In Cincinnati, death threats forced the removal of a billboard with that message.
And now in Nashville, the local yokels are up in arms about an identical billboard. And offering the usual brilliant reasoning to support their position:
"It just absolutely wrong place, wrong town, wrong timing," said Green Hills resident Donnie Cude.
Something about the phrase "Not Religious, You’re not alone", doesn’t sit well with Cude.
"It’s a slap in the face to the Nashvillians and the people who have a strong foundation and do so much good for this town," said Cude.
It has become quite clear that the mere existence of people who don’t accept their religious views is considered a terrible offense to the most reason-impaired of the righteous. I just can’t imagine why anyone else should really care what offends them.
Brayton, let it be said, is also a principled advocate for gay equality pretty regularly on his blog. So it’s a safe bet he knows perfectly well how a story like this would resonate with his gay readers. But I have to say that my hunch is that atheists probably get it worse nowadays.
I can think of a lot of cities where those bus ads would…yeah…draw some notice, but not a whole lot of bellyaching had they read "Gay? You’re Not Alone."
I remember a passage from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Catch Trap where one gay character tells another ruefully about the unspoken rule in Hollywood, that there are two things you can’t be and keep working in this town and one of them is a communist. But back in the day communism and atheism were tightly joined together in the political rhetoric of the cold war, and more often then not what you got was the sense that the problem with Communism wasn’t it’s totalitarian nature but that it was godless. "Godless communism" was what they called it. Now it’s just godlessness. Probably in the hierarchy of evilness, Atheists are worse then homosexuals…homosexuals being merely the interior decorators of Satan’s evil one world empire, atheists being its sinister architects.
Penn Jillette wrote a simple, lovely piece about being an atheist for an NPR series titled, This I Believe. It reads in part…
Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
The problem, as a lot of gay folk already know painfully well is that the more you come out of the closet, the more people can see you for the human being that you are, the more the bigots will hate you for the human being that you are.
I’m Right…And If I’m Wrong That Just Makes Me Even More Right…
Sullivan, on a tear lately about Sarah Palin, tries to plumb the depths of this particular corner of the human gutter…
The lies of Sarah Palin are different from any other politicians’. They are different because they assert things that are demonstrably, empirically untrue; and they are different because once they have been demonstrated to the entire world that they are untrue, Palin keeps repeating them as if they still were true or refuses to acknowledge that she was wrong.
Yeah. And I’m reading this and flashing back to my early years on the Internet, and a place called Usenet, and a little corner of Usenet called alt.politics.homosexuality. APH it was (is) an unmoderated forum, created to divert arguments about gay civil rights and the validity of homosexuality away from the gay social forum, soc.motss. It is basically a place where bigots and gay folk can argue to their heart’s content, about any damn thing, as civilly or profanely as they like.
I spent years there arguing with bigots, and it didn’t take long for me to notice exactly the same behavior Sullivan describes above in a lot of them. A good example of that kind of thing is the bogus figure for average gay male lifespan Paul Cameron cooked up. Some bigot would cite it as proof that teh ghay lifestyle was inherently dangerous. About two or three dozen gay posters would quickly post the backstory on how Cameron got this figure (he averaged the ages in the obituaries of two gay newspapers during the worst of the AIDS epidemic deaths in America). Said bigots would then either a) agree that the figure was wrong and then the next day cite it again anyway, or b) keep citing it and add to it that Cameron’s figures had been proven to be correct, or c) keep citing it and add to it that Cameron’s figures had been proven to be correct and that most gay people will tell you so.
I keep saying this but it’s true: your gay and lesbian neighbors have been seeing this behavior on the part of the kultar kampfen for decades now. It’s not simply that they lie, or even that they’re so brazen about it. It’s that digging in of heels even when the lie has run its course and isn’t fooling a single solitary soul anymore. The game seems to be that as long as you can’t get them to admit they’re wrong they win.
