It wasn’t often some guy I thought was drop dead good looking and sexy asked me out on a date, but that happened one day when a fellow user of a gay BBS I did volunteer work for sent me an email complementing me on some posts I’d made and calling me “intense”. I was happily taken by surprise. At the end of that email, he asked if we could meet up.

I figured it wasn’t going to go well when the first thing he told me when we met at the Dupont Circle Metro, was how much he hated my sunglasses…

Back in the BBS days, the 1990s, before the Internet was opened up to commercial use, I joined a small gay community BBS system and eventually became one of its volunteer support staff. It grew from a single line, single connection at a time system to a multi-line multi-user system, and with that, came the first chat channels I’d ever been exposed to. Gay chat channels.

But this was not a meat market sort of gay BBS…its sysop swore if it ever became that he’d pull the plug on it. He wanted it to be an information resource for the local gay community and to its final hours when the Internet finally killed the BBSs, that was what it was. Even so, you had to expect there would be lots of gay singles there, lonely hearts, mostly computer geeks, looking for something better than the bar scene. Or at least quicker.

I hated the bar scene…just never fit into it…and I joined that BBS specifically to meet people in what I hoped was a nicer environment, and hopefully find a boyfriend. So with the new “chat rooms” came new opportunities for private conversations with whoever else was logged in, and one day, I think I was reading my mail, I got a ping from another user on a different line to have a private chat. Sure, says I, and I entered chat mode.

He asks me if I live in the city. No says I, I live in the suburbs. He asks a few other things, I forget what now, and then he asks me, “What are you into?” So I reply that I like cartooning and photography, and writing software and I tell him about the work I did for that BBS, and the local newspapers I did photography for. I tell him about my work building architectural models and how it tweaked my skills as a draftsman and painter…after a while I noticed he wasn’t responding. Then I saw he’d logged off.

I sat there puzzling it over for a while, wondering if maybe he’d just been disconnected somehow. That happened a lot back in the dial-up modem days. But eventually I figured it out.

I’m seeing this other hashtag flying across my Twitter feed… #whitehistoryclasses…and it puts me in mind of a story I’ve been meaning to tell for a long time in this space.   Charitably, when some of us white folk assert there is no systematic racism in this country because all the No Coloreds signs have been taken down, we are being merely clueless.   There is more to it than that.   I know from personal experience, and I strongly suspect most of us white folk know it too…or would if we wanted to.   Gather round the campfire boys and girls, and I’ll relate a little White History for you.   A piece of mine anyway.

It was the late 1970s, and I was in my twenties and desperate for work.   But I had a reliable car, a little Ford Pinto sedan that was bought and paid for…bought with so few options (it literally didn’t even have a cigarette lighter, although the wiring for one was there in the dashboard) it was easy to work on myself, and über reliable.   And I loved to drive it.   So one avenue I kept looking at in the Help Wanteds were all the ads for couriers.   If I could combine my love of driving with a job that required me to drive places would be ideal…or so I thought.

Problem was, all those ads listed detailed knowledge of the roads in downtown Washington D.C. as a requirement, and not only did I not know downtown all that well, I absolutely hated driving there.   Traffic was a horrible and parking was a nightmare all day long.   So I kept looking hopefully for a listing from a service that needed someone to work the suburbs instead.   And lo and behold, one day I saw one.   Must know Montgomery County Roads…said the ad.   Well…I was their man!

So I darted out to the address on the ad, supremely confidant that I would ace whatever test they threw at me.   Hello…says I.   I’m your man.   I’ve lived here practically my entire life.   I know Montgomery County roads like I laid the asphalt myself.   Well…says the owner of the courier service, an elderly man who from the look of him could have retired decades ago…we need to test that for ourselves.   And they put me in a small room and gave me a sheet of questions.   Describe how, exactly, you would you get from point A to point B.   This is going to be a piece of cake thinks I as I sat down.

But the first question asked about a route in downtown Washington D.C.   And…I couldn’t answer it.   So I skipped to the next question on the test which was…another question about directions in downtown Washington D.C..   And so was the next.   And the next.   They were all questions about downtown Washington D.C..

