Reading this article from Gay.Com, about a raid on a New Mexican gay gym, was like reading a history book about gay life before Stonewall…except that only one person was arrested…

New Mexico state police and the Albuquerque fire marshal’s office entered and secured the men-only gym about 10 p.m. Saturday and arrested club manager Ron Cordova on suspicion of selling and dispensing alcohol without a liquor license, said New Mexico Department of Public Safety spokesman Peter Olson.

But gym patrons — who were forced to lie on the floor, handcuffed, with semi-automatic rifles pointed at them — say that if the raid was about an alcohol infraction, it was, at least, overkill.

Ronald, a 57-year-old gay man from Miami Beach who requested that his last name not be used, said he was visiting New Mexico looking for real estate opportunities when he heard about a "social event" at Pride Gym on Saturday evening.

"There were about 35 of us there, and most were older men, some in their 70s, eating tacos and chatting," Ronald said. "Most of us were fully dressed, because it’s a legitimate gym with a sauna, but not a bathhouse."

"Suddenly, a SWAT team carrying semi-automatic weapons, plastic shields and late gloves burst through the door and told us to get on the ground. They kept saying, ‘We’re not here for you,’ but still they handcuffed us and kept us on the ground until they could run background checks on all of us. This took about an hour."

At least one elderly man suffered a panic attack and was taken away by paramedics, Ronald said. A few of the patrons were in the sauna when the raid occurred, and, when their towels fell, they were forced to lie on the floor naked, he said.

Ronald claimed that police officers led one man into a separate room and took pictures of him.

"The guy was wearing a leather harness and a jockstrap. A female officer with a digital camera took him into a room; we saw about 15 or 20 flashes coming from there and heard lots of laughter. They (the officers) were having a good old time. It was like the gay Abu Ghraib."

The ACLU is looking into it, but this is George Bush’s America, and I honestly can’t see any court case against police treatment of citizens like this, let alone homosexuals, going anywhere.  The Bush supreme court gives the police pretty much carte blanche these days, and it seems sometimes reading the news accounts of police behavior that made it past the courts, that they can cuff you and strip search you and do a cavity search of you during a routine traffic stop, so long as in their "judgment" they needed to do that.

"The officers were serving a search warrant and the fire marshal was there to inspect the building," Olson said. "Any time there is a situation with a large number of people, officers will employ whatever tactics they need to maintain control of the situation."

The warrant, he said, arose from tips from locals that alcohol was being served at Pride Gym. "Any time agents find someone serving alcohol without a license, it causes concern because those proprietors are operating outside of the law." He said it’s inaccurate to characterize Saturday night’s event as a ‘raid,’ and maintained that officers were not out of bounds.

…

"We were committing no crimes, and not one of us treated the police with any disrespect," Ronald said. "If they (the police) were trying to prevent drunk driving, why didn’t they target the art gallery where I went earlier that night? They were serving wine."

Olson said art galleries serving alcohol had been the focus of similar enforcement in the past, and now employ professional bartenders to serve wine.

However, he said he was not aware of incidents where gallery patrons were forced to lie on the ground at gunpoint.

Does anyone really need to explain why art gallery patrons are treated more like human beings by the police then the patrons of a gym that caters to the gay community?  The only difference here from the way cops treated gay people pre Stonewall is that everyone inside wasn’t led in handcuffs to police vans stationed outside, but that’s only because sodomy isn’t a crime anymore.  One more Bush appointee to the supreme court, and that will change, and the vans will be back.

The usual suspects have filed suit in Michigan , to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay people.

LANSING — A conservative group sued Wednesday to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay workers and said the school is violating a 2004 amendment to the state constitution.

The American Family Association of Michigan filed the lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court and hopes to get a ruling setting a precedent that would block domestic-partner benefits at other state universities.

The purpose of the suit is to ensure that courts rule on the constitutionality of domestic-partner benefits at public universities, said Patrick Gillen, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, which is representing the association.

By providing same-sex benefits, MSU is "recognizing same-sex marriage in substance, if not by label," Gillen said.

Not to mention providing access to health care for a class of people the American Family Association would just as soon see dead.  The bible says their blood will be upon them after all…

I’m going on another of my cross-country road trips this weekend, and the news today gives me reason to reflect once more on a simple, devastating fact: I can freely travel all over America, only because I am single.

Had I a spouse, a same-sex spouse because I am a gay man, we would have to take care not to set so much as a toe in states like Virginia, and Nebraska, and any of the other states in the Union (maybe we should start referring to it as a Dis-union now…), that have not only passed constitutional amendments banning same sex marriage, but also any legal recognition whatsoever of any possible legal right a same sex couple may need to have, in order to defend their union. Because if anything should happen to either one of us, it would be a nightmare for the other. A nightmare like this…

When Sharon Kowalski was injured in an automobile accident in November 1983, her partner, Karen Thompson had to fight a nightmarish legal battle with Kowalski’s parents lasting ten years. During that time, Kowalski’s parents placed her in a nursing home where they could insure that Thompson would be kept away. The nursing home was unequipped to give Kowalski the physical therapy she needed, and which might have made a difference in the extent of her recovery had it been given to her early on. When Kowalski was given a typewriter to communicate, she instantly began typing out calls for Karen. The typewriter was taken from her.