Over at Pam’s House Blend, poster Louise relates getting one of those chain emails the sheeple like to send around to those of us who aren’t with the program. It begins on a familiar (if you’ve ever gotten one of these yourself) note…
I found this to be very truthful and interesting. We need to stand up for our beliefs instead of letting the more vocal become the majority.
…and ricochets right into tea-bagger fantasy land with a missive purportedly written by winger buffoon Ben Stein…
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees…
Two sentences into it and you just know where it’s going. But further on down it takes a turn I wouldn’t have credited even Stein with taking…
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said okay.
Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Pay attention to that "why our children have no conscience" part. As it turns out, the Stein didn’t say half of what the chain email says he said. Most of it was tacked onto a transcript of a commentary he gave on CBS Sunday Morning some time ago. And the tacked on part is full of bogus "facts" like the one about Dr. Spock’s son committing suicide. it didn’t happen. A grandson who was schizophrenic did. But there is no family tragedy too painful for the kultar kampfen to glorify themselves with it.
Conscience? Conscience? If a conscience that won’t even politely suggest you shouldn’t belly flop into the gutter has any use I can’t imagine what it would be. Actually, your children probably do have a conscience. You just can’t tell because you don’t know what one looks like.
Pastor Joe Fuiten, who at first seems to be among Washington’s more sane Christian fanatics, concedes that the campaign to reject Referendum 71 has "fallen short of the glory of God." In a statement posted over at the Tacoma News Tribune in response to an editorial (posted in full after the jump), Fuiten blames his former brothers-in-bigotry—Gary Randall and Larry Stickney—for disappointing the Lord and for failing to oppress the gays.
Fuiten dives into a tirade against his former cohort Randall for being exactly what The Stranger exposed Randall to be long ago: a greedy bigot who takes money from naive evangelicals and puts little of their contributions into the campaign. Today, Fuiten writes, "On August 28th, Mr. Randall promised ‘All income is spent directly on printing, mailing, Internet promotion and going forward, media ads and expenses, rather than salaries or consulting fees.’ We were promised ‘Radio ads are running and more are on the way.’ As it turned out, according to the PDC reports, virtually nothing was spent on media ads and precious little on anything else."
What caught my attention reading the right reverend’s rant was he asked something in it I’ve just about Never heard any of these gutter crawling bigots for Jesus ask themselves in the aftermath of any of these anti-gay electoral battles:
Randall claimed the referendum was a miracle from God, but I have to wonder at that. In the Bible, the miracles of the loaves and fishes fed 5,000 with 12 baskets left over. In this "miracle" we didn’t have enough money to fund television ads but the gays had millions.
In the Bible, a miracle raised one who was sick. In this "miracle" our strategy was sick and then died in the election. I suppose such miraculous claims are made to hype up the faithful to work harder and give more. It just seems like the "miracle" that Randall claimed fell a bit short of its biblical counterparts.
Was the referendum an effort blessed by God? Did the Kingdom of God advance because of the effort? I have not heard of people giving their lives to Jesus.
[Emphasis mine…] This is a question I used to hear so often asked by the Baptists I grew up with that seeing it there in that bigot’s rant startled me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any anti-gay crusader ask that question after gay bashing a few hundred thousand or so of their neighbors at the ballot box. Did people come to Jesus? Were souls saved?
It’s been decades since I’ve heard preachers talk like that. Not just that taking their measure by the goal of winning souls to Christ, but to even question one’s actions in that light in the aftermath of battle…it’s startling in its utter abnormality. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of these knuckle-draggers question whether or not they did anyone or anything any damn good beyond putting the homos back in their place and seldom even that since The Homosexual Menace usually just dusts itself off and gets right back to attacking the sanctity of marriage and family and morality.
