Candis Cayne, who will be playing the part of a rich man’s mistress in the UK TV show, Dirty Sexy Money.   Why can’t I have hair like that???

Just in case you were wondering if Dr. (sic) Laura Schlessinger has made any progress on growing that conscience…

Dr. Laura Blames Spitzer’s Wife

Eliot Spitzer loves him some whores! How did it ever happen? What drove him to risk his career and marriage? And what does it say about the rest of us? These are the big questions taken up by the Today Show, and look who they got to answer them! Dr. Laura Schlessinger, that’s who?

VIEIRA: Do you think women play any role in this, Dr. Laura?

SCHLESSINGER: It’s interesting. what you said about what men need — men do need validation. When they come into the world they’re born of a woman. Getting the validation from mommy is the beginning of needing it from a woman. When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like our hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need.

VIEIRA: Are you saying women should feel guilty, like they somehow drove the man to cheat?

SCHLESSINGER: You know what, the cheating was his decision to repair what’s damaged, and to feed himself where he’s starving. But, yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.

You know…I’ll bet that’s what a lot of prostitutes tell themselves when they see that ring on a customer’s finger.  I’ve no idea what is going on in that household right now, but it’s a safe bet that Spitzer’s wife is feeling all kinds of hurt right now.  And here comes Mrs. Morality and Virtue to pile on heaps of self righteous scorn on…not Spitzer for cheating on his wife, but on his wife for not sexually satisfying him enough.

You really have to wonder what gutter people like Schlessinger have crawled out of.  And…how big a sucker you have to be to listen to them yap, yap, yapping about morality.  And…why the fuck is our news media giving slimeballs like her a forum to kick heartbroken people.  I know…I know…   It attracts viewers and that’s money in the bank…

Guess who might have a gay son…

Sally Kern Scrubs Gay Son?

Well in lieu of the kid actually coming forward, it’s not much more then rumor.  But it wouldn’t surprise me.  Alan Keyes.  Phyllis Schlafly.  Pete Knight.  Charles Socarides.  And this commenter brings up something I hadn’t considered, but should have in light of what my travels among Ex-Gay survivors have taught me…

I see in this foolish woman much anger and resentment. Her beliefs are challenged within herself, because if she stands by them then she must accept her part in her son being a homosexual. She isn’t strong enough to do that. Instead, she has created a paranoid delusion that there is some vast conspiracy of gays infiltrating schools and governments to turn others gay and force their lifestyles on everyone. Her subconscious has created this great gay evil so she doesn’t have to blame herself…

Now that I look at it, I can see there’s probably a lot of that going on here.   The reason they’ve become warriors against the gay menace, is that if there is no gay menace, then all they have left to explain why their kids are gay is what the pulpit thumpers have been pounding into them…that its poor parenting that makes a kid gay…that they’re the ones to blame…their children are going to hell because of them…

Geeze…  I could almost feel sorry for her now.  Can I?  Nope.  Still can’t…

Via Fark.Com…  The 20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups Of All Time…

From turning down the Beatles to stomping Napster – the most ill-advised, foolhardy and downright idiotic decisions ever made by The Man.

I particularly liked this one, because I lived through it, and it was when I began to hate the record companies…

#19 The industry kills the single—and begins its own slow demise
In the early ’80s, the music industry began to phase out vinyl singles in favor of cassettes and later, CDs. Then, since it costs the same to manufacture a CD single as a full album, they ditched the format almost altogether. But they forgot that singles were how fans got into the music-buying habit before they had enough money to spend on albums. The end result? Kids who expect music for free. “Greed to force consumers to buy an album [resulted] in the loss of an entire generation of record consumers,” says Billboard charts expert Joel Whitburn. “People who could only afford to buy their favorite hit of the week were told it wasn’t available as a single. Instead, they stopped going to record shops and turned their attention to illegally downloading songs.”
Unintended consequence The Eagles still top the album charts.

This was such a brain dead marketing decision that when I saw them start doing it I didn’t believe it.  Suddenly the singles racks started getting smaller and smaller and you never saw anything new in them.  Worse, now if you wanted a single you had to buy it on cassette, which wouldn’t have been so bad except the quality of pre-recorded cassettes was dismal.  And I saw all this happening and thought, Oh no…they Can’t be serious…  But…they were.