So I took the test back to the owner and told him I was sorry, but I could not answer any of it.   No worry, says he.   We’ll put a radio in your car, you will get your jobs from the dispatcher and if you get lost you can call for directions.   I needed the work, so I said well…okay…I can do that.   But…why did you write your ad as through you were looking for people to work in Montgomery County?

And I swear to god he patted my knee like he was my grandfather and said, “Oh, we wrote it that way so we won’t get any of them colored boys out here looking for work.”

Well…god forbid us white kids from the suburbs would have to compete with them colored boys from the city who probably know their streets like the backs of their hands.

So I hemmed and hawed and said I really didn’t want to drive in the city…but if you ever need someone to work out in the county give me a call…and I darted out of there.   I felt dirty in a way I hadn’t since I stood in a line of about twenty or so other guys and bent over and spread them for my pre-induction physical.   Later I sent in an anonymous letter to the county telling them about the ad and the service…but I didn’t actually call the man a racist to his face and walk out on him either.   I just didn’t have that kind of nerve back then.

No, I don’t know what it’s like to be a black guy in America.   But I know what it’s like to be a white guy.   And I know exactly how much was stacked in my favor.   Every one of us does.   Or could, if we really wanted to face facts.

It’s like the buildup of magma under a hotspot. Eventually the pressure building up forces it out. Same thing with bile…

Rick Warren Goes Nuts On Twitter, Attacks ‘Liberal Theology’ Out Of The Blue

You can only wear that mask of genial civility for so long before you just have to start spitting at the heretics in the church across the street.

The thing sociopaths never get is the difference between laughing at the powerful and laughing at the oppressed.   Apparently some Colorado state representative spoke up recently in favor of a bill banning the carrying of guns on college campuses. Now I happen to think that’s a perfectly reasonable position for everyone, gun owners and second amendment believers like myself to take.   I also understand perfectly that the likes of the NRA and other Kultur Krieger would howl bloody murder over it for reasons that have essentially nothing to do with the ability of people to defend themselves from violence.

To the extent that any argument is being made here, it’s that guns in the hands of women can prevent rape, therefore banning guns from college campuses makes rape more likely to happen to young women, therefore if you believe in banning guns on college campuses you must think rape isn’t so bad really.   The level of cheap bar stool demagoguery here is breathtaking.   But wait…there’s more…

Naturally the right wing noise machine kicks into gear and tries to make this Colorado state representative into some kind of liberal Todd Akin.   The problem with doing that when you never saw anything wrong with Akin’s crack about legitimate rape in the first place completely escapes them…

#LiberalTips2AvoidRape: The Most Horrible Hashtag Of The Week Thus Far, Explained

There’s this new hashtag #LiberalTips2AvoidRape that’s now on its second day of trending on Twitter: A really, really great expression of our shared humanity, and of the possibilities of feel-good, thoughtful conservative satire… this is not…

Satire, as every political cartoonist knows, is a powerful weapon against the brutal and the ignorant.   And never more so than when the brutal and ignorant try wielding it themselves.   It’s like one of those magical swords in fantasy stories that turns on its unworthy bearer.   Behold…

If you have the stomach for a torrent of rape jokes you should go browse that hashtag on Twitter.   Pay attention to what’s going on here.   This isn’t about guns.   This isn’t about the second amendment.   This isn’t about the ability of people to defend themselves from violence…

The ability of the common man and woman, and particularly of the weak and vulnerable, to be secure in their homes and their streets, to defend themselves from violence, is an eminently liberal concern.   That is not what the reactionary right is about.   They vigorously thump for their own right to self determination and self defense and sneer when the powerless and outcast assert those same rights.   This is about culture war.   Nothing else.

Here’s how some liberals are responding to the hashtag…

That’s the right approach.   And in that spirit I have some of my own.

#LiberalTips2AvoidRape: Focus on putting violent offenders in jail, not pot smokers

#LiberalTips2AvoidRape: Remove judges that think women provoke rape by dressing slutty and walking alone

#LiberalTips2AvoidRape: Teach boys their manhood does not depend on their ability to dominate women

#LiberalTips2AvoidRape: Prosecute those who protect rapists from the law, even if they happen to be Catholic priests or the Pope

#LiberalTips2AvoidRape: Fire any politician who even utters the words “transvaginal probe” in the context of an abortion bill.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
-Inigo Montoya, “The Princess Bride”

Here’s another word people keep using: Homosexual.