Did we do anyone any damn good? Who’s asking? Yes, it’s true, for the moment same-sex couples aren’t entirely strangers before the law in Washington state. But gay folk and their families…their parents, their sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts, and all their friends, and all their loved ones, know that nearly half of the people who bothered to cast a ballot wanted their ring fingers cut off and I have a hunch that making homosexuals into scapegoats for every one of their straight neighbor’s cheap failures of moral character hasn’t done a whole fuck of a lot to bring anyone to Christ.
But it sure has made the sorry lot of you feel so fucking righteous though, hasn’t it? Until all the dust settles and the Homosexual Menace lays quietly on the floor nursing its wounds and you catch a glimpse of something that looks like a human being in it and everything gets quiet for a little while until you can work yourselves back up into a righteous frenzy again, so you don’t have to see that glimpse of something human in the Homosexual Menace again. Did anyone give their life to Jesus? Hahahahaha! Since when did that matter?
I did hear from a non-Christian friend commenting about one of his friends. He wrote, "I noticed the anger building in him, and tried to soften his approach, but he’s fed up. Referendum 71 has turned him against Christians." Neither is a Christian.
Well then I guess they’re not your neighbors then either, are they reverend?
In 1989, Juan Navarete came home to find his beloved Leroy Tranton lying bloody on the concrete driveway to their house. He’d fallen off a ladder while doing work. What happened to Juan next is the stuff of nightmares. Or…righteous devotion to Godliness depending on your point of view…
Juan and Leroy lived together in Long Beach for eight years. One day, Juan came home from the grocery store and found Leroy, who had fallen off a ladder, lying on the concrete patio. Leroy was rushed to the hospital where he stayed in a coma for several days. Although Leroy regained consciousness, he remained hospitalized for nine months. Juan visited Leroy once or twice each day, feeding him and encouraging him to recuperate.
Leroy’s estranged brother, who lived in Maine, filed a lawsuit seeking to have himself appointed as Leroy’s conservator.
When Juan accidentally found out, he showed up at court in Long Beach. Although Juan, who was not represented by counsel, stood up and protested, the judge refused to consider Juan’s plea because he was a stranger to Leroy in the eyes of the law.
The brother subsequently had Leroy transferred from the hospital to an undisclosed location. When Juan finally discovered that Leroy was being housed in a nursing home about 50 miles from Long Beach, he attempted to visit Leroy there. The staff stopped Juan in the lobby, advising him that the brother had given them a photo of Juan with strict orders not to allow him to visit Leroy. Unfortunately, no one else ever visited Leroy there.
It took Juan about two weeks to find an attorney who would take the case without charge. The attorney filed a lawsuit seeking visitation rights.
A few hours before the hearing was scheduled to occur, the brother’s attorney called Juan’s attorney, informing him that Leroy had died three days before.
Since the body had already been flown back to Maine where it was cremated, Juan never had an opportunity to pay his last respects.
Juan had no, absolutely no legal standing to do anything other then grieve, and there are those (I’m coming to you in a minute Jeff…) who would likely say that he was lucky to have that, and not be tossed into a jail cell for admitting he had engaged in homosexual conduct. In the eyes of the law, he and Leroy were strangers. Some people to this day think that’s more then we deserve, considering that in the eyes of the law we used to be criminals.
Same sex marriage is allowed in a few states now, and you can call that progress if you wish. But the chilling truth is that in most of the land of the free and the home of the brave, a same sex couple can be legally ground under foot by the local justice system, to the sound of loud hosanna’s from the righteous. It’s not enough that our wedding rings mean nothing. It’s not enough that our love isn’t seen as meaningful to us, let alone to anyone else. Even our grief must be unreal…a cheap imitation of the real grief heterosexual couples feel when one becomes gravely ill, or dies.
Because to permit us even our grief is to erode the sacred institution of heterosexual only marriage…
In his veto message, Republican Carcieri said: "This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.
"If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnerships, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of the state of Rhode Island decide.”
At a hearing this year on one of the stalled bills to allow same-sex marriage, Mark S. Goldberg told a Senate committee about his months-long battle last fall to persuade state authorities to release to him the body of his partner of 17 years, Ron Hanby, so he could grant Hanby’s wish for cremation — only to have that request rejected because "we were not legally married or blood relatives."
