What California And Florida Could Not Bring Themselves To Do For Love, And Hope, And Dreams Come True…By God, The Mouse Could…And Did…
When I was in Disney World recently, I made a point to ride the monorails. I’d been absolutely fascinated by those things ever since I saw the pictures of the first ones in Disneyland back in the early 70s. I’ve wondered ever since why more cities didn’t have something like them.
On the trip from Magic Kingdom back to the Transportation center, which is a transfer point from the Magic Kingdom and Resort lines to the Epcot line, you go past several Disney resort areas, and the voice in the cars narrating the journey takes note of a little wedding pavilion along the way, just between the Grand Floridian and the Polynesian resorts…
With all the grandeur of a classic Victorian summer home, Disney’s Wedding Pavilion offers many enchanting possibilities for the wedding ceremony of your dreams. With its palm-fringed solarium and views of Cinderella Castle across the Seven Seas Lagoon, this magnificent non-denominational chapel can accommodate your Escape Wedding ceremony with style and grace.
I was coming by then to really like Disney World, and the It’s A Small World After All mentality that pervades it. But I had to wonder if that wedding pavilion was open to all couples, or whether Disney would, to avoid controversy, stipulate that the marriages had to be legally binding in the state of Florida, which had just then passed an anti same-sex marriage amendment.
Well…know I know…
Gay couples given keys to the Magic Kingdom as Disney relents
The Guardian, Saturday April 7 2007
Disney’s theme parks are synonymous with the great American family day out, with the company’s traditional hospitality and characters having enthralled generations for more than half a century.
Now Mickey Mouse has taken a step away from protocol by throwing open the gates of Cinderella’s castle for same-sex partnership ceremonies. Gay and lesbian couples can, for the first time, stage their own commitment ceremonies anywhere on Disney property, a privilege heterosexual couples have enjoyed for decades.
"We are not in the business of making judgments about the lifestyle of our guests," said Donn Walker, spokesman for Disney Parks and Resorts. "We are in the hospitality business, and our parks and resorts are open to everyone."
The shift in position came after complaints that gay couples were specifically excluded from the Fairy Tale Weddings programme at Disney’s theme parks in California and Florida, and on its cruise liners. While others had a wide choice of marriage options, such as taking their vows on a white-knuckle ride or beneath a fireworks show with Minnie Mouse as a bridesmaid, gay couples had to organise their own private ceremonies in rented meeting rooms at resort hotels.
The Walt Disney Company has long been a tacit supporter of gay tourism. It has come under fire from the religious right for policies that include partner benefits for homosexual employees. In the 90s, rightwing groups held protests against the annual "Gay Days", when more than 100,000 gay and lesbian visitors go to Disney resorts.
The company blamed its weddings policy on laws in Florida and California prohibiting same-sex unions. But after pressure from the gay website afterelton.com, it dropped its requirement that Fairy Tale Weddings packages, which start at $8,000 (£4,100), have to include a valid marriage licence. "This is consistent with our policy of creating a welcoming, respectful and inclusive environment for all of our guests," Mr Walker said.
Michael Jensen, the editor of the website, had complained that Disney appeared to be hiding behind the law. Although same-sex wedding ceremonies were not legally recognized, he said, there was nothing to prevent gay couples holding their own ceremonies.
"Elton John, who had a civil union with his partner David Furnish last year in England, would have been turned away from Disney’s wedding gates," Mr Jensen said, pointing out that the singer had earned the company millions of dollars with his music for The Lion King.
Note that happened back in 2007. Nice. And I’ll say this…you can’t stay in the Disney theme parks for long without realizing there is a ton of gay talent there, working hard to make sure everyone enjoys their stay. From the "cast members" in character costume (including several really cute Peter Pan’s I saw during my stay) to the ones who were simply working support roles and keeping the whole complex running smoothly, my Gaydar, which has trouble going off around DuPont Circle, was going off like mad. And even though Gay Days for this year were long over, I still saw the occasional same sex couple strolling through the crowds, hand in hand, or arm in arm. Nobody bothered them.
The pleasant, Let’s All Get Along And Enjoy The Day attitude was infectious and disarming. You felt it everywhere. In Magic Kingdom I took a bad spill one night near main street, while hurrying to the monorail. I’d mis-stepped over a curb and tumbled hard onto a cobblestone pavement with my cameras dangling around me. Luckily neither they nor I were badly hurt, but instantly a crowd of about a dozen or so folks were all around me asking me if I was okay, and helping me back up. In another park I am certain they’d have just walked right on by.
We are in the hospitality business… That, really, sums it up. And it’s the right answer to give to bigoted louts who just can’t enjoy themselves unless other people are suffering. But there is more to it. It’s that It’s A Small World After All mentality. That really does seem to be the bedrock there. I wrote previously how refreshing, how exhilarating it was to see the story of life on earth, and the history of human progress told, not only matter of factly, but that the study of science and history and archeology was a grand adventure. There was something else in Disney World that genuinely lifted my spirits more, much more, then I would have imagined going into it. That, It’s A Small World After All mentality that pervaded everything there.
Sniff at the Disney-esq sentimentality if you like…but it gave my soul a much needed boost to face the real world outside the gates (where I later learned hundreds had been killed in by terrorists in India…). I’d thought of it as escapism. It isn’t. It’s taking a break. You just can’t let the world bear down on you constantly without going nuts. It’s good to have somewhere you can go to remember your dreams, and why they were good, and let the power of those dreams lift you once more.
So it should not surprise the Kultur Krieger that Disney of all mainstream American icons, is being gay friendly. For one thing, they’re in the hospitality business, not the beat your neighbor over the head with ballot initiatives business. For another, Disney has always believed in the better tomorrow, and in the power of dreams. If all that is a fairy tale, I’ll take it over the one George Bush, James Dobson, and the Mormon church are selling to America these days.
