Video Only — A threatening letter has sparked a new controversy here in San Diego surrounding the gay marriage debate. Donors who gave money to the No on Prop 8 campaign say they received blackmail letters demanding money, and the Yes on 8 campaign now says the letters were sent by their employees.
In Nicholas Meyer’s Sherlock Holmes novel, The West End Horror, there’s a scene between Holmes and Oscar Wilde…I’m quoting from memory here…where Wilde tells Holmes that he has a perfect way of dealing with blackmailers when they threaten him with incriminating letters. "I publish them", he says.
Donate to No On 8, Here. Maybe you’ll get one of these letters too…suitable for framing…or posting online…
Message From Starfleet Captain: The Center Of The Universe Has Been Discovered…And You’re Not It…
You know how it is that some Über heterosexuals just have this…overwhelming need…to project their cheapshit character flaws and emotional infirmities onto gays? Yeah…it’s like that…
William Shatner is aiming his phaser at his former "Star Trek" colleague George Takei, calling him "sick" and "psychotic" in a YouTube rant.
Ticked off that Takei didn’t invite him to his recent California wedding, Shatner trashed the actor who played Mr. Sulu on the 1960s sci-fi series as if he were a villainous Klingon.
"The whole thing makes me feel badly, poor man," Shatner said in the video. "There is such a sickness there. It’s so patently obvious that there is a psychosis there. I don’t know what his original thing about me was."
…
"He has continued to speak badly about me for all these years," Shatner continued. "Obviously, hiding his homosexuality – talk about festering and not living the truth of your life and feeling badly about yourself – and being fearful somebody would find out about this terrible, terrible secret, so he thought."
Geeze Bill…Ego much? I like the response of Takei’s spouse, Brad Altman…
Altman later told the News that the pair "definitely" sent an invitation to Shatner through his manager, Larry Thompson.
"Maybe he thought it was junk mail," Altman said.
KaPow!
And in other news…at least one happy gay man out there managed to land an Altman. Not that I happen to know anyone by that name myself…precisely…
Since last Monday I’ve finished half a page on Episode 11 of A Coming Out Story. It’s slow work when all I have is the weekday evenings. Tonight I was only able to finish one panel, but that got a page done and I can see the end of the pencil work on this one in front of me.
A few panels are some of my best pencil work so far. There’s a close-up of a young me with my head on the pillow at the beginning of this one that I’m especially happy with. And one pencil of the object of my affections that gets him pretty well right, as I remember him strolling through the hallways of my old high school. I’m getting good now at drawing my main actors with a few simple lines. We’ll see how well they translate into inks.
I’m able to have fun again with the whole situation I’m relating in my story. I think now, that part of my cartoonist’s block this past year has been that it wasn’t fun revisiting it, because I was living it all over after again having found him again after 35 years of searching. That shy seventeen year old is still there inside of me, and I’ve been walking on eggshells for over a year now, stressing all over again about what he thinks or doesn’t think of me. It’s crazy…I’m a grown man now…but there it is. So trying to get my sense of humor back about that part of my life so I could work on the story just hasn’t been do-able. I’ve been stressing almost exactly like I was 35 years ago. Maybe some day when I’ve finished A Coming Out Story, I’ll do one about how finding your first crush turns you back into the kid you were all over again, and all the things in your past you thought you’d settled and resolved you only thought you had.
The other thing that may have got me motivated again is a couple books I’m reading written by gay men who were imprisoned in Britian back in the 1950s for "homosexual offenses" or "gross indecency". I’m into a book my Peter Wildeblood, Against The Law, in which he gives an account of his being caught up in the Montagu scandal of 1954 and his subsiquent imprisonment. Part of what I want to relate in my own story is how it was I managed to navagate my way to self acceptance without hating myself, and how easily it could have gone the other way for me. I was lucky in so many ways, but mostly in that. Because I fell in love, and because the guy I fell in love with was a decent, good-hearted guy who was good to me, I never hated myself.
But that was purely accidental. I came of age just after Stonewall, and just before the APA removed homosexuality from it’s list of mental illnesses, and the popular culture all around me constantly told me I was some sort of disgusting, degenerate monster. It was seeing my sexual orientation in the context of being in love, that saved me from that. It was pure luck. And I was fortunate also, very fortunate, to be coming of age right when the modern gay rights movement was taking off, just after Stonewall. Ten years earlier, and I might have been locked up like Wildeblood was. Or sent off to a mental hospital. That would probably have killed me. It killed a lot of people.
And the hate is still killing people. When I was a gay teenager, gay kids got absolutely no adult guidance while making that difficult transition from child to adult. The only thing we were taught then was that it was tragic, if not utterly disgusting, that we existed. It is barely any better nowadays. The religious right is fighting a furious, bitter, scorched earth battle to keep gay kids from accepting themselves and growing up to live healthy and whole adult lives. We have to hate ourselves, as much as they hate us. One thing I want to try to do with my story is get across the message that gay kids need to be loved, like all children do. They don’t need to be taught to hate themselves. It is a crime against humanity, to teach a child to hate themselves. Reading Wildeblood’s story reminded me of that other reason why I wanted to get my own story down, in my own way.
I wrote earlier that Obama’s favorabilities have surprisingly survived this election intact, given the amount of shit that has been flung in his direction. Part of the reason is that the GOP overreached in their attacks. While arguing that he was inexperienced could’ve gained traction pre-Palin, the stuff about being a Muslim Marxist Manchurian candidate was simply, well, ludicrous.
If you want to take a look at their reasoning, I recommend the work of Stanley Kurtz over at the National Review…
Stanley Kurtz being the guy who doctored up marriage statistics from Scandiavian countries so he could claim that legal same-sex marriage resulted in the decline of heterosexual marriages and that children were being raised mostly by unmarried parents now. Over at Slate, associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, M. V. Lee Badgett shows how Kurtz did it…
Despite what Kurtz might say, the apocalypse has not yet arrived. In fact, the numbers show that heterosexual marriage looks pretty healthy in Scandinavia, where same-sex couples have had rights the longest. In Denmark, for example, the marriage rate had been declining for a half-century but turned around in the early 1980s. After the 1989 passage of the registered-partner law, the marriage rate continued to climb; Danish heterosexual marriage rates are now the highest they’ve been since the early 1970’s. And the most recent marriage rates in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland are all higher than the rates for the years before the partner laws were passed. Furthermore, in the 1990s, divorce rates in Scandinavia remained basically unchanged.