…or this…

When Juan Navarrete came home in 1989 and found his partner LeRoy Tranton lying bloody on the concrete driveway to their house, it marked the beginning of a bitter fight with Tranton’s brother who prevented Navarrete from seeing his beloved in the hospital. Despite Tranton’s persistent calling for his lover Juan, he was kept away. When Tranton later died, Navarrete was unable even to visit the grave.

…or this…

In 1993, a Virginia judge ruled that Sharon Bottoms was an unfit mother because she was a lesbian, and awarded custody of her 20-month-old son, to her mother, who had sought custody of the boy when she learned her daughter was a lesbian, and in love with another woman.

…or this…

In 2000, a court in Tacoma Washington ruled that Frank Vasques could be denied his lover of 28 years’ estate because the two where in a homosexual relationship. They had shared a house, business and financial assets for 28 years.

…or this…

After NBC news cameraman Rob Pierce died in a helicopter crash, his family visited his partner Frank Gagliano, in the Miami condominium the two had shared. After mourning together, they told Gagliano he should take a walk on the beach. Then Pierce’s family changed the locks on the condo, and when Gagliano returned, told him he was no longer welcome there. Gagliano had to go to court just to get his belongings.

…or this…

In Massachusetts, after Ken Kirkey’s partner Mark died of cancer, Mark’s family removed his ashes from the home the two shared. Kirkey discovered he had no legal right to Mark’s ashes, though they were among the first to take advantage of Vermont’s new Civil Unions law.

…or this…I

n 2001 Sharon Smith was told she had no legal standing to file a wrongful death suit against Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, after two of their dogs mauled her partner Diane Whipple to death in the hallway of her apartment.

…or this…

In 2002 Officials at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center barred William Robert Flanigan Jr. from his dying partner’s bedside, saying he was not "family", and that ‘partners’ did not qualify. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner, Robert Lee Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center insisted he would not be allowed his partner’s bedside. Only when Daniel’s mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel’s room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. He would die two days later. Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel’s final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints

…or this…

In 1999 Earl Meadows 56, passed away a year after suffering a stroke which left him unable to take care of himself. He was cared for by his lover and partner, Sam Beaumont, 61, on the Oklahoma ranch they had both worked together for a quarter century. Meadows cousins, filed suit and Beaumont lost everything he and Meadows had worked together for, the ranch, the cattle, everything, because even though he had a will, it lacked a second witness signature, and a judge ruled it was invalid, and in a state that has a constitutional amendment banning not only same sex marriage but any legal recognition of same sex couples, as far as the law was concerned, Beaumont and Meadows were legally strangers.

After Meadows’ cousins won his worldly goods in court, they went back to court and sued Beaumont for back rent for every year he lived on the ranch.

This is the future that jackasses like Andrew Sullivan, and the Deep Thinkers at the Independent (sic) Gay Forum, who preach the virtues of "federalism"and letting each state go their own way on same sex marriage, are condemning gay couples to: a patchwork of states they can safely travel in, embedded in a dangerous no-homo-land where the law doesn’t merely fail to acknowledge your rights as a couple, but actively seeks to destroy your union, and throw the two of you into a living nightmare, when given any opportunity whatever to do so. For all the same reasons that a nation half free and half slave would not work, for all the same reasons that a nation where rights are allocated on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion different in every state would not work, a nation where some couples are allowed to live in peace in some states and in a state of fear in others will not work. You cannot build a democracy out of "some animals are more equal then others, depending on their sexual orientation and their physical location at any given moment".

In Georgia, where the question was about how many different subjects a constitutional amendment ballot could embrace, the court unanimously decided that the subject in question was not, after all, a combination of same sex marriage plus civil unions, but one simple all embracing expression of animus by the heterosexual majority of Georgia toward same sex couples as a class. On that basis, the heterosexual majority of Georgia could have thrown every knife at gay people they could have gotten their hands on in that ballot question, the right to hold property, the right to vote, the right to walk down any street in Georgia without getting your head bashed in, and the subject of the ballot question would still have been only the hate, not the particulars of how that hate is expressed. On the other hand, let’s face it, that is pretty much a correct view of what the subject of the ballot question was: Resolved – same sex couples have no rights the heterosexual majority is bound to respect…

But for this week’s laughing mockery of justice, the court in New York has to take top honors. This is their rational, I am not kidding, for keeping marriage in New York a heterosexual prerogative:

First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true. The Legislature could also find that such relationships are all too often casual or – temporary. It could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement — in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits — to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.

The Legislature could find that this rationale for marriage does not apply with comparable force to same-sex couples. These couples can become parents by adoption, or by artificial insemination or other technological marvels, but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse. The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in opposite sex relationships will help children more. This is one reason why the Legislature could rationally offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only.

What they’re saying there, is that a "rational" reason for limiting marriage to heterosexuals only, "could be" because heterosexual couples are less likely to provide stable homes for children, because heterosexuals can have children just by randomly fucking around, and probably will, whilst homosexual couples are more likely to provide stable homes for children because they have to work harder to bring children into their homes.

