I just got my first Valentine’s Day spam from FTD.   Maybe they finally figured out trying to sell me Mother’s Day flowers every year since mom died isn’t getting them much business.   Problem is, reminding me I’ll be single for yet another Valentine’s Day isn’t helping adjust my attitude toward them any either…

Subject:   Save 25% and Send a Big Hug to Someone You Love

Why…yes.   I would absolutely love to send a great Big Hug to Someone I Love.   Alas, the few Someones in my life who fit that category of Someone I Would Love To Send A Great Big Hug To are all happily coupled…er…to other people.   So I really don’t think I should be sending flowers to any of them.

Save 25%. Send Someone You Love a Big Hug! The FTD ® Big Hug ® Bouquet. Now Only $29.99. Same day delivery available. Offer ends Saturday.

The Most Romantic Day is Near! Place Your Valentine’s Day Order Now and Save Up To 20%.

Yes, The Most Romantic Day Is Near.   Thanks for reminding me.   Bastards.

The Lonely Rose by Demonmiss27

…and I’ll get your idiot spam on Mother’s Day again this year too won’t I?

But I won’t mope around the house.   No.   I’m going to get right to work on This Years Valentine’s Day Poster Contest!   It’ll be Fun!

The folks over at SLOG are making me wish I was in Seattle for Valentine’s Day this year…

The Stranger’s 12th Annual Valentines Day Bash

Every year on Valentine’s Day the Stranger hosts a very special event for the heartbroken, the recently dumped, the bitterly divorced. Single people bring mementos of failed relationships to our Valentine’s Day Bash and we invite them up on to the stage, we listen to their sad stories, we boo their awful exes, and then we destroy their mementos live onstage in front of a cheering crowd. Over the last 12 years we’ve burned wedding photos, weve smashed engagement rings to smithereens, shattered sex toys after dipping them in liquid nitrogen, had gay boys beat off on the favorite t-shirts of homophobic ex-boyfriends, and taped pictures inside urinals and broadcast live, streaming video of live, streaming urine running down the faces of lying, cheating, scheming, heartless ex-girlfriends.

The Bash is coming up fast—did you know that Valentine’s Day is on February 14 this year?—and you could consider this your save-the-date notice if you weren’t, you know, GOING TO BE ALONE ON VALENTINE’S DAY, seeing as you don’t have a date to save the date for BECAUSE YOU JUST GOT DUMPED. So instead consider this your personal invitation to start looking around for a memento to bring to the Bash. We don’t want to get all woo-woo about this, but we’ve heard from past Bash participants that they were truly moved by the experience and it did, on some level, help ’em heal. And, hey, if you’re single on Valentine’s Day, what better place to be than a room full of drunk, single people on the serious rebound?

Wonder if I can get something like this going here in Baltimore.   Somehow Baltimore seems like a more perfect place for it then Seattle.   But maybe all that rain they get in the Pacific Northwest makes them all gloomy up there.   I could show them gloomy here in Baltimore.   Maybe instead of random stuff I find out on the web, this year’s poster contest will be my own Baltimore photos.

43 years ago today, this is what the nation was being told about its gay citizens, by one of the big national news magazines…

It used to be "the abominable crime not to be mentioned." Today it is not only mentioned; it is freely discussed and widely analyzed. Yet the general attitude toward homosexuality is, if anything, more uncertain than before. Beset by inner conflicts, the homosexual is unsure of his position in society, ambivalent about his attitudes and identity—but he gains a certain amount of security through the fact that society is equally ambivalent about him.

A vast majority of people retain a deep loathing toward him, but there is a growing mixture of tolerance, empathy or apathy. Society is torn between condemnation and compassion, fear and curiosity, between attempts to turn the problem into a joke and the knowledge that it is anything but funny, between the deviate’s plea to be treated just like everybody else and the knowledge that he simply is not like everybody else.

…In 1948, Sexologist Alfred Kinsey published figures that homosexuals found cheering. He estimated that 4% of American white males are exclusively homosexual and that about two in five had "at least some" homosexual experience after puberty. Given Kinsey’s naive sampling methods, the figures were almost certainly wrong. But chances are that growing permissiveness about homosexuality and a hedonistic attitude toward all sex have helped "convert" many people who might have repressed their inclinations in another time or place.

Homosexuals are present in every walk of life, on any social level, often anxiously camouflaged; the camouflage will sometimes even include a wife and children, and psychoanalysts are busy treating wives who have suddenly discovered a husband’s homosexuality. But increasingly, deviates are out in the open, particularly in fashion and the arts. Women and homosexual men work together designing, marketing, retailing, and wrapping it all up in the fashion magazines. The interior decorator and the stockbroker’s wife conspire over curtains. And the symbiosis is not limited to working hours. For many a woman with a busy or absent husband, the presentable homosexual is in demand as an escort —witty, pretty, catty, and no problem to keep at arm’s length. Rich dowagers often have a permanent traveling court of charming international types who exert influence over what pictures and houses their patronesses buy, what decorators they use, and where they spend which season.