Of course, the good news about marriage rates is bad news for Kurtz’s sky-is-falling argument. So, Kurtz instead focuses on the increasing tendency in Europe for couples to have children out of wedlock. Gay marriage, he argues, is a wedge that is prying marriage and parenthood apart.
The main evidence Kurtz points to is the increase in cohabitation rates among unmarried heterosexual couples and the increase in births to unmarried mothers. Roughly half of all children in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are now born to unmarried parents. In Denmark, the number of cohabiting couples with children rose by 25 percent in the 1990s. From these statistics Kurtz concludes that " … married parenthood has become a minority phenomenon," and—surprise—he blames gay marriage.
But Kurtz’s interpretation of the statistics is incorrect. Parenthood within marriage is still the norm—most cohabitating couples marry after they start having children. In Sweden, for instance, 70 percent of cohabiters wed after their first child is born. Indeed, in Scandinavia the majority of families with children are headed by married parents. In Denmark and Norway, roughly four out of five couples with children were married in 2003. In the Netherlands, a bit south of Scandinavia, 90 percent of heterosexual couples with kids are married.
That’s a higher rate then some states here in America. Mostly bible belt states. But look at this. First Kurtz gerrymanders the marriage statistics in Scandinavia by including time frames when it was declining Prior to the passage of same sex civil unions, to prove that those civil unions had an adverse affect on heterosexual marriage. In fact, after civil unions passed heterosexual marriage rates Improved. But that wasn’t enough. Kurtz also pointed out the fact that many heterosexual couples have their first kid out of wedlock, deliberately omitting the fact that they almost always marry afterward, in order to lead people to believe that there was some sort of massive population of kids living with unmarried parents in Scandinavia now. That this conclusion is absolutely false, that you can only arrive at it by concealing the fact that most parents do in fact marry after their child is born, mattered nothing to Kurtz. He had something to prove, and damn the evidence. This is what passes for virtue and morality among social conservatives.
Now he’s peddling the Obama is a marxist and/or muslim terrorist claptrap. How…unsurprising…
For some reason I was suddenly able today to sit down at my drafting table and finish two pages of the next episode of A Coming Out Story. Just…bang, bang bang…one panel after another…just…came out of me. The first hour or so of it was very difficult, but there was none of the reluctance to immerse myself in the storyline that I’d been experiencing for the past year or so and after a while it just kept coming. Two pages of good quality pencils. It was as though I’d never stopped drawing it a year ago.
I’ve got another two and a half pages to go and the pencils are done. After that, the inks should only take about five or six working days and the Photoshopping another two or three. By working days, I mean solid four hour stints at the drafting table. That’s a working day when all I have to give it is the time I have after work, or weekends.
I have no idea where all this just suddenly came from. I’ll probably be pondering it for the next few days. So much has happened since I started this little tale. So much, just over the past couple months. But I was able to churn out pages of this thing during other times of stress in my life. For some reason I just couldn’t so much as bear to look at this thing for a long, long while. Now I can. And…it’s fun again. I think that’s probably the biggest thing. I was banging out panels and quietly laughing to myself at the humor in the storyline as I drew them. It was a fun I haven’t had in a long time.
I’m going out for a brief walk now. I need to take a break. But I feel as if I could do some more when I get back inside.
I’ve lived with this creative urge inside of me all my life and I still don’t understand it. It comes and it goes in its own good time is all I can figure.
[Update…] Did two more panels before turning in for bed tonight. I keep this head of steam up and I’ll have the next episode out the door before the end of the month for sure…
The database of contributors to the campaigns, for and against, California proposition 8 must be lagging a tad behind because my first contribution of $500 still isn’t in there. But just for kicks and grins I took a stroll though the listings of contributors from Maryland, and was gratified at the overwhelming support No On 8 was getting from my neighbors. Out of something like a hundred and thirty names, only about five or six were from folks who gave money to support cutting the ring fingers off same sex couples. None of them were names I recognized.
I dontated another $500 dollars to the No campaign today. That makes my stake in the fight an even thousand now. But everyone who donates money between now and midnight Sunday (tomorrow as I write this) gets their contribution matched…
Dear Bruce,
Thanks to the outpouring of support in response to the $1 million match grant announced on Thursday, we are nearly halfway there.
The Yes campaign is now dragging out the usual Homosexuals Want To Prey On Your Children scare rhetoric…some of which is being targeted at California’s ethnic communities. Box Turtle Bulletin has a post up on a Yes ad aimed at Chinese readers, that directly links same sex marriage and pedophilia. Also incest and polygamy. The hate mongering from the Yes crowd has turned what was a likely victory for same-sex marriage, into a dead heat, largely because the No side is being outspent and out organized…largely with the behind the scenes support of the Mormon church. The Latter Day Saints as they like to call themselves, account for 40 percent of the Yes money bucket.
They’ve been swamping California TV with ads that portray gay people, both directly and indirectly, as child molesters, and claim that same-sex marriage will give homosexuals the legal means to go into schools and conduct recruiting activity even in kindergarten. They’re also claiming that churches will be forced to marry same sex couples under threat of prison if they don’t comply. It’s like Watching Anita Bryant’s campaign all over again. All that’s missing is Jerry Falwell standing up in front of a room full of reporters saying that a homosexual will kill you as soon as look at you.
That’s why the polls have tightened. We could loose marriage in California…possibly for generations, if people don’t step up to the plate and give. Now.
I’m single. It’s looking now as though I’ll always be single. So why should I care. Because I still believe in love. Love hasn’t looked at me twice but I still believe in it. And I can see with my own two eyes all the happy, contented, loving couples out there and they deserve a chance to make a home together, grow old together, have a life together. So I’m in for a thousand. Before its over I’ll probably give more. If we loose California the bitterness will just go on and on and on and maybe I’ll never live to see the end of it. But at least I’ll know I was one of those who did something, took a stand for freedom and justice and love even when it seemed hate would win anyway. What is freedom worth to you? What is equality worth?
