Via Dan Savage…Via After Elton…  HBO is pointing the finger at Obama…

Developing: HBO says they aren’t to blame for not including Gene Robinson in concert special

Contacted Sunday night by AfterElton.com concerning the exclusion of Robinson’s prayer, HBO said via email, "The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show."

Uncertain as to whether or not that meant that HBO was contractually prevented from airing the pre-show, we followed up, but none of the spokespeople available Sunday night could answer that question with absolute certainty.

However, it does seem that the network’s position is that they had nothing to do with the decision.

So who made the decision to closet the Gay Men’s Chorus?  Dan Savage sums it up nicely here …

When you’re throwing folks a bone it’s a good idea to make sure they can, you know, see the bone.

It’s five in the morning here in Baltimore, and already my mailbox is chock full of outrage over this.  From the Gay Democrats mail list to the local Baltimore lists its everywhere.  Everywhere but Google news which seems to think that Robinson’s prayer was seen by the whole nation.  Over at Science Blogs they’re calling it an Historic inaugural slap in the face to LGBT community.  One commenter there posted this…

We’d like to have you speak at our inaugural event…
We’d like to put your face up on the screen
Look around you; all you see are Democratic eyes.
Stroll around the Mall until it’s time to speak

And here’s to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….

Use another camera while the Bishop says his prayer.
Put it on a crowd scene for the broadcast
Keep him in the closet, Bishop Robinson’s not there
Most of all, we’ve got to hide him from the kids

Shoo, shoo, to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….

Standing on the marble steps, with Lincoln looking down
Going through the motions for TV
Laugh about it, Shout about it, Try to spread the word
Anyway, the Bishop wasn’t heard

Where have you gone, Marian Anderson?
The GMC is singing just like you
Ooo ooo ooo
What’s that you say, Bishop Robinson?
CNN sure kept you locked away
Hey hey hey… hey hey hey…

Posted by: Cuttlefish | January 18, 2009 10:38 PM

Craigkg is reporting that even those in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial might not have been able to hear Robinson’s Prayer…

In fact, it is being reported by some who were in attendance that when Rev Robinson delivered his invocation, the speakers were either turned down or off all together.

He goes on to write…

The situation with Rev. Robinson and Rev. Warren has become so incredibly similar to the fiasco involving Donnie McClurkin and Rev. Andy Sidden its not even funny. Before the South Carolina primary, Obama held a concert for black evangelicals and invited gospel singer and "ex-gay" homophobe Donnie McClurkin to sing and emcee the event. GLBT activists reacted by denouncing McClurkin’s claims that gays can change their sexual orientation (aka be saved) and Obama for having such a divisive anti-gay figure associated with his campaign. The GLBT community is rightly very sensitive to the legitimization of  the ex-gay movement and the severe psychological damage reparative therapy can have of those subjected to this (being kind here) torture. After some hemming and hawing Obama announced he did not agree with McClurkin’s views on gays, tried to reinterate his own support of the GLBT community and announced that an invocation at the concert would be delivered by openly gay minister, the Rev. Andy Sidden. It was highly questioned at the time having a white gay minister deliver the prayer when several black gay ministers were available and willing to give it. At the concert, Rev. Sidden delivered his prayer in front of a largely unoccupied venue as most people were outside still filing in. Reports put the crowd at one quarter to one third of the eventual attendance at best. McClurkin went on to emcee and perform in  front of the full crowd and delivered his own god saved me from my gayness statement…

At Talking Points Memo…there is the Top Ten Reasons Why HBO Censored Gene Robinson…

1. HBO sound system cannot broadcast gay voices.
2. Program ran over schedule, so HBO went back in their time machine and cut the beginning of the live broadcast.
3. Appearance of a gay men’s chorus went way over HBO’s ‘gay quota’ for the event.
4. HBO is a family-friendly network that does not carry offensive material like frontal nudity, profanity, or bishops.
5. Ellen DeGeneres was jealous.
6. Dumbledore was jealous.
7. HBO was warned that terrorists were watching for a signal that America was gay weak.
8. Rick Warren was jealous.
9. Everyone knows all gays are atheists.
10. Sarah Palin used her special anti-Russian spyware to block the signal.