Imagine the soda companies deciding to get rid of all their vending machines and making you buy a six pack every time you wanted a Coke or Pepsi.  Now further imagine that instead of six packs of Coca-Cola, say, they made you buy a six pack of five drinks you didn’t really like all that much, just to get the Coke you really wanted.  You think their sales would go up?  No…they’d go straight into the gutter.  And there they’d stay, because an entire generation of kids would grow up drinking something else besides soda, and when they got older and got jobs and could afford the six packs, they still wouldn’t buy them, even if the soda companies started offering them as singles again.

When I was a kid I lived on a small allowance, and then a series of minimum wage jobs.  This was back when the minimum wage was like $1.75.  Yes…I flipped burgers.  Lots of them.  I also delivered tons of those advertising fliers that you hate finding on your door knob when you get home from work.  And I bought lots of singles.  Buying the 45 rpm version of a song I really liked was a no-brainer, even if I had very little money that week.

I still have them too… 

That’s two "Disc-Go" carrying cases full of 45s, and some nice Beatles tunes there on the kitchen table that, alas, you can’t legally get online.  The one I’ve got in my hand is Revolution (that’s my camera’s electronic shutter release in the other hand).  The pre-Apple, Capital Records one is Eleanor Rigby, which I actually bought for the A side tune Yellow Submarine.   Eleanor seems to get more play these days for some reason.  Actually, my all time favorite cover of that song is the one Ray Charles did, and I can’t get a digital copy of that one either, though I was able to find a YouTube post of Ray singing it in concert and it’s very close. 

Happily, most of my favorite old 45s are out there for me on iTunes or Amazon.  It was discovering that I could get nice clean digital copies of many of my scratched up old favorites that got me into the market for digital music to start with.  Prior to that I’d just been ripping from my existing CD collection.  The night I discovered I could buy new copies of my old 45s I think I blew like about 40 bucks on iTunes.  They make it so easy.  If I could legally get digital copies of these Beatles tunes they’d all be on my iPod right now.  Supposedly that’s going to happen soon.

The record companies should be kissing Steve Jobs’ ass.  I have bought more music in the past year then I’ve bought in the previous decade and two things they’ve tried hard to kill are responsible for that: digital music downloads and Satellite Radio.  Now, via a friend, I’ve discovered the Internet Radio service Pandora and it is just amazing.  On Pandora I can specify an artist or a song I really like and the web site will serve me up a steady stream of music that is like that.  I could listen for hours.  I have several Pandora channels set up already for my favorite swing music, rock, light jazz, New Age and classical.  And if I hear something I like, there’s a ready link I can click to get it from either iTunes or Amazon.  I always check Amazon first because their downloads are all DRM free MP3s.

If the record companies don’t manage to kill Internet Radio, I’ll have another stream of music I can enjoy to listen too, and hear something new, or something old, that I might want to suddenly buy.  And as long as I can easily buy the single online for under a buck, I probably will.  Like, right then and there.  Immediately.  Do they really want to stop me from doing that?  Apparently…

There must be something better then going home at the end of the day and trying to kill my mind to keep this constant heartache at bay. 

The other day I ventured out to a bar on Hampden’s "The Avenue" and sat down at the bar, just not to be home alone for once.  I had several drinks, chatted amicably with some of the others there, and then walked, a tad tipsy, home, feeling comfortably numb.  The next day a friend actually congratulated me on going to a bar by myself.  Don’t be too thrilled, I replied, I’m drinking more.  Which is just why I didn’t want to become a barfly in my middle age.  The next morning I woke up with a middle of the week hangover, something I won’t say I’ve never experienced before, but then it was in the comfort of my own little bar in the basement, which came with the house.  I’d never have put one in of my own accord.  I was raised in a Baptist household, see…

So I don’t want to do that again.  At least not until my regular Happy Hour gang meets again this Friday.  So I’m hitting on my humidor more.  Which of course, taxes my body in its own slowly lethal way.  But at least it numbs the heartache somewhat and the next morning I don’t feel it, other then perhaps a little more tiredness in the veins.  I wonder what it’s doing to my heart.  The physical one that is.

There must be something better.  Tonight I saw something I have in common, at least remotely, with the ex-gay survivors, something I see over and over again in their words:  you always get told that if you’re still gay, then you aren’t trying hard enough not to be.  And as it turns out, the lonely get the same painful, hurtful message, often from well meaning friends and family.  It’s always your own damn fault.  Stop whining and work harder at it.  And when change never comes, you just feel more guilty, more worthless.  There is something wrong with you.  It’s your own fault.

