I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I wasn’t braver back then. It might have made a difference in both our lives. Maybe.

Scott Lively will not stand trial in the United States for his crimes against humanity after all…

Lively had faced  a crimes against humanity lawsuit from Ugandan LGBT activists, who allege he has acted in violation of international law, by seeking to promote the persecution of gay people.

However, the lawsuit was dismissed this week by the  United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which ruled that there was no jurisdiction for the case.

There’s a line from poem going through my head as I read the entire article over at Pink News. It’s in the Penguin Greek Anthology, by the poet Palladas of Alexandria who was, “A Pagan in the age of the rise of Christianity, his verse is imbued with a deep-rooted, bitter pessimism and melancholy…” In the poem a murderer is spared sudden death by a dream from the god Serapis, warning him to jump for his life before a crumbling wall crashed upon his bed. The murderer thanks the god for saving his life. But the next night he gets another dream from Serapis who tells him that saving his life wasn’t exactly the plan…

Don’t think the gods have let you go
and connive at homicide.
We’ve spared you that quick crushing, so
we can get you crucified.

One can hope that’s the case here for Lively, because this was emphatically not exoneration. The judge’s decision should scare the hell out of him.

To summarize Lively: for decades he has made it his life’s work to actively incite violent passions toward gay people in other parts of the world. He does this, by visiting places where people have suffered horrific war crimes, mass murders, acts of genocide, and tells that that the agents of their suffering were homosexuals, that homosexuality was the  evil that befell them. And then he basically stands back and lets the rage of the mob run its course, later denying that he ever meant any actual violence toward homosexuals  to come of it.

It begins with his first book on the subject, “The Pink Swastika”, in which he asserts that German fascism was an almost exclusively homosexual creation, that the Nazi party was basically a homosexual network, and that the horrifically violent crimes perpetrated toward jews, slavs and others was the inevitable outcome of homosexual mental pathology.  The book has become the go-to piece of propaganda for the religious right, whenever gay civil rights activists point to the horrors of the Third Reich, the death camps and the pink triangles. And it’s instructive.  Lively makes  a good example of the sort of “fake news” and “junk science” your gay neighbors have had thrown at us by the religious and political right for decades. What we’re seeing now in the age of Donald Trump is nothing new to us.  Lively’s  book has been denounced over and over again as a near total fabrication by actual historians of world war two and the rise and fall of the Nazis, but it  is regarded as holy writ in the pews of the evangelical right and the republican gutter, where it does not matter that Lively is spreading lies so long as the lies are useful.

Not getting enough traction for his ideas beyond the U.S. bible belt, and failing abysmally in western Europe where the history of the Third Reich is perfectly well understood, he began in the 1990s to take his show to places elsewhere in the world, to where his campaign of hate mongering might have more success: to places where horrific war crimes were committed and memories were still raw. Places such as eastern Europe, Russia, and Africa, but also, and critically, where actual knowledge of those events is either sparse, or kept under tight government control for political uses. There he holds  rallies with local political and religious leaders and he tells the people who gather that the dead they mourn, their murdered parents, grandparents, all the loved ones they lost, or never even got to know, died at the hands of the homosexual menace. And he tells them that if they let homosexuality take root in their communities it will all happen again.

And unsurprisingly, after he leaves, laws are passed, gay people are arrested, tortured by police, disappeared, or killed at the hands of mobs. See Scott Lively’s hand in Russian persecution of gay people, and in Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, the list goes on and on. Wherever he goes, he gives the festering grief and anger over past war crimes, murder and genocide a scapegoat: homosexuals. It happened because of the homosexuals. It happened because of the homosexuals.

You know what to do…

So the case against Lively, brought by Ugandan LGBT activists who accused him of crimes against humanity by seeking to spread a legal and extra-legal reign of terror against homosexual people was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The crimes he was accused of did not occur on U.S. soil, and so could not be addressed in the U.S. courts. But this decision should scare the hell out of Lively, if he in fact has anything remotely resembling a conscience capable of fear left within him, because in it the judge gives a ringing affirmation that Lively did in fact commit crimes against humanity by the standards of international law…and conceivably could be prosecuted in an international court:

The question before the court is not whether Defendant’s actions in aiding and abetting efforts to demonize, intimidate, and injure LGBTI people in Uganda constitute violations of international law. They do…

…Discovery confirmed the nature of Defendant’s, on the one hand, vicious and, on the other hand, ludicrously extreme animus against LGBTI people and his determination to assist in persecuting them wherever they are, including Uganda.

