Ich bin gut. Keine Schäden an meinem Haus aus dem Hurrikan. Danke für die Nachfrage.

Bitte Sie wieder schreiben irgendwann vor dem Ende des Universums…

oder auch nicht…

-Bruce

She’s an adorable little calico and she’s feral so she won’t let anyone get too close.   But for several years now she’s been lurking around my street and occasionally visiting Casa del Garrett, to check the menu around the bird feeders, and every now and then catching something.   I keep the feeders well off the ground, in part to keep city rats from getting into them and in part to keep little calico cats away from the customers, though I suppose she, and the occasional hawk, also consider themselves that.   I’d rather she left my birds alone.   But she is the most amazing hunter I’ve ever seen and part of me respects professionalism in every endeavor.

And bravery.   I watched one day as she stalked up to the edge of a fenced in yard that usually contains two very large dogs. She would have been a bite sized snack for either one but cat sense must be far superior to spider sense as she seemed to know even though she could not see the entire yard from street level that the dogs weren’t in there.   But a small flock of birds was, feeding on some seed that had been put out. I watched her suddenly leap over the fence, run up the hill, run back down and back over the fence and across the street with a small bird in her mouth. It happened that quick.   Another time I was serenely watching the birds at my feeders from just inside my front door and she suddenly leaped over the top step (where you see her sitting in that photo) and tried to snag one of the birds that were inadvisedly ground feeding there.   What caught my attention was when she made her sudden leap her front claws were striking in the air above the sidewalk, not where the birds were, but where she knew they would be.   That time she missed but was close…one of those birds must have felt the whiff of air as a claw passed by.   I have seen the occasional feathery left overs scattered around my walkway.   Usually it was a pigeon.   She can have all of those she wants.

In a heartbeat I’d take her in, but as I said she’s feral and those cats will never accept human companionship. But somebody has been watching out for her because her coat is usually very clean and well kept and one ear is clipped (you can barely see it in this photo) which means at some point someone scooped her up and took her to the vet to be spayed and given her shots). I’m guessing the city doesn’t mind at least some feral cats prowling about, provided they’ve been spayed/neutered and topped off with anti-rabies, as they’ll help keep the rodent population in check.   And at least until recently someone must have been feeding her.   Good as she is hunting, I don’t think that’s enough to account for the her overall good condition. Most ferals I’ve seen looked pretty tattered.   He coat is always shiny and clean.   Or at least it was until recently.

In the weeks before Sandy hit I noticed she seemed a bit…disheveled.   Her coat had started to look a bit…worn.   And she seemed tired all the time.   She’s been around the neighborhood for some years now and I thought perhaps age was beginning to set in.   Or maybe one of the other ferals around here had bullied her out of her place wherever she was getting food and shelter.   Or maybe the crazy older lady everyone in the neighborhood suspects is feeding the strays had stopped for some reason.   I hadn’t seen the woman around her house for a while.   She’s easy to spot when she goes for her walks.   She’s the one who always wears a heavy winter coat when she goes for her walks, even in a brutal heat wave.   She has family that stops by regularly and I began to wonder if maybe they’d finally taken her away.

So I began to worry about the little calico.   Then Sandy barreled in.   During the worst of the storm I caught a glimpse of the calico huddled in the basement window sill and I felt frustrated I couldn’t just bring her inside.   But any move I might have made toward her just then she would have bolted into the storm which would have only made matters worse.   So I let her be, afraid the next morning I’d find a little dead kitty in front of my basement window.   But somehow she survived it.   Maybe she moved on to wherever it is she normally beds down for the night.   There are crawl spaces under some of the houses, and somewhere under one of those maybe there would be shelter and heat.   I have no idea.   All I know is after the hurricane she was gone, but later the next day she showed up again.   And the next day I did something I swore I wouldn’t.   I put some food out for her.   I knew the moment I did that I was making a commitment I wasn’t sure I wanted to be making. But I did it.   It was the sight of her huddled wet in the basement window sill and I couldn’t do anything but hope she wasn’t going to die of exposure.