What is your safety worth to you? Do you consider yourself a danger to children? The Mormon church says you are. They are telling every one of your neighbors that you want to enter their kid’s schools and teach them to be homosexuals. Probably so you can have sex with them.
Do you want to put the neighborhood pastor in jail? The religious right says you do. They are telling everyone, every single person you will ever walk past on the street after this election is over, that you want to put their pastors in prison if they don’t marry same-sex couples.
Do you want to put your neighbors in jail along with them. The right wingers backing proposition 8 say you do. They are telling your neighbors that you will have them arrested if you aren’t allowed into their kid’s schools to teach them how to have sex with you.
Maybe you don’t care all that much about same sex marriage. But the hate mongering going on to get proposition 8 passed, if allowed to go unchallenged, could get you killed. Or someone you love. Maybe that someone in your arms.
We are not supposed to exist. But we do. We are not supposed to love. But we do. We are not supposed to have a share of the American dream of liberty and justice for all. But it is the human dream, and we are as human as they. We exist. We love. We dream. Now we take our stand, for love, for life, and in the doing so, tell the world that we believe in the righteousness of our love, and our dream of freedom. Because it is righteous. Because our dream does not need us to hate our neighbor to make it real.
Donate Here, to No on 8. If you do it before midnight tomorrow whatever amount you donate will be matched. Any small amount…any at all…can help make a difference in leveling the playing field.
If you donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email, I will draw, if you wish, an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…you can have a signed 11 by 17 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
I’ve been giving it some thought lately. Probably I’m no different in this regard then any middle aged man who is staring it in the face at this point in his life. You’ve lived so many years, and now it’s looking you in the face. And I happen across this article in Scientific American that pretty well tracks my own thoughts on the matter…
Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
It should strike us as odd that we feel inclined to nod our heads in agreement to the twangy, sweetly discordant folk vocals of Iris Dement in “Let the Mystery Be,” a humble paean about the hereafter. In fact, the only real mystery is why we’re so convinced that when it comes to where we’re going “when the whole thing’s done,” we’re dealing with a mystery at all. After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does—it’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?
Yeah…that’s about it…
Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself slipping away, but it isn’t as though there will be a “you” around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just to remind you, you need a working cerebral cortex to harbor propositional knowledge of any sort, including the fact that you’ve died—and once you’ve died your brain is about as phenomenally generative as a head of lettuce. In a 2007 article published in the journal Synthese, University of Arizona philosopher Shaun Nichols puts it this way: “When I try to imagine my own non-existence I have to imagine that I perceive or know about my non-existence. No wonder there’s an obstacle!”
Actually…I’ve never had that problem. Maybe it’s just a failure of imagination…and mine is altogether too good for my own good. But here it is: Think of sleep. You lay down, and then you sleep. Perhaps you dream. Perhaps you remember a few of them when you wake up. Fine. But what about that part you don’t remember. The part where you are just..not there. That void between sleep and awake. That’s death. Or if that doesn’t do it for you…try to remember what it was like Before you were born. That point in time when you weren’t. That’s it too.
It’s a horrible thing to consider. But ironically, it’s nothing to be afraid of either. There’s a lot of ways of Dying that are worth being afraid of for sure. But if death really is the end of you, then you won’t know it, so it’s really nothing to fear in and of itself. A painful death maybe. A failed life maybe. But the saving grace of actually being dead is that won’t know it.
I’m 55 now. I don’t think I’m going to make it past my sixties. My body is getting tired. I can feel the strength in it slipping away. I think I have more of mom’s side of the family genes in me then dads. Males in her side just don’t last all that long. I figure I have maybe another ten years or so in me and that will be it. Either my heart will go or I’ll get a stroke or something like the males in her side usually do and that will be that.
Of course, that’s assuming I get the natural death and there’s no guarantee of that. I live in the city after all. I was taking my nightly walk the other day, with my iPod’s earbuds plugged in. I was strolling through my neighborhood where I’ve always felt safe, listening to a favorite classical piece, my mind wandering between this and that, when a friggin’ huge pit bull lunged at me from out of nowhere. This lady was walking her dogs…the other one was this little fluffy white thing…and as I passed by the big pit bull suddenly decided to take offense at my existence. There were parked cars between me and her and I didn’t even see them coming, just the motherfucking dog lunging at me from between two parked cars while it’s owner struggled to hold on. "Jesus Christ", I exclaimed, and she looked at me for a moment like she’d have loved to just let the dog go. They walked on by without so much as a word of apology from the lady. And here I always thought my violent Baltimore end would be at the hands of a mugger.
So…it could be anything…really…at any time. It’s a thing I’ve always accepted, I think, somewhere in the back of my mind. But when I was younger, it was only the violent or accidental death that seemed to be looking me over from somewhere just out of reach. I still had most of a natural human lifespan ahead of me, and in that, plenty of time to find a mate. Now I think, I’m just waiting to die because something somewhere in some corner of my mind has finally concluded that it won’t happen. And I’ll pass on from life never having had experienced that love of my life that so many others do…even if it’s only for a while. If I’d had it to do over again, knowing how it would be…I think I might have just opted out.
My brother once helpfully told me that a lot of people never find their soulmate. Thanks brother mine. Another of my gay Happy Hour friends helpfully told me recently that I should give up looking for that certain someone. "I’ve seen the guys you keep looking at," he told me. "People who look like that…want people who look like that." This from a nice looking guy who himself has an older lover. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I get the message. I don’t qualify. I reckon this is why the two of them decided to leave me stranded at the gate.
I kinda like the Fark.Com commenter’s responses to that Scientific American article…
"Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness, and you will see the impossibility of it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness."
Don’t try that. I did and wound up falling face-first into the coffee table.
…
f there’s an afterlife, you probably think "Whoa." If there is no afterlife, it’s probably like the last scene of
He’s probably referring there to that last brilliant last episode of The Sopranos…
Imagining death is the only way I get to fall asleep every night.
…
I do this all the time while brushing my teeth in the morning. It makes going to work not seem so bad.
…
So what about the virgins?
…
As long as I can taste Key Lime Pie.
…
The last second firings of the last neurons to go create a neurologicalexperience that only seems to last an eternity.