The evidence of record demonstrates that Defendant aided and abetted efforts (1) to restrict freedom of expression by members of the LBGTI community in Uganda, (2) to suppress their civil rights, and (3) to make the very existence of LGBTI people in Uganda a crime.

Don’t think the gods have let you go and connive at homicide…

One of the nice spiffs of working in a place that actually cares about employee health and wellness is they have an annual Health Fair here, where they set up booths you can visit and get various simple but informative tests done.  They had one  today at work, and  I went to some of the booths/tables. There was a new one that gave you an overall “inside the body” age, based on weight, body mass, body fat percentage, skeletal muscle percentage, visceral fat level and resting metabolism. It gave me an inside the body age of 49, which I’ll happily accept (I’m 63). Other tests were pretty good also, including happily the cardiac recovery test which had me doing vigorous step exercise for three minutes. I am not a high burn exercise kind of guy and was proud just to have finished the test (my knees aren’t shot yet), but they gave me a solid “normal” grade so there’s that too.

The general consensus was that even though I don’t do much formal exercising, the fact that I don’t smoke (cigarettes) and my day usually includes at least a couple miles or more of walking (back and forth to work when the weather is good, and an evening walk around the neighborhood before bed), that’s kept me in pretty good health despite the fact my job has me sitting down a lot. Also my vertical Baltimore rowhouse has me doing steps a lot. No…seriously…a Lot. Fact is, even at work I get up a lot and go talk to people rather than email or message them because I fidget too much if kept seated for too long and won’t sit still. Just ask any of my elementary school teachers. Plus I got a FitBit to remind me to get up and take a walk in case I get zoned out doing code work or documentation.

So I’m in pretty good health for my age. Which is something to think about whenever I get to fretting over it because it’s so horrible on mom’s side of my family tree.

Depend on the ecologically minded Germans to react with alarm to Trump pulling us out of the Paris Accord. Bonus hilarity for when Trump babbled about being elected to represent Pittsburg not Paris, and the mayor of Pittsburg essentially told him to fuck off, his city is sticking to the Paris Accord. Today Der Spiegel reposted this cover from last November on its Facebook page. It was prescient, and yet so terribly obvious; everyone had to know what was coming next.  

I can’t wait for them to finally release this short film. That kid…  He really takes me back…

Happy Pride, everyone!

The month of June is often considered LGBT+ Pride month to commemorate the Stonewall riots which occurred in June 1969. Because of this, many LGBT+ Pride events are held around the world during June to celebrate love, diversity, and acceptance.

Have fun, stay safe, and celebrate love this month!

–In A Heartbeat – Animated Short Film

From the In A Heartbeat Facebook page…

Hi everyone! Thanks to our Kickstarter backers we were able to work with a Spaniard composer we had only once dreamed to work with, Arturo Cardelús. His music has elevated our film in indescribable ways, and he has uploaded a piece of it for you to listen in his youtube channel.

We were also able to fly to meet him in LA for the live recording session of the score, which we’ll be sharing more with you later.

Check it out and give him some love…

Excuse me…I have something in my eye…

Teen Vogue posted an article about a new short animated film I’ve suddenly begun following closely…

“In a Heartbeat” Short Film Features a Boy’s Heart Chasing the Guy of His Dreams

Around a few weeks ago, the internet quietly fell in love with In a Heartbeat, a short film about a closeted young boy who falls into the treacherous situation of possibly being outed: by his own heart. In the production, the lad’s heart pops out of his chest to chase down the boy of his dreams.

It started out as the thesis project of two seniors, Beth David and Esteban Bravo, studying Computer Animation at the Ringling  College of Art and Design. They started a Kickstarter fundraiser so they could get money to pay for a music composer and sound designer.  The link to the Kickstarter was only posted on their personal Facebook page but it took off and they got funding beyond their wildest dreams, all of which they’ve been putting to use on their project.  

I can see why, just from the bits and pieces they’ve shown. The short won’t be released until next month…they’re hooking it to Gay Pride. But  the premise is something that…as  is being echoed all over  Facebook…gives you all the feels.