A couple days later after work I got a distinctively colored and shaped bowl out of my kitchen cabinets and put it on the basement window sill where I’d seen her during the hurricane.   It had one of the cans of tuna from my winter pantry.   I had about a half dozen of them I knew I wasn’t going to finish by the sell by dates on them, so I figured they weren’t going to waste if I gave them to the cat.   The next morning I saw the bowl had been eaten from, and I hoped it was her and not a city rat that got into it.   I brought it inside and cleaned it out.   I had a plan.

The next day when I came home from work she was there on my front steps.   The front steps are one of her usual perches where she stalks my birds.   I spoke to her and she moved away, but not too far.   I went inside, got the bowl out, put another can of tuna in it and walked outside to where she could see me.   When she saw the bowl her face lit up.   There was a reason I picked that particular oddly shaped and colored bowl.   Seeing me holding it she could make a connection between it and me.   I put it down on the basement window sill, and nearby on the front porch, a smaller bowl of water.   Then I went inside, walked down to my basement art room and peeked under the curtain in front of the basement window.   There she was, eating.   When she was done, she moved away and I came back upstairs and took the bowl back inside.   I don’t want to be feeding all the neighborhood cats, let alone the city rats.   Just her.

A few minutes later I walked back outside.   It was Halloween night and I wanted to put up some decorations and attract some goblins.   As I was stringing some lights on the front steps rail, she came out from under one of the cars parked on the street, walked closer to me on the sidewalk then she ever did, still well out of arm’s reach…sat down…and stared right at me for a time, never taking her eyes off me, like she was sizing me up.   For a good five minutes she did that, as I tried talking a calming patter to her while I was stringing lights.   Then she seemed to shrug, and walked away.   The next day, promptly after work, she was sitting on my front steps, waiting.

So now we have a routine going.   And her coat is looking nicer again and she seems to have more energy.   I have no idea if that’s me or her other source of food is back online too.   But it’s good to see.   I’m too single to have a pet and this is in many ways an ironic echo of the story of my life.   It seems no matter who I take a fondness to I always get kept at arm’s length.   So in a way this is a relationship I’m used to.   But she’s lived on the city streets for years now, and the other side of that coin is I probably don’t have to worry about her too much if I go away for a while.   I might be able to talk one of my other neighbors into putting some food out for her while I’m gone.

The other day I bought some nice stainless steal cat bowls, one for water and one for food.   And some cat food.   Today she ate from both.   She actually seemed to like the cat food better then the human food.   And thus Bruce, walking the stations of life, steps into that crazy old man who feeds stray cats stage.   Oh well.   I guess I don’t mind.

This from Michelangelo Signorile this morning…

In 2006 Romney went on to stop the publication of an anti-bullying guide for public school students, because the term “bisexual” and “transgender” were used in a passage discussing harassment against students. These and other actions were a stark turnaround from when Romney had, in his Senate run in 1994, told gay activists that he was better on gay issues than Ted Kennedy, claiming to support an array of rights for gays and saying that his voice would have more weight on the issue than Kennedy’s.

What seems clear now, looking at Romney’s record, in which he made a lot of promises to gays in those early years but never delivered, is that the pandering he did was to gay activists and the voters of Massachusetts, as the devout Mormon used that state as a stepping stone to the presidency.

This.   Romney’s constant verbal flip-flops and outright lying over the years make him appear to be a total panderer.   But he isn’t.   Look at his record, both in and out of public office.   There’s the man.   Bigoted.   Cruel.   Predatory.

If you’re still committed to vote for this man admit it…you don’t care that he’s a brazen in-your-face liar. You care about something else. Maybe it’s the president is a darkie. Maybe it’s the homosexuals are after your children. Maybe its rape is a gift from God. Whatever.

You’re going to vote for the liar. Because he shares your moral values.

I my twitter stream via Juan Cole…

@GoogleFacts: “It’s possible to die because of a broken heart. It’s called “Stress Cardiomyopathy””

No shit Sherlock.   And it does not help that the solitary life is seemingly incomprehensible to those who have coupled.   Even if that coupling was ultimately unsuccessful it was something at least.

I have felt the stress of aloneness taking years off my life for quite some time now.   This winter is going to be…difficult.