So here I am tapping my keyboard, as a way of therapy.  Somewhere out there, the guy who left me those messages last December may read this and feel justified once more.  Maybe he’ll want to twist the knife in again.  Wonder if they basically feel the way I do, frankly my dear, we just don’t give a damn.  If it’s who I think it is who wrote that, then he knows exactly how to make it hurt in a way I’ll never get over.  Maybe he was being nicer to me then I realized at first.

My productivity is going down into the toilet at work.  My little Baltimore rowhouse is a mess.  I need to sit down and do my monthly bills and budget.  I need to work on some of the exercises in that Advanced Java Web Services textbook.  I have repairs to make on the front porch.  My drafting table has been sitting idle for so long.  It takes so much energy to push back constantly at the heartache and some days I just don’t have anything left.  And it’s been that way with me for decades now.  Decades.  Lonernomore1, you should be impressed with how long I’ve managed to hold it all in and not spill my guts out to everyone.

Again its a pathetic method for sympathy. Have a great life, and yet once again you will be alone because that is what you choose… 

No…it isn’t what I choose idiot, any more then I choose to be a gay man, although I’m perfectly content with that.  If I choose this solitude then it stands to reason I would be content with it now wouldn’t I?  I have a nice little house, a job I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams I’d ever have, that earns me a very comfortable living, I’m in reasonably good health, although if I keep on smoking and drinking that might well change.  I have a nice car.  I have good friends.  Just no arms to come home to.  I would give it all up if I could have that.  I’d wash dishes forever to have that.  But you can’t make bargains with fate.  Fate doesn’t care.

There must be something better.  I just can’t seem to find it.  If it won’t find me then I’m done for.  The reason you accept being gay is that it’s the only way to finally make a whole person out of yourself because it’s what you are, and true love, if you’re ever going to find it, is with another of your own sex.  You accept being gay, in order to find that love.  The catch of course is, that doesn’t mean you will.

The people who know me all tell me that I’d make a very worthy lover.  Fate doesn’t seem to much care about that either though. 

From Tom Tomorrow and into my quote file…

How difficult is it not to hire four thousand dollar prostitutes?

I know a lot of people who manage to make it through their daily lives without even hiring a two thousand dollar prostitute.

(Raises hand…) 

Four thousand dollars.  Four thousand dollars.  Four thousand dollars. Man…you’re telling me people who make the kind of money that can routinely buy a four thousand dollar fuck can’t find themselves a lover? 

Once in my life…once…I laid down with someone I wasn’t actually in love with.  I was in my twenties and at one of my first Pride Day fairs, and let myself get picked up by a somewhat cute-ish looking guy who turned out to be a complete airhead.  But I was lonely and I wanted to get picked up so I let him do it and it taught me a lesson because when we got back to his place nothing happened.  It took me years to figure out why because he was actually physically my type, but see my birthday post to a certain someone below because the answer’s there.  Sex with someone you are deeply, madly in love with just blows away everything else, and I was spoiled very early in life to it and I’ve wanted nothing less ever since.

For four-thousand dollars I suppose she’s pretty goddamned hot but you know what…she doesn’t love you.  And…you don’t love her.  And there you are, with this big fat spectacular super-sized bank account that can get you her and you’re settling for second best.  Second.  Best.  At any price, it’s still second best and you’re an idiot.  A big fat rich idiot.  You could buy attention with that money.  You could travel the world.  You could find The One.  You have the means to make the feast of life happen for you.  And there you are, still scarfing down fast food.  And getting fat and lazy.  And ignorant.  Jackass.

And doubly so if you’re married and still buying it on the side.  Idiot. 

If I had that kind of money I would travel the world until I found him.  But I don’t.  I have just enough to live a pretty comfortable middle class life.  I suppose that could get me a three, if not a four figure lay from time to time if I really wanted it.  But I don’t.  I don’t see the sense of that and haven’t ever since I looked into a certain someone’s eyes back in 1971 and after that day money could never buy what I need and I would give up everything I have now and wash dishes for the rest of my life to have my soulmate.

So I’m wandering around YouTube and I see a few posts of clips from the old Superman TV series.  I used to scramble for the TV set every day after school to watch these, and to this day still feel a little thrill whenever I hear the harp and strings trilling the intro to the theme music. The series first aired in 1952, a year before I was born, and the last episodes were finished and aired sometime in 1957 or 58.  I became an avid childhood fan sometime around 62 or 63 when the episodes began appearing on local after school TV.  I think the first episode I ever watched was Panic In The Sky, which many fans say was the best episode of the series. 