Never mind that this is, once again, arguing that the purpose of marriage is to provide an environment for the raising of children, which is patently is not since having children, or even being physically able to have children, is not a requirement for marriage.  Never mind that.  This argument is pathetic on its face.  I guess you have to have grown up during the Stonewall years to appreciate the irony of it all. Once upon a time it was your gay and lesbian neighbors who were begging for some meager measure of rights, or at least a shred or two of human dignity, on the grounds that it wasn’t our fault that we were mentally unstable, and it would be cruel to punish us for something we cannot help. Today, at least in New York, it is heterosexuals who are saying they need rights because they cannot help being unstable. But if heterosexuals relationships are too unstable to exist without marriage, then heterosexuals are in no position to pass judgment on the fitness of their gay and lesbian neighbors for marriage either.

Except that they are the majority, so they can anyway. That is the rational here, nothing else. We outnumber you, so we can. The rights of heterosexual couples are enshrined in the fabric of our democracy, our constitution. The rights of gay couples exist, or not, a the discretion of heterosexuals. We can beg for rights, but we cannot assert a right of equality because we are manifestly unequal to heterosexuals in the only way that matters in George Bush’s America: we are fewer. What two state supreme courts have said today, is that this means the majority can do whatever it damn well pleases with our households, and any hopes and dreams we might have ever had or ever dared to want for happiness and peace and a life together with the ones we love, simply because they outnumber us. My Country ‘Tis Of Thee…

And here I am, slowly packing my things for another cross country trip, looking at my path through Virginia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and so on…and wondering how the hell I could possibly make such a trip if I had a spouse. I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. It would be too dangerous for both of us. The minute either of us became sick or ill or incapacitated in some way, everything we made of our lives together, and every hope and dream we ever had for the future, could be annihilated by laws designed specifically to be relentlessly hostile toward same sex couples. 

And never mind vacations.  My employer is sending me to the OSCON Open Source conference in Portland Oregon at the end of the month.  Do I tell them I can’t go because Oregon passed a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage and if I get sick or injured out there my spouse could be legally barred from taking any sort of care of me, let alone visiting me in the hospital, or seeing to it that my medical wishes are respected.  Robert Flanigan Jr.  Karen Thompson.  Juan Navarrete. 

And then there is the matter of families being torn apart.   I have family in Virginia, and my mother’s grave, that I could never see again, if I had a spouse.  They say Virginia’s anti same sex laws are so draconian, they may even disallow joint checking accounts between same sex couples.  How the hell do I even go lay flowers on my mother’s grave, when every moment I am in Virginia, I am putting my spouse at risk for a legal nightmare?  It is impossible.  No family of mine has the right to demand I risk flushing our marriage down the toilet, simply to come down for a visit.  If the people busy passing these laws really believe that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex, then there are a lot of families in those states, in for some bitter awakenings in the years to come.  Of course a lot of these people just discard their gay and lesbian children anyway, like so much human garbage.  But not all of them do.  I guess the message to those families is, if you love your gay children, there’s probably something wrong with you people anyway.

Anyone who thinks this state’s rights approach is fine for solving the issue of same sex marriage in America is smoking crack.  It is a recipe for tearing this nation apart, one family at a time.  And friends from friends.  I used to have straight friends who would have told me today, to count my blessings, and be glad that I am still single. That is why they are now ex-friends.

I’ve shown you this one before…right…?

It’s the flagpole at one of those churches that look nothing like churches, just down the road from Love In Action in Memphis.  The church it’s in front of has no steeple, nothing at all in it’s style or structure to suggest that it’s even a church at all.  It looks from the road, like your basic office building.  Seems the god of the white upper class, at least in the bible belt these days, likes its sanctuaries to look like either office buildings, or shopping malls.  A look perhaps befitting fundamentalism’s new emphasis on worldly things. 

I can’t say much about the rest of the bible belt because I haven’t wandered there much, but Memphis seems to have more megachurches that look like shopping malls per capita then the rest of America has shopping malls. There’s Germantown Baptist, which I visited the last time I was down there.  Nestled in the midst of a very well-to-do suburb of Memphis, it has it’s own tennis courts, day care, and big screen TV’s inside the sanctuary, so the folks in the back rows can see what’s happening on the stage.  Then there is the place the locals call Six Flags Over Jesus…Bellevue Baptist Church.  I’ve not been there yet, but the locals say it not only has the big screen TVs mounted on either side of the stage like Germantown, but TV cameras mounted on cranes that can pan around and capture all the action for the TV audience.  It’s got a bookstore, A GRACE Family Life Center, a JOY Christian Recreation Complex, a Love building, a Praise building, a really nice website where you can find a link to their Live Sermon Webcast, and a User Agreement with this wee notice:

Hypertext Link: You may provide a hypertext link to this web site on another web site only upon the receipt of written consent from Bellevue. To receive such consent, fill out a request form. Upon receipt of written consent, you may provide a link in the following manner: (a) the link points to the URL http://www.bellevue.org and not to the pages within the site; (b) the appearance, position or other aspects of the link do not create a false impression that Bellevue is associated with, or endorses, another web site, church or product; (c) the link does not dilute or damage Bellevue’s trademarks, service marks or goodwill; (d) the link does not display Bellevue’s web site with frames. Bellevue may revoke its consent to the link at any time in its sole discretion.