Via Ed Brayton…

D’Souza Gets Engaged — While Still Married

Although D’Souza has been married for 20 years to his wife, Dixie, in South Carolina he was with a young woman, Denise Odie Joseph II, and introduced her to at least three people as his fiancée…

The next day another conference organizer, Alex McFarland, distressed by D’Souza’s behavior, confronted him in a telephone conversation. D’Souza admitted he shared a room with his fiancée but said “nothing happened.” When I called D’Souza, he confirmed that he was indeed engaged to Joseph, but did not explain how he could be engaged to one woman while still married to another. When asked when he had filed for divorce from his wife, Dixie, D’Souza answered, “Recently.”

How the man who, while editor of the Dartmouth Review, penned a racist parody of African American students titled “This Sho Ain’t No Jive Bro” and later outed a gay student using stolen mail between members of the Dartmouth Gay Student Alliance can in any sense be labeled a Christian is something confederate christianists can explain I suppose.   But here it is again: the righteous anti-gay moralist getting caught with his pants down around his morals.

Self-hating closeted gay people and anti-gay fundamentalists have this in common: they’re both so busy fighting the homosexual menace they never develop the skills necessary to honorably manage their own sexual desires.   And every time they fail miserably at it they double down on their fight against the homosexual menace.

I made a promise to myself, the day I turned 30 (ages ago it was), that I would not turn 60 and still be single and alone.   I am going to keep that promise.

A friend posted this photo to his Facebook wall the other day…

…to which another friend remarked, “Some churches seem to self-select for the ignorant and the gullible. But I like the comment someone left: “Take this sh*t seriously. It’s all fun and games until someone starts shooting.” And in other news…some days this dream I had back in April of 2005, somewhere in George Bush’s America, still bothers me…

In this dream I’m driving to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to visit some gay friends. From Baltimore, Gettysburg is not all that far away. This is a day trip I’m taking, and I have three gay friends with me…a full car. We chat easily as I drive with the windows down and the moon roof open through some very lovely Maryland, and then Pennsylvania countryside. I don’t recognize anyone in the car with me…never saw their faces before in my life. But somehow…in this dream…I know they are all friends of mine. It is a beautiful day. Perfect actually. Not too hot, not too cold. The air smells sweet and crisp and clear. The sky is a perfect blue, with just a few fluffy clouds in it here and there…just enough to make it beautiful, but not so many as to block the sun. A perfect day. My companions and I are feeling as sunny and cheerful as the weather. Peace and contentment and companionship. A perfect day.

Eventually we get to a small and cozy old cottage house in Gettysburg. Somehow I know it is not far from the battlefield nearby…somewhere over the rolling hills of grass and trees. But the sight of such a charming little house puts all thoughts of that terrible war out of my mind. It is so cozy and peaceful to look at. Like something out of a Currier and Ives print. There is a large plot of land around it, with a very nice stone walled garden on one side of the house. Inside we meet more friends, There is a table of lovely snacks and wine. Delicious. I chat with a few of the folks inside, get a few snacks from the table and a small crystal glass of wine, and walk out into the garden…back out into the perfect day. I don’t recognize any of these people. But somehow in my dream I know that they are all gay friends of mine. We chat about this and that in the beautiful garden. The couple who owns the house has clearly done years of careful loving work on both house and garden.

The garden is surrounded by a low stone walls that I think must date back hundreds of years. Inside the wall are so many beautiful bushes and flowers it just takes your breath away. A little paradise. It is a very peaceful, tranquil setting, and I feel a warm, serene ease being there, and being in the company of these other gay folks. I don’t know any of them, yet I feel that we are all compatriots…comrades somehow. Kindred.

I am sitting on one of the low stone walls. A guy about my age is sitting beside me on my right. Several other guys are standing in front of me. We are chatting easily about this and that. As we chat, about a dozen bright yellow birds, American Goldfinches, land on the wall near us. We watch as they fly a short distance to one of the garden’s Azalea bushes, now in full rosy bloom. Yellow birds hopping around in a rose red bush, looking for some food I suppose. The sight is lovely. One of my companions remarks on how colorful they are, and I agree.

The goldfinches fly off, and almost immediately about a dozen or so starlings land on the stone wall a short distance away from us. My companions ignore them. Some people don’t like starlings, they’re not very pretty birds, but I like and even admire them in some ways. But starlings are not welcome in most places because their flocks can get Huge and they make a lot of mess.