Goldberg said he tried to show the police and the state medical examiner’s office "our wills, living wills, power of attorney and marriage certificate" from Connecticut, but "no one was willing to see these documents."
Homosexuals don’t love…they just have sex…
He said he was told the medical examiner’s office was required to conduct a two-week search for next of kin, but the medical examiner’s office waited a full week before placing the required ad in a newspaper. And then when no one responded, he said, they "waited another week" to notify another state agency of an unclaimed body.
Homosexuals don’t love…they just have sex…
After four weeks, he said, a Department of Human Services employee "took pity on me and my plight … reviewed our documentation and was able to get all parties concerned to release Ron’s body to me," but then the cremation society refused to cremate Ron’s body.
"On the same day, I contacted the Massachusetts Cremation Society and they were more than willing to work with me and cremate Ron’s body," and so, "on November 6, 2008, I was able to finally pick up Ron’s remains and put this tragedy to rest."
When will it occur to supporters of same-sex marriage that they do their cause no good by characterizing those who disagree with them as haters, bigots, and ignorant homophobes? It may be emotionally satisfying to despise as moral cripples the majorities who oppose gay marriage. But after going 0 for 31 – after failing to make the case for same-sex marriage even in such liberal and largely gay-friendly states as California, Wisconsin, Oregon, and now Maine – isn’t it time to stop caricaturing their opponents as the equivalent of Jim Crow-era segregationists? Wouldn’t it make more sense to concede that thoughtful voters can have reasonable concerns about gay marriage, concerns that will not be allayed by describing those voters as contemptible troglodytes?
Why of course you’re not a contemptible troglodyte Jeff…you’re perfectly capable of looking at your gay and lesbian neighbors and seeing human beings…aren’t you…
I can sympathize with committed gay and lesbian couples who feel demeaned by the law’s rejection of same-sex marriage or who crave the proof of societal acceptance, the cloak of normalcy, that a marriage license would provide.
Because of course, all Juan Navarete wanted when he saw Leroy lying in a pool of blood on their driveway was societal acceptance…a cloak of normalcy.
If you knew what it was your gay and lesbian neighbors wanted, you wouldn’t be a bigot Jeff. But you can’t see the people for the homosexuals, so you don’t. You can’t. You never will. Even a troglodyte knows his neighbor is capable of grief.
They say sex is a powerful force for human bonding. But…no. It isn’t sex. It’s touch. I wrote this back in 2007, when I was going through another bad patch of missing Keith…
Alone
A few moments spent in the arms of someone you love can bring you back. Even if a few moments is all you get, it can bring you back. At least, for a while.
This wasn’t as intimate as it sounds. I was on my way to Key West, and stopping by Hilton Head I’d taken him out to dinner on the island that night. We shared a hug in the parking lot. A very, very long hug. He knew how unhappy I was. So he gave me that long, goodbye hug. But that was all it was. And it lifted my spirits considerably, given how depressed I was after I’d caught that glimpse of his happy domesticity earlier the previous day…
How To Make Your Ex Bleed In One Easy Step…
You want to make someone you dumped bleed? I mean, really, really bleed? I mean, Profusely…? Here’s my little tip: Don’t tell him about all the great sex you’re having now that he’s out of your life. Don’t bother telling him that your new boyfriend is so much better in the sack then he’ll ever be in his wildest wet dream fantasies. Don’t tell him how much your new boyfriend understands you so much better then he ever did. That’s amateur stuff. Really. You want to give him a hurt he’ll take to his grave, and hopefully sooner rather then later, just mention in passing some small bit of domesticity that you and your new main squeeze are currently enjoying…
Me: So I’ll probably be in town in an hour or so…you want to go grab a bite to eat somewhere after I get settled in…
He: Um…well actually (XXX) and I are about to go grocery shopping in a bit… Why don’t you call when you get in. If you want…there’s some good British comedy shows on TV later tonight you can watch at the hotel.