They also report that NPR silenced Robinson.  Over at TVBarn.com they’re reporting that Robinson’s image was kept out of the NPR gallery of event photos as well.  Also…

A search of Getty Images, NYTimes.com and WaPo slide shows turned up nothing. In short, I found no visual evidence that an invocation was ever said. 

The TVBarn blogger lists three options for team Obama to handle this:  1) Claim it was a technical glitch,  2) Admit they never intended for Robinson to be seen on national TV,  3) Admit they screwed up.  My money is on 1, and they’ll stick stubbornly with it no matter how many people point out that the event began without any problems precisely on time, and that the "glitch" only happened during Robinson’s prayer, and that it still doesn’t explain why the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.

So far not one of the mainstream news media outlets I have scanned have reported either that Robinson was silenced, or that the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.  However, the comment boards of some of them, like the  are already electric with people angry that they didn’t get to see and hear Robinson.  His prayer was beautiful and stirring to many. 

Mike Tidmus writes in his post, The incredible disappearing bishop…

Could it be that the American media has finally decided these public events should be 100% secular? Don’t count on it, friends, because you know as well as I do that pop-pastor Rick Warren will be front and center and at full volume to kick off President-Elect Obama’s formal Inauguration on Tuesday.

Today’s event at the Lincoln Memorial was entitled We Are One, but apparently We Are Minus One is closer to the truth.

It didn’t have to be this way.  And yet…it did…

So…did you catch Gene Robinson giving the opening prayer to the Inaugural Festivities? 

No?  Well don’t fret…neither did anyone else…

Permission To Get Upset?

Posted by Dan Savage on Sun, Jan 18 at 5:35 PM

When Barack Obama chose anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-porn Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, gays and lesbians—still smarting from Prop 8—were understandably upset. Well, I thought our dismay was understandable. But a lot of folks in the comments threads here, there, and everywhere disagreed. Barack was just trying to bring the country together, to find common ground, and Rick Warren invited him to his church, and how dare you get upset, trust the man, let him get into office before you start grousing at him about this, why are you worrying about symbolism when it’s policy that matters, and blah blah blah.

…

Then when Barack Obama chose Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop, to give the invocation at tonight’s pre-inaugural festivities—the concert tonight at the Lincoln Memorial—the folks defending Obama were all like, "SEE? Obama is bringing the country together! Anti-gay preachers, gay preachers—everyone is equal and equally welcome!" And Gene Robinson did give the invocation at tonight’s concert…and his words were very moving. You can read the full text of Robinson’s prayer here.

But if you were watching HBO’s broadcast of tonight’s concert you didn’t see Robinson, or hear his remarks… because Robinson’s invocation wasn’t included in the broadcast. Skipped over during the live broadcast, edited out of the rebroadcast.

How about the fact that tonight’s other big gay moment—the D.C. gay men’s chorus singing with Josh Groban—passed without the chorus, unlike every other performer, being identified?

Nice.  Welcome to morning in America.  No matter what little token we may think we’ve managed to win, never doubt the ability or the willingness of the corporate media to make sure we remain invisible.  And it’s not just that they’d rather have republicans in power then democrats.  It’s not just that allowing people to see their gay and lesbian neighbors for the human beings we are, makes it hard for us to be the monsters we have to become every election year so that republicans can gay bash their way into winning elections.  Homophobia is as much a fact of life in the high testosterone boardrooms of corporate America as it is in the megachurch stadium seating big screen TV cathedrals of the heartland.  They hate us.  First of all you have to understand that they hate us.

The democrats are sill late in coming to this fight.  Obama and his people probably genuinely thought they were being actively inclusive in bringing in Gene Robinson.  They were probably totally blind-sided by all this.  Like a lot of decent rational people, they just don’t get the depth of contempt toward gay people.  They never believe it until they actually see it for themselves.  You can’t just take a rhetorical stand in favor of gay equality.  You can’t just make a few gestures of sympathy and expect any progress to be made.  This is a knife fight.  They hate us.  They hate us with a venom that is as bottomless as it is bitter.  Every inch of progress in this fight, every inch, every painful, bloody inch of progress we make toward equality, toward the day when we are free to love and hope and dream and make decent lives for ourselves to the best of our ability, is its own poisonous scorched earth total war.  Every inch.  It will be like that right up to the bitter end and for generations after.  They hate us.  They will never stop hating us.  Of course HBO censored Gene Robinson.  Of course they shoved the Gay Men’s chorus into the closet.  The corporate media will keep on making us invisable, will keep on shoving us back into the closet, will enable the demonization of gay people, and look the other way at the toll of death and destruction until someone makes them stop.  Asking politely will not change one single solitary thing.  They hate us.