My companions ignore the small flock of starlings. As I watch one of the birds starts walking very awkwardly on the stone wall, over towards where I’m sitting. As it gets closer I can see its feathers are unkempt…ruffled…disordered. Some look broken. It’s little pointy yellow beak is broken and bent in the middle. It comes closer, awkwardly waddling on little stubby bird legs. I can see eyes are just two black holes in its head…empty sockets in its little bird skull.

It walks awkwardly over the stones to me and then it stops, fixes those empty socket eyes on mine, and in a little dry, gravelly voice, begins singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic to me…

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

…and then I wake up.

I have a plan. I’m going to buy a box. Whenever I see something I want to give you, instead of sending it to you I’ll put it in the box. Inside the box will be an envelope with instructions for my brother to send it to you when I die. That way you can have all the things I wanted to give to you and you won’t have to worry that I’ll send you anything more.

PS: It was great seeing you and chatting for a while this week! If there are do-overs like you said, then maybe we can have more time together then.

…it’s almost exclusively to prevent spam in the comments.   Those of you who don’t run your own blog would not believe how much spam tries to invade blog comments these days.   It’s amazing.   I suspect most of it is simply to jack up Google rankings.   Anyway, that’s why you have to wait for me to approve comments.   It isn’t about controlling what opinions get expressed here, though if I see post or thread highjacking taking place I’ll put a stop to that too.   The moderation is about blocking spam.   Sorry.   This is why we can’t have nice things.

Maggie Gallagher claims that it is rare for same-sex relationships to last.   Her proof is the Regnerus study, which did not examine same sex relationships.   If I cover my eyes so I can’t see you, then you aren’t there.

One afternoon a few years ago, while I was strolling around Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World, I wandered by this at one of the gift shops…

…and I had to have it.  Sometimes these little random items of consumer art manage to tweak something deep down inside of you, despite themselves.

So romantic isn’t it?  And I am very much the romantic.  But look at it.  What do you see?  A beautiful young girl in love with her handsome prince charming, all dashing and heroic.  But all art, even pop culture commercial art, involves two creative acts.  There is the artist’s turn, wherein the piece is made.  The artist brings to it whatever is within themselves.  Then there is the viewer’s turn.  And the viewer brings to the piece whatever is within themselves.  And I am a gay man just one step away from 60, within arm’s reach of social security retirement age, whose love life has been pretty much one failed attempt after another.  Here’s what I see: she’s in love with a statue and she thinks the person she sees in it is real and it isn’t.

No, I haven’t actually watched Disney’s The Little Mermaid yet.  So if that’s all part of the Disney happy ending then okay…fine.  But I am a fan of Walt Disney all the same if not so much of one that I’ve had to watch everything that ever came out of his studios.  I like his happily ever after mindset, that There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow Shining At The End Of Every Day way of looking at life.  That is how I want life to Be.  That is why I keep going back to Disney World these days…for that happy sense of life’s wonderful possibilities.  So never having watched it I can almost picture the story Disney made of that Hans Christian Andersen tale.  And they all lived happily ever after.  In one form or another that was the story Walt Disney always told and I am convinced he honestly believed it and that was why that song always came out of him.  But for the rest of us it isn’t so easy.

So when just the other day I ran across the story behind the story of The Little Mermaid, I saw why there was something about it I could see, even in that Disney figurine, that tweaked a very dark and lonely place inside of me…

The Little Mermaid was written as a love letter by Hans Christian Andersen to Edvard Collin.  Andersen, upon hearing of Collin’s engagement to a young woman, proclaimed his love to him.  He told him “I long for you as though you were a beautiful Calabrian girl.”  Edvard Collin turned Andersen down, disgusted.

Andersen then wrote The Little Mermaid to symbolize his inability to have Collin just as a mermaid cannot be with a human.  He sent it to Collin in 1836 and it goes down in history as one of the most profound love letters ever written.

The story originally ended thusly…

The prince and princess marry, and the Little Mermaid’s heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up and of all the pain she has suffered. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters bring her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife and lets his blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid again, all her suffering will end and she will live out her full life.