So I’m seeing the chatter about how this new Gallup poll (you know…the folks who did so well predicting the outcome of the last election…), gives us a more accurate figure for the percentage of gay people in America than Kinsey’s ten percent, and I can only conclude they aren’t paying attention to what they’re reading, don’t understand where that ten percent figure came from and/or what the Kinsey scale actually was.

Kinsey’s scale of zero through six, where zero (exclusively heterosexual) and six (exclusively homosexual) described the sexual behavior of his subjects over the previous three years of their lives, based on extensive face to face interviews with them. The report stated that ten percent of American males were “more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55” by grouping the percentages of the five (Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual) and six positions on the scale together to come up with that ten percent figure. Later gay rights activists used this to claim that ten percent of the population is homosexual.

That’s an arguable, but perfectly defensible claim based on Kinsey’s data which, again, came from subjects who were only asked about their actual sexual behavior for the previous three years. But it is measuring a different thing than Gallup asked, which was…

“Do you, personally, identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender?”

See the difference? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The problem has always been the percentage of people who are homosexual you get in any given study depends on how the people who did the study define what “homosexual” is.   It seems so clear cut and obvious on the surface of it and yet different people, even in all intellectual honesty about it, have different definitions…let alone those who want to marginalize us when it’s convenient (their numbers are too small for society to cater to their whims), and exaggerate our numbers when convenient (nearly all child molesters are homosexuals…it’s how they perpetuate themselves since they can’t reproduce…).

At this stage in my life, after all I’ve seen of this world, I am still comfortable with that ten percent figure.   But I’m calling it desire, not necessarily how someone behaves or how they self identify.   I Know people, and so do many of us who are gay, who would fit comfortably in either that Kinsey five or six position and yet would nonetheless have assured Gallup that they were heterosexual.   It’s called “The Closet” and a lot of people are still in it….some still in denial, some not.   In my generation and earlier especially, you see a lot of gay men who married young, as a way of turning themselves straight.   Some of these have remained in those marriages, living behind that mask still, after all that has passed by them in the struggle, and I can’t find it in my heart to blame them for that.   They love their wives very much.   Add to that those of us who are out in various stages, even out to everyone they know and work with, and who would be unwilling to answer that question from a stranger.

I still think ten percent is probably right. But even those of us who are militantly out and proud don’t always seem so to the passing stranger.   There is no gay lifestyle.   You likely won’t know unless you are close enough to a person to know, and even then you might not.   And still, even today, many people simply don’t want to know it about themselves. It does not surprise me either that perhaps only three to four percent rather than ten are willing to live openly just as they are, and fight the fight for our human dignity that still needs fighting.

“Do you, personally, identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender”, is a question worth asking of course, and maybe someday better researchers than the louts at Gallup will ask that question.   But it’s really not the point.   The word does not mean that.

Came down a few moments ago to find the washing machine had not spun my load of shirts and wouldn’t open the door (it’s a front loader). Crap, thinks I…considering I might have to call for service and wondering how much of a bite that’ll take out of this month’s income.   I try a spin only cycle to see if that would jar it out of its state.   It rinses the load but the drum never moves.

Crap. Crap. Crap…

I have loved this new washer…an Electrolux.   It is the most amazingly water efficient thing I have ever seen.   No matter what sort of load I put in it the washer only uses just enough water to get everything nice and soaked, but there is never any excess I can see in the drum.   The clothes are just there in the drum, completely wet, but not actually tumbling in any water at the bottom of the drum.   It’s amazing to me.

And that of course, is because it’s completely computerized.   And I make my living in the IT world.   So what naturally comes to mind is…I go up upstairs, get the owners manual, go back downstairs to the washer and try unplugging it…waiting for a bit…and plugging it back in.   This allows me to get the door to unlock and I get my unspun and still soggy shirts out.   I close the door again, open the manual to the Installation Diagnostics page and make the washer go through its installation diagnostics.   I figure if nothing else at least I’ll have something, possibly some error code to tell the service folks when I call them.