It isn’t cheap by any means, but same-sex couples can have that magic moment now too. They can exchange vows by the shores of a beautiful lagoon, with Cinderella’s Castle in the background. Everything will be just right, perfect even, like a dream come true.
Then they can go forward together, back into the world, breath their life into it, and make the dream real…
A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes Come True
by Harrison Ellenshaw
The Jonah Goldberg complains that things are getting ugly. No…not that cutting the ring fingers off of devoted couples is an ugly thing to do…but that those couples are fighting back is ugly…
Did you catch the political ad in which two Jews ring the doorbell of a nice, working-class family? They barge in and rifle through the wife’s purse and then the man’s wallet for any cash. Cackling, they smash the daughter’s piggy bank and pinch every penny. "We need it for the Wall Street bailout!" they exclaim.
No? Maybe you saw the one with the two swarthy Muslims who knock on the door of a nice Jewish family and then blow themselves up?
No? Well, then surely you saw the TV ad in which two smarmy Mormon missionaries knock on the door of an attractive lesbian couple. "Hi, we’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!" says the blond one with a toothy smile. "We’re here to take away your rights." The Mormon zealots yank the couple’s wedding rings from their fingers and then tear up their marriage license.
As the thugs leave, one says to the other, "That was too easy." His smirking comrade replies, "Yeah, what should we ban next?" The voice-over implores viewers: "Say no to a church taking over your government."
Obviously, the first two ads are fictional because no one would dare run such anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim attacks.
The third ad, however, was real. It was broadcast throughout California on election day as part of the effort to rally opposition to Proposition 8, the initiative that successfully repealed the right to same-sex marriage in the state.
What was the reaction to the ad? Widespread condemnation? Scorn? Rebuke? Tepid criticism?
Nope.
This newspaper, a principled opponent of Proposition 8, ran an editorial saying that the "hard-hitting ad" was too little, too late.
Look at this. Just look at it. Goldberg is saying that to call the Mormon church’s campaign against same-sex couples for what it is, is comparable to spreading the antisemitic lies that greedy Jews are controlling the world’s financial markets. And as for calling Muslems terrorists, just what the hell did Goldberg think was going on among his pals at in the kook pews after 9-11?
But Mormon’s really did spend millions, and made the critical difference in organizing the vote on Proposition H8. This isn’t a lie, it’s a matter of record. Although exactly how much money and manpower the Mormons put into it is still being dragged out of them by California authorities. That ad Goldberg calls ugly, was simply calling the Mormon’s attack on loving, devoted couples for what it was in meaning and in fact: an invasion of their homes, their lives, that destroyed their Marriages. That is literally what it was.
But Goldberg doesn’t see it that way. In his twisted moral sewer, it isn’t the Mormons who were the aggressors here, but the same sex couples who’s only crime was to be in love…
It’s often lost on gay-rights groups that they and their allies are the aggressors in the culture war. Indeed, they admit to being the "forces of change" and the "agents of progress." They proudly want to rewrite tradition and overturn laws. But whenever they’re challenged democratically and peaceably, they instantly complain of being victims of entrenched bigots, even as they adopt the very tactics they abhor.
Here’s what I tried to post in the comments to his column at the LA Times…
Tell Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., who had to wait outside the hospital doors while his beloved partner Robert Lee Daniel, died at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center that he is the aggressor in the culture war. Tell Janice Langbehn, who had the hospital door shut in her face while her partner Lisa Marie Pond died of a stroke in Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida that she’s the aggressor in the culture wars. Tell Sam Beaumont, who was evicted from the ranch he shared with Earl Meadows, his partner of decades, by Meadow’s cousins, and then sued for backrent on top of that for back rent, that he’s the aggressor in the culture wars. Tell all the loving, devoted cross-national couples who cannot marry their loved ones, and have to wave goodbye to them as their visas expire, that they’re the aggressors in the culture wars. Tell Sharon Bottoms, whose son was taken from her because she is a lesbian, that she’s the aggressor in the culture wars.
Then look at yourself in a mirror, and ask the knuckle dragging lout you’re staring at what kind of person cuts the ring fingers off of devoted, loving couples, and then has the nerve to call Them aggressors?
…but the Times limits comments to 650 characters, so I had to whittle that down a tad. It’s pending "approval".
Goldberg and his smarmy kind need to understand one thing if they understand nothing else…the days when we passively accept having our home lives torn to bits by gutter crawling bigots like him and then being spit on for good measure, are over. No more Mr. Nice Gay. Welcome to the morning after. I’ll be your server today. My name is Fuck You.
Here’s what I don’t get about California and the recent Proposition 8 vote: Why all the commotion over yet another passage of yet another marriage amendment?
This was the 30th time a state has placed either a constitutional amendment proposal or its equivalent on its ballot, and the 30th time the amendment has passed.
Thirty straight wins is formidable. It’s downright Globetrotter-esque. The New England Patriots didn’t even go 30-0.
Nice. Tens of thousands of loving, devoted couples have just been forcibly divorced, care of the tens of millions of dollars the Mormon church shoveled into California’s ballot initiative process, and this prize Mormon lout is comparing that trauma to a sports game. I guess part of the process of becoming a god involves laughing at the humanity of those mere mortals who just happen to be your neighbors in this life too…
To: Lee Benson (benson@desnews.com), The Mormon Times.