And, so on. If there wasn’t at least one major heart wound it wouldn’t be Christmas…
It was right after that I wrote a post about how depressed I was that alarmed a bunch of people. Interestingly enough, it was also shortly after that I got my first nastygram from an anonymous AOL poster.
A few months ago I was overjoyed that Keith was coming up for a visit. Finally. I’d been trying for years to coax him to come up here and see the house I’d bought for myself, and the life I was living up here in Charm City, and maybe even meet some of my friends, particularly the group of gay guys I regularly do a Friday night happy hour with in Washington D.C. And…deep down inside…I wanted to have him here under my roof for a few days, just to picture what it would have been like for us to have been lovers after all. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.
As the day of his arrival up here in Baltimore approached, that old twitterpated feeling took hold once again, and for days I wore a great big smile and my attitude went way, way positive. It affected everything. I spent weeks beforehand, cleaning and tidying up everything around Casa del Garrett so it would be perfect. My energy levels at work jumped a hundred fold. I was polishing off work items one right after the other like they were nothing. I felt Good, in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager in love for the first time. Everyone at work and in my personal life noticed it. I was happy. Content. Blissful. Life was good. Life was sweet. So very, very sweet. And he hadn’t even arrived yet. But somehow, something deep inside knew what was coming.
My body sang. My energy levels soared. The day he came, he called first and said he was in Baltimore and on his way. And I immediately got this familiar knot in my stomach, just like I did years ago, when I was a teenager, and in love, and expecting any moment now to see the object of my affections. And when he left after a few days, I dropped into a deep grey funk the likes of which I’ve never experienced before. Ever.
When he came here and I was showing him around Casa del Garrett for the first time (he’d never been here before…) and I was showing him the upstairs and the bathroom which had a lot of remodeling done by the previous owner…and he gently mocked how technical I was getting when I described the improvements and I laughed with him and say "Hey…I’m a techno geek…okay?" and he laughed and put his arms around me and hugged… And…and… For a moment I saw how my life could have been had I been loved…even for a short time. But he doesn’t want to be that person in my life and all I have ever been able to do is just imagine how it would be. Now I can remember how it feels to have someone put their arms around me while we’re laughing together at some foible of mine. But he doesn’t love me and it seems I will never have love except in my imaginings and my dreams.
Thing of it is, I Knew I was going to experience a funk after he left Baltimore. Logically at least. I Knew it. I thought I would get through it like I always have. But it was worse then anything this time. It wasn’t just I was heartsick. My body Ached. I lost energy…it was like the floor had been pulled out from under me. At the office I was reasonably fine…I was able to get my work done and interact with my co-workers almost like nothing had happened. But at home I wandered around my little rowhouse in a daze. Like I’d fallen down the stairs. Like I’d been hit by a car. Like I’d just had my arms cut off.
And in a sense, I had. Now that I’m settled a bit, I think I understand it better. It’s something like this…
A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb (even an organ, like the appendix) is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. Approximately 5 to 10% of individuals with an amputation experience phantom sensations in their amputated limb, and the majority of the sensations are painful…
Although not all phantom limbs are painful, patients will sometimes feel as if they are gesturing, feel itches, twitch, or even try to pick things up…
That moment we shared while I was geeking out in the bathroom…I kept feeling his arms around me in that moment, over and over again throughout my misery, well into the next month. It wasn’t just my heart. My body kept insisting that something was missing. It was dreadful.