We all have to protect our brand I guess. 

Okay…so much so obvious.  You’ve all heard me going on about megachurches before.  But last night I was surfing my bookmarks and via The Flypaper Theory I discovered World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church, and I think they’ve done them all better. World Overcomers Outreach Ministries has a grand Walk Of Nations entranceway, a bookstore, a gym, an Olympic sized swimming pool, a bowling alley, a video arcade, and a pool hall.  I’m a bit surprised they don’t have a bar somewhere in there too.  The next step, is for someone to put a floating megachruch on the river somewhere, with a casino inside.  But to make sure they leave their competition in the dust, World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church are even building their own Statue Of Liberty. 

Well…kind of…

Our Lady Of Manifest Destiny, as PeskyFly puts it.  I had to stare at it for about five minutes before I could convince my brain of what my eyes were seeing.  The torch is gone, replaced by a cross.  The tablet that once read July 4th, 1776, has been replaced by the ten commandments.  And yes, they will unveil the thing tomorrow, on the fourth of July, 2006.  According to this article in the Memphis Commerical Appeal, the seven spikes on her crown that represent the seven seas of the world has been changed to signify the seven redemptive names of Christ. The crown itself has been inscribed with the name "Jehovah".   An old colossus, to replace the new one given this nation as a token of esteem once upon a time…

The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus

The lamp of course, had to go, because the golden door has to go.  Yearning to breath free are you?  Don’t you know that freedom is only possible if you believe what we tell you to believe, live how we tell you to live, and worship how we tell you to worship?  Democracy is a lie straight from Satan, because only the devil would think up a system of government that gives heathens the same rights as the righteous.  Think about it.  True freedom means doing what we tell you to do and thinking what we tell you to think because we’re righteous and  if you’re not one of us then obviously you aren’t.  Give your conscience to us and you’ll be free.  We’ve got a really swell video arcade and pool hall you can while away the hours between sermons in.  And the TV reception inside the church is great.  Have you visited our gift shop yet?

Finally…

Click on the image to go directly to the new episode, or go to the main page of A Coming Out Story…Here. 

This one was intended mainly to introduce my circle of friends and add a little to the setting.  I never intended for it to take so damn long to produce…I just kept hemming and hawing about how I wanted to do this one, which is a very repetative sequence of panels, and so I did other things and let it slide for far, far too long.  If I want to finish this thing before I’m 100 I need to be a tad quicker at getting these out.

This one is about a certain blind spot I had in my teen years, that drove some of my friends nuts.  They kept waiting for me to grow up and "get it" and I kept wondering why they often looked at me like I was from another planet.  Little did any of us really understand that I was growing up right on schedule, just on a slightly different course from theirs.  Paradoxically, had I a better understanding of my own homosexuality, I might have had a better understanding of their heterosexuality, and how hormones were jerking them around too, in their way.  And when a guy with a ‘C’ average at best said he was going to go help one of the foxiest honor roll girls in the school with her homework, I might have been able to read between the lines a tad better then I usually did.

35 Things You’d Never Want to Answer

1. Have you ever been questioned by the cops?
Yes.  As a witness a bunch of times.  Once as an arrestee.  I was arrested, with a friend, for discharging a firearm inside the urban limits.  But we weren’t actually inside the urban limits and the charges were dropped.  And we got our rifles back too.

2. Do you close your eyes on roller coasters?
I don’t ride roller coasters.  My life is a roller coaster.  If I ever rode a roller coaster, I would not close my eyes.  Life has taught me not to do that.

3. When’s the last time you’ve been sledding?
Nine…I think.  On the hill behind our apartment complex.

4. Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone?
Rather not alone.  Have most of my life though.

5. Do you believe in ghosts?
No.  But then I’ve never seen one.  I’ve looked in a bunch of places and waited around but never seen any.  What is a ghost anyway?  If you’re still aware, but in another state of being, are you really dead?  Life after death is a wierd self contradicting concept.  Either you are dead or you’re not.

6. Do you think O.J. killed his wife?
Sure looks like it to me.

7. Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie?
Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom?

8. Can you honestly say you know ANYTHING about politics?
Well…yes actually.  Growing up in the Washington D.C. area makes you at least a little aware of it.

9. How do you feel about your last ex?
Sad.  Very sad.

10. Do you like to cuddle?
Yes.  And…neck.  And stroll down a beach holding hands.  And making my boyfriend smile.  And thinking about him while drawing his name in my sketchbook.  And all that icky romantic stuff.  Yes.

11. If you’re driving in the middle of the night, and no one is in sight, would you speed?
Never in a residential area, and not if I can’t brake in the distance my headlights reach.  At night, a lot of things might not be in sight, that are in the path of your front bumper all the same, or are about to be.

12. Do you have a secret that no one knows but you?
Yeah.  And they still don’t.

13. Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees
Yankees.  Just because they piss everyone off and I would rather watch pill commercials then sports.  Go Yankees.

14. How often do you remember your dreams?
I remember them all just after I wake up.  But if I don’t focus my thoughts on any of them I will forget them completely after about an hour or so.  I keep a dream notepad next to my bed.  Dreams are the best part of sleeping.  Even nightmares are interesting sometimes.  When they’re over.