…
Yes I can. I’ve been to Ohio.
…
I was not alive for 14+ billion years before I was born, didn’t bother me in the least.
…
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.
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In every moment, we choose our eternity. Because eternity happens in an instant. I’m filling mine with love – and cream cheese.
…
Isn’t imagining death counter-productive? I mean, if you imagine it, you’ve just proved your alive.
I would think that not imagining death is closer to actual death.
Now there’s a sharp mind.
A five page artical from Scientific America about Death… before noon. Christ, I was hopping to put off my despair untili after 4 o’clock today… Thanks subby… asshat.
…
i dreamed that i died one time. i actually went to heaven, and could fly. but i still had to watch out for the powerlines just like i have to do in the dreams where i can fly, but haven’t died.
…
Imagine death? I can barely imagine Australia.
What’s awful now is that I can imagine death, but I can’t imagine being in love. Another of my gay happy hour friends gave me a little impromptu lecture the last time I was visiting him, about how having a lover is "work". You gotta love the way coupled people try to make lonely singles feel like they’re not missing out on anything. Especially when they leave you hanging at the gate as though your missing out on a chance to find that certian someone wasn’t any big deal.
Some time ago I bought myself one of those "body pillow" things. For those of you unfamiliar, they’re oversized pillows, about four feet long, that you can cuddle up to for comfort. I’d seen them advertized, mostly to women, and resisted the impluse to go out and get one for myself because I don’t have the kind of brain that can fool myself with subsitutes for the real thing (which is partly why I’ve never just gone out and rented an "escort" for the night). But I was at Costco one day and saw a big box full of them and the ones they were selling were so soft and nice that I found myself checking out with one and brought it home. It’s actually kinda nice to have something to just wrap myself around at night, but the interesting thing I’ve discovered is that just having that…mass…there in the bed with me has become addictive, even if I don’t snuggle up to it. It’s warm, it retains body heat, which will probably be nice when winter sets in here at Casa del Garrett. But the thing is it’s this object that’s just there laying next to me in the bed and now if it’s not there the bed seems so horribly empty that I have to bring it back in or I can’t get to sleep.
There’s probably some primitive subconscious thing going on there, having to do with that human need to have that other there with you. It’s just a big long pillow. It’s not flesh and bone, it doesn’t breath, it doesn’t have a heartbeat, it doesn’t roll over and hog the blankets. It’s just a big soft pillow. But it’s something. We are not made to be single all our lives. But some of us are condemned to be that. The crying shame is it doesn’t have to be that way. All the lonely people don’t have to be that way. The human family could put its mind to fixing that if it only wanted to. But the nature of coupled people is they stop caring about the lonely. They are complete, and they don’t want to be reminded of how it was when they weren’t. So they don’t pay attention to those of us who need help. That leaves us at the mercy of predators…dating service cons…"escorts", love advisers, and other opportunists that just take our money because they know we are desperate and easy marks. At least the body pillow only cost me a few bucks and it doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t.
Sleep these days, is the only time I don’t feel alone. Death won’t be so bad, except if I see it coming I’ll know I failed, and it wasn’t really worth being alive.
Rod Dreher, who thinks that same-sex marriage will destroy not only marriage itself, but civilization, posts today in an article titled, Newsom & Truth About Gay Marriage that…
Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown law professor, lesbian and pro-gay marriage activist, writes in the new book "Same Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts", that there is an irreconcilable conflict between civil marriage rights for gays and religious liberty for traditionalists. "[G]ay rights leaders are trying to deal with the conflict by simply wishing it away. That is neither possible nor intellectually honest."
And what is the nature of this conflict? Well…one commenter on Dreher’s blog sums it up thusly…
We have been over this ground hundreds of times, as Rod has pointed out. Why should the government care if Kate and Angela want to throw a party to celebrate their alternative lifestyle, which has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage?
But forcing my children to witness the lie that the relationship of two lesbians or two gay men (or three or four or twelve people of assorted genders) is *exactly the same* as the relationship of two people of opposite genders who not only can produce their own biological children but are expected to be completely responsible for them for eighteen years or so is an affront to my civil liberties, not just my religious ones.
Heaven forfend that he should be Forced to witness anything that contradicts his religion. I suppose he’s all for outlawing Jewish holidays too. But let it be said…he has given it a lot of thought…
The only way gay marriage and heterosexual marriage can be truly equal is if we require the sterilization of all heterosexual couples before they can marry. Otherwise, we’re creating a fiction that these two totally and radically different types of relationships, one of which has an overwhelming tendency to produce new citizens and the other of which has an overwhelming tendency not to–and *can never* do so in the same way, e.g., where each partner is equally the biological parent of each child–are exactly the same.
And if that’s not enough…
Since "marriage" as a civic concept has already been made completely meaningless by the advent of gay "marriage," and will only become more so as time goes on, I have a modest proposal: abolish it. End it altogether. Make "marriage" as important a secular concept as baptism and confirmation are–that is, not at all.
…
So, legally speaking, we’ll all be glorified cohabitators
Which is where I foolishly decide to jump into the discussion. Here’s my comment, being held for moderation last I looked…
Since "marriage" as a civic concept has already been made completely meaningless by the advent of gay "marriage," and will only become more so as time goes on, I have a modest proposal: abolish it. End it altogether.
That’s probably coming, but it won’t be same-sex marriage that makes it happen. When marriage in the United States becomes the moral equivalent of a whites only or gentiles only country club, heterosexual couples, good decent heterosexual couples, the very sort you really want to keep bought into it, are going to start abandoning it.
Not many certainly…not at first. But it’s already starting to happen. Opposite-sex couples are resorting to other forms of "civil union" or contracts or what-have-you more and more these days. Some think marriage is "old fashioned." Some dispute its relevance to couples in this day and age. Do you really think putting that Heterosexuals Only notice on the marriage license is going to change people’s minds about that? No…I don’t think you do.
How many couples with gay family and neighbors and friends are going to sign that document? Probably many, even so. But fewer and fewer, as people, good people, decent people, at long last get sick to death of watching loving, devoted same sex couples fighting constantly for rights they themselves can take for granted. You may not appreciate how the feeling of being privileged can make some people feel ashamed. Try.