I was in elementary school, and our TV set back then was a black and white vacuum tube affair with rabbit’s ears antenna resting on the top of the set.  That was actually the typical setup in most homes back then. You turned the thing on and then you had to wait a minute or so for all the tubes to warm up before you saw or heard anything.  And even then it usually took another five minutes or so for things to settle down and you got a picture that wasn’t fuzzy and didn’t flutter or roll.  Often this was accompanied by a lot of fiddling with the rabbit’s ears.  Luckily by the time I got home from school the TV had already been warmed up from playing all of grandma’s daytime TV soap operas.  If I got home from school early it was As The World Turns.  If I got home late it was General Hospital.  Thankfully, in their infinite wisdom and greedy willingness to exploit a much younger and more easily dazzled audience that the local TV station operators knew wouldn’t sit still for Will Doris Find Out That Ted Is Her Long Lost Brother Before She Marries Him, after 4PM the soaps gave way to Superman, Astro Boy, Supercar, and The Cisco Kid.

I saw several posts on YouTube of the opening titles for various seasons  of Superman.  So just for kicks and grins I clicked on the opening titles for the first season.  In the comments below I saw this…

(5 months ago)
Brings back great childhood memories!

(3 months ago)
Sure does.
I used to watch this on Nick at Night when I was 8 or 9. Was a great show.

Arrggh…!  For the record, Nick at Night was spawned off of Nickelodeon in 1985, by which time I was 32.  Am I that old?  Vacuum tubes?  Rabbit’s ears?  Yeah…I reckon.  Damn.  How did that happen?

What a lot of bullied gay kids discover as they get older, is that bullies never really grow out of it…

Gay singer tells of ‘nightmare’

Singer Ian ‘H’ Watkins’ has told of the "complete nightmare" of growing up gay in the south Wales valleys.

The former Steps singer, who is from the Rhondda, filmed a personal account for BBC Wales’ Week In Week Out.

In the programme, he also looked at schools’ treatment of gay issues and admitted he was bullied "relentlessly".

Making the documentary, he said he was shocked to be told by one Christian campaigner that being gay made him no better than a serial killer.

Christian Voice director, Stephen Green, told Watkins his lifestyle was "sinful", and made him no better than US mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Mr Green also told the former Celebrity Big Brother contestant he could become straight if he wanted to.

The comparison to Dahmer who was jailed for life in 1992 after the Wisconsin trial heard evidence of his cannibalism after murdering his victims came when Watkins told Mr Green he was "completely happy" being gay and that he was in a loving relationship.

Mr Green added: "Jeremy (sic) Dahmer was happy murdering people, does that make it right?"

The comment shocked Watkins and he responded: "So, being completely happy and at one with yourself, and being in a happy, loving relationship is the same as murdering somebody?"

But Mr Green stuck to his guns during the exchange: "Sin is sin…in the eyes of God, sin is sin…"

When Watkins referred to people being born gay, Mr Green told him: "I don’t believe anybody is born homosexual. God wouldn’t allow anybody to be born homosexual."

Watkins, who came out when he was in the Big Brother house alongside Shilpa Shetty and Jade Goody, says he was "absolutely flabbergasted" by the comments.

You might ask why, since like a lot of gay people he’d been hearing them most of his life.  But staring into the face of grinning depravity always comes as a shock, no matter how often you’ve seen it before.  That wasn’t a conversation about Watkin’s homosexuality, it was about his happiness.  Green saw it…saw it was real the moment Watkins told him of it…saw it in his face, in his voice, in that peaceful aura truly happy people gently radiate.  He saw it, and his immediate reflex was to punch it out.  And he reached for the first weapon he could wrap his hands around to do it.  Ah…Jeffrey Dahmer…the cannibal…that’ll do the trick…  And he swung.  He swung at that innermost place in Watkin’s heart where that joy had taken root.

It wasn’t sin Green was striking out at.  God is just the grown up bully’s substitute for mother’s skirt…something to hide behind when the bullied start looking like they’ve had enough.  It was the happiness in Watkin’s voice Green hated, it was his joy, it was the sight of a person in love, and it was pure reflex.  And he did it, with the same brutally carnal delight a playground bully takes in busting apart that nice toy the neighbor’s kid just got for his birthday…for the pleasure of seeing the look in the kid’s eyes when he realizes his toy is gone.  The tears afterward, are like free candy.  Green is probably still savoring the look on Watkin’s face at the moment of impact.  He’ll be savoring it for weeks.