…

There is no denying the considerable talent of a great many homosexuals, and ideally, talent alone is what should count. But the great artists so often cited as evidence of the homosexual’s creativity—the Leonardos and Michelangelos —are probably the exceptions of genius. For the most part, thinks Los Angeles Psychiatrist Edward Stainbrook, homosexuals are failed artists, and their special creative gift a myth. No less an authority than Somerset Maugham felt that the homosexual, "however subtly he sees life, cannot see it whole," and lacks "the deep seriousness over certain things that normal men take seriously … He has small power of invention, but a wonderful gift for delightful embroidery.
 
Homosexual ethics and esthetics are staging a vengeful, derisive counterattack on what deviates call the "straight" world. This is evident in "pop," which insists on reducing art to the trivial, and in the "camp" movement, which pretends that the ugly and banal are fun. It is evident among writers, who used to disguise homosexual stories in heterosexual dress but now delight in explicit descriptions of male intercourse and orgiastic nightmares. It is evident in the theater, with many a play dedicated to the degradation of women and the derision of normal sex. The most sophisticated theatrical joke is now built around a homosexual situation; shock comes not from sex but from perversion. Attacks on women or society in general are neither new in U.S. writing nor necessarily homosexual, but they do offer a special opportunity for a consciously or unconsciously homosexual outlook.
 
They represent a kind of inverted romance, since homosexual situations as such can never be made romantic for normal audiences.  

…

Even in ordinary conversation, most homosexuals will sooner or later attack the "things that normal men take seriously." This does not mean that homosexuals do not and cannot talk seriously; but there is often a subtle sea change in the conversation: sex (unspoken) pervades the atmosphere. Among other matters, this raises the question of whether there is such a thing as a discernible homosexual type. Some authorities, notably Research Psychologist Evelyn Hooker of U.C.L.A., deny it—against what seems to be the opinion of most psychiatrists. The late Dr. Edmund Bergler found certain traits present in all homosexuals, including inner depression and guilt, irrational jealousy and a megalomaniac conviction that homosexual trends are universal. Though Bergler conceded that homosexuals are not responsible for their inner conflicts, he found that these conflicts "sap so much of their inner energy that the shell is a mixture of superciliousness, fake aggression and whimpering. Like all psychic masochists, they are subservient when confronted by a stronger person, merciless when in power, unscrupulous about trampling on a weaker person."

Another homosexual trait noted by Bergler and others is chronic dissatisfaction, a constant tendency to prowl or "cruise" in search of new partners. This is one reason why the "gay" bars flourishing all over the U.S. attract even the more respectable deviates.

…

The once widespread view that homosexuality is caused by heredity, or by some derangement of hormones, has been generally discarded. The consensus is that it is caused psychically, through a disabling fear of the opposite sex. The origins of this fear lie in the homosexual’s parents. The mother—either domineering and contemptuous of the father, or feeling rejected by him—makes her son a substitute for her husband, with a close-binding, overprotective relationship. Thus, she unconsciously demasculinizes him. If at the same time the father is weakly submissive to his wife or aloof and unconsciously competitive with his son, he reinforces the process. To attain normal sexual development, according to current psychoanalytic theory, a boy should be able to identify with his father’s masculine role.

Fear of the opposite sex is also believed to be the cause of Lesbianism, which is far less visible but, according to many experts, no less widespread than male homosexuality—and far more readily tolerated. Both forms are essentially a case of arrested development, a failure of learning, a refusal to accept the full responsibilities of life. This is nowhere more apparent than in the pathetic pseudo marriages in which many homosexuals act out conventional roles—wearing wedding rings, calling themselves "he" and "she."

Is homosexuality curable? Freud thought not. In the main, he felt that analysis could only bring the deviant patient relief from his neurotic conflicts by giving him "harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed." Many of Freud’s successors are more optimistic. Philadelphia’s Dr. Samuel Hadden reported last year that he had achieved twelve conversions out of 32 male homosexuals in group therapy. Paris Psychiatrist Sacha Nacht reports that about a third of his patients turn heterosexual, a third adjust to what they are, and a third get no help at all. But he feels that only about one in ten is moved to seek help in the first place.

That is the crux: most homosexuals apparently do not desire a cure…

Focus on the Family? The Mormon Times? No…Time Magazine, issue of January 21, 1966 – The Homosexual In America

You can read the whole thing Here.

I was 12 years old. By the end of the year I would turn 13, and enter my teen years in an America where the common view of gay people were that we were sick tortured twisted sexual deviants who ought to be locked up for the safety of the community. When I was 14 I would sit with my grade school peers in a sex ed class, taught by our gym teachers, who told us that homosexuals typically killed the people they had sex with, and preferred to kidnap and rape children and seduce young heterosexuals, rather then seek out other homosexuals for sexual trysts, precisely because we knew how dangerous we were. They taught us that homosexuals would become so excited during sex that we often mutilated the genitals of the people we were having sex with. They taught us that we were confused about which gender we were, and hated ourselves, and would take out that hate on other people by killing them horribly. Most unsolved murders we were told, were committed by homosexuals. That was the world I came to know myself in.