Subject: Sore Losers
Sore losers Mr. Benson? The thousands of loving, devoted same sex couples who’ve just had their ring fingers cut off by your church are sore losers are they? Well…I reckon. But count on more sore losers to come. Sore losers like Richard Raddon, who just lost his job at the Los Angles Film Festival after his donation of 1500 dollars came to light. And Scott Eckern, who lost his job at the California Musical Theater when his donation of a thousand dollars came to light. Sore losers like Marjorie Christoffersen, owner of the El Coyote in Los Angles, who has lost customers and the respect of her neighborhood when her donation came to light. Sore losers. Election day has come and gone, and the votes have all been counted, and still the ranks of sore losers grow. And grow. And grow. We were supposed to just go away now weren’t we? Because it couldn’t possibly matter to us that our ring fingers had just been cut off. Because homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.
Eckern and Raddon, and all the sore losers still to come got exactly what they asked for, exactly what they worked so righteously to achieve. A world without love, without sympathy, without kindness and trust. A world where love grovels before the mob, and the human heart is something anyone can spit on if they have enough votes. Your church spent millions to tell our neighbors, our co-workers, our parents and children, our brothers and sisters, our families and our friends, that their gay and lesbian companions in this life were invading their schools to molest their children, imprison their clergymen, and destroy western civilization. And now we’re sore losers too. Well…I guess if we can be destroyers of western civilization, we can be that too without too much additional burden.
Sore losers? Okay. Fine. Whatever. And you…may you spend every second of the rest of your life watching victory laugh in your face. You reached for the poison. Now drink it.
So…We Removed The Brakes…And Damn If The Train Didn’t Jump The Tracks And Crash Anyway…
Via Atrios… The propaganda in the kook pews these days is the economic collapse was caused by liberals forcing banks to make mortgage loans to poor people. As Eric Hoffer once said, propaganda doesn’t fool people, so much as allow people to fool themselves…
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.
Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.
"These mortgages have been considered more safe and sound for portfolio lenders than many fixed rate mortgages," David Schneider, home loan president of Washington Mutual, told federal regulators in early 2006. Two years later, WaMu became the largest bank failure in U.S. history.
The administration’s blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of a philosophy that trusted market forces and discounted the need for government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.
Emphasis mine. And…what was the trigger for that previous spurt of massive government intervention in the economy? Oh…right… The Great Depression. Much of the regulation that republicans have been fighting tooth and nail to eliminate was put in place in the 1930s, to prevent another one of those.
"We’re going to be feeling the effects of the regulators’ failure to address these mortgages for the next several years," said Kevin Stein of the California Reinvestment Coalition, who warned regulators to tighten lending rules before it was too late.
Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.
That needs to be fixed. I know a lot of folks are absolutely against the bail-outs. But if massive portions of the economy suddenly go dark we’ll be a decade or more digging our way out of this. But in exchange for…oh…not going to jail…the people who are responsible for this mess should at least loose their jobs. If train-wreaking the world economy isn’t incompetence then what the hell is?
I have finally…Finally…finished the pencils and inks for episode 11 of A Coming Out Story! And it only took me…what…a year and four months? That obviously wasn’t an actual year and four months worth of work. For the longest time I simply could not go anywhere near my drafting table, for some reason I still don’t really understand, other then so many stresses in my life just all came together all of a sudden and I just couldn’t even bear to look at my work area down in the art room.
But it’s coming together now. I still have some work to do in Photoshop…adding the panels and text and touching up this and that. It’ll be the touching up that takes the most time, because I want to get things as right as I can before I put anything up. This episode comes to seven and a half pages. That’s two rows of drawings per page, at about four panels per page. But some pages had more then that. I think I did 29 panels in all for this one.
I have it all scanned in. Now I have to polish it up and put it online. I’m hoping to get that done by next weekend. Finally. Yes…I know…I’ve promised finish dates before that I’ve let slide. But the heavy sweat work was the pencilling. That part of it really gives meaning to the phrase 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. Actually, I’d say it was more like 2 percent verses 98 percent. But now that’s done, the rest is just a matter of cleaning up.
I actually had to go back and re-do some of it after I’d been away from it for so long. I wasn’t satisifed with many of the earlier panels and I re-drew a lot of it. Then I added two more pages to the beginning of it. But those two pages came out of my pencil pretty fast, compared to the rest of it.
The next episode may run to as many if not more panels, but I think it will go quicker because it tells a story more then this episode does. The drawing for 12 will be a lot less repetative then 11s was. You’ll see what I mean when I put 11 up. Finally.
“Nobody was prepared for this,” Mr. Rubin said in an interview. He cited former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as another example of someone whose reputation has been unfairly damaged by the crisis.
This seems like a pretty serious dodge here…
Yes, but not the one you think it is. Rubin, like a lot of the Bush-Reagan big money cronies, drank the deregulation kool-aid some time ago. He really thinks that unregulated capitalism is self correcting and self sustaining. He’s Still looking at what happened to the world economies through those ideological rose colored glasses. What’s happening now just wasn’t supposed to happen. They still can’t believe that it’s happening. And if the government they’ve been calling part of the problem not part of the solution for so long hadn’t started bailing their asses out, they’d be jumping out of windows now, just like they were during the Great Depression.
For generations now, ever since FDR, the country club class has been dispensing crap about how the Great Depression wasn’t really caused by their greed and excesses, but by the very government regulation that has kept us from having more of those massive boom and bust cycles ever since. The great middle class created in this country by the New Deal is something they sincerely regard as having been carved out of their hides and they hate it. They think we’re taking money from their pockets and they don’t see and don’t care that it was making the nation stable and the economy solid and strong for generations…strong enough for them to keep getting all the rich they want to get…just not as much or as fast. But this idea that taxes are theft, and regulation is socialism, not the cost of having a stable democracy and a stable economy, is like a religion to them.
So for generations now, the uber rich have been drenching the middle class with this fairy tale that the Great Depression was actually caused by…get this…Too Much government regulation, as opposed to the nearly none that allowed them to create worthless paper wealth on top of worthless paper wealth…just like…oh…what they did during the Bush years. They told the middle class that if the rich were only allowed to dismantle the New Deal, why, Everyone would prosper. But that crap was supposed to be just for the rubes to eat, while the rich ate the standard of living and the life savings of the middle class because they’ve thought all along that all that was rightfully theirs to begin with.