[Edited a tad…]

On SlashDot recently there was a post concerning Google’s announced support for repealing or overturning Proposition 8.  Google placed its opposition to discriminating against same-sex couples in marriage in the context of being able to entice the best workers to its California workplace, but immediately the commenters on SlashDot began to bellyache at the hypocrisy of being concerned about recruiting good workers at the same time they’re laying people off.  As if the two things are mutually exclusive.  I guess most SlashDot visitors are very young and haven’t been through many recessions. 

But reliably came the calls from ersatz libertarians to get government out of the business of marriage.  Civil Unions they say, are a workable compromise.  People are just getting hung up over a word they say.  Never mind that making all civil marriages civil unions just isn’t going to happen politically.  Our enemies don’t want us to have even civil unions.  This isn’t a fight over a word or none of these anti same-sex marriage amendments would forbid civil unions too and nearly all of them do.  That wasn’t accidental.  The word people are getting hung up over in this fight isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexuals’.

From the Salt Lake Tribune comes this little article, ostensibly to show that Utahns (read: Mormons) aren’t so bigoted after all…

Poll: Utahns back some gay rights, but not weddings or adoptions

While Utahns aren’t ready to let gay and lesbian couples exchange wedding vows or enter civil unions, most are willing to give them broader legal rights to inherit property, visit a partner in the hospital and ward off employment discrimination…However, the poll shows overwhelming opposition (70 percent) to any changes to the Utah Constitution that would allow same-sex partners to enter civil unions…

Well isn’t that lovely.  You want hypocrisy?  It’s not in Google taking a stand for human decency, even as it has to lay off workers.  It’s here, right here, in all those righteous people who think that respecting the love and devotion of same-sex couples in sickness makes it okay to rip their lives apart in health.  If you believe that homosexuality is a sickness, a perversion, an abomination to God that will lead to the destruction of the family and western civilization, then what sense does it make to give same sex couple’s any rights?  All that says, is they know goddamned well that same sex couples love each other every bit as much as opposite sex couples do.  All this says, is that they don’t want to be thought of as the gutter crawling butchers of other people’s hopes and dreams that they are. 

This is their way of saving face, nothing more, nothing less.  It’s the equivocation of bigots trying to look at themselves in a mirror and deny the blood on their hands was something they did willingly, deliberately, knowingly. We don’t hate them…look…we’re willing to let them visit their sex partners in the hospital…  How does that make sense when homosexuals are destroying the family and western civilization?  It doesn’t.  It’s an admission of guilt.  It exposes the bedrock of animus toward gay people that motivates them more then simply denying gay people all legal status does.  Ignorance sees only monsters when it looks at gay people.  It takes shame to know that kicking them in the face isn’t something you want to be seen doing.

And even those moral runts only constitute a bare majority of the whole in Utah.  After the critical roll the Mormon church played in passing Proposition 8 became known, Mormon church leaders averred they had no objection to granting same sex couples some small rights, and the democratic opposition in the state promptly took them at their word, proposing legislation to grant them just that.  They call their work, without any apparent sense of irony, the "common ground" bills.

While Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, doubts Utahns would change the state constitution to permit civil unions, he said he would entertain bills on more-expansive legal rights for gays.

"The fact that anybody wants [wider rights] is grounds to pursue it and investigate it," said Waddoups, adding that he would ensure the Common Ground bills get a fair debate if they make it to committee or the Senate floor.

But opposition certainly will follow from Utahns such as poll respondent Maureen Johnson.

"I don’t believe they should have any rights at all," said the South Jordan resident. "The Lord says the man is made for the woman and the woman is made for the man."

Well thank you Senator Waddoups, R-Taylorsville for entertaining the idea that gay people ought to have rights.  The compromise between right and wrong is indifference to either right or wrong.  The compromise between living in freedom and living in a police state is I agree to put the handcuffs on myself and pretend I had a choice in the matter.  The compromise between love and hate is to put the knife into your own heart and spare hate the trouble.  The word that describes the "common ground" between free people and tyrants is Battleground, not Peace.  Just ask the shades that walk at Shiloh.