15. Can you name 5 songs by The Beatles?
I Want To Hold Your Hand
She Loves You
Please, Please Me
Paperback Writer
You Know My Name, Look Up The Number

16. What’s the one thing on your mind?
Being single.

17. Do you believe in love at first sight?
Uhm…no.  I believe in Oh My God Look At Him He’s So Fucking Beautiful at first sight though.

18. What talent do you wish you had?
I wish I could play an instrument.  But no…I just can’t keep a beat to save my life.

19. What do you wear to bed?
My day, usually.  Probably why I have such a problem with insomnia.

20. Have you ever been caught stealing?
I. Don’t. Steal.

21. Rock or Rap?
Rock.

22. If you could be seen with one famous person, who would it be?
Being seen with is nothing.  I would like to talk for a while with Walter Cronkite, Neal Armstrong, Arthur C. Clarke…uhm…dang…so many of my childhood heros are dead now…

23. Do you know anyone in jail?
Not…currently.

24. Have you ever sung in front of the mirror?
Yes.  Still didn’t sound any better.

25. What food do you find disgusting?
Guacamole.  Sushi.  Cottage Cheese.  Oysters.  Prunes.  Tofu.  Skim Milk.  Beer.

26. Did you ever play, "I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?"
Sure.  Then group showers in gym class kinda made it pointless.

27. Who is your biggest fan?
I have friends, not fans.

28. Have you ever stood up for someone you hardly knew?
Yes.  Done it all my life.  I get outraged, I get angry, and I remember all the people in my life who stood up for me.

29. If you could live anywhere, where would you live?
Oceano, California for half the year.  Manhattan the other half.

30. If you could be any animal what would you be?
See…I take questions like this too literally.  I don’t want to give up my human brain.  Even to fly.  But it would probably be some sort of bird.  An owl most likely.

31. Your best quality?
All my qualities play off each other so I don’t think there is a "best".
The part of me I would least want to give up is my curiosity.

32. Best feature?
Don’t know.  Nobody’s ever told me stuff like that.  

33. When was the last time you smoked pot?
I…forget.  No…seriously.  Really.

34. Have you ever spent the night with a person of the opposite sex?
Is this a question about sex?  Why the evasiveness?  How about "Have you ever been in the sack with a person of the opposite sex and you both had sex that was so hot you steamed the windows and peeled the paint off the walls and deep cleaned that old throw rug at the foot of the bed you were going to throw out one of these days and when neither one of you could so much as move a muscle anymore you went to sleep and then it was the next morning"?  But no…we have to be coy about it don’t we?   Look…this isn’t vacation bible school, it’s MySpace.  Your parents are aghast, James Dobson is having fits, your local TV Action News team is running an investigative report and congress is holding hearings and if we don’t give them at least a five bleeding ulcers over what we’re all up to in here Every Fucking Day Of The Week then we’re just not doing our jobs in here.  So if you’ve got a question for me about sex, then just friggin’ ask it…okay?

Well…anyway…the answer is ‘no’. 

35. Do you miss high school?
I miss the scene me and my friends had back then.  I miss it very much.  I miss some of my teachers.  A few of them were very good to me.  They not only taught me, they stoked the hunger to learn in me.  I miss them very much.  But life goes on…

See…I gave you answers.

[Edited number 2 a tad…] 

It looks tonight, as though the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to embrace the pogrom of the American right wing billionaires who have been financing the upheaval in his church over the ordination of gays and women…

The Archbishop of Canterbury has outlined proposals that are expected to lead to the exclusion of The Episcopal Church of the United States from the Anglican Church as a consequence of consecrating a gay bishop.

The US branch of Anglicanism faces losing its status of full membership of the Anglican Church in the wake of its consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, an act which has propelled the worldwide church to the brink of schism.

The final straw came when The Episcopal Church failed to "repent" of its action at its General Convention in Columbus, Ohio earlier this month, and failed to vote through a moratorium on any more gay consecrations.

Dr Williams is proposing a two-track Anglican Communion, with orthodox churches being accorded full, "constituent" membership and the rebel, pro-gay liberals being consigned to "associate" membership.

All provinces will be offered the chance to sign up to a "covenant" which will set out the traditional, biblical standards on which all full members of the Anglican church can agree.

But it is highly unlikely that churches such as The Episcopal Church in the US, the Anglican churches in Canada and New Zealand and even the Scottish Episcopal Church would be able to commit themselves fully to such a document.

These churches and any others that refused to sign up could opt to cut ties to Canterbury altogether, or could choose to remain in associate status.