However the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride and as dawn breaks she throws herself into the sea. Her body dissolves into foam…

Later, Andersen gave it a happier ending.  The little mermaid is turned into an air spirit and told she will gain an eternal soul after doing good deeds for 300 years.  But it seems tacked on and contrived.  You need a Walt Disney to turn that story around and Walt found his other half early enough on that he could believe in it.  Andersen it seems, never did.  A lot of us don’t.

Here in Maryland this election year, my heterosexual neighbors will be deciding whether or not their gay neighbors can get married. Oh, gay Marylanders can vote on it too…all possibly two to ten percent of us depending on who you ask are the percentage of homosexuals in a given human population.   On the one hand homosexuals are a small minority whose needs can be easily and casually erased by the heterosexual majority with a simple flick of a voting booth button.   On the other hand we are a terrifying threat to civilization itself.

One of our local numbskulls…no not Don Dwyer…state delegate Emmitt Burns (note: a Democrat), threatened Baltimore Ravens players for speaking out in favor of same-sex marriage.   This prompted another NFL player, Chris Kluwe, to pen a scorching hot missive back at Burns, wondering in part…

Why do you hate the fact that other people want a chance to live their lives and be happy, even though they may believe in something different from what you believe, or act differently from you? How does gay marriage affect your life in any way, shape, or form? Are you worried that if gay marriage became legal, all of a sudden you’d start thinking about penis? (“Oh shit. Gay marriage just passed. Gotta get me some of that hot dong action!”) Will all your friends suddenly turn gay and refuse to come to your Sunday Ticket grill-outs? (Unlikely. Gay people enjoy watching football, too.)

All in good fun…right?   Burns backed off a tad, allowing that even football players can speak their mind from time to time.   But of course the kook pews couldn’t let the matter rest there.   It was starting to look like the most manly of sports was open to the idea of gay people being something other then human garbage.   So out comes another Ravens player, Matt Birk just to prove that football hasn’t entirely succumbed…

I think it is important to set the record straight about what the marriage debate is and is not about, and to clarify that not all NFL players think redefining marriage is a good thing.

The union of a man and a woman is privileged and recognized by society as “marriage” for a reason, and it’s not because the government has a vested interest in celebrating the love between two people. With good reason, government recognizes marriages and gives them certain legal benefits so they can provide a stable, nurturing environment for the next generation of citizens: our kids.

Children have a right to a mom and a dad, and I realize that this doesn’t always happen. Through the work my wife and I do at pregnancy resource centers and underprivileged schools, we have witnessed firsthand the many heroic efforts of single mothers and fathers — many of whom work very hard to provide what’s best for their kids.

But recognizing the efforts of these parents and the resiliency of some (not all, unfortunately) of these kids, does not then give society the right to dismiss the potential long-term effects on a child of not knowing or being loved by his or her mother or father. Each plays a vital role in the raising of a child.

Marriage is in trouble right now — admittedly, for many reasons that have little to do with same-sex unions. In the last few years, political forces and a culture of relativism have replaced “I am my brother’s keeper” and “love your neighbor as yourself” with “live and let live” and “if it feels good, go ahead and do it.”

The effects of no-fault divorce, adultery, and the nonchalant attitude toward marriage by some have done great harm to this sacred institution. How much longer do we put the desires of adults before the needs of kids? Why are we not doing more to lift up and strengthen the institution of marriage?

Same-sex unions may not affect my marriage specifically, but it will affect my children — the next generation. Ideas have consequences, and laws shape culture. Marriage redefinition will affect the broader well-being of children and the welfare of society. As a Christian and a citizen, I am compelled to care about both.

I am speaking out on this issue because it is far too important to remain silent. People who are simply acknowledging the basic reality of marriage between one man and one woman are being labeled as “bigots” and “homophobic.” Aren’t we past that as a society?

Don’t we all have family members and friends whom we love who have same-sex attraction? Attempting to silence those who may disagree with you is always un-American, but especially when it is through name-calling, it has no place in respectful conversation.

A defense of marriage is not meant as an offense to any person or group. All people should be afforded their inalienable American freedoms. There is no opposition between providing basic human rights to everyone and preserving marriage as the sacred union of one man and one woman.

I hope that in voicing my beliefs I encourage people on both sides to use reason and charity as they enter this debate.

You can almost hear him pleading with his readers to pay attention to all that I Am Not A Bigot hand waving at the end and not the fact that an editorial against same-sex marriage ending with a call for reason and charity had absolutely none of either of those things to offer.