How I managed to come out of my teen years into adulthood not completely loathing myself as others of my generation did is a story I’m (very slowly I’m afraid…) telling in cartoon form in A Coming Out Story. I was so lucky…especially in that my first high school crush was so completely decent to me. Those of us who made it out of there in one piece emotionally and mentally, pretty much swore to make sure other gay kids didn’t have to go through what we did, and to fight for the honor and the dignity of our lives, and our loves, so that future generations wouldn’t have to know what it was like to have your teachers look you in the face and try to make you and all your friends believe that you were a sexual monster…a deviant…a pervert…

Atrios writes…

It’ll be interesting and, more often than not, frustrating to watch as the new reality takes hold in Washington. The Village conventional wisdom has been stuck in 1984 for 25 years now, and obviously things have changed. The media have been taking their cues from Republicans for so long it’s difficult to see how that will change quickly. But things have changed.

I was watching some of the TV news coverage of the inauguration last night…I haven’t watched TV news in ages its been so pathetically worthless…and I was struck by how many of the gas bags on my screen were actually older then me.  Then I remembered that I am not young either.  So why did they look so damn old?

If the Village Conventional Wisdom has been stuck in 1984, I’ve been stuck in 1976 for 32 years now.  That is…I keep thinking of myself as young when logically and rationally I know I’m not and haven’t been for quite a while.  I look in the bathroom mirror every morning and dang if I don’t see a 55 year old man staring back at me.  But I know I’m that and when I see myself in a mirror, or in a photograph, it doesn’t bother me.  But sitting on the couch watching tv (or for that matter banging on a keyboard as I am right now) somehow I just snap back into that mental self image I had back when I was a kid.

So I have no gut level apprehensions at the passing of the generational torch that I’m seeing now in some of the talking heads.  As far as the inner me is concerned, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for all my life: when what Howard Cruse once called Kennedy Time picks back up where it left off.  I’ve been waiting out Nixon Time now for so long I’d almost forgotten how it felt to be living in an America that had a bright and promising future in front of it.  I’ve no idea if Obama is going to be the kind of president Kennedy was…in point of fact I was too young during Kennedy’s all too brief administration to really grasp what was going on in the world politically.  All I knew was after being a kid in a world where the communists were lurking in all the shadows, suddenly there was nothing to be afraid of anymore.  There was a future ahead of us, and it was going to be a great adventure after all, and not something to fear.  If Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated, I wonder if the counter-culture that came later in the decade would have pushed back as hard at that era’s Wise Old Men.  Johnson was no Kennedy.  We all felt betrayed.

There is something in the air today, very much like the feeling I had back in "Kennedy Time".  Yes, there are dangers ahead, yes there are hard times facing us, but we will meet them and rise above.  We can do it.  Liberty and Justice for All can win over totalitarianism and greed and hate.  America can walk with the rest of the world into a brighter tomorrow.  We can do it.  I’m writing here about the sense of mind and spirit you feel now, not necessarily the reality on the ground.  The next few years are not going to be a cakewalk obviously.  For one thing all the apparatus of the Nixon/Reagan right are still there.  Rush Limbaugh and all the other hate jockeys will still be pumping venom into hearts and minds, although hopefully to smaller and smaller audiences.  Right wing billionaires like Howard Ahmanson will still be destabilizing our democracy with their wealth like heroin and meth pushers destroy neighborhoods.  The enemies of democracy around the world will hate us all the more for living up to our ideals then they did while Bush and Cheney were busy pissing on them and laughing.  But America is dreaming a better dream now, then the tired and fearful conceits of the Wise Old Men. 

So there I am on the sofa, watching the talking heads on TV trying to wrap their minds around this new president and this new reality and suddenly they all just look old and tired and I have to remind myself that they’re not that much older then me some of them.  And I am struck by this fact.  The entire time Bush sat like a turd in the White House and I was hating, absolutely loathing the Washington news media, The Villagers, for kissing up to him, I never really noticed how old The Villagers were.  I saw it in their faces today.  But mostly, in their smiling bewilderment.  And I remembered how Kennedy had begun, by declaring that the torch had been passed.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage-and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
–John F. Kennedy – inaugural address, Friday, January 20, 1961

There’s going to be a lot of ink written about how Obama represents the passing of the tired old boomer generation.  But many of us boomers didn’t get old and tired and never let go of our dream of a better world, a just and peaceful world.  We were outflanked by the Nixonites, who simply dug in their heels and kept on fighting after Nixon resigned.  We thought the struggle was over then and it wasn’t, it was only just beginning.  Cheney and Rumfeld, who were both in the Nixon administration, and much of their gang were born either before or during the second world war.  Villagers like David S. Broder were born well before it.  If my generation is guilty of anything, it’s living too much in our dreams and not enough in the world to make them real.  I’m told that there is a saying among Jews, that when you pray you should pray as though everything depends on God, but when you act you should act as though everything depends on you.  We should treat our dreams like that.  Dream as though dreams come true.  Act as though dreams are not enough.  And never underestimate how much the darkness hates the dreamer.