Even someone my age…or especially someone my age, who grew up in a time when gay teenagers were simply not allowed to have crushes, let alone see our  lives and our struggles to find that special someone reflected on the screen. I’ve been trying for over a decade now to put my own  Coming Out Story out there…in dribbles and drabs as I can find time to spend at the drawing board. These two filmmakers have captured the essence of it…all the terrifying joy of that first crush. A  closeted young boy falls into the treacherous situation of possibly being outed by his own heart  which pops out of his chest to chase down the boy of his dreams…

That is brilliantly clever, and it was so much Me…and probably lots of other gay folk of my generation as well, and also those that followed.  The closet isn’t just one door but many; and that first door out is often the hardest one to open.  As the subtitle to my cartoon story says:  The first person you come out to is yourself… I remember so very well that terrifying yet magical time when my heart was more ready than I was to know.

Yes…it seems to have worked out better for the kid in this animated short than it did for me. But that’s art, which as Picasso said, is a lie that makes you see the truth. Gay kids of my generation seldom got the happy ending. I sure didn’t. And yet despite all the heartbreak and disappointment I’ve endured since that first magical crush, I can still look back on it fondly and gratefully. It Was magical.

I can’t wait to see the entire thing. In the meantime…here’s the first official trailer. Their Facebook page is Here.

This came across my newsfeeds this morning…

Gay people ‘deserve to die,’ SLO High teacher’s letter to student newspaper says

In a letter to the student newspaper, a San Luis Obispo High School teacher quoted a Bible verse saying that people committing homosexual acts “deserve to die,” drawing outrage and concern from students, teachers and parents, and a call for calm by administrators.

Read the letter Here.

Dad’s side of my family is from that part of California, not very far down the coast, and many still live in the area. I visit there whenever I can and my plan ‘A’ for retirement is to return one day to the Garrett ancestral homelands. It’s a lovely little slice of coastal California paradise. My brother often says he lives in a postcard. Every time I return to it something deep down inside me aches to stay. This is where you belong it says: this is where you have always belonged. The climate is nice, the landscape stunningly beautiful (if occasionally prone to movement) and most of the folks I encounter are nice, decent, laid back Californios. I would feel absolutely comfortable living there as an openly gay man. But et in Arcadia ego, this kind of venomous hate is everywhere, and in the current political climate, when a leading candidate for President of the United States openly courts religious right figures that call for death to homosexual people, you need to expect this sort of thing. Even so, seeing it coming from a grade school teacher to his students still manages to shock.

An update to this from the local paper says the teacher in question has resigned amid death threats. But he was a new hire on his probationary period and the district had already decided to let him go when the current school year ends. You have to assume there were already signs that teaching schoolkids was probably not a good fit for him. This may have been his way of giving everyone the finger before he left. As to the death threats, he’d thrown one not only at every gay kid in that school, he basically gave every kid in that school permission to violently attack any gay person they might come across outside of school. In all the talk of how unsafe the gay kids in that school are feeling now, spare a few moments to think about the larger community that school draws from, and the gay adults who might be in it. And now he’s complaining someone(s) threw that back at him.

Understand this: A teacher, in a public school, was advocating violence. When all is said and done, the name of the target isn’t as significant as the fact that a teacher basically said to his school kids that civilized norms can be disregarded and god says that’s not only okay, it’s your duty. The beast he released into that school, into that community, obeys no one. It will eat the one you hate. It will eat the one you love. It will eat you too.

It’s spring, and I’m now two weeks into the spring diet routine and comfortably back into my 31 waist blue jeans again. I realize dieting is very hard for a lot of people, but for me it’s basically don’t eat sugary treats, eat only when actually hungry, and then only those very bland foods I had as a kid and a young adult of very limited means. Dieting is painful to me, only to the degree that I have to go back to food that bores the hell out of me. But I hear this is a common complaint. It also reminds me of how uncertain I was about my future, and that  without the lucky breaks I had I might still be living in someone’s basement eking out a living doing odd jobs.

When I started making a good living as a contract programmer I could easily splurge on all the nice rich calorie laden food I couldn’t have when I was younger. Around that same time the pounds began to mysteriously accumulate. I went from 120 to 160, and a 28 inch waistline to a 33 inch one, and those pants were beginning to feel tight. I put it down to an aging body. Mom was a small, thin as a rail woman before she had me. As she got older, she got heavier. Her dad, according to the photos I have of him, had the same pattern. I figured it was my fate too, and just let it slide.