How much longer do we put the desires of adults before the needs of kids?

Chris Kluwe shot a response back that pretty well sums it up:

The only impact same-sex marriage will have on your children is if one of them turns out to be gay and cannot get married. What will you do (and I ask this honestly) if one or more of your kids ends up being gay? Will you love them any less? What will your actions speak to them, 15 years from now, when they ask you why they can’t enjoy the same relationship that you and your wife have now? And if your response is “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”, well, for a lot of people that bridge is here right now. They’re trying to cross it, but the way is barred…

But pay attention to how reliably that Save Our Children rhetoric pops out of their mouths.   When you see this, it’s a red flag, because as Kluwe says, some kids are gay.   What you’re seeing there isn’t about kids at all, it’s about the old slander that homosexuals are child molesters.   Birk isn’t thinking about the welfare of gay kids when he argues that same-sex marriage is a threat to children because there aren’t any gay kids.   Nobody is born gay, they’re recruited into it.   It’s knowledge so deeply ingrained within him it colors everything he says throughout the editorial.   There are no gay kids so I don’t have to worry about my kids being gay.   I worry that they’ll be recruited into the lifestyle. I worry that homosexuality will be normalized.

That’s the problem he has with same-sex marriage.   But don’t call him a bigot because…you know…he has Reasons.   Just don’t ask him for any.

Marriage is in trouble right now — admittedly, for many reasons that have little to do with same-sex unions.

Er…Matt…   In this entire editorial you don’t give Any reasons that have to do with same-sex unions.   It’s marriages is about the welfare of children and if we let same-sex couples marry that will destroy marriage which would be a very bad thing for children.   But don’t ask me why letting homosexuals get married will destroy marriage when we let heterosexual couples incapable of having children get married all the time because then I’ll have to say something like because….homosexuals!   And then you’d call me a bigot and I’m not so stop trying to silence me!

I am not a bigot.   I respect everyone.   Even the folks whose ring fingers I want to cut off and whose lives I don’t have clue one about…

Children have a right to a mom and a dad, and I realize that this doesn’t always happen. Through the work my wife and I do at pregnancy resource centers and underprivileged schools, we have witnessed firsthand the many heroic efforts of single mothers and fathers — many of whom work very hard to provide what’s best for their kids.

Seems you never worked with any same-sex parents Matt.   But you have an opinion about the fitness of their families.   Why is that Matt?   Where did that opinion come from if it wasn’t first hand experience knowing and being a part of the lives of gay couples and their families.

Ah…I think I know…

NFL Player Matt Birk Makes Anti-Gay Ad for Catholic Church and Equality Advocate Chris Kluwe Responds: VIDEO

In a video for the Minnesota Catholic Conference, Baltimore Raven center Matt Birk doubles down on the anti-gay sentiment he expressed in an op-ed for the Star Tribune this week in support of Minnesota’s upcoming ballot measure that would constitutionally ban same-sex marriage.

First comes the editorial, then the video, and this was a spontaneous display of support for the heterosexual prerogative like all those Mormons coming together spontaneously to work for Proposition 8 was.

This is the Catholic church talking through a willing football player.   But again…take notice of all that I Am Not A Bigot And Calling Me One Amounts To Censorship hand waving at the end.   His critics aren’t trying to silence him, he’s trying to silence his critics.   This is How Dare You Take Issue With My Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs You Bigot! It’s the only song they have left now apparently. The only reason people support the right of gay couples to marry is because they hate Jesus.

I encourage all Americans to stand up to preserve and promote a healthy, authentic promarriage culture in this upcoming election.

Same-sex marriage is not healthy.   Same-sex marriages are not authentic.   And charity is you treat me better then I am willing to treat my homosexual neighbor.   And don’t be calling me a bigot simply because the only reasons I have for denying gay couples the right to marry are my religious beliefs and a knee jerk reflex that homosexuals somehow threaten my children.