So in addition to heterosexuals getting drive-in married and drive-in divorced, Plus all the heterosexual couples who just live together because they couldn’t care less about marriage to begin with, now you’ve got committed couples opting out of marriage because they don’t want their union, their mutual love, their devotion to each other and their kids, tainted by prejudice. And so that special place of honor marriage has in society, that I keep hearing folks babbling about in the same breath as "love the sinner…" just sails off, off into the sunset along with things like antisemitic homeowner covenants. Good job folks. Mission Accomplished.
It’s been well said that homosexuals can’t possibly do nearly the damage to the institution of marriage that heterosexuals already have. Orson Scott Card, who thinks homosexuality is a threat to the survival of the human race, said so in a recent column of his. Call it a testament to its power, and its essential truth, that marriage in the U.S. hasn’t been utterly finished off by now. A lot of big guns have been aimed at it over the course of my lifetime alone, and yet it still stands. But the righteous aren’t through with it either.
If the religious right finally convinces the rest of America that they can and will block same-sex couples from achieving marriage equality for generations, if ever, what will almost certainly happen is a faster movement away from marriage and toward other forms of coupling. Co-habitation is already a fact of life for a lot of young opposite-sex couples. Turning marriage into an instrument of discrimination is hardly going to change that. It’s just going to make decent people feel uncomfortable with the whole thing. Call it a win for the sexual radicals, with an assist by the sexual theocrats.
Mark Weigel reads a note from the kook pews, and takes it apart…line by line…
Another question yet to be resolved is whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. There is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii.
What evidence? We have a newspaper announcement of Obama’s birth in Hawai’i from 1961, and we have a Hawai’ian certificate of live birth. Obama did have Kenyan citizenship until he turned 21; as the son of Barack Obama, Sr, it was automatic. And it did not negate his American citizenship.
There is also a registration document for a school in Indonesia where the would-be president studied for four years, on which he was identified not only as a Muslim but as an Indonesian.
Here’s the document. It does identify Obama as a Muslim and identifies Indonesia as his "nation of citizenship," but that’s what his parents wrote down on their seven-year old son’s school form. If Gaffney thinks this negates Obama’s American citizenship, he doesn’t understand the law.
If correct, the latter could give rise to another potential problem with respect to his eligibility to be president.
Completely false. The document lists Honolulu as Obama’s "place and date of birth."
Curiously, Mr. Obama has, to date, failed to provide an authentic birth certificate which could clear up the matter.
False. I’ll link it again. Unless Gaffney believes that the state of Hawai’i is forging documents for Obama, this is proof that he was born in Honolulu.
This is fever swamp, Vince Foster-was-murdered, Bush-blew-up-the-WTC stuff…
Yes…isn’t it. Oh…but look…it isn’t some babbling nutcase churning this stuff out from his parent’s basement…
Neoconservative pundit Frank Gaffney, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense, has bid adieu to polite society with this column on "the Jihadist vote."
Let me repeat that: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary Of Defense. These are the folks who have been running the country for the past, oh, Eight Years. The debacles that are Iraq, Katrina and the national economy starting to make sense now? Here…let me explain something to you… No…Wait… Let Them explain something to you…
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
This isn’t just the heart of the Bush presidency…it’s the heart of the republican grassroots. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore”… Actually…yes it is…
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. They are not entitled to their own facts. Lies have consequences. The erosion of trust has consequences. You can’t just keep on making things up and expect nothing to come of it… When stocks become worthless, markets fail. When the word of the people becomes worthless, democracy fails.
UPDATE: Later in the column Gaffney cites Pennsylvania attorney Philip Berg, who’s filed a frivolous lawsuit against Obama on this citizenship conspiracy theory. That would be this Philip Berg.
Now, it is time for world leaders to take the lesson learned from Iraq and issue a warrant for the arrest of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney; arrest them; take them to a neutral country; try them for the murder of over 2,800 people from more than 80 countries on 9/11/01 and, when found guilty, sentence them appropriately. Jurisdiction would be proper in any of the more than 80 countries whose citizens were murdered on 9/11.
I compared Gaffney’s nonsense to 9/11 trutherism for a reason.
UPDATE II: This is pathetic: a Toledo station runs a "local hero"-type story on Berg, which puts legal documents from Hawai’i on equal footing with his fact-free claims. It’s mind-boggling. On the one hand you have a government certificate that says Obama was born at 7:24 p.m. on 8/4/61 in Honolulu. On the other you have Berg’s claim, from his lawsuit:
Obama’s grandmother on his father’s side, his half-brother and half-sister all claim Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. Reports reflect that Obama’s mother traveled to Kenya during her pregnancy; however, she was prevented from boarding a flight from Kenya to Hawaii at her late stage of pregnancy (which, apparently, was a normal restriction, to avoid births during a flight).
Notice the distinct lack of quotes and sources? It’s because the "Obama’s African family members claim he was born in Kenya" story is an internet myth. They have never claimed that. There is no such story. Go ahead and try to find it.
An internet myth. Note that. It’s what the grassroots are saying. To each other. Among other things. Over and over. Obama is a Muslim. Obama has ties to al Qaeda. Obama is a traitor. Obama is a terrorist. So it is, that the republican grassroots take their collective consciences around behind the barn and shoot it. Anything to win, even if it means taking a running bellyflop into the gutter. But it’s not just Obama they are hurling bullshit shit at. They are taking a dump on the very flags that they are busy waving.
It’s one thing to oppose the other party’s candidate on the basis of their record. It’s one thing to oppose them on the basis of their beliefs. It’s one thing to oppose them just because you don’t like their looks, the cut of their clothes, or because the sky is blue. Fine. It’s your right. But when you spread lies you are not opposing the man. You are hating on democracy. You are giving it the middle finger. A democracy is the sum of its citizens. Corrupt yourself, and you corrupt your country. It’s one thing for the politican on your TV screen to do it, it’s one thing for the talk radio host you tune into every day to do it, but when You lie to your neighbor for political gain, you are shitting on America.