One thing that struck me about Obama early in the primaries, was how good he was at taking the measure of his opposition, how decent he remained in the heat of the fight and how relentlessly focused he was on the process and the outcome.  He took the Clinton camp completely by surprise, and walked right on by them, so certain were they that their candidate was inevitable.  There’s the difference between the generations.  There’s why Obama was the better person for the job…the necessary person for the job.  Nothing is inevitable.  If the torch has now been passed to a new generation who revere the dream of liberty and justice for all, but are wise to its enemies, starry-eyed and street-smart, then we will get to the promise land.

[Edited a tad…]

Steve Gilliard that is.  I was just thinking now how sad it is he didn’t get to see this day.  Jim Capozzola too.  Jim I think would have loved that someone with a brain who likes to read was finally in the White House.  But Steve especially.   Steve should have lived to see this.

I watched him take the oath of office, and heard him speak to America and the world after, with my co-workers here in the Institute auditorium.  I was too young to appreciate Kennedy, really.  But I remember not only the excitement of the adults around me, but also the sense of promise everyone saw in him.  The nation was young again, and the future was full of promise.  I never really appreciated what so many decades of Kultar Kampf had done to take that away from me.  So much Ronald Reagan.  So much Moral Majority.  So much George Bush.  So much Karl Rove.  So much James Dobson.

And then I watched Obama take the oath, and I heard him speak to America, and to the world, and I felt it again, just as I had when I was a kid, doing my duck and cover exercises, listening to the civil defense tests on the radio and TV, and nobody knew who was going to win the cold war, or the space race.  And I wasn’t the only baby boomer in that audience.  We all felt it.  I could tell.  America is young again.  The future is full of promise.  We can do it.  We can do anything…

So…the insulate the exterior wall of the bedroom proof of concept test:  The results are pretty much what I’d hoped for.  Sunday I cut and stuck foam insulating panels on the back bedroom wall with double sided mounting tape.   For the rest of that day the temperature in the room seemed to maintain pretty steadily.  But the real test I knew, would be how it felt in the morning after a good overnight chill outside.

I’ve actually been running an oil filled space heater in the bedroom lately because it gets so cold overnight.  When I first moved into Casa del Garrett, I used to run an electric blanket.  But the blanket died on me last year and I bought the oil filled space heater to replaced it, thinking that a space heater was a more versatile spot heating solution then an electric blanket.  Since I was testing the difference insulating that back exterior wall would make, I kept the heater off.

Monday morning the bedroom was refrigerator cold when I got up.  But none of the foam panels I’d put up were radiating coldness at all.  So it was coming from somewhere else then the sections of wall I’d insulated.  As I paced around the room trying to see where the cold was coming from I realized I’d forgotten about the wall length closet on one side of the room. 

That closet goes the entire length of the bedroom on the wall I share with my neighbor.  One end shares a wall with the bathroom and the other end of it is the exterior wall.  That little slice of exterior wall in the closet was cold as ice when I put my hand to it and it was chilling all the air in the closet, which then seeped out into the bedroom.  So Monday I put up some more sheet foam against that wall.  I also added some more foam panels to a portion of the exterior wall that had been built out to accommodate one of the heating ducts as it was very chilly too. 

Once more I slept without the space heater on.  This morning when I got up it was 16 degrees outside and the bedroom was pretty warm.  So this pretty much settles it.  My project starting next spring is to insulate the exterior walls here at Casa del Garrett.

More on that as I get into it.

According to After Elton, the Inaugural Committee is saying they never told HBO not to broadcast Gene Robinson’s prayer and that the whole thing was an unfortunate mis-communication. 

The Presidential Inauguration Committee just issued a statement saying, "We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson’s invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday’s program. We regret the error in executing this plan – but are gratified that hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the mall heard his eloquent prayer for our nation that was a fitting start to our event.” — PIC communications director Josh Earnest. 

Okay…  So why was the Gay Men’s Chorus closeted?

Whilst scanning the English language page of Der Spiegel I come across this…

Germans Full of Angst about the Future, Survey Reveals

Okay…from all the books on German culture I’ve been reading lately, is this is something like saying Pope Still Catholic, or Bears Found To Prefer Woods To Port-A-Johns.  Germans and angst are like southerners and barbecue. 

Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin, wonders if Robinson was hurried onto the stage and then off again before the Pre Inauguration festivities actually began…

Did HBO cave in the face of conservative outcries over Rev. Robinson’s selection for this event? Did the Inaugural committee rush Rev. Robinson onstage and off before the broadcast was slated to begin? Whatever the case may be, this is a cold slap. HBO has some serious explaining to do, as does the Inaugural committee.