This is not simply a victory for bigotry…it’s a milepost along a highway of blood.  Homosexuals will die, never doubt this, as a result of the religious passions Williams is now pouring gasoline on.  After the holocaust you’d think they’d know better, but it seems that lesson was only Lets lay off the Jews for a while and bash the homosexuals instead.  Once upon a time the Catholic church, and then the Protestants, insisted that Jews were Christ killers who deserved what they got.  You can argue that lead directly to the Ovens, but in fact the killing had been going on for centuries.  By the reckoning of normal population growth statistics, and starting from the count of the number of Jews in the holy lands at the time of Jesus (the Roman occupiers kept meticulous records in the manner of all totalitarian states…), I’m told there should be about 240 million Jews walking this earth, right now, right this moment.  In fact there are about 18 million.  Hitler didn’t do all that…

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.
-James Carroll, "Constantine’s Sword"

The holocaust made antisemitism something you’re not supposed to preach from the pulpit…at least not while outsiders are looking.  But on the other hand Leviticus gives a free pass to people who kill homosexuals in the name of God, and judging from the reaction in some quarters already to Williams’ decision to expel everyone who doesn’t think homosexuals are unclean, the mob is ready for a little Leviticus action…

And get it they will.  I strongly doubt it is any coincidence, that the rise in gay bashings and killings worldwide has come at a time when Catholic and Protestant church leaders, in America and in the third world, are busy calling homosexuals a threat to everything from children and marriage and family to the existence of civilization itself.  Rowan Williams has not only signed onto this pogrom, whatever his future protestations that he means gay people no harm, by throwing his church into schism because some churches weren’t treating gays as the unclean god condemned sinners they are, he’s now poured gasoline onto it.  The Gays Split The Church, isn’t quite as good as The Jews Killed Christ, but it will do nicely.

No Dr. Williams…our blood is not upon us.  It is upon you.

I’ve a new cartoon up…finally.  I’m so sorry for the cartoon page downtime, but I have to admit it’s been gratifying to get so scolded for it.  I’m just amazed that my political cartoons have so many fans, particularly since I don’t advertise, and the couple small community papers that had been carrying it dropped out at the beginning of the year without explanation.

Yes…this one’s old news.  It had been on the drawing board for weeks now.  I have another few like that in various stages of readiness, so the next week will be catching up.  Then hopefully we’ll be back to normal.

Oh…and there Will be a new episode of A Coming Out Story up late Saturday.

Just so family and friends know…Casa del Garrett is holding up just fine under the onslaught of rain here in central Maryland.  My street dead ends in a grassy field, beyond which is a sharp drop down about sixty feet or so to an area of warehouses, and from there down about thirty feet or so more to the Jones Falls river (which is more of a very large creek most days).  I am well above the hundred-year flood plain around Jones Falls.  In addition my neighborhood is on a slight, but pronounced grade, such that if I walk three blocks east or two blocks north, I am standing at the same height as my roof.  Rain water, even from the last hurricane runs off pretty quickly around here, and people keep the storm gutters clear.

Last night, during a torrent of rain, I stood under the aluminum roof over my back deck and watched the water cascading down the alley.  The flat roofs of our rowhouses all tilt toward the back yards, and most all of us have gutter extensions that drain the runoff into the alley.  It was a mad river back there for a while, but because of the grade the water was rushing down the alley as fast as it was coming down out of the sky.  There was no danger of it overflowing into our yards or our basements.  At the end of the alley is a big storm gutter, but also the drop down to the Jones Falls, which would have to rise about a hundred feet to put my neighborhood at risk of flooding out.

I’d had it in mind to get the roof inspected this summer, as it’s about two-thirds into it’s ten year life expectancy.  But so far there are no leaks.  My little brick rowhouse is staying water tight, even under the basement door.  The bad news is that they’re calling for rain through the rest of the week for Washington and Baltimore, so a lot of places around here are going to flood.  I haven’t seen any downed trees yet, but I’m sure I will before the week’s over.  So far the power has flickered from time to time, but hasn’t gone out yet.  I’ve seen the power company trucks rolling around though, so I reckon downed trees have been giving them trouble elsewhere.

At the moment we’re under another torrent again.  They come and go.  Sometimes there is no rain at all.  It’s very much like what you get from rain bands from a tropical storm…nothing, then light drizzle, then rain, then a torrent of rain, then back to a drizzle or nothing for a while…only from what I see on the Weather Channel it’s just a stalled front pumping rain up the coast. 

So I’m fine for now, and I am not at any great risk of flooding.  It’s going to leave its mark elsewhere in the state though.

Yes…the Advanced Camera for Surveys went into safe mode last Monday, after an anomaly was detected in the the CCD Electronics  Box.  Basically so I’m told, the voltages went above their high limits.  So the camera went into safe mode.

We have a redundant power supply circuit we can switch to, and I understand preparations are being made to activate it.  But they want to fully understand what happened to cause the safe mode first.  They’re going to do this slowly and methodically, look at all the data, run a few tests, look at the data some more, one step at a time until they are satisfied they understand what happened.  I’m told there is no cause for alarm, and we’ll probably get back to doing science with it by the end of the month.

I’m starting to get scolded now for not keeping my cartoon page up to date, and I won’t have this week’s political cartoon(s) ready until late Monday.  So just so you know that I’ve actually been somewhat busy in my art room these past few days, here’s a peek at the next installment of A Coming Out Story…

Click on the image for the full size version, if you like.  I have four more sets of panels like this one to finish, but I’m close.  I expect to have the next installment up this Saturday.  I think I’m getting my steam back.  The story gets a little fun-er now.  I have two political cartoons on the drawing boards that I’m almost done with too.  I should have them up late tomorrow.  I also have another Mark and Josh cartoon…two in a series actually…in the works.