This precious democracy we all share, that was bestowed us with the blood and treasure of so many of our forebears, asks only that you treat its core value, the election, with care and attention, and give to it whatever honest consideration you can, to the best of your ability. We all make mistakes sometimes in the ballot booth. Some votes we cast we long live to regret. But the important thing is we try and are honest. With ourselves. With our neighbors. Disagree we may. Vehemently. Fine. So long as it’s honest. That is what so many good people in so many generations past have died for, so that we could do. Speak freely and honestly to each other. Persuasively. Bluntly. Calmly. Angrily. Whatever. But honestly. Because you can. Because people died to give you that freedom. That’s all American is obliging you to do every election year. Instead, you are feeding it poison.
America is dying from that poison. I hear you speak of your patriotism, your love of flag and country. Over and over again I hear it. I see you wave the flag. I see it on your front doors. I see it on your bumpers. I see you wearing it on your lapels. Fine. Swell. Whatever. You love America? Then Stop Lying. Stop. Your motherfucking lies are killing it.
[Update…] Here’s a link to Factcheck.org on Obama’s birth certificate, since the one Weigel linked to isn’t enough for the kook pews. As if…anything could be…actually… I’m sure they have a way of explaining away this too…
In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961…
Dig it. They went looking through the newspaper archives and found the birth announcement. Of course…it’s all part of the consperacy you see…
Tech columnist Robert X. Cringely once wrote that "If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside." I don’t know about costing one hundred dollars, but the explode once a year killing everyone inside part is on the way…
Authorities have blamed a faulty onboard computer system for last week’s mid-flight incident on a Qantas flight to Perth.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said incorrect information from the faulty computer triggered a series of alarms and then prompted the Airbus A330’s flight control computers to put the jet into a 197-metre nosedive.
At least 51 passengers and crew were hurt, many suffering broken bones and spinal injuries, when the plane carrying 313 people from Singapore to Perth climbed suddenly before plunging downwards on October 7.
The plane was cruising at 37,000 feet when a fault in the air data inertial reference system caused the autopilot to disconnect.
But even with the autopilot off, the plane’s flight control computers still command key controls in order to protect the jet from dangerous conditions, such as stalling, the ATSB said.
"About two minutes after the initial fault, (the air data inertial reference unit) generated very high, random and incorrect values for the aircraft’s angle of attack," the ATSB said in a statement.
"These very high, random and incorrect values of the angle attack led to the flight control computers commanding a nose-down aircraft movement, which resulted in the aircraft pitching down to a maximum of about 8.5 degrees."
The pilots quickly regained control of the jet, issued a mayday emergency call and requested an emergency landing at the Learmonth air force base in remote Western Australia where passengers received medical treatment.
"The crew’s timely response led to the recovery of the aircraft trajectory within seconds. During the recovery the maximum altitude loss was 650 foot," the ATSB said.
The plane’s French-based manufacturer has issued an advisory on the problem and will also issue special operational engineering bulletins to airlines that fly A330s and A340s fitted with the same air data computer, the ATSB said.
Oh…your aircraft needs our $230,000.00 per seat service upgrade patch 3b_06-A…
Like that Airbus, my Mercedes-Benz is fly by wire. Seriously. There is no direct linkage between the accelerator pedal and the engine. I push down on the pedal and the onboard computer decides what to do, depending on how fast I’m already going, what gear I’m in, whether I’m driving up or down an incline, the road conditions as judged by the traction control system and I’m sure a zillion other variables it’s evaluating from one instant to the next.
The gear shifter is also more of an electronic control then a direct linkage, although it will lock the transmission in Park. I can press a button next to it to choose between two pre-programmed automatic shifting patterns, "Sport" and "Comfort". And it learns your driving habits and adjusts the pre-programmed shift patterns accordingly. There is a fairly complex set of steps you have to perform to reset the transmission program back to the factory default if you don’t like how its adjusted itself to the way you drive.
Mostly, while driving Traveler, I don’t really notice any of this. The car responds to me very sure and certain. I was driving in a sudden torrent of rain several weeks ago and never, Never have I felt so confident in the car I was driving, so solid and sure was the feel I had for the road while the skies had opened up all around me. I could barely see more then a few feet in any direction at times and the traffic was slowing to a crawl, but the car felt absolutely tight and sure. I never felt the slightest bit of skittishness or uncertainty in the car. The Mercedes was just There.
It’s easy to forget driving that car, that I am not nearly as much in control of it as I was my 1973 Ford Pinto. It just feels like I have more control. It’s a way better engineered automobile. It is much more a driver’s car then anything I have ever owned. But there is a computer, that’s trying to be as invisible as possible, between me and the car. This technology has been working its way into modern automobiles for quite some time now. You may already be driving a car with an adaptive transmission. Fly-by-wire is in the new 2008 Accords, so I was told when I went shopping last year. It’s probably in a lot of other cars by now too. The new hybrids would pretty much have to be fly-by-wire.
It’s nothing to be afraid of, so much as Aware of. All technology can fail. It’s just that computer technology is scary because it works invisibly. You can see the failure mode of an engine. You can take it apart and look at it and see where it broke and reconstruct the sequence of events from all the broken pieces. Software is like a ghost in the machine, running spirit-like inside hardware with no moving parts, just a lot of silent, miniature black monoliths on a green circuit board. When a program crashes, it vanishes like the soul from a corpse. You may know the instructions it was executing at the time it crashed, but it’s unlikely you’ll still have access to the state the system was in just prior to the crash. You have to debug it with whatever state it was left in After the crash…assuming you can get that out of it…and whatever other traces of itself it left behind before it died. It may take days or weeks or months to figure out what it was doing in those final moments, and why the fuck it was doing it.
This is why most cars these days have "black boxes" in them…just like airplanes. For those cases when…you know…the whole thing just blows up…
Hi, just wondering when your next installment of A coming out story will hit the gay comic list
Gulp…
Hi ***…
I’m so embarrassed about this one taking so long. Every night I see people all over the world pinging that page to see if there is a new episode up and I just cringe.
It’s in pencils stage now, and the work is slow for somewhat personal reasons. I don’t want to give away too much of what happens in the story, but basically the object of my affections in the story vanished from my life, quite suddenly, after high school. I started doing the cartoon, in part, to get something of that part of my life, that I’d never been able to put to rest since, out of me. Then after decades of searching, I actually found him. We’ve been chatting off and on ever since and it’s churned up a lot of old feelings I thought I’d laid to rest.