But the washer goes through its diagnostics just fine, during which it fills and drains and the drum goes through all its movements like it’s supposed to.   At the end the display gives the washer a Passed All Tests.   So I put the unspun shirts back in, close the door and give it a Spin Only cycle, which also does a brief rinse. Works like it’s supposed to. Shirts are in the dryer now.

The poor dear had gotten confused somehow, and powering it down and back up cleared the problem. I rebooted my washing machine, in other words. Or in further words, I now own a washing machine that may need the occasional reboot. Well…but I learned to live with that when I got the new furnace   A computerized furnace.   But it measures the temperatures inside and outside of the house and can adjust the blower speed on a minutely variable scale as needed.   It builds up an internal history of how the house responds to outside changes in temperature and anticipates what is needed to maintain the temperature inside.   It’s lowered my energy bills considerably.   I’ve rebooted it a bunch of times since I had it installed six years ago.

I’m sure glad my life took me down the Earning A Living In IT route. I have No idea what people my age who have little to no experience diagnosing computer/software problems must be thinking when one of their new microchip controlled appliances starts acting funny, but I suspect it’s something like panic.

This just popped up in my Facebook stream…

Why how very helpful!   Yes, I’ll just do that Facebook.   Happy Valentine’s Day my dear friends.   When do I get to meet Robbie?

Hahahahahaha…

I know…I know…   People who look like that…

The winner of our contest surmounted incredible odds to beat their rivals for the crown.   Or perhaps stabbed a few of them in the back…who knows.   All’s fair in Love and War, two things so very different from one another, yet so similar in the wreckage they leave behind.

But we’re not done yet.   Further bitter, yet still ridiculously hopeful reflections on our pre-game celebration are yet to come.   So put that bottle of sleeping pills back in the medicine cabinet and tune in tomorrow!

Here is our last batch of this year’s worthy entries, each of whom might have made the cut were it not for the fact that their best simply wasn’t good enough. Their prize in the days, weeks and years of sleepless nights to come will be knowing that, and our special Valentine’s Day sympathy card printed on recycled paper.

Next: The glorious winner!

Good morning, all you happy not lovers!

Illinois Bishop: Catholics backing gay marriage are destroying the family

In a special speech to honor Valentine’s Day and discuss the meaning of love, the Bishop also said that being gay is a ‘condition’ that can be dealt with through a ‘life of chastity’.

“This Valentine’s Day we would also do well to focus on a more authentic understanding of the word ‘love'”, says Bishop Paprocki.   Love is never having to say you’re sorry for destroying other people’s hopes and dreams of love and happiness.

So, Happy Valentine’s Day, all you lonely gay singles living out your righteous lives of celibacy. The Bishop of Springfield says, “You’re Welcome!”

And once again right off the bat we have four oh so worthy entries for our contest!   Rest assured these entries would have easily won top honors if only there hadn’t been another who came out of nowhere to dash their hopes of glory.   Now they are mere broken shells of their former selves, who will spend the rest of their lives wondering if there wasn’t something more they could have given it, something more they could have done.   They will remember Valentine’s Day for the rest of their lives, and shouldn’t we all?

So let’s all give these hopeful losers a friendly pat on the back and a very brief but sincere look of understanding…

Tomorrow…The Big Winner!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day Eve…via The Advocate…

eHarmony Founder: Gay Marriage “Damaged Our Company”

After he was forced to open up his site to gay users, Neil Clark Warren says he had to hire guards to protect his employees from furious conservatives.

He had to hire guards “…to protect our lives because the people were so hurt and angry with us, were Christian people, who feel that it’s a violation to scripture” and it’s Teh Gay who damaged his company.   Well Neil perhaps it was those “Christian people” (sic) who damaged it, when they and their forebears went on a rampage in the hearts of their neighbors over the course of millennia.   The lonely gay people who went to your site, only to get turned down, were there looking for what every lonely heterosexual went looking there for, what you promised them they would find that made your dating site better than the others. Compatible partners. That matchmaking algorithm you advertised was more reliable then just browsing the personals. They were looking for someone to love and be loved by you drooling moron, and after all, you’re in the business of selling love aren’t you?   You know what that is…right…?