But some of the uber rich actually started believing they could have their middle class and eat it too. Sorta like the way they told us they could take the Social Security trust fund money and put it into the stock market and then there would be money in both the trust fund to pay for current benefits and money in the stock market too! See how one dollar magically becomes two? That thinking is how they got us into the current mess, and not coincidentally how they got us into the Great Depression once upon a time. Back then, the government regulated the banks to prevent that magic money from getting into the finance system again, and the uber rich have been trying to roll back those regulations ever since, because that prevented them from sucking money out of the banks…money that theoretically belonged to working class depositors. Oh sorry depositor…we loaned your life savings out to somebody…who loaned it out to somebody…who loaned it out to somebody…who bought stocks with it…
They began thinking they really could suck the money out of the middle class, and still have a middle class left to sell things to and keep the economy running. But…There is no free lunch. Really. There isn’t. Why…the Free Market will self correct…and the rising tide will lift all boats… No. It doesn’t. It sure didn’t during the Great Depression…that grand daddy of all boom and busts. And now that they’ve managed to gut most of the New Deal brakes that kept those huge boom and bust cycles from seriously crashing the economy…surprise, surprise….it’s all crashing around their heads again. And only that evil wicked federal government is standing between them and absolute ruin. And they’re begging it to step in and save them from…well…themselves. Schadenfreude.
And they won’t learn. Trust me…they won’t learn. At the end of some future day, when things are back to normal, or as near to normal as possible, they’ll still look resentfully out from their rarefied heights down upon the middle class, all the ticky-tacky homes with their ticky-tacky furniture and their ticky-tacky clothes and their ticky-tacky lawn ornaments, believing all that only exists because it was carved out of, and not there to save their sorry hides.
I don’t do MySpace that often anymore. Or Facebook that much either. which I got lured into because so many of my co-workers are on it. But of the two I think it’s been Facebook more these days then MySpace. But I’ll still check into MySpace every now and then.
MySpace will feed you ads tailored to your profile…meaning I get a definate gay slant to the ads I’m being fed. That’s okay with me. Better then okay actually. In a world that still seems to have trouble admitting that folks like me exist, let alone treat us fairly, it’s kinda nice to be talked to by advertisers, instead of talked past all the time.
But just now when I logged off, I got fed an ad for "Senior Dating". Swell. Just what I needed. I’m assuming this isn’t ‘Senior’ as in Senior Software Engineer.
Great. Just great. First thing in the morning and I get called a lonely old fart by MySpace. Bet I find another goddamned AARP card in the mail again tomorrow too. I must have thrown out two or three dozen of those damn things already. I’m not old. I’m at that awkward age. You know…somewhere between birth and death.
Get Your Deeply Held Religious Beliefs Off My Back
Of course, while I was away in a private little world where everyone gets along, the fallout from Proposition H8 continued in full force. As it should. A lot of people are claiming they have a duty to strip gay people of their civil rights because their religion tells them to. But they had another duty, as Americans, to stand up for liberty and justice for all. We have seen time and again in this KulturKrieg, how religion is used as a wedge, to separate Americans from one another, for the benefit of the haters of the American dream. Charles De Gaulle once said Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first. That applies to Christian nationalism as well.
Freedom of religion doesn’t mean you’re free to impose your religious beliefs on others. Freedom of religion means even the heathens in the church across the street have rights too. Freedom of religion means that even the people your religion brands as pariahs have rights too. Freedom of religion means we are all equals in the eyes of the law. That is how the religious outcasts of Europe once conceived of the American land they fled to, when their own beliefs were being persecuted back in the old countries. A nation of religious non-conformists, dissidents, and outcasts, cannot hold together when one group demands that its "deeply held religious beliefs" have the force of law over others. The haters of America are well aware of this.
You can be a Mormon when you pray in a Mormon church. You can be a Catholic when you pray in a Catholic church. You can be a Baptist when you pray in a Baptist church. When you walk into a voting booth, you must be an American. The American prayer is for liberty and justice for All, or America simply cannot be anymore. If that offends your deeply held religious beliefs, find another country. Because what you want to live in is a theocracy, not a democracy. You can be a Christian, or a Mormon, first, before anything else, anywhere and everywhere but in the voting booth. In the voting booth, you must be an American first.
When Are Your "Privately Held Religious Beliefs" Not So Private Anymore?
Posted by Dan Savage on Wed, Nov 26 at 10:44 AM
When you donate $1500 to a political campaign to strip other people — people who are not your co-religionists — of their civil rights. Richard Raddon is, or was, the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival. All hell broke loose after it emerged that Raddon, who is Mormon, had donated $1500 to the "Yes on 8" campaign. The LA Times:
After Raddon’s contribution was made public online, Film Independent was swamped with criticism from "No on 8" supporters both inside and outside the organization. Within days, Raddon offered to step down as festival director, but the board, which includes Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, Lionsgate President Tom Ortenberg and Fox Searchlight President Peter Rice, gave him a unanimous vote of confidence.
Yet, the anti-Raddon bile continued to bubble in the blogosphere, and according to one Film Independent board member, "No on 8" supporters also berated Raddon personally via phone calls and e-mails. The recriminations ultimately proved too much, and when Raddon offered to resign again, this time the board accepted.
Raddon released a statement that said, in part, "I have always held the belief that all people, no matter race, religion or sexual orientation, are entitled to equal rights." Except for when they’re not — and Raddon also believes that the religious should wield a veto over other peoples’ civil rights. He goes on to whine about being a "devout and faithful Mormon," and about how his contribution to "Yes on 8" was a "private matter." Uh… no. A donation to a political campaign is a public matter; and civil marriage rights for same-sex couples did not infringe upon the religious freedom of Mormons, devout or otherwise.