So it’s been a bit of a struggle to keep going with this…but keep going I will. I just need to get back into the groove of it again. I have it all plotted out…I just need to get on with it.
Thank you for asking. I really appreciate the interest people are taking in that story. If you like, I can put you on a mail list I have to notify people when a new episode is out. I am going to try really hard to get the next one finished by the end of this month at the latest.
-Bruce
I really need to just get on with it… Especially now…
October 11, 2008: The catering is all in line, and the outfits perfectly pressed. The months of planning have trickled down to hours. Andrew and I are holding our Manhattan engagement party, step one in our bicoastal wedding celebration.
October 11, 1995: I watch every word that comes out of my mouth for fear that my less-than-masculine speech patterns will lay bear the truth that is and has always been within my head. It’s unfair to date members of the opposite-sex, both for me and my partners in faux courtship. But what choice do I have? There are no gay people in my high school. Heck, are there gay people in my town? In all of Tennessee? The entire Southeastern region?
October 11, 2008: Andrew, the planner of our duo, has the day mapped out. Shave, manicure, and haircut are all booked into specific slots. I, on the other hand, am taking a fairly laxidasical approach to getting my stuff done. But while our approaches are different, our excitement is the same. We are both excited and shocked that this long overdue journey is finally in motion.
October 11, 1995: I’ll probably marry someday. I don’t feel like I have a choice. You get through school then ya get hitched. And hey, at least when I marry, I will finally prove to everyone that I am straight. I’m sure that in time, I too will believe it. Right?
October 11, 2008: The Connecticut ruling makes three states where we gays can legally marry.
October 11, 1995: It’s not like I can legally marry a dude even if I wanted to.
October 11, 2008: It’s not even noon, and there have already been two phone calls from my mom-in-law-to-be. She just might be the most psyched of all of us! And why shouldn’t she be? Her baby is finally getting married!!
October 11, 1995: Did anyone see me looking at that issue of "Entertainment Weekly"? The one with the cover story on "The Gay 90’s"? And if so, did they suspect anything? ::sigh:: I better go watch the game and talk about "hot" girls.
October 11, 2008: 115 guests will be on hand to send well wishes to the two fiancés. Acceptance or "tolerance" is not even up for debate. We are loved. We are accepted. Non-"controversially."
October 11, 1995: Will I ever feel love? Real love? A genuine, rock you to the core love?
October 11, 2008: Today is National Coming Out Day. And while the booking was purely coincidental, the resonance of the date is not lost on me.
October 11, 1995: I just learned that today is apparently something called "National Coming Out Day." I gotta remember to put my guard up extra high, since people will probably be talking about it. Questions are dangerous. And the "right" answers are hard to find since they really don’t jibe with what I know to be true.
October 11, 2008: I’m happy. Really frickin’ happy. I want to wish a joyous National Coming Out Day to everyone:
October 11, 1995: I’m scared. Really frickin’ scared. Please tell me it gets better than this. Please tell me there is peace to be had. Please tell me I will come out of this darkness.
Some photos Here. I’m so happy for both of them. I wish them all the best. This poor angry world needs so much more of this. So very much more.
If you donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email, I will draw, if you wish, an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…you can have a signed 11 by 19 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
By All Means, Let Me Know How You Feel. I WANT To Know. Really.
There are many reason why I do not regard myself as a Christian anymore. Probably chief among them is I am no longer convinced that God even exists. But even so, fundamentalism notwithstanding, I think you can still regard yourself as a Christian nonetheless. If you think God worship is all there is to Jesus’ message, then you weren’t listening.
Forgiveness. Here is why I just can’t call myself Christian anymore:
Over at Box Turtle Bulletin, Jim Burroway posts that he received a phone call from a reporter saying that many proposition 102 (the Arizona anti same-sex marriage amendment) yard signs are being damaged.
I got a phone call last night from a reporter from Phoenix’s ABC15, telling me that a spokesperson for the ’Yes” side for Prop 102 says that more than a hundred of their campaign signs were vandalized. Obviously, everyone here at No on Prop 102 condemns such vandalism. While we are happy to engage in a vigorous debate on the issues, vandalism has no place in rational debate.
Oh…good grief. Look…if some people are willing to spread the open sewer that is their conscience out on their lawns for everyone in the world to see, then by all means leave the fucking things alone. Seriously. Leave them alone.
Photograph them. Document it. We are living through a moment in history, however these votes turn out. Document it. Document it. Document it. And later, if the thing passes, should these fine God fearing folks feel the need to pretend that they never supported it (and they will, many of them, never doubt it), remember how you felt seeing those signs waved in your face, remember how it felt to have your ring finger cut off while they praised God, and wave their signs right back in their faces. Yes…yes you did…
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches,
that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress.
Progress is healing the wound… -Malcolm X
It’s good to know the names on that knife in your heart.
Jesus would say that I have to forgive. I can appreciate how anger can turn into hate. I can appreciate how it can corrode your soul, turn it to rust. There is a reason why we have to forgive. Jesus was right. But there are some things I simply cannot forgive. Just…can’t. Ironically my Baptist grandmother was exactly like me in this regard. Neither one of us could let go of a grudge. It’s a dangerous combination I’ve lived with all my life: dad’s loaded gun temper, grandma’s ability to hold onto a grudge forever. If I didn’t have some small smidgen of mom’s endless capacity for love and sympathy I’d be some kind of absolutely legendary asshole. I have grudges from back in elementary school I still take out and polish every now and then.
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better. -Edgar Watson Howe
Forgiveness. Hopefully after November gay couples in California will still have their ring fingers, and those in Arizona and Florida will still have hope. But if not, don’t ask me to forgive. Ever. I’ll laugh in your face.
You could say these are hard times to be gay, let alone have a conscience, and be a Catholic Priest. But then…you could say these are hard times to be gay and be sitting (or standing) in a lot of churches…
A week ago, Father Geoffrey Farrow stood before his Roman Catholic parishioners in Fresno and delivered a sermon that placed him squarely at odds with his church over gay marriage.