“I have said that eHarmony really ought to put up $10 million and ask other companies to put up money and do a really first class job of figuring out homosexuality. At the very best, it’s been a painful way for a lot of people to have to live.”

Yes it has Neil. Because of louts like you.   Money isn’t your problem.   The only thing stopping you from figuring out homosexuality are your bar stool prejudices.   All those lonely, hopeful people you turned away as unfit for your services…never mind whether or not your computer matchmaking scheme actually works or not…they walked away with a tiny little bit more of that pain than they had when they got there…No Homos…and that teensy tiny little bit more has your name on it.

…because after all, they deserve to be spat on…they’re homosexuals.

Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. It always comes down to this.   It is the one unmovable unshakeable belief more essential to the faith than the Resurrection.   Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.   Behold…

“dates”.   “dates”.   “dates”.   The scare quotes say it all.

This is the mindset.   You will not reach it with reason or appeals to sympathy.   It is simply incapable of seeing the people for the homosexuals.   In its regard, comparing what homosexuals do with the higher, nobler feelings of love that heterosexual couples experience is an insult, a profane slur, an attack on our very humanity, on love itself.   They are not attacking anyone, they are defending ourselves from attack by those who sink to practice the most degrading form of base animalistic lust imaginable which, by demanding that it be regarded as the equal of normal heterosexuality, can only drag civilization itself into the gutter.   “dates”.   “dates”.   “dates”.

Meanwhile…

The Superintendent of Schools who oversees the Indiana teacher who told a local news station that gays have no purpose in life is supporting the teacher’s exercise of her “First Amendment rights.” Dr. Mark A. Baker, who is in charge of Sullivan County’s public schools system, the Northeast School Corporation, released a statement noting that special needs teacher Diana Medley ”at no time was … representing the Northeast School Corporation,” but indicating she had the right to publicly state her beliefs, presumably without endangering her position.

I see.   So if she told that reporter her students were a bunch of retards you’d stand up for her right to publicly state that belief.

It’s that time of year, when love is in the air.   Like that house a couple blocks over that caught fire and was completely gutted, the smell of ashes and the lost memories of a lifetime forever turned to smoke and slowly fading recollections of what was once ours, lingering in the neighborhood for the rest of the summer, and well into winter.   Yeah…that.

This our annual celebration of all those hopeful dreamers who bravely bought with their heart’s desire, a ticket in the Lotto of Love.   You have to play to win.   And for 175,711,536 to 1 hopeful dreamers, to loose.

This year’s theme was Famous Love Quotations!   And we sincerely, are really and truly sorry if we failed to mention this when announcing the start of our contest.   And the deadline for entries, which was yesterday.   But we are sure we did.   You were probably just not paying attention as usual.   We have always had communication issues.

Before we review all those worthy contestants who just didn’t make the cut this year, despite giving it their all, let us pause and remember all the glorious winners of previous years, who are now left stunned and wondering that anyone could have taken their place…

The winner of our First Annual Contest…

You will always be remembered as the first one.   No one can ever take that away from you.   What was your name again?

Our Second Annual Contest winner, who reminded us the most cherished times happen at home…

Our Third Annual Contest winner examined the evidence and came to a conclusion as to the cause of…love.

Our Forth Annual Contest Winner reminded us that love makes us stronger inside…

Our Fifth Annual Contest Winner…

Er…   Oh…right.   Our Fifth Contest was overly affectionate and we had to call it off.   It kept calling and texting for months afterward and leaving notes in our mailbox and on our windshield and we finally had to block it on Facebook and get a restraining order.   But we will always remember it fondly.

So tomorrow we begin celebrating this year’s worthy losers.   What would Valentine’s Day be without them?   For if everyone found their one true love, it would not be such a precious and magical thing would it?   When you think about it, all those dashed hopes and dreams after coming oh so close are what make Valentine’s Day so special.   Otherwise it would just be another crass commercial holiday exploiting our deepest feelings to get us to buy cheap goods and junk food at ridiculous markups, and kill millions of lovely rose blossoms and other beautiful flowering things as a token of how much we care.   And we’ve just had Christmas haven’t we?