Bill Condon, the gay guy who directed Dreamgirls, attempted to get Raddon’s back: "Someone has lost his job and possibly his livelihood because of privately held religious beliefs."
No. No. No. Raddon lost his job due to criticism of his public political actions, not his private religious beliefs, and his public political actions were a part of the public record. If Raddon wanted to go to church and pray his little heart out against same-sex marriage, or proselytize on street corners against gay marriage, or counsel gay men to leave their husbands and marry nice Mormon girls instead, that could be viewed as an expression of his "privately held religious beliefs." Instead he helped fund a political campaign to strip a vulnerable minority group of its civil rights.
"Millions of Californians definitely lost their civil rights," says John Aravosis. "But I’m not hearing a lot of concern about any of those victims, only sympathy for their attacker. When you use the power of the state to rip away my civil rights, and force me to live by your ‘values,’ you are no longer practicing your religion. You’re practicing politics."
In the wake of Prop 8 millions of gays and lesbians all over the country have decided that we’re no longer going to play by the old rules. We’re not going to let people kick our teeth down our throats and then run and hide behind "Nothing personal — just my private religious beliefs!" That game’s over.
That game’s over. When you advocate for this or that as a matter of law you are not practicing religion…you are practicing politics. And when you attempt to use the laws all Americans must live by, to bash your neighbor and elevate yourself, you are not a patriot but a nationalist.
This is the second time I have seen in the news since Proposition H8 passed, a Mormon who while working side by side with other gay people, first in the theater, and now in films, gave serious money to cut their ring fingers off. One-thousand, five hundred dollars is not pocket change. You just don’t give that kind of money to something like this, simply because your church tells you to donate. That’s the kind of money you give, when you really, really want the measure to pass. This was not simply religious obedience on his part. He was serious about it. That money became a knife in the back of every gay person he knows, every gay person he ever worked with, every gay person whose creative talent and energy gave him the means to earn a living.
What you have to understand about this fight, is that it isn’t about marriage. It’s about love. Gay people, must not be allowed to love and be loved in return. They must not be allowed to have that intimate other in their lives, that companion of the heart to walk through the years with, side-by-side, soul to soul. To allow us to marry is to aknowledge that homosexuals love, and that cannot be. But when you take the possibility of love away from someone, what is left? What is left, to council peace, compassion and sympathy when rage fills the empty space where love once lived?
Do they really think, at long last, that we are not human? What Raddon got was precisely what he asked for. A world without love, without compassion, without sympathy, without peace. Congratulations Richard. Mission Accomplished.
Snowstorms that dump two or three feet of snow overnight, and the Friday after Thanksgiving, are why I stock up on supplies for the Winter. There are days when you just don’t want to set foot outside, let alone drive anywhere.
What Was That King Said About Shallow Understanding Again…?
He was talking about race relations of course, but you can see it apply all across the spectrum of human relationships: "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will…"
No kidding. I’m fifty-five years old now. My walk through life has taken me in many different directions, down many paths I would not have expected. Paths that even today some people who have known me for ages have never heard me talk about. Most of old high school friends know very little about the life I’ve lead lately. The friends I’ve made in the 80s and 90s mostly know very little about the life I led as a kid. My co-worker friends know little about my home life. My gay friends don’t really know my straight friends, and vice versa. The two main branches of my family tree live on different coasts, and don’t much like each other. Mom’s side sees less and less of me as their religiosity grows more and more hardened. My brother and I talk often, but he is not here to actually see the life I lead, or take part in any of it. It’s not that I live separate lives. I live only one. But it is very broadbanded. My walk has taken me many places.
I appreciate the fact that no one friend has ever been with me throughout the whole of that walk. It is the central grief of my life, that I have had no partner in love to share much of the walk with. I am fifty-five years old now, and any lover I manage to gain now, will only be there to walk with me through the last few bits of it. I’ll never have that one great lifelong love. It’s too late. The closest I could get to it now, is if I manage to make a lover out of someone from my past, who happens to come back into my life all of a sudden. Which I am pretty sure won’t happen.
So I can appreciate how some folks I see on a semi-regular basis here in Washington-Baltimore won’t know, can’t possibly know, all there is to my story. But some of it must surely become pretty goddamned obvious after a few years of hanging out with me. Let alone a couple decades. But apparently…not.
Understand that central grief of my life, if you understand nothing else about me, and handle it with care if I choose to let you see it. Because when that happens, Understand This, I am Not looking for a shoulder to cry on. If I let you see that grief it’s because, only because, I trust you. It’s a big part of me, that grief. I don’t want it there…I hate it…it has drained so much of the energy out of me over the decades. So much that I could have been, and now never will be. It still drains me a little, every day. I don’t want it there…I hate it. But there it is. We place our hearts in our friend’s hands. Mine has a great big wound on it that never heals, and never will until the day comes, if it ever does, that I find that intimate other. If I give you my heart you will see it there…it’s impossible for me to hide. And I shouldn’t have to hide it from a friend anyway. Just…handle it with care. It’s bigger, deeper, and a hell of a lot more painful then it looks. You poke it, and you won’t like what happens next.
I get it that not everyone in this world wants the soulmate. Really I do. I get that the quick easy fuck, and the shacking up with someone you don’t really like all that much, simply because you just don’t want to go home to an empty house every night, isn’t just a phenomena of the urban gay subculture, but all of humanity. You need to get that I am not that. For years, seriously, ever since I was a teenager coming off of my first high school crush, I regarded casual sex as cheap and the people that pursued it shallow. Well…I grew up. I came to realize that my temperament in love and sex and the whole dating and mating game were not everyone’s. I came to realize that you can’t judge people by the kind of sex they have, but by how well they treat one another. Should have been an easy thing for a gay man to grasp, but it took me a while. But at last I got there.