One small step taken against a widely practiced form of child sexual abuse yesterday in California…

California governor signs gay conversion therapy ban

The thing to remember here is this only applies to licensed therapists, not pulpit thumping hate mongers who are still as free as ever to stick a knife in a kid’s heart and twist it in the name of Christ, and then twist it again in the name of love.   But already the usual suspects are screaming bloody murder…

In a statement on NARTH’s website, the group says the law will seriously jeopardize the livelihoods of “licensed therapists in California who would otherwise be willing to assist minor clients in modifying their unwanted same-sex attractions and behaviors.” It also will “supplant the rights of parents,” the group says.

Note the reliable appeal to the rights of parents.   But no parent has the right to subject their child to sexual abuse and ex-gay therapy is just that.   If you think that’s hyperbole I strongly recommend you listen to the stories of the survivors of ex-gay therapy and compare them to the survivors of other forms of sexual abuse.

Kendall said the therapy he underwent “led me to periods of homelessness, to drug abuse, to spending a decade of my life wanting to kill myself. It led to so much pain and struggle. And I want them to know that what they do hurts people. It hurts children. It has no basis in fact. And they need to stop.

The self loathing.   The shame.   The despair.   Blaming yourself for what happened.   People need to look at what this practice does to children.   And not just ex-gay therapy but the general cultural shaming and bullying of gay kids.   Really look at it.   This is sexual abuse.

But the abusers won’t stop of their own accord.   Oh no…the kids really wanted it you see…

…the law will seriously jeopardize the livelihoods of “licensed therapists in California who would otherwise be willing to assist minor clients in modifying their unwanted same-sex attractions and behaviors…

What those kids want is to be loved.   They don’t want to be abominations in the eyes of God.   They don’t want their parents breaking down in tears, screaming at them that they’re ashamed to be their parents.   They don’t want to be monsters.   But who told them they were?   No Mr. Nicolosi, those kids didn’t want you feeling up their souls, poking around in the most secret private places of their hearts, you just told yourself they did.   That’s how it usually is with the seducers of the too young to understand.

The only purpose this practice ever had is to make gay people hate themselves, and incidentally to excuse the righteous for hating them.   You don’t have to be gay, so it isn’t our fault for making your lives miserable, it’s yours for being gay.   You choose to be gay, so you choose to be persecuted. There’s a political side to ex-gay therapy, as justification and cover for anti-gay politicians, but beneith the surface there’s the core value: homosexuals must hate themselves, must accept they are society’s outcasts.

The pulpit thumping homophobe who gets caught preying on minors.   The bar stool moralizer with a gambling habit.   The family values politician who goes for a hike on the Appalachian trail.   It’s the homosexuals who are destroying the moral fiber of society, surely not any of these.   Our enemies say they are fighting against the normalization of homosexuality.   But it isn’t what society and culture think of us, it’s that we might stop hating ourselves they won’t endure.   If open homosexuality stops being the touchstone of moral decay, then where will the fingers point when another righteous culture warrior gets caught with their pants down? It’s having to look in a mirror and admit the crying wreckage they’ve made of their own lives was their own doing they’re fighting tooth and nail to prevent.

So the scapegoat must never think themselves worthy of being loved, must never know what it is to love, and be loved.   Because love is patient, love is enduring, love can nourish and sustain through the worst of times.   Because love can move mountains.   Because the one thing you never want the scapegoat to be able to do is move mountains.

To make a scapegoat, you have to cut the heart out when they’re young.

The culture war is a battlefield with many dead hopes and dreams, mostly unseen and forgotten…

‘Collateral Damage’ in the LGBT Community: Straight Spouses, Still in the Darkest Corner of the Closet

Tucked in a corner of the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender closet is a little-known group: straight women and men in heterosexual marriages whose husbands or wives come out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender after marrying them as “the right thing to do.” Finding the marriages too difficult to maintain due to their hidden sexual orientation or gender identity, they eventually say, “Honey, I’m gay,” or, “I need to become the woman or man I am,” or their mates discover signs of a same-sex lover or an opposite-gender wardrobe. Though some couples work out ways to stay together, most divorce, their children now in a broken family. As divorced LGBT partners begin to live their lives with integrity, their straight ex-partners are left in shock, their own identity, integrity, and belief system shattered. The spotlight on the disclosing partners, few outsiders think about their wives or husbands. “They’re straight! They’re normal. No problem.”