It’s been a while since I’ve been catcalled by some jackass in a passing car, but it just happened a while ago, and in front of where I work no less. 

I’d just ducked across the street to the little student coffee hutch in Bloomberg to get a bagel, since the cafeteria here was out by the time I got in.  I was walking back toward the crosswalk when I heard a car behind me beep its horn and saw the driver motioning me to go ahead and cross.  Most of the drivers here are friendly to pedestrians, probably because this being a university campus there are so many.  Drivers that hate navigating a ton of pedestrian crosswalks have plenty of alternative routes.  Anyway…so I start crossing and then I hear the passenger shout out something at me.  I didn’t quite catch it, but the driver, a young guy looked really embarrassed.

Probably, it was something like "Get a haircut!" which I got tired of sometime back in 1973.  I thought I caught the word "hair…" anyway, but I’m still not sure.  At work, I wear it in a ponytail that I’m pleased to say goes halfway down my back.  Long hair is high maintenance stuff, and if I didn’t have the thing for long haired males that I do, mine would be as short now as as most other American males’ (alas, alas…). 

The point being, hair like this is work.  It has to be brushed constantly…and after a nice drive in the countryside with the windows down and the moonroof open it’s a mass of knots I have to carefully detangle.  Showers with me are three-fourths hair care and one-fourth the rest of me.  When the conditioner I use suddenly goes missing on the store shelves I panic.  I take pride in my hair.  It may look unruly because it’s never cut, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get a lot of TLC.  It gets tons.  It’s my mane.  Grey streaked now though it is.  People have been known to enjoy running their fingers through it.

So…Get Over It! 

Last time I got catcalled was last summer while I was walking out of the Lambda Rising here in Baltimore’s little gay neighborhood.  But that time it was "Nice ass!".  "Nice ass!" is always welcome.

Via Atrios…

Man Talks About Woman Found in Dry Ice

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A man who was found with a woman’s body packed in dry ice in his hotel room told a newspaper that her death may have been in some way connected to religion.

”Everything that happened was for religious reasons,” Stephen David Royds told The Orange County Register on Sunday.

Royds spoke to the newspaper in a brief interview from jail. He repeated the statement four times but did not elaborate.

Detectives found the body of Monique Felicia Trepp, 33, fully clothed inside a large Rubbermaid container late Thursday after arresting Royds at the Fairmont Newport Beach for investigation of selling and possessing cocaine, police Sgt. Evan Sailor said.

Sometimes, it’s the little details that keep you wondering…

Along with Trepp’s body, police found porch swings, toy night-vision goggles and large sake bottles with lamp sockets stuffed into their spouts in the room of Stephen David Royds.

Note to self: Don’t open the door to missionaries without a gun…

Via Dan Savage over at SLOG… Seems like this is my week to revisit some folks I’ve done political cartoons on. This time it’s Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern, who back in May of 2005 demanded that all Oklahoma public libraries move any book with a gay or lesbian character or theme into a restricted adults only section. Not that Oklahoma has any shortage of office holders who like to gay bash for votes, but Kern if anything, represents a portion of America distinctive for the authenticity and the stamina of its hate. Hear it speak:

Gay America doesn’t really need to hear this. This sort of thing is nothing new to us. We hear it all the time. We know what it is that we’re facing. It is straight America that needs to hear this. All of you, who think that the gay community exaggerates the threat we face every day in a nation where this kind of poisonous vitriol remains largely unexamined, unacknowledged, and unconfronted. The reason Sally Kern can feel free to say that gay people, Gay People, are a cancer spreading throughout America isn’t that she was speaking before a small group of like minded bigots, but that the larger community of heterosexual Americans don’t bother paying attention to the torrent of hate right under their noses. Until it actually kills some poor kid like Matthew Shepard, or Lawrence King. For the sake of your country, for the sake of your own personal safety because more and more these days, straight people are getting gay bashed too, you need to listen to this.

The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation.

Not everyone’s lifestyle is equal. Just like not all religions are equal.

No society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more then, you know, a few decades.

It’s the death knell for this country.

I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has. Even more so then terrorism.

They’re going after…in schools…two year olds.

They’re going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle.

Gays are infiltrating city councils.

Have you heard that the city council of Eureka Springs is controlled by gays? There are some others…Pittsburgh Pennsylvania…Kensington Maryland…Oregon, West Palm Beach Florida and many other places in Florida… What’s happening? And they are winning elections.