Then one day I found my high school crush and he asked me for a photo. For reasons unknown around that same time I decided to try and get my slim figure back again. As it turned out what was killing me was mostly sugar, and when I tried to cut back I was surprised at how addicted I’d become to it. When I was a teenager I could snarf down all the candy and cookies and cupcakes I wanted. Apparently you can’t keep doing that in middle age.

So I’m back in my 31s now and feeling good about sticking to the diet the rest of the month. The routine is I get my waistline back  by summer  and I maintain until the end of the year and stuff your face holiday season, which coincides with winter and staying indoors most of the time and being less active season…and so the waistline expands…then it’s back to spring dieting again… So I’m told lots of people subscribe to this plan.

I feel sorry for this guy. Really.

Got a chance to sit for a few moments in the test director’s seat this afternoon, in the Flight Ops room, and talk with White Sands on the NASA voice loop during a test of JWST data links. I’m still in training for this slot, and won’t be single-handedly directing tests for a while, but it was so very cool to be talking with other ground stations on the NASA loop…nervous first timer though I was…

I went to the March for Science in Washington D.C. More about that later. But I’m back home now, and the first thing I did naturally was offload my digital photos onto the network drive. I’ll put them into Lightroom in a bit and post a new photo gallery later. The rally was taxing enough on my sixty-three year old body that I had to bail out before the march actually happened, and retreat to my hotel room. But I got a bunch of good shots at the rally on the Washington Monument grounds so I’m happy.

Later, after my legs recovered a bit and I got some energy back, I took a dinnertime walk around D.C. and snapped off a few shots with the mini Hasselblad (Sony) of what was left of the march ephemera after all the crowds were gone and the streets were nearly empty and it was still drizzly because I’m a weird old fuck and I was in a gloomy mood just then. If you’ve seen my art photography here you know what was coming. And I wasn’t sure even as I was taking those shots whether or not I wanted to include them in a gallery of shots of the March for Science. What comes out of me at those times when I’m doing it for the pure art of it is pretty dark. I can see that photographic eye in everything I do and I don’t really like it. But it’s worse when I’m not working on a theme or an event. Then it’s the pure inner photographic eye that comes out. I was pretty sure none of that belonged in a gallery with the science march.

As I wandered, I found a street sign…one of those historical markers D.C. has been putting around town. This one told me the studio of Mathew Brady was nearby  on Pennsylvania Avenue, and that it was relatively unchanged from when he lived there. So I tried to find it just to nod in fellowship to whatever memories might still be lingering there…

Mathew B. Brady was one of the first American photographers, best known for his scenes of the Civil War. He studied under inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. -Wikipedia

But of course it had no marking plaque or even a street number over the door so I’m still not sure I saw the right one. But something had drawn me there. Obviously since I’m at the March for Science, I count myself as a person  of science. But I am also an artist, and those two sides of me were excruciatingly difficult to reconcile when I was a teenager, until I read Jacob Bronowski’s little book, Science and Human Values.  I try to be rational about things, but there are moments when I feel moved by a spirit I have no name for. That was one of them.

I am not a camera, the camera is me. What comes out of it is me. But also what was actually there. The reality within and without. The cold grey drizzle. The nearly but not quite empty streets. What I saw. How it made me feel. In no other art are both those things quite that literally true. The photographic image is fixed by light entering the camera and it exists in a fixed time and place, but the what the photographer sees is within and timeless. Brady was the first to show us what war looks like via the camera’s unflinching deterministic eye. But it was also a mirror held up to ourselves. This too is human. In retrospect it was a perfect sort of serendipity being drawn to Brady’s studio that evening because probably no other art owes as much to science as photography. Chemistry, optics, the physics of light. The camera shows us what was there, and in the process tells us what it is to be human. Whether or not we want to know it.

Something Facebook kindly threw in my face this morning, because it loves me: how it was before the Crisis (or whatever it was, I’ve no idea, I was out of the loop…) Of Summer 2012, after which our conversations could no longer be private.

So it goes as the Tralfamadorian’s would say…

Le Dance Pathetique…as choreographed by Alex Jones…

Un…

“In fact, let me say this right now. Let me tell — I’m not against gay people. OK. I love them, they’re great folks…”

Deux…

“But Schiff looks like the archetypal c**ksucker with those little deer-in-the-headlight eyes and all his stuff.”

Trois…

“And there’s something about this fairy, hopping around, bossing everybody around, trying to intimidate people like me and you…”

Quatre…

“He’s sucking globalist dick.”

Le Curtian…Applaus a vous…

(More on Le Dance Pathetique here.)