But some people seem to think growing up means not simply learning to acknowledge and respect other gay folks lifestyles, but living them too, as if my own romantic needs and desires are childish things, fairy tales, that sensible gay adults leave behind. If that’s the case, then I’m not the one who needs to grow up. You are. I learned the world is bigger then the limits of my own understanding, larger then the reach my own desires. You can learn it too. And learn this while you’re at it: people who need the lover and do not need and do not want the fuck buddy are a legitimate part of that world. Your mileage may vary. Fine. I am not you. And that’s okay. Let’s hear it for diversity.
No, I will not trick.
No, I will not hang out in meat market bars.
No, I will not "broaden my interests". There is nothing wrong with my interests. You’d know that, if you’d ever bothered to understand what my interests really are, instead of assuming what they are by whatever jerks my head around. I am looking for a lover, not a fuck buddy. If I was looking for the fuck buddy then maybe what turns my head would be a good indicator. It’s not.
No, I will not accept being single as my state in life. The day I finally accept that I have no chance whatsoever in finding that one great love of my life, is the day I put a gun to my head. Stop asking me to accept it, or stop pretending to like me as a person. Pick one.
And stop blaming me for my own singleness! I Have tried to find that intimate other, that companion of my heart. As I recall, I sent a certain someone who seemed to have a hard time wrapping his head around this, a several page letter detailing how hard I’ve tried ever since I was a teenager. And what I got back was a Fisked response that basically ignored every fucking thing I said in that letter, and kept right on blaming me for my own singleness. The fact is, if you’d care to look beyond your own great good fortune, at just our own little crowd, that finding and keeping that one great love is a goddamned hard thing. Most people are lucky to get even one chance at it. Let alone two.
Which is why we all need friends. Friends who care. And I don’t mean care in merely a rhetorical or theoretical sense. Friends who actually care enough to help. Shouting out to a drowning man from the safety of the shore, directions to a store that sells life preservers, isn’t helping.
I don’t expect my friends to set me up with dates. And especially not if they think it’s asking too much to expect to actually have a love that engages you body and soul, heart and mind. And extra especially if they think I’m not attractive enough to actually have a chance of finding what I am looking for. And extra-extra especially if they have a completely fucked-up idea of what it is that I am looking for in the first place. I don’t expect it. But if something comes along, and you see a chance to do something like that for a friend, then why the hell wouldn’t you? That’s what I just don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you? I’ve actually done that sort of thing in the past for some of my heterosexual friends. Hell…heterosexuals do that for each other all the fucking time. If I wanted to get bitter about how indifferent gay culture is I could easily right now. But I know better then to judge all gay people by the indifference of some.
And when something just fucking drops into your lap, and you just let it float away like a dead leaf in the autumn wind, am I really being a hardass if I see that as a sign that your friendship was a hell of lot shallower then I’d thought it was? I thought we were friends. I don’t just say that word to everyone I know. Friends. I put my heart into your hands, hopes and dreams and wounds and all, and you let it drop on the floor. Is it my fault that it broke? Maybe. If it was my fault I put my heart there in the first place. Should I have known better?
I don’t think of myself as a particularly high maintenance friend. But I have my tender spots and in my defense I practically wear some of them on my sleeve. You had to know what you were doing to me when you did that. Or you’ve just been so goddamned lucky in your own love life it’s so completely so utterly blinded you to how hard it is for others, that you thought it wasn’t any big deal. Or maybe you just decided on your own that it wasn’t right for me. Would have been nice to have had the chance to decide that for myself.
A chance. That’s all I ask of my friends, is when a chance comes along, they let me have it. Maybe nothing at all comes of it. Fine. At least I had another chance, and it’s seeing the occasional chance still coming my way that keeps me going at my age. A chance. It fell into your lap. And instead of letting me have it, you kept it, and let it slowly wither into nothing. It’s gone now. Gone. And I’m left wondering what the fuck you were thinking when you let that happen. I suppose now you’re sorry you even told me about it to begin with. Of course the thing to be sorry about is you told me, not that you let it die.
I am not angry. I’m sad. But life, and the one great grief in my own, go on. I’ve been dealing with the big grief for decades now. I can deal with this.
For the past several months I have been wading into German history and culture, the better to befriend a certain someone. Last week it paid off. Finally. But it was eye-opening. If you want to make friends across cultural boundaries, it helps to understand where the other person is coming from, understand their frame of reference, and learn what their expectations are in social situations. If they’re even a little interested in you, they are probably trying to meet you halfway, and chances are you are trying to do the same. But you just can’t wing it. You have to know where the other person is coming from. And all too often Americans don’t even know where they are coming from.
Anyway… I meant to post this some time ago. This is a passage from Germany – Unraveling An Enigma, by Greg Ness. If you are trying to befriend a German, or trying to do business with one, I strongly recommend this book…
It is no coincidence that the Germans call the Enlightenment the Aufklärung, literally, the "period of clearing up". With the German’s strong sense of history, they view the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on Wissenschaft (science and scholarship) and Vernunft (rational understanding), as a watershed in human development.
It would be difficult to overstate the German respect for understanding based on rational analysis and scientific knowledge, both of which are seen as ways of creating Klarheit. This desire for clarity can be seen in their attempt to define their germs precisely when discussing issues as well as their love of creating comprehensive categories and taxonomies. Because Germans love to converse at length, clear, well-thought-out, rational arguments based on broad knowledge elicit admiration and great respect…
…
Germans also desire clear, unambiguous knowledge as a way to reduce the general insecurity and anxiety that plague them, since having knowledge is one of the best forms of control. From the German perspective, you can only control that which you understand, keeping every lurking chaos at bay.