If you’ve got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say, you know I’m going to just forget about it because the rest of me is fine? It spreads. Okay? And this stuff is deadly and it is spreading and it will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.

This is what republicans have been driving voters to the polls with for decades now. And it’s been killing people. And they don’t care, as long as it wins them elections.

Via Pam’s House Blend… Right Wing Watch has this video up on McCain’s new buddy, Ron Parsley, whom I’ve done a political cartoon about previously…

“This so-called hate crimes legislation would preferred status to people based on entirely on who they choose as a sexual partner. What if they change their mind the next night!”

“Why is marriage under attack?!…Why is the family coming under such brutal attack from the forces of darkness…”

“I will lift my voice against THE AGENDA of America’s tortured and angry homosexual population…”

“In essence the Supreme Court of the United States on June 26, 2003, legalized the perverted act of sodomy. And we said nothing…”

“This is not about homosexual rights or lesbian rights…this is about THE DESTRUCTION of the VERY COVENANT (organ music rises up in the background as he waves his finger desperately) They are seeking to “redefine” marriage. In other words, they are intending to PERVERT God’s original intention!”

Parsley, an Ohio megachurch pulpit thumper once shouted out at the “War on Christians” conference in 2006, “A spiritual invasion is taking place! Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! Lock and load!” When these righteous men of god, these men of high moral values speak of war, people listen. And here’s the blood payoff…

The mistake when these people rail against hate crime laws, is to take the rhetoric at face value. They’re babbling that those laws will restrict their ability to preach lock and load sermons from the pulpit, but it’s not the loss of their the first amendment rights they’re worried about. When Parsley shouts “lock and load” he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s calling for blood on the streets. If his useful tools, the young male thugs he’s counting on strike fear into the hearts of gay people, suddenly find themselves being held accountable for their actions, then they might think twice and Parsley’s work, and that of his fellow hate mongers will all be in vain. They’re not worried about being silenced. They’re worried that their words won’t have the desired effect anymore, that the bloodshed will stop. A fearful homosexual, is a good homosexual. A dead homosexual, is an even better one.

Behold, Exodus International’s ministry to persons afflicted with Same Sex Attractions…

…or Was at least, if you take their word for it.  You know you can take them at their word don’t you…?

In August, 2007 after a lot of prayer, deliberation and listening to friends and critics alike — but mostly the Lord — we decided to back out of policy issues and our Director of Government Affairs took a position with another organization.

–Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International to Ex-Gay Watch. 

Jim Burroway has more Here.   Peterson Toscano notes the shift in Exodus policy in his blog post Lovely Shifts And Dramatic Changes.  Allow me to be the grouch here.  Take another look at that anti-hate crime laws poster.  It’s a damn lie.  And they knew it was a damn lie while they were creating it.  And in that, it is eminently typical of the quality of Exodus International’s relationship to honesty with regard to…well…goddamn near everything.  Homosexuals… homosexuality… Teh Gay Lifestyle…  ex-gay therapy…  They have lied in the past.  Brazenly.  Ingeniously.  Unashamedly.  Unhesitatingly.  But we can trust them now, can’t we?

Um….no.  Let’s look at what’s being said here.  Really look…

It may sound nuanced but we weren’t really involved in “politics.” We never worked for the direct election or defeat of a candidate.

No Alan…that doesn’t sound ‘nuanced’.  It sounds duplicitous.   Never mind that lobbying politicians and voters on policy issues is politics too, observe the telltale adjective…the Direct election or defeat of a candidate?  I’m laughing in your face Alan.  Exodus has always been a republican tool in election campaigns.  Why have so many of Exodus’ "Change Is Possible" billboard campaigns been waged in swing states, with relatively small gay populations?  You know goddamned well why.  The republican candidate bashes the democrat over their stand on gay rights issues.  You folks come along and tell the voters that homosexuals don’t have to be homosexual if they don’t want to anyway, thereby allowing the republican gay basher to blame gays for their own persecution, and the voters to tell themselves that by voting against gay rights they’re not hurting anyone, because the gays can always stop being gay when they’ve had enough. 

The primary function of Exodus has always been to make political gay bashing palatable to voters.  I mean…look…you don’t actually Change very many homosexuals do you?  If I ran a corporation whose main product failed miserably so often I’d have gone out of business long ago.  But Change isn’t your product.  Animus toward homosexuals is your product.  And by that measure, you’re still worth the money the religious right spends on you, if not quite as much as before.