With Proposition 8 on the November ballot, and his own bishop urging Central Valley priests to support its definition of traditional marriage, Farrow told congregants he felt obligated to break "a numbing silence" about church prejudice against homosexuals.
"How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives?" he asked parishioners of the St. Paul Newman Center. "I am morally compelled to vote no on Proposition 8."
Then Farrow — who had revealed that he was gay during a television interview immediately before Mass — added a coda to his sermon.
"I know these words of truth will cost me dearly," he said. "But to withhold them . . . I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights but of their human dignity as well."
…after which the parish Bishop had him burned at the stake. Well…not Literally…
Parish leaders concluded two morning Masses on Sunday with an apology to parishioners.
Farrow’s statements, they said, were not in accord with church teachings. Also, the priest did not inform church elders about his plans before delivering his sermon, said Deacon John Supino, who read a letter from Steinbock reaffirming the Catholic Church’s support for Proposition 8.
Quoting Steinbock, Supino said the church teaches that sex is a gift from God to be acted on only by a man and a woman within marriage. But Proposition 8, he insisted, does not represent a condemnation of gays or lesbians.
"The teachings of the church on these matters did not arise with Proposition 8 but have been in place for over 2,000 years," Supino said.
There’s something else that’s been in place for over 2,000 years. They call it antisematism. Or as James Carrol put it at the beginning of his history of antisematism, Constantine’s Sword:
We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but insufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such. These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal.
Ten years ago yesterday, a five-foot, two, 105 pound gay college kid died after being tortured and beaten by two thugs almost twice his size. He was beaten so badly the hospital staff who received him after the police cut him from the fence he’d been tied to, compared his condition to that of automobile accident victims. But it was no accident. His killer’s knew that while God might hold them accountable for stealing his wallet, He would look the other way while they tied that kid to a fence, beat him to a pulp, put their cigarettes out on his body and left him to die slowly in the cold plains night. In most American churches, today still, the sermon is that Christ’s call to love your neighbor ends at the doorstep of your homosexual neighbor’s house.
Farrow became a priest 23 years ago, working in parishes in Visalia, Merced, Bakersfield and the nearby town of Arvin. A graduate of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, he also served as a chaplain in the Air Force Reserve at Edwards Air Force Base near Palmdale in the early 1990s.
Farrow, who said he realized that he was gay in boyhood, revealed his sexual orientation only to close friends and family. He told his parents just four years ago.
"This was the secret I was going to take to my grave," he said.
That changed when he received a June 30 "pastoral letter" from Steinbock’s office in which the bishop condemned the California Supreme Court’s ruling in May that legalized same-sex marriage, and supported the passage of Proposition 8, calling marriage between a man and woman the "foundation blocks for society." He compared the court’s action to efforts by Nazi Germany and the Communist regimes in Russia and China to alter family arrangements.
Only Nazis or communists would want a society that treats homosexuals as the equals of heterosexuals…right? That’s what these righteous men of god are saying there isn’t it. And never mind that this is what the Nazis actually did to homosexuals…
…er…along with something like Nine Million Jews. Which is pretty much what you’d expect after…what…two-thousand years of calling Jews Christ killers and waving Leviticus at homosexuals. And the communists weren’t, and aren’t what’s left of them, any better.
Russia is not the only post-Communist country with a gay problem. In Poland, authorities have recently undertaken an initiative to outlaw all discussion of homosexuality in schools, and a high-level official in charge of children’s rights, Ewa Sowinska, followed in the footsteps of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell by expressing concern about the sexuality of purse-carrying purple Teletubby Tinky Winky and its possible effects on young viewers.
A few days before his personal experience with homophobia in Moscow, Tatchell wrote about the problem of anti-gay bigotry in Eastern Europe on the blog of the British newspaper, The Guardian. "With the demise of communism," Tatchell noted, "religious fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism are filling the void. Homophobia is the hallmark of these reactionary movements."
But this argument is not entirely accurate. Far from being a new phenomenon in the former Soviet bloc, homophobia was also a hallmark of communist regimes. In the Soviet Union, male homosexuality was punishable by up to eight years of imprisonment; while sodomy laws in American states required proof of specific sexual act, a gay man in Soviet Russia could be jailed if his neighbors testified that he had no female company and frequent male visitors who stayed overnight. Castro’s Cuba has been notorious for its persecution of gays.
This isn’t rocket science. The totalitarian state cannot allow you to own your heart. Your heart must belong to the state. Orwell understood the puritanical nature of totalitarian states. In this passage of 1984 he captures it perfectly:
Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was:
"When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?"
That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.
But this is the essential nature of sexual puritanism as well. The theocrats claim to be merely serving God’s will…but what king didn’t also claim exactly the same thing? What dictator? When the leaders of the Catholic church complain that Nazis and communists were trying to bend the shape of the family to their liking, they are the pot calling the kettle black. Totalitarian states have always sought to dictate the nature of family life. And they have always needed their scapegoats.
Let it be said, the Catholic church isn’t now, and wasn’t then, the only righteous house of god busy campaigning to purge society of its deviants. A lot of fine, upstanding protestants were and are doing exactly the same thing. Proposition 8 isn’t about protecting marriage. It is about protecting the stigma theocrats have placed on gay and lesbian people. That’s it. That’s all that it is about. Because when the day comes that Americans take for granted that the homosexual is a fellow American and neighbor too, then America’s tinpot dictators won’t have any scapegoats left to rouse the passions of the mob toward. We have always been at war with homosexuality…
What kind of America do you want to live in? The one where the dream of liberty and justice for all still lives, or the one where only the dream of theocrats are allowed? Would you rather live in an America where neighbors can look each other in the face as equals, or the America of James Dobson and Karl Rove and Pope Ratzinger, where some are more equal then others?
Do you dream the dream of freedom…of a world where totalitarianism is just a distant, ugly memory? Where everyone is free to follow their hopes and dreams wherever they lead? Do you believe in liberty and justice for all? Do you believe in love? Please help fight the good fight. Donate Here, to No on 8. Or Here, to Arizona Together. Or Here, to Say No On Two.
Donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email and I will draw an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice.
Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…I’ll gladly mail you a signed 11 by 19 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
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