How many times do we hear broken hearted lovers say that loosing that lover, that other half, felt like they’d had an arm cut off? In 1982 I picked up a copy of Howard Cruse’ Gay Comics and saw a story by French Cartoonist Patric Marcel titled, One For Sorrow…
Imagine having your arm torn off… There would be pain of course…but more important would be the sudden lacking, and the futile urge to have it back on…
I was well aware of what he was talking about by then. And imagery like that exists throughout the landscape of lost love. It’s more then just a metaphor I am convinced now. It really is something like that phantom limb phenomena. I’m a geek…okay? Bear with me here…
We have all these little ways of expressing sociability, fraternity, via various kinds of ritualized touch. Moments where we are permitted to cross the physical boundary between us. Handshakes are the most common one I can think of right now. I’ve heard it said they evolved as a way of letting a stranger know your intentions are friendly. Look…I’m unarmed… Some cultures allow for a bit more. A formalized kind of greeting kiss. A pat on the shoulders. Greeting hugs have become more common in American culture in my lifetime then they were when I was a kid. They serve to introduce and reinforce social bonds. But these are more, it turns out, then simply acknowledgments of social regard. Operating below the levels of rational consciousness, below even the lower primate and mammalian brain, is the platform it all rests upon.
We understand, if incompletely, that touch is a powerful thing, and we need to be careful how we let others do that to us. Not just as a matter of physical security, but emotional security too. To get close requires a cultivation of trust. It’s not just that someone within arm’s reach can take a swing at you so you have to be careful. It’s when you permit someone’s touch, you are making them a part of you. I mean that literally. The more intimate that touch, the more intimately they become a part of you. It really is that powerful a thing.
Our bodies map themselves, and remap themselves constantly. We have to learn how to do things like walk, run, ride bicycles, dance, hammer nails, brush teeth. The alien feel of a new tool becomes, after many hours of use, as if part of the hand and arm. And to our mind now, to the body’s inner map, it is. You pick it up, it’s There. Even something as complex as an automobile becomes an extension of the body, once its behavior has been mapped by the brain. Accelerate…back off a little…flick up the turn signal stalk…turn the wheel a bit… It’s not the car moving through traffic, it’s you. And when you get behind the wheel of a different car, it feels strange for a while, until your body has had a chance to map that one out too.
But the car doesn’t touch back. A favorite tool lost or stolen can make you angry, but you caress the world with the tool, it doesn’t caress you back. People (and pets) are different. They touch back. And our bodies map that touch to itself. And more…
Research suggests that if a love potion does in fact exist, the mammalian hormone called oxytocin is likely the key ingredient.
Oxytocin is a hormone produced naturally in the hypothalamus in the brain. Studies have shown that oxytocin is associated with our ability to mediate emotional experiences in close relationships and maintain healthy psychological boundaries.
In studies with non-human mammals, oxytocin has been shown to promote nest building and pup retrieval, acceptance of adopted offspring, and the formation of adult pair-bonds.
This important hormone is naturally released in response to a variety of environmental stimuli including skin-to-skin contact, uterine or cervical stimulation during sex, nipple stimulation in lactating women, and as the result of a baby moving down the birth canal.
[Emphasis mine] They say it’s sex that bonds a couple. Not…exactly. It’s touch. Which happens during sex of course. But everywhere else in a couple’s relationship too and those ways, I am convinced now, are much more meaningful and fundamental. Your lover can touch you in ways even a dear friend cannot, and not simply in sexual ways. Your lover can ruffle your hair, stroke your neck, rest a hand on your cheek. It’s a private language every couple invents for just themselves. This touch means one wordless thing…that touch another. Your lover can reach a hand out and lightly touch yours with just a fingertip, and send a tremble through your body. And your body knows that person’s touch, has it mapped out and stored in its mindless subconscious automatic understanding of what it itself is.
And when that touch isn’t there anymore, it’s a shock the body refuses to accept for a time. Like a phantom limb, you can still feel those arms around you, that hand inside of yours, and it is a torment. One that broken hearted and jilted lovers aren’t really being taught how to cope with, because everyone keeps telling them that it’s all in their mind. But it isn’t. Not entirely. It’s in their bodies too. They have, in a very nearly literal sense, lost a physical part of themselves.
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