Harvey Milk is screaming in his metaphorical grave right now.

It’s a good question, and this scenario fits nicely with the alleged technical difficulties I keep hearing about, that prevented Robinson’s words from even being clearly heard by the crowd that was there:  I have friends who work as sound engineers, I’ve been with them as they did their work in various settings, and I’m here to tell you that they work hard at choreographing each and every microphone and pickup’s settings for each and every element of an event.  I have no idea how the video side of it works but I’d be surprised if it was any less intricate.  If Robinson was rushed out before the stage crew and the technical engineers were ready for him that would explain the fumbling around, and possibly even the video black-out.  The only problem with this scenerio of course, is it still doesn’t explain why the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.

One fuckup I can accept.  It’s still unacceptable, amateurish, unprofessional behavior that gay Americans have every right to be pissed off about and demand an apology for, but I can be convinced that one was a fuckup.  Two of them that Just Happen to target the gay presence at this event and only the gay presence at this event and it’s staringly obvious that it was deliberate.  The only question now is who engineered it?

I’m reading elsewhere that Dianne Feinstein heads the inagural committee.  Well, there’s a good place to start.  People just assume that since she was Mayor of San Francisco after Harvey Milk and George Moscone were assasinated that she’s a friend of the gay community.  Nothing could be further from the truth…

After the 1978 death of Harvey Milk in San Francisco, gay rights activist Tom Brougham came up with a definition of domestic partnership that is now universally used, and was designed to include everything about marriage except sexual orientation. According to Brougham, the definition was that the couple must be more than 18 years old and mentally competent to make a contract. Furthermore, his position was that domestic partners must publicly declare the partnership and pledge to be responsible for each other.

In 1982, Brougham’s definition was modified by Supervisor Harry Britt (a gay man appointed to replace Harvey Milk). Britt’s version was adopted and passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, but Dianne Feinstein, mayor of San Francisco at the time, came under intense pressure from the Catholic Church and subsequently vetoed the bill. Not until 1989 was a domestic partnership law adopted in the city of San Francisco…

–Wikipedia – Domestic Partnership

Note that we have been fighting for marriage rights since the 1970s.  Next time some ignorant jackass asks you why same-sex marriage has suddenly become such a big deal with teh gays, slap them upside the head with the biggest, thickest history book you can find.

A recall attempt was made after Feinstein vetoed Britt’s bill, to get her booted out of office.  The gay community was massively pissed off.  But Feinstein calculated that there weren’t enough gay people in San Francisco who cared enough about domestic partnership in the disco 70s to sign enough recall petitions to get it to the point of their actually being a vote.  But another group of pissed off San Franciscans, gun owners, were already circulating a recall petition on her after she signed some new gun control measure or another.  Many gay folk simply started adding their names to that one.  That gave it enough signatures that a vote was actually held, much to her shock. 

She survived it.  Ever since when asked about it she has not only never apologized, she has insisted vetoing the bill was the right thing to do.  Feinstein is that sort of democrat that blocks progress on equality far more then outright bigots manage, because they keep conning people into believing they’ll do the right thing once in office and then when it actually comes time to do the right thing, they don’t.

I wonder if another Catholic Bishop whispered into Feinstein’s ear again, that she’d better not be seen giving anything to the gays…

Via Dan Savage…Via After Elton…  HBO is pointing the finger at Obama…

Developing: HBO says they aren’t to blame for not including Gene Robinson in concert special

Contacted Sunday night by AfterElton.com concerning the exclusion of Robinson’s prayer, HBO said via email, "The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show."

Uncertain as to whether or not that meant that HBO was contractually prevented from airing the pre-show, we followed up, but none of the spokespeople available Sunday night could answer that question with absolute certainty.

However, it does seem that the network’s position is that they had nothing to do with the decision.

So who made the decision to closet the Gay Men’s Chorus?  Dan Savage sums it up nicely here …

When you’re throwing folks a bone it’s a good idea to make sure they can, you know, see the bone.

It’s five in the morning here in Baltimore, and already my mailbox is chock full of outrage over this.  From the Gay Democrats mail list to the local Baltimore lists its everywhere.  Everywhere but Google news which seems to think that Robinson’s prayer was seen by the whole nation.  Over at Science Blogs they’re calling it an Historic inaugural slap in the face to LGBT community.  One commenter there posted this…

We’d like to have you speak at our inaugural event…
We’d like to put your face up on the screen
Look around you; all you see are Democratic eyes.
Stroll around the Mall until it’s time to speak

And here’s to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….

Use another camera while the Bishop says his prayer.
Put it on a crowd scene for the broadcast
Keep him in the closet, Bishop Robinson’s not there
Most of all, we’ve got to hide him from the kids

Shoo, shoo, to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….