Ever since John Smid had that brilliant idea of dragging gay teenagers into ex-gay therapy against their will, you folks have had to endure a lot more critical scrutiny then before, and one fall out of that is that people are starting to notice all the political activism you’re doing tends to contradict your ersatz message of love.  You’re more effective for the anti-gay right when people really believe that all you’re trying to do is help all those poor victims of Same Sex Attraction Disorder who hate themselves because…well…because of all the goddamned lies your kind likes to spread about them.  Hence, the costume change.  And notice how it went from "We are not a political organization" to "We are not a political organization Anymore."  Nice.  But…yes…you are…

One area that we found to be incredibly beneficial was simply sharing our stories with lawmakers. If and when there are opportunities to do that we will.

The word for that is Lobbying Alan. 

I know…I know…it’s So Hard to remember what words really mean after spending so many years as a mindless cog a lie factory…isn’t it.  But they Do mean things, existence exists, reality is real, and when all is said and done that’s the enemy you’ve been fighting all your life right there, not teh gay, not teh liberal, not teh secular.

Happy Birthday To A Certain Someone…

Once upon a time there was a gay teenager, who fell in love with a beautiful high school classmate.  But at first, he didn’t know that the wonderful thing he was feeling, that he’d never before felt in his life, was love.  The days were more beautiful then before.  The wind at his face was sharper and sweeter.  The sunsets were a little more brilliant.  The stars shone a little more intensely in the night sky.  He felt more alive then he ever had before in his life.  But he did not know it was love that he felt.

For one thing, the gay teenager had been taught that gay people don’t love.  Gays, he was taught, just have sex.  Ugly, monstrous, murderous, sordid and twisted sex.  He was taught that gays often killed the people they had sex with.  He was taught that gays usually mutilated the bodies of the people they had sex with.  He was taught that gays raped children.  He was taught that gays hated themselves, because deep down inside, they knew how sick and twisted they were.

His teachers taught him those things about gay people.  The newspapers and magazines he read said those things about gay people.  The TV shows and movies he watched told him stories about the ugly things gays did to normal people, and to each other.

And since the gay teenager knew deep down inside that he wasn’t any of those horrible, evil things he had been taught that gays were, he believed he couldn’t possibly be one.  His family thought he was a lazy dreamer.  His grades in school were barely passable.  His teachers and his mother scolded him constantly for not doing his homework.  But he knew he wasn’t a monster.  So he couldn’t be in love.  Because to be in love with another male would have meant that he Was a monster.

All through his junior year, and through most of his senior year, he could not allow himself to believe that it was love he felt for the beautiful classmate.  He could only glance silently, and then quickly away, as they passed each other in the hallway, feeling a terrible longing deep in his heart that he couldn’t understand, because he knew it could not be love.

But the classmate he was in love with had a good heart.  He worked hard in school, and at home, and treated all his friends well, and he was trusted and loved by all of them.  One day he spoke to the gay teenager, and soon after they began to talk to one another as they met throughout their schoolday.  They began finding times and places they could be alone together.  In the library.  In certain empty classrooms, or certain empty corners of the school, at certain times of the day.  Wherever they knew they could be alone.  And they would meet at the end of their schoolday at his locker, and walk together into the world outside their school, where they would part company…the gay teenager to his mom’s apartment across the railroad tracks, his classmate to his parent’s house in the nice neighborhood across the street. 

And one day…one bright beautiful day the gay teenager would never forget…he realized that he Was in love, and that to be in love with another male was beautiful after all.  Because he saw that he had fallen in love with someone who was as beautiful within, as they were without.  Because he saw that he had fallen in love with someone whose heart was as good as his smile was beautiful.  Because the one he loved was smart, and worked  hard, and treated his friends with love.  And the gay teenager saw it was all of that which he had fallen in love with; not merely the surface beauty his eyes could see, but also the inner beauty his heart saw as well.

And because his classmate studied hard, the gay teenager also began to study hard.  His grades went up and his teachers and his mother were pleased.  And because his classmate worked after school, the gay teenager got a job and worked nights too and earned money for himself and his mother, and his family who had thought him nothing more then a lazy dreamer were pleased.  And because his classmate was bound for college, the gay teenager, whose own father had never graduated from high school, decided he must go to college too.  And he did.

And whenever they met for the rest of that last summer together, whenever his classmate smiled at him, the gay teenager smiled too.  And for the rest of his life, the gay man the gay teenager eventually became would smile whenever he remembered it.  And he never hated himself.