Common ground is that we are all equal in the eyes of the law.  Once upon a time that was the American compromise.  We all had different faiths, came from different lands, were raised in different cultures.  But as far as the law was concerned, we were all Americans.  The religious and fascist right have waged a decades long scorched earth war to shred the American ideal of equality, so that they might rise above the rest of us and rule over all.  Because they are the favored of God.  Because to rule over the heathens is their God-given right.  No…duty. 

Take up the Godly Man’s burden…
Ye dare not stoop to less…

And now we, who believe in the American dream, are in a pitched fight to retake what was once our sacred common ground: liberty and justice for all.  Equality is the common ground.  What’s equal to marriage, is marriage.

This headline scanned across my Google news page this morning:

America’s Everyman Calls Mormons ‘Un-American’

What’s significant about this is that Hanks is seen as the same sort of American Everyman character actor that Jimmy Stewart once was.

“The truth is this takes place in Utah, the truth is these people are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen,” he told Tarts. “There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here’s what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed and people can see who’s responsible and that can motivate the next go around of our self correcting constitution and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So lets have faith in not only the American, but Californian constitutional process.”

This, I can see from the other Google news headlines, has the kook pews up in arms.

The Mormon church responds thusly…

Actor Tom Hanks went after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for their support of California’s Proposition 8 while talking to Fox News. Today, the Church responded.

…

Church spokesman Scott Trotter issued a one-sentence statement today in response to Hanks’ comments. It reads: "Expressing an opinion in a free and democratic society is as American as it gets."

So cutting off your neighbor’s ring finger amounts to expressing an opinion.  See how easy it is to live without a conscience?  You don’t have to give a shit about anything or anyone.  You can rip apart your neighbor’s marriage.  You can brutalize children for profit.  The lives of other people don’t matter.  Only your quest for Godhood matters.  Who cares how many lives you destroy, when at the end of it all you get to be a God?

You knew it was going to be an easy day in class when you walked in and saw one of the school’s Bell & Howell Filmosound 16mm projectors set up in the middle of the room. If the teacher was a technologically challenged sort, they’d let the class AV geek (sometimes that was me) thread the film through it and run it. You got to sit back and watch a film, and it was a safe bet that the film would be a lot more interesting and engaging then whatever teacher taught that particular class. Or to put it another way, you knew you had a good teacher when the sight of the film projector was a bit of a let-down.

My favorites were the Bell Labs educational films. Least appreciated on my list were the Highway Safety Institute films that grossed and scared the crap out of me to the point where I almost refused to get a driver’s license. Oh…and the sex ed films about the dangers of heavy petting. Who cared about that stuff anyway?

Then there were the films warning us about the dangers of homosexuality. I think I saw this one in high school…

Yeah, I laughed. As someone who actually sat through some of those old 1950s morality films, I can tell you that whoever did that one got it just about perfect…down to the stilted dialogue and cheesy narration. All that was missing from it was the randomly warbly sound of the old 16mm projector audio.

But some of us still remember the real thing…

That’s what me and my peers all got back in grade school. They were showing this crap to us as early as 8th grade. Before the personal computer came along, before the internet, before cable TV and home video, the only things we knew about homosexuals and homosexuality, were what we were taught in films like that one.

I’m sure those 1950s film makers had no idea, no clue themselves, that some of the kids watching that film were gay themselves, or that the others in the class would one day learn that an old classmate they’d gone to school alongside of is gay, and have to reconcile the kid they’d known with the image of the sick and twisted homosexual monster that they were taught. I’m sure those 1950s film makers had no idea, no clue themselves, what it was like to be either one of those kids, all grown up now, looking apprehensively at each other.

Via Fark, I stumbled across a post in Spike titled 10 Signs Your Car Is A Beater.  After a while I realized I was laughing because I’d owned some of those cars myself.