No problem…   For the culture warriors anyway.   Years ago, when I became involved in the struggle of a gay teen who was forced into ex-gay therapy against his will, I had my eyes opened to a bitter little corner of the culture war that was mostly under the radar of mainstream notice. The many good and decent people scarred horribly from the experience of putting themselves, or having been put through, a relentless gauntlet of shame, allegedly for the sake of saving their souls.   But as is usually the case, the saviors were less interested in the people they were theoretically saving then in building their own stepping stones to heaven.   They didn’t follow up, they didn’t give a shit whatsoever about the fate of the saved.   It was all just theater.   Grist for their bar stool conceits about their status as God’s own right hand. And you never saw it more clearly then in the human suffering of straight spouses, mostly heterosexual women, who were nothing more then useful tools for the haters of homosexual people.

Straight spouses are injured by the very anti-gay or anti-trans/pro-straight factors in our society that caused their mates to marry them — “collateral damage,” some say. Those in mixed-orientation marriages, like their partners, feel unfulfilled by the sexual mismatch, often blaming themselves and accommodating their partners’ wishes at the expense of their own.

There were the gay folk themselves, but also parents shamed into believing that their son’s homosexuality was their fault.   And there were the spouses of homosexual men.   One thing you notice right away listening to the stories of the survivors of ex-gay therapy is how little attention is paid to women.   In the manner of righteous misogynistic patriarchal thugs, those women never mattered.   Lesbians were seldom a target of the ex-gay outfits.   They were focused almost exclusively on male homosexuality.   And so of course, heterosexual women lured into marriages with gay men didn’t matter, except as tools to cure men of their homosexuality.

Once they know the truth, the vast majority divorce and must pick up the pieces of their fractured families to create a semblance of normalcy for their children. In addition, a number keep their ex-partners’ “secret,” wanting to avoid the latter’s rejection by community, workplace, or place of worship, and to protect their children from taunts. If their partners disclose publicly, they are rightfully praised for their courage, while their straight ex-spouses are forgotten. Keeping the secret or feeling discounted, straight spouses retreat into their own kind of closet, invisible. Some find peer support through the Straight Spouse Network. Few find the knowledgeable professional help they need.

There is another victim of this human tragedy as well, unseen, unacknowledged, possibly even unaware themselves: other gay men, who might have loved, and been loved by those gay men, had they grown up in a world where their sexual nature was not used against them, for the sake of the righteous.

So much love lost to the world, to so many hearts left to wander the world alone.   So the righteous could make their stepping stones to heaven out of other people’s hopes and dreams of love.

I am not an atheist because I have a grudge against religion.   I stopped believing simply because I had to finally admit to myself that belief had stopped making sense to me.   But I will acknowledge that it was helped along by that relentless torrent of hate flung at me and at so many other good hearts simply for what we were.   It forced me to question the biblical truths I was raised to believe.   I think eventually the questions would have come anyway.   Having had the father I did, the whole concept of original sin, and being held guilty for acts not of my own doing, struck me as monstrously grotesque the moment I began to fully understand it.   But there is no doubt the questioning came sooner, and more forcefully, because I had to think about why such a wonderful, beautiful, life affirming thing as falling in love was, for me, proof that I was an abomination.

I’ve had it good, golden even, compared to what other gay people have had to endure.   I was never thrown out of my house, never had to hear my own parents tell me they hated me for what I was.   But I am alone.   I have been alone my entire life.   And I have seen the faces of others, so terribly alone as am I.   We homosexuals are a minority.   In the best of all possible worlds it would still have been a harder road to that place of peace and joy for us.   It didn’t have to be made worse.   Yes mother, yes father, I will take my heart, and all its hopes and dreams of love and devotion, and put them in this little coffin and bury it.   Because I am your good son…

I am an atheist. I love life, and this good earth, and I try to love the people who come my way in it.   I try to be a good neighbor.   I want love to succeed, if not for me then for others.   There is no despair in me in knowing that the end is the end.   It means that this life I have now is what I have to make right, make good.   To leave this world in some better way because I have walked in it is enough.   There is nobility there for me.   And hope.   But if there is a judgment day coming, I would rather answer for the life I’ve lived then have to answer for the life of someone who told a gay man to get himself married so God would not abandon him, and then be shown all the broken and destitute hearts that he thought on that day would be the proof of his love of God.