He never hated himself. 

He had been taught that to be gay was to be a terrible monster.  He had been taught that to be gay was to be human garbage.  He had been taught that to be homosexual, was to never know love.  But because self understanding had happened to him in just that way…and because of who it was he had fallen into first love with…he knew at once, as soon as he saw it, that he had been taught lies.  He Did know love.  And it Was beautiful.  And it Was good.   And the gay teenager saw the truth of it, and how fine and beautiful it was.  And he never hated himself.

And because of that, he never did any of the self destructive things that ignorant people taught him that gay people do.  Oh for certain he partied it up like all of his boyhood friends.  But he never tried to destroy his mind with drugs or alcohol because he knew there was nothing wrong with the person he was.  And he never sought out sex with strangers in the alleys or toilets or empty parks, because he knew his heart wasn’t ugly, and that his heart’s desires weren’t terrible, but noble and good and decent, and the love he was looking for, that his heart needed, couldn’t be found in the toilet, and didn’t belong in the gutter, and wasn’t to be given away to strangers.

Because he never hated himself.  Because of that first love.

Happy birthday.  I wish for you all the best that life can bring your way, and everything your heart holds dear.  Life took us in different directions as life will do, and there is never any going back.  But the boy is father to the man and you are still that decent, good-hearted, hard working person I knew way back when, and a lot of what I am today I am because of that.  It could have gone in so many different directions for me back then, taken so many hard and cruel and ugly turns like it did for so many gay guys of our generation and it didn’t because of you.  

Thank you. 

And… 

Alles Gute!  Alles Gute!  All the best!  All the best!

Love
-Bruce

I grew up in the suburbs…in various garden apartments my mom moved us to, as her employer relocated from time to time, and as her income level rose marginally.  My earliest memories are of living in the city though, in Washington D.C. close to the Northeast freight yards.  I used to watch the trains from the screened in porch on our second floor of our apartment.  As soon as she could, mom moved us out of the city, so I wouldn’t have to attend city schools which she felt were dangerous.  To this day I cannot imagine how much worse it could have been for me in the city, because I was bullied pretty constantly throughout grade school anyway, all the way until my high school years at Woodward, which were heaven by comparison.

I vividly remember the first nice garden apartment we moved to in the suburbs.  It had a balcony with large plate glass sliding doors and tons of green spaces between the buildings for kids to play in. And it had Air Conditioning!  I thought we’d really moved up in the world.  Then I began making friends at school who lived in houses…real houses…with upstairs and downstairs and basements and everything.  The suburbs were heaven it seemed.  Just…heaven.

Well…their time may be coming to a close.  This from Dan Savage over at SLOG…

After years of listening to David Brooks go on and on and on about how real Americans loved the exurbs—we can’t get enough of those big yards, soulless bedroom communities, and long commutes—I was thrilled to read this piece in The Atlantic yesterday.

Pent-up demand for urban living is evident in housing prices. Twenty years ago, urban housing was a bargain in most central cities. Today, it carries an enormous price premium. Per square foot, urban residential neighborhood space goes for 40 percent to 200 percent more than traditional suburban space in areas as diverse as New York City; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Washington, D.C….

Author Christopher Leinberger points out that American exurbs are likely to suffer the same fate that American inner cities did from the ’50s to the ’80s: soaring crime rates, deteriorating schools, falling property values…

The experience of cities during the 1950s through the ’80s suggests that the fate of many single-family homes on the metropolitan fringes will be resale, at rock-bottom prices, to lower-income families—and in all likelihood, eventual conversion to apartments….

As the residents of inner-city neighborhoods did before them, suburban homeowners will surely try to prevent the division of neighborhood houses into rental units, which would herald the arrival of the poor. And many will likely succeed, for a time. But eventually, the owners of these fringe houses will have to sell to someone, and they’re not likely to find many buyers; offers from would-be landlords will start to look better, and neighborhood restrictions will relax. Stopping a fundamental market shift by legislation or regulation is generally impossible.

Which suburbs will avoid this fate? According to Leinberger suburbs and exurbs served by commuter rail—particularly those with walkable urban-ish centers (older suburbs with small retail strips in their “downtowns areas” or newer developments with “lifestyle centers”)—may buck the trend. But as gas prices continue to rise and more people choose walkable cities over car-dependent exurbs, the fate of McMansions will be sealed: they will become, Leinberger argues, “the new slums.”