Which leads us to this, regarding German communication patterns…
In Germany, there is a strong emphasis on explicit verbal communication, which emphasizes the content level of communication, and deemphasizes the relationship level. This is especially so among educated Germans in business and public situations, and is directly correlated with the private/public distinction we examined in the previous chapter. Americans also place significant emphasis on the content level of a communication but do not deemphasize the relationship level as much as Germans do…
Educated Germans today have, as we learned in chapter 3, idealized analytical knowledge, and their communication style tends to be explicit, fact oriented, and academic. There is a widespread belief among well-educated Germans that only by remaining rational and constantly following clear principles will humans be able to achieve a better, more civilized society. Germans believe that to really express something exactly, one needs complicated language…
(like…German? Um…anyway…)
…This leads to a business German that is more elevated and convoluted as compared with the more pragmatic, popularistic American style.
Corresponding to the strong emphasis on content, the relationship aspects of communication, as mentioned before, are more marginalized. Conflict is generally avoided, not by emphasizing harmony in personal relationships or by smoothing over differences of opinion, but rather by maintaining formality and social distance. Direct attacks on the content of a person’s communication are common, but attacks on the person are avoided by keeping the discussion impersonal and objective…
At last year’s Oktoberfest visitors ate 521,873 roast chickens, 58,446 pork knuckles and 104 oxen. They consumed 6.9 million liters of beer which is supplied exclusively by Munich’s six main breweries and is brewed especially for the festival. The list of lost items collected from under the tables is a good indication of how intense the partying can get — last year it included four sets of false teeth, 1,600 pieces of clothing, 600 identity cards and credit cards, and one complete Dirndl dress.
Notice the precision of the statistics there. Okay…thinks I. I get it now…I think. Germans are really Vulcans. But instead of Pon Farr they have something called Oktoberfest…which is when they get to go crazy…
Members of staff found 680 identity cards and passports, 410 wallets, 360 keys, 265 spectacles, 280 mobile phones and 80 cameras, one set of diving goggles, one set of angel’s wings, a superman costume and four wedding rings.
A long-haired Dachshund was also found roaming the festival ground, but was later reclaimed by its owner.
"For the first time, no dentures were found," the Munich city press department said with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. "Is this a sign of demographic change, good dental hygiene or a higher rate of tooth implants?"
I see more identity cards are being lost. But…Diving goggles? And…what self respecting native child of the land that produced Nietzsche would be seen in a Superman costume for chrissake? That’s too ridiculous for words.
Beer. Enough of it makes even Vulcans let down their hair…and fall on the floor…
I was only five minutes out of Disney World and moving down the Interstate when I decided to tune in OutQ on the car’s Sirius radio, and happened to get the hourly news, and hearing about the ongoing fight over Proposition H8 was all it took to make me angry, livid even, all over again.
You know…there was more to growing up with Walt Disney’s Wonderful World on the TV then the cartoons and the Disney-esq storylines. There was a sense to much of what Disney did, that, yes, it’s a small world after all, that the future was bright with promise, that technological progress was a thing to be embraced and that the study of science was good for us, part of a well balanced education.
I spent most of my time in Epcot, but a little also in Magic Kingdom, in Tomorrowland. There was a cute little Tomorrowland poster at the Main Street U.S.A. entrance to the Magic Kingdom, that read The Future That Never Was Is Finally Here. Tomorrowland is one great big nod to the retro-future of the 1950s and 60s. But at its core is this almost childlike sense of progress, grounded in knowledge, leading to a wonderful tomorrow. It was the sense of the future I grew up with. And I’m here to tell you, after eight years of George Bush and the religious right and their Republican enabler’s cultural war on reason, knowledge and science, it was exhilarating to have it served up to me again, unselfconsciously and unapologetically….like it was just everyday common sense.
I rode the Spaceship Earth exhibit at the entrance to Epcot. You get on a set of moving carts that work pretty much like other Disney “people mover” technologies. The step-on station is a platform that moves along with the carts. The carts never stop, but the access platform moves along with them so it’s a simple matter to get onto one. Once in the cart you sit in front of a touch screen video display which asks you for your language and place of origin, which it uses to tailor the narrative guide specifically to you. Each seat in the carts has its own set of speakers, and you only hear your own guide. The ride chronicles the progress of human communication, and the sharing of knowledge, from the stone age to modern times. The most soul-satisfying moments of my stay at Disney World, where those moments spent seeing the grand arc of the human story laid out before me as a great adventure, without concession to fundamentalist demands for biblical correctness. Time and again I walked through Disney World stunned, absolutely stunned, that here in the United States of America in the 21st century, kids are more likely to see in an amusement park then in their own schools, archeological and scientific facts not only told truthfully, but the pursuit of those truths seen as a great and wonderful adventure. I don’t think it’s just Disney’s gay friendliness that has the fundamentalists pissed off.
Sniff at all the staff (excuse me…Cast Members…) walking around the park in character costumes if you like. But that It’s A Small World After All mentality pervades everything in Disney World and after so many years of relentless scorched earth republican party assaults on tolerance and diversity, it was wonderful to stay for a while in a place where those things were just taken as a given. There was no preaching of diversity, it was just always there in the background, especially in Epcot. But even in Downtown Disney, which is more like a shopping plaza then a park, there was a holiday display that showcased all the different ways different cultures celebrated at this time of year. Yes, there was also “Christmas” everywhere. I went to “Micky’s Christmas Party” in Magic Kingdom Thursday night, a special event with a Santa parade and a spectacular fireworks display over Cinderella’s Castle (see below). But it was more a celebration of the holiday spirit, and believing in your own dreams, then any particular religion. There were in fact, no references to religion at all. Anywhere. Except to acknowledge, respectfully, even cheerfully, that different people have different beliefs. It’s A Small World After All. James Dobson would have hated it. He’d have joined hands with Maleficent onstage to try and tear it all down so that people won’t believe in their dreams anymore.