Old friends of mine can hopefully see now why I’m being coy about names and faces.  I am as much a product of the 60s/70s as any other boomer child and I decided when I set out to do this story that I wouldn’t censor the pot smoking (among other things) that went on back then.  So the names, and a few faces, have been changed to protect the not quite so innocent.  And if my old friends want further inoculation, they can simply point to my introduction to the series, in which I plainly state that the story I am telling is one-third things that really happened to me, one-third artistic license, and one-third pure fantasy. 

I think I’m getting my steam back here.  I should be a bit more productive in the coming weeks.  Hopefully I can get back into some kind of rythm on my Coming Out Story.  I have something like fifity episodes scripted already  (and there are more I need to work out) and I don’t want to be doing this thing for the rest of my life, so I need to figure out ways I can get these things made faster.  Part of my slowness in getting this installment out has been in experimenting with new ways of working, both on the drafting table and in Photoshop.  I’d like to get myself to a place where I can turn out a new episode every two weeks.  Otherwise I’ll be decades finishing this thing.

[Majorly Edited…]

Just to while away the time…

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.
-Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?"
-Howard Ikemoto

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
-John W. Gardner

No stream rises higher than its source.
-Frank Lloyd Wright

I’m sure many people will ask, ‘how could anyone do such a horrible thing?’  My only answer is, it isn’t easy,and was done only after much thought.
-John List, in a letter explaining why he killed his wife and children
                       
That we can do such as this, and still remain moral men, is what makes us great.
-Heinrich Himmler, to his troops after a mass execution of Jews in Poland

When heterosexuals come to terms with their sexuality, they call it adolescence.  When gay people do the same, they call it "coming out."
-The Columbus Dispatch, "Coming out"

Most of us survive our first loves.  But imagine what it must be like when your first love is not only a test of your commitment to your partner, but also of your parents’ to you?
-Desiree Cooper "Mother’s love is not a worry for gay teen", The Detroit Free Press

America is Satanic. America is so Satanic that even hamburgers should be considered evil, because they come from America.
-Sun Myung Moon

For best results: wash in cold water separately,
hang dry and iron with warm iron. For not so good
results: drag behind car through puddles, blow-dry
on roofrack.
-Laundry instructions on a shirt made by HEET (Korea)

It’s not like I never want to bite people…I just know it’s wrong.
-Satchel Pooch (Mrs. Pastor)

I smoke because it keeps me from killing people.
-Sarah Deere (Eschaton blog reader)

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.
-H.L. Mencken, Minority Report

What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it… That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.
-Richard Feynman

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Herrera v. Collins

A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life. Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away. Be good natured and untidy in your exuberance. In the glare of your mind, be modest, and beholden to what is tactile and thrilling.
-Mary Oliver

Some people are settling, some people are settling down and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies.
-Carrie – Sex And The City
 

 

Logo (the gay cable channel that seldom has anything on it I want to watch) has its viewers’ picks for the top 50 LGBT films, and  Pam’s House Blend is running a top 3 thread in response.  Every time one of these Pick Your Favorite GLBT Films things comes up it only serves to remind me how little same sex Romance there is out there.  But I think I can actually pick a top three…

Stipulating that I have not seen Brokeback Mountain…which seems to be on everyones favorites list nowadays (and it seems, rightfully so…)  These three have all the right ingredients, the stuff of every heterosexual romance you’ve ever seen or read, but finally gay couples get a chance to play too.

• Latter Days – Excruciatingly hard to watch in spots (like the excommunication scenes), but this is the kind of true hearted same sex romance I have long waited to see on film.  L.A. party boy discovers a group of young Mormon missionaries has moved into the apartment across from his, and takes a bet that he can seduce one of them.  Of course they fall in love.  It could easily have belly flopped into the trite pool, but like all good romances, the lovers drive each other to reach beyond themselves.  The Mormon boy challenges the party boy’s superficiality and the party boy coaxes the Mormon boy out of his suffocating shell. 
• You I Love – A sexy sweet rollercoaster of a love story.  Young successful, trendy Moscow urbanite with young successful and trendy girlfriend falls head over heels in love with young Russian male from deep in the Asian side of the country.  I almost threw a chair through the TV set when I thought the film was going to end with the lover’s being separated…but they didn’t do that to me.  Some have suggested that the film cops out by having the lovers taking refuge in a bisexual triangle at the end (with the urbanite’s girlfriend).  Given the vehement social prejudices on display in the film (and in real life in Moscow lately), I can forgive the filmmakers for this.  You do not doubt for a moment the love the two guys have for each other throughout this film and it is very touching.
• Lan Yu – Successful single businessman, preoccupied with business and cynical about love, has a tryst with a younger man that turns into a longtime on again – off again affair.  Businessman showers younger man with gifts, including an expensive house to live in, but keeps him at arm’s length because he doesn’t believe in love.  Then businessman is then caught up in the shady dealings of his company, arrested and put on trial.  Younger man sells all the gifts the businessman bought for him to pay bribes to corrupt local officials and get his lover out of jail.  Businessman learns that love is really more important then business after all.  If they’d only ended it there this film would be my all time favorite.  But then they had to go and gratuitously kill the younger lover off at the very end of the film in a random construction accident, leaving the businessman alone and grieving.  I suppose this was supposed to drive home the lesson about not wasting your chances for love, but they didn’t have to do that to make the point.