Standing on the marble steps, with Lincoln looking down
Going through the motions for TV
Laugh about it, Shout about it, Try to spread the word
Anyway, the Bishop wasn’t heard

Where have you gone, Marian Anderson?
The GMC is singing just like you
Ooo ooo ooo
What’s that you say, Bishop Robinson?
CNN sure kept you locked away
Hey hey hey… hey hey hey…

Posted by: Cuttlefish | January 18, 2009 10:38 PM

Craigkg is reporting that even those in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial might not have been able to hear Robinson’s Prayer…

In fact, it is being reported by some who were in attendance that when Rev Robinson delivered his invocation, the speakers were either turned down or off all together.

He goes on to write…

The situation with Rev. Robinson and Rev. Warren has become so incredibly similar to the fiasco involving Donnie McClurkin and Rev. Andy Sidden its not even funny. Before the South Carolina primary, Obama held a concert for black evangelicals and invited gospel singer and "ex-gay" homophobe Donnie McClurkin to sing and emcee the event. GLBT activists reacted by denouncing McClurkin’s claims that gays can change their sexual orientation (aka be saved) and Obama for having such a divisive anti-gay figure associated with his campaign. The GLBT community is rightly very sensitive to the legitimization of  the ex-gay movement and the severe psychological damage reparative therapy can have of those subjected to this (being kind here) torture. After some hemming and hawing Obama announced he did not agree with McClurkin’s views on gays, tried to reinterate his own support of the GLBT community and announced that an invocation at the concert would be delivered by openly gay minister, the Rev. Andy Sidden. It was highly questioned at the time having a white gay minister deliver the prayer when several black gay ministers were available and willing to give it. At the concert, Rev. Sidden delivered his prayer in front of a largely unoccupied venue as most people were outside still filing in. Reports put the crowd at one quarter to one third of the eventual attendance at best. McClurkin went on to emcee and perform in  front of the full crowd and delivered his own god saved me from my gayness statement…

At Talking Points Memo…there is the Top Ten Reasons Why HBO Censored Gene Robinson…

1. HBO sound system cannot broadcast gay voices.
2. Program ran over schedule, so HBO went back in their time machine and cut the beginning of the live broadcast.
3. Appearance of a gay men’s chorus went way over HBO’s ‘gay quota’ for the event.
4. HBO is a family-friendly network that does not carry offensive material like frontal nudity, profanity, or bishops.
5. Ellen DeGeneres was jealous.
6. Dumbledore was jealous.
7. HBO was warned that terrorists were watching for a signal that America was gay weak.
8. Rick Warren was jealous.
9. Everyone knows all gays are atheists.
10. Sarah Palin used her special anti-Russian spyware to block the signal.

They also report that NPR silenced Robinson.  Over at TVBarn.com they’re reporting that Robinson’s image was kept out of the NPR gallery of event photos as well.  Also…

A search of Getty Images, NYTimes.com and WaPo slide shows turned up nothing. In short, I found no visual evidence that an invocation was ever said. 

The TVBarn blogger lists three options for team Obama to handle this:  1) Claim it was a technical glitch,  2) Admit they never intended for Robinson to be seen on national TV,  3) Admit they screwed up.  My money is on 1, and they’ll stick stubbornly with it no matter how many people point out that the event began without any problems precisely on time, and that the "glitch" only happened during Robinson’s prayer, and that it still doesn’t explain why the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.

So far not one of the mainstream news media outlets I have scanned have reported either that Robinson was silenced, or that the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.  However, the comment boards of some of them, like the  are already electric with people angry that they didn’t get to see and hear Robinson.  His prayer was beautiful and stirring to many. 

Mike Tidmus writes in his post, The incredible disappearing bishop…

Could it be that the American media has finally decided these public events should be 100% secular? Don’t count on it, friends, because you know as well as I do that pop-pastor Rick Warren will be front and center and at full volume to kick off President-Elect Obama’s formal Inauguration on Tuesday.

Today’s event at the Lincoln Memorial was entitled We Are One, but apparently We Are Minus One is closer to the truth.

It didn’t have to be this way.  And yet…it did…

So…did you catch Gene Robinson giving the opening prayer to the Inaugural Festivities? 

No?  Well don’t fret…neither did anyone else…

Permission To Get Upset?

Posted by Dan Savage on Sun, Jan 18 at 5:35 PM

When Barack Obama chose anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-porn Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, gays and lesbians—still smarting from Prop 8—were understandably upset. Well, I thought our dismay was understandable. But a lot of folks in the comments threads here, there, and everywhere disagreed. Barack was just trying to bring the country together, to find common ground, and Rick Warren invited him to his church, and how dare you get upset, trust the man, let him get into office before you start grousing at him about this, why are you worrying about symbolism when it’s policy that matters, and blah blah blah.