10. Your Trunk Looks Like a Pep Boys Exploded

My first car was a new car.  Looking back on it, I was unreasonably lucky in that regard.  Most kids on my side of the railroad tracks, fresh out of high school, were lucky to get hand me downs or well worn junkers.  I got a brand new 1973 Ford Pinto.  I had to make the payments myself, but Mom willingly co-signed the loan.  I guess I’d proven by that time that I could be responsible about money.  The drive it off the lot price was $1997.48.  It had a 1600cc overhead valve four with a tiny one barrel carb and a four-speed manual transmission.  I got the most bare bones one they had on the lot: it didn’t have a radio, it didn’t even have a cigarette lighter above the ash tray…only a metal plug where one would have gone.  I later found that the wiring for the lighter was there anyway when I added one so I could power things off it.

Ford and GM and AMC had just decided to get into the sub-compact car market, and the big selling point of the Pinto back then, was it’s basic simplicity.  In the sexist climate of the times, one of their ads was of a group of airline stewardesses standing around a Pinto with its hood up, holding various tools, demonstrating that even stewardesses could do the maintenance on one.  The great thing about that car for me was that even a kid fresh out of high school could work on one.  That was important, because I had absolutely no money to pay anyone to work on it. 

Over the years I learned to do the maintenance on it myself, even to the point of replacing brakes, clutches, water pumps and exhaust pipes and mufflers, even the radiator at one point.  That bought me a familiarity with automobile basics, and over time an appreciation for good mechanical design, which the Pinto had in some regards, and didn’t in others.  It also got me started on assembling a good tool collection. 

I made a decision early on, influenced by the Uber geek crowd I’d already fallen into at that age, to only buy the very best tools.  Since I was in no position to be buying expensive tool sets, I simply bought one of what I needed, when I needed it.  I could skimp on food and clothes if I had to, but if I needed a tool for something I would buy the very best Sears Craftsman or Snap-On.  The thinking was that a tool was something you didn’t just buy, but invested in because they made you self sufficient.  It’s a strategy I pursued the rest of my life.  When I moved into Casa del Garrett back in 2001, I came well equipped with tools (and spare parts…I’m a pack rat after all…) for doing all sorts of Harry Homeowner tasks around the house, many of which, particularly the hand tools, had been bought back in my teens and twenties.

I kept that Pinto for an entire decade, pampering it as best I could.  Back then you were doing good if you got over 50k out of a standard American made car.  They only made them back then with five digits on the odometer, which tells you right there what they expected the life span of one of their cars would be.  I got 135k out of that Pinto.  But age took its toll and the car began to fall completely apart in ways I simply could not cope with and I had to give it up. 

3. Starting Your Car Requires the Hood to be Open

That was the Pinto toward the end of its life.  The little one barrel carburetor had some sort of vapor lock going on inside of it.  During the hot summer months I had to open the hood unscrew the air filter lid and stick a paper clip, I swear, into a hole near where the float lived.  I’d hear a slight swoosh of pressure being released.  Then the car would start.  If I didn’t do that…forget it.

There were other problems.  The plastic in the dashboard and the steering wheel was severely cracked, as well as the vinyl in the driver’s seat.  I patched the driver seat with duct tape, I thing I reckoned I could get away with since I lived on the white trash side of the tracks anyway.  One of the windshield wiper arms was prone to popping off, as was the rear view mirror occasionally.  The gear shifter would come off the trans like a gecko’s tail in my hands while I was shifting if I wasn’t careful.  I’d added an oil cooler, a nice stereo cassette deck, a set of gauges including a Heathkit electronic tachometer, and an electric rear window defogger, and I’d religiously changed the engine oil every 2000 miles.  I pampered that engine and it never failed me, but by 135k everything around it was pretty much falling apart.  If mom and I had a house I’d have kept at it, but we lived in an apartment and while I could get away with the occasional oil change landlords tend to frown on tenants doing clutch work in the parking lot.

I had no money for a new one, and since I didn’t have steady work then I couldn’t ask mom to co-sign a loan for another one.  I couldn’t promise her I’d be able to keep up the payments.  A friend stepped forward and offered me his mom’s old Chrysler Newport.  It was a tank.  It had a 450 cubic inch V8 under the hood and bench seats front and rear.  It was so big the dashboard had two ashtrays, one on the driver side, and one on the passenger side.  Having driven a Pinto for ten years, I felt tiny and lost inside that thing.  I named it The Blue Wale.

Oh…and it had a pretty big hole in the floor in front of the driver’s seat.  I kept it covered with a floor mat.

I did my best to take care of it, including replacing the motor mounts after one broke loose.  But a reckless driver in a Mercury Capri hit me head-