Now for three guilty pleasures…

• Gravitation and Earthian – Neither of these anime were nearly as good as the manga they were based on, but…damn!  Beautiful long haired (and I mean Long Haired) guys.   Oh yes…
• Harry and Son – Robbie Benson in a pair of cut-offs.  And the story is pretty good too…
• Happy Together – My anti-romance, for when I’m in a cynical mood.  Lovers who cannot stand each other, yet cannot keep their hands off each other, end up stranded in Buenos Aires, doing menial work to make ends meet while taking the occasional roll in the sack that they just can’t seem to avoid.  Something about the idea that Buenos Aries is the place where all failed romances end up appeals to me.

From our Department Of Unsurprising Things…  Via The Register…did you know that the Tribulation Forces are monitoring your keystrokes…?

Watchers of right-wing Christian groups in the States say a new apocalyptic videogame released by cultish Revelations-based fiction series Left Behind is riddled with spyware.

Developers have incorporated software from an Israeli firm called Double Fusion. It incorporates video advertising and product placement into the game, and reportedly records players’ behaviour, location, and other data to be uploaded to Left Behind’s Bible-powered marketing machine.

Nice.  But the righteous have nothing to fear.  If this sort of thing bothers you, you’re probably an agent of Satan anyway.  Or a UN Peacekeeper.

In an interview on the series’ website Greg Bauman of Left Behind Games explains: "Left Behind: Eternal Forces will help readers get a sense of the conflict and chaos of the time period portrayed in Left Behind and live out how they would defend themselves and their faith from the Antichrist and his Global Peace Keeping Forces." The United Nations, already organ of satanic machinations for many on the Christian far-right, features strongly in the game. Goat-footed demons reportedly emerge from UN peacekeeping humvees.

Which reminds me of something I was watching unfold in tired resignation the other day…(via Steve Gilliard)

Gun owners accuse UN of July 4 conspiracy

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Americans mistakenly worried the United Nations is plotting to take away their guns on July 4 — U.S. Independence Day — are flooding the world body with angry letters and postcards, the chairman of a U.N. conference on the illegal small arms trade said on Wednesday.

"I myself have received over 100,000 letters from the U.S. public, criticizing me personally, saying, ‘You are having this conference on the 4th of July, you are not going to get our guns on that day,"’ said Prasad Kariyawasam, Sri Lanka’s U.N. ambassador.

"That is a total misconception as far as we are concerned," Kariyawasam told reporters ahead of the two-week meeting opening on Monday.

For one, July 4 is a holiday at U.N. headquarters and the world body’s staff will be watching a fireworks display from the U.N. lawn rather than attending any meetings, he said.

For another, the U.N. conference will look only at illegal arms and "does not in any way address legal possession," a matter left to national governments to regulate rather than the United Nations, he added.

The campaign is largely the work of the U.S. National Rifle Association, whose executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, warns on an NRA Web site (http://www.stopungunban.org/) of a July 4 plot "to finalize a U.N. treaty that would strip all citizens of all nations of their right to self-protection."

Notice how the rank and file just ate it up.  Lookout!  Lookout!  The UN is coming to take your guns away on the forth of July…!  And you wonder why some people reflexively associate guns with mentally unstable lunatics.  This is exactly why I am not a member of the NRA.  That, and their knee jerk support for any gutter crawling bigot running for office who happens to have the right position on gun ownership.  And you know what…I’ll bet at least two-thirds of the membership of Pink Pistols bought into this crap too.

Something else from Cosmic Variance that caught my eye…  Physicists are eagerly awaiting the first collisions from the new Large Hadron Collider…

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator which will probe deeper into matter than ever before. Due to switch on in 2007, it will ultimately collide beams of protons at an energy of 14 TeV . Beams of lead nuclei will be also accelerated, smashing together with a collision energy of 1150 TeV. 

But they need to be a tad careful in turning it on… 

Now for the reality check, as presented last week by the LHC project manager Lyn Evans (insert drumroll here): The machine will be closed in August 2007 and first collisions will occur in November 2007 at center of mass energy 1.8 TeV. The same energy as the previous run (known as Run I) at the Tevatron! It seems that this decision is very prudent. In 2007, only a couple sectors of the LHC will be fully commissioned to handle 7 TeV proton beams. The remaining sectors will not be commissioned until early 2008.

Let’s think about this for a moment. Commissioning (starting) new colliders is frought with numerous unintentional aborts of the beam. And when a beam is aborted, it has to go somewhere (it’s called dumping the beam). Hopefully it aborts as planned, otherwise….much energy is dumped somewhere it should not be! At full throttle (7 TeV beams), the energy stored in the LHC beam is 700 MegaJoules, or 10 TeraWatts. How big is that? Well, 10 TeraWatts is about half of the world’s total energy output. No wonder the accelerator folks are a bit jittery! They don’t want to dump 10 TeraWatts of beam just anywhere…

Here’s a picture (courtesy of Tom LeCompte) to illustrate this point. The kinetic energy of battleship guns is 300 Megajoules, or just less than half that of the full LHC beam. Now we understand why the machine folks want to be a bit cautious…

Yeah…I think I’d be careful with that too.