…

Then when Barack Obama chose Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop, to give the invocation at tonight’s pre-inaugural festivities—the concert tonight at the Lincoln Memorial—the folks defending Obama were all like, "SEE? Obama is bringing the country together! Anti-gay preachers, gay preachers—everyone is equal and equally welcome!" And Gene Robinson did give the invocation at tonight’s concert…and his words were very moving. You can read the full text of Robinson’s prayer here.

But if you were watching HBO’s broadcast of tonight’s concert you didn’t see Robinson, or hear his remarks… because Robinson’s invocation wasn’t included in the broadcast. Skipped over during the live broadcast, edited out of the rebroadcast.

How about the fact that tonight’s other big gay moment—the D.C. gay men’s chorus singing with Josh Groban—passed without the chorus, unlike every other performer, being identified?

Nice.  Welcome to morning in America.  No matter what little token we may think we’ve managed to win, never doubt the ability or the willingness of the corporate media to make sure we remain invisible.  And it’s not just that they’d rather have republicans in power then democrats.  It’s not just that allowing people to see their gay and lesbian neighbors for the human beings we are, makes it hard for us to be the monsters we have to become every election year so that republicans can gay bash their way into winning elections.  Homophobia is as much a fact of life in the high testosterone boardrooms of corporate America as it is in the megachurch stadium seating big screen TV cathedrals of the heartland.  They hate us.  First of all you have to understand that they hate us.

The democrats are sill late in coming to this fight.  Obama and his people probably genuinely thought they were being actively inclusive in bringing in Gene Robinson.  They were probably totally blind-sided by all this.  Like a lot of decent rational people, they just don’t get the depth of contempt toward gay people.  They never believe it until they actually see it for themselves.  You can’t just take a rhetorical stand in favor of gay equality.  You can’t just make a few gestures of sympathy and expect any progress to be made.  This is a knife fight.  They hate us.  They hate us with a venom that is as bottomless as it is bitter.  Every inch of progress in this fight, every inch, every painful, bloody inch of progress we make toward equality, toward the day when we are free to love and hope and dream and make decent lives for ourselves to the best of our ability, is its own poisonous scorched earth total war.  Every inch.  It will be like that right up to the bitter end and for generations after.  They hate us.  They will never stop hating us.  Of course HBO censored Gene Robinson.  Of course they shoved the Gay Men’s chorus into the closet.  The corporate media will keep on making us invisable, will keep on shoving us back into the closet, will enable the demonization of gay people, and look the other way at the toll of death and destruction until someone makes them stop.  Asking politely will not change one single solitary thing.  They hate us.

[Edited a tad…]

I keep having these dreams where you give me a date or time.  They keep coming true.

On SlashDot recently there was a post concerning Google’s announced support for repealing or overturning Proposition 8.  Google placed its opposition to discriminating against same-sex couples in marriage in the context of being able to entice the best workers to its California workplace, but immediately the commenters on SlashDot began to bellyache at the hypocrisy of being concerned about recruiting good workers at the same time they’re laying people off.  As if the two things are mutually exclusive.  I guess most SlashDot visitors are very young and haven’t been through many recessions. 

But reliably came the calls from ersatz libertarians to get government out of the business of marriage.  Civil Unions they say, are a workable compromise.  People are just getting hung up over a word they say.  Never mind that making all civil marriages civil unions just isn’t going to happen politically.  Our enemies don’t want us to have even civil unions.  This isn’t a fight over a word or none of these anti same-sex marriage amendments would forbid civil unions too and nearly all of them do.  That wasn’t accidental.  The word people are getting hung up over in this fight isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexuals’.

From the Salt Lake Tribune comes this little article, ostensibly to show that Utahns (read: Mormons) aren’t so bigoted after all…

Poll: Utahns back some gay rights, but not weddings or adoptions

While Utahns aren’t ready to let gay and lesbian couples exchange wedding vows or enter civil unions, most are willing to give them broader legal rights to inherit property, visit a partner in the hospital and ward off employment discrimination…However, the poll shows overwhelming opposition (70 percent) to any changes to the Utah Constitution that would allow same-sex partners to enter civil unions…

Well isn’t that lovely.  You want hypocrisy?  It’s not in Google taking a stand for human decency, even as it has to lay off workers.  It’s here, right here, in all those righteous people who think that respecting the love and devotion of same-sex couples in sickness makes it okay to rip their lives apart in health.  If you believe that homosexuality is a sickness, a perversion, an abomination to God that will lead to the destruction of the family and western civilization, then what sense does it make to give same sex couple’s any rights?  All that says, is they know goddamned well that same sex couples love each other every bit as much as opposite sex couples do.  All this says, is that they don’t want to be thought of as the gutter crawling butchers of other people’s hopes and dreams that they are. 

This is their way of saving face, nothing more, nothing less.  It’s the equivocation of bigots trying to look at themselves in a mirror and deny the blood on their hands was something they did willingly, deliberately, knowingly. We don’t hate them…look…we’re willing to let them visit their sex partners in the hospital…  How does that make sense when homosexuals are destroying the family and western civilization?  It doesn’t.  It’s an admission of guilt.  It exposes the bedrock of animus toward gay people that motivates them more then simply denying gay people all legal status does.  Ignorance sees only monsters when it looks at gay people.  It takes shame to know that kicking them in the face isn’t something you want to be seen doing.

And even those moral runts only constitute a bare majority of the whole in Utah.  After the critical roll the Mormon church played in passing Proposition 8 became known, Mormon church leaders averred they had no objection to granting same sex couples some small rights, and the democratic opposition in the state promptly took them at their word, proposing legislation to grant them just that.  They call their work, without any apparent sense of irony, the "common ground" bills.

While Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, doubts Utahns would change the state constitution to permit civil unions, he said he would entertain bills on more-expansive legal rights for gays.

"The fact that anybody wants [wider rights] is grounds to pursue it and investigate it," said Waddoups, adding that he would ensure the Common Ground bills get a fair debate if they make it to committee or the Senate floor.

But opposition certainly will follow from Utahns such as poll respondent Maureen Johnson.

"I don’t believe they should have any rights at all," said the South Jordan resident. "The Lord says the man is made for the woman and the woman is made for the man."

Well thank you Senator Waddoups, R-Taylorsville for entertaining the idea that gay people ought to have rights.  The compromise between right and wrong is indifference to either right or wrong.  The compromise between living in freedom and living in a police state is I agree to put the handcuffs on myself and pretend I had a choice in the matter.  The compromise between love and hate is to put the knife into your own heart and spare hate the trouble.  The word that describes the "common ground" between free people and tyrants is Battleground, not Peace.  Just ask the shades that walk at Shiloh.

Common ground is that we are all equal in the eyes of the law.  Once upon a time that was the American compromise.  We all had different faiths, came from different lands, were raised in different cultures.  But as far as the law was concerned, we were all Americans.  The religious and fascist right have waged a decades long scorched earth war to shred the American ideal of equality, so that they might rise above the rest of us and rule over all.  Because they are the favored of God.  Because to rule over the heathens is their God-given right.  No…duty. 

Take up the Godly Man’s burden…
Ye dare not stoop to less…

And now we, who believe in the American dream, are in a pitched fight to retake what was once our sacred common ground: liberty and justice for all.  Equality is the common ground.  What’s equal to marriage, is marriage.

It’s not just for young girls who read fashion magazines anymore…

Study: Gamers Self-Conscious To “Extreme” Body-Types

If you’ve ever played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and felt down that you don’t possess Nathan Drake’s rugged good looks–don’t get down–you’re not alone.

According to research by a Kansas State University Psychology professor, gamers that view extremely muscular men or very thin women are more likely to feel self-conscious about their own physique.

Richard Harris, (author of the research) said that his research shows that simply viewing the attractive game character for 15 minutes can negatively impact the player’s image of their own looks and body.

“It was kind of sobering that it did have such a short-term effect,” Harris said.

Harris divided a group of university students up, having the males play a wrestling video game while the females played a beach volleyball game. Before they played, the students completed a survey about their body image. After they played the game for fifteen minutes, they were surveyed again. The new survey showed that the participants, as a whole, viewed their bodies more negatively.

You know what else can leave you with a negative body image?  Friends.  The kind that just drop chances for you to meet people on the floor because you’re not good looking enough to be boyfriend material. 

The Catholic church’s list of sins and their ranking is made public for the first time.  Ever wonder why the church has a hard time fessing up to its role in the Holocaust?  They’re not being obtuse.  Genocide isn’t that big a deal compared with, say spitting out the Eucharist…

Vatican reveals secrets of worst sins

The Apostolic Penitentiary, or "tribunal of conscience", has been shrouded in secrecy ever since it was established by Pope Alexander III in 1179 and until now has never provided details of the cases it scrutinizes.

They are considered so heinous by the Catholic Church that only the Pope can grant absolution to those who perpetrate them.

Blah…blah…blah…

While priests and bishops can deal with confessions of sins as grave as murder or even genocide, the tribunal is reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious.

They include attempting to assassinate the Pope, a priest abusing the confidentiality of the confessional by revealing the nature of the sin and the person who admitted to it, or a priest who has sex with someone and then offers forgiveness for the act.

…

Defiling the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ, is also considered a sin of extreme gravity and one which is on the increase, the high-ranking members of the tribunal said.

Cardinal Stafford said there had been a rise in incidents in which people would receive Communion and then spit it out or otherwise desecrate it, sometimes in Satanic rituals. 

…

Such sins, which can only be dealt with by the Pope, acting through the tribunal, bring automatic excommunication from the Church. If the Pope decides to grant absolution, the excommunication is lifted.

See…it’s all a matter of proportion.  The punishment has to fit the crime.  Forgiveness isn’t lightly meted out when the sin is grievous.  Himmler could have been dealt with by the local parish priest.  But only the Pope can forgive you for spitting out the Eucharist.  And remember, there is no morality without religion.