Walt Disney was a man of his times, and his magic kingdom was born after the second world war and at the beginning of the first American space age, when we were just learning how to launch humans into space and bring them back alive. There was so much we were going to do, and that we still haven’t. So much Walt Disney wanted to do too. Epcot wasn’t originally planned as a theme park. It was Walt’s Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. Having finally had my first hand look at what he accomplished with his theme park, I find it tragic he didn’t get a chance to realize his original dream for EPCOT. Cigarettes killed him before he could. But I think he would have done it had he lived.
And…thing of it is…had he accomplished EPCOT…so many many years ahead of its time…it would be a city today, perfectly, absolutely perfectly positioned to withstand the impact of rising energy costs. Here (in three parts) is a film that Walt produced to get investors to buy into his planned city of tomorrow. The quality on this copy is not wonderful, but it gets it across. These days you hear a lot about making cities and communities “walkable” and investing in more and better public transport. In EPCOT as originally planned, the pedestrian was going to be king. Various Disney developed “people mover” technologies were to be employed to get you from one place to another. The only reason you’d need a car in EPCOT, would be if you wanted to go visit someplace else.
“…their schools will welcome new ideas, so that everyone who grows up in EPCOT will have skills in pace with today’s world.”
I haven’t heard anyone seriously talk about schools and ideas and living in today’s world like that since Reagan began putting the knife into the New Deal. I was fortunate to enter school sometime just after Sputnik scared the hell out of the U.S. and suddenly giving kids a good science education was a vital national security thing and to hell with the fundamentalist vote. I grew up in a world where science and rationality and the pursuit of knowledge and understanding had respected and valued places in school and in society and in our dreams of tomorrow. It was either that, or let the Soviets plant their flag on the moon, and in effect, declare their ownership of space. You know…that place where all the missiles fly on their way to our cities.
Maybe it wasn’t all do-able exactly the way it was envisioned back then, but the spirit of the times is what matters more then its vision of what tomorrow would look like. Tomorrow is always different then you imagined it. But once upon a time we were all allowed to dream about making tomorrow better then today. We could envision a better world someday. The fundamentalists hate that dream. They want to take it away from us. All of us…not just gay people. We can’t be allowed to dream that dream. Because their dream is about the world coming to an end.
So I spent a while in Disney World. I saw Cinderella’s Castle and Micky and Donald and the Genie and I rode Spaceship Earth. I saw planet Earth float over the world showcase lagoon while its continents told in pictures the story of life, and the human journey from African savannas to the seas…and then the skys…
We can see a new horizon
built on all that we have done
and our dreams begin another
thousand circles ’round the sun
And I rode The Carousel of Progress…
There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of ev’ryday
There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow’s just a dream away
…and I was able to remember the old dream once again. Sniff at the Disney-esq sentimentality all you want…I used to…but I swear I won’t anymore. I have lived through decades of this culture war and it is precisely this sentiment that the fundamentalists want to make us all forget, kill in our hearts forever, so they can get back down to the business of bringing a world they have always hated to an end.
I am so glad I went. And not just because I got to see a certain someone I haven’t seen face to face in decades. Got to see him smile too…
A couple shots from the Late Night Christmas Special I went to last night at the Magic Kingdom…
That’s how they had the Castle lit up for the Christmas Special. Apparently they have to hang those lights every night the hold the special, after the park normall closes (which is early…5PM I think…), and have them ready for the special event reopening at 7PM.
There was a Christmas Parade down Main Street, then at 9:30 there was the most amazaing fireworks display I have ever witnessed around the Castle. Here’s a wee taste from inside the crowd…
There was a light show, On the Castle walls, which kept changing color. There was music piped over the crowd by tactfully hidden loudspeakers which must have been everywhere because the music and the narrator’s voice (it was Jiminy Cricket), was never too loud in one place, nor too quiet in another. The sounds just seemed to come at you out of thin air. And everything, Everything, was precisely timed to the fireworks display, which was massive, and tightly choreographed. They literally painted the sky around the Castle with multicolored fire.
I’ve never seen its like. Fireworks were shooting From various Castle ramparts, and bursting in the sky behind it, while animated images were being projected on various parts of the Castle walls, and the walls themselves were constantly changing color. Lots of really good booms rang out, timed exactly to the music. Things were flying up into the sky from all directions. At one point, an acrobat dressed up as Tinkerbell sailed overhead from the top of the highest Castle turret. Every little thing about the display was perfectly done, which was amazing because there was so much going on. And you don’t just sling around powerful fireworks like the ones they were using. Those explosions and bursts of light were Not small. The uber geek in me was impressed. Actually, it made my jaw drop.
More later. I’m off now to use the voucher for a free game at the Fantasia Miniature Golf area.
Turns out, I do have a fridge here in the room. Like many utility things here in Disney World it was tactfully hidden behind something meant to look like something else. In this case it was a dresser cabinet. One of the doors was actually hiding the fridge. So I can go buy some stuff and bring it back to the hotel room without worrying about it spoiling.
I did so much yesterday, and I have so much on the plate today, tomorrow, and Sunday that I don’t think I’ll be blogging for a while. The price of the tickets here, and the accessories, makes you want to make the most of every moment. I’ll write more about all that later too.
In the meantime, a certain someone is in for a surprise when he comes in to work one of these days shortly…whether he sees me this trip or not. Hey guy…your co-workers are a really nice bunch of people. And they all like you very much.
Of course I can say that out here because you don’t read my blog. You’re not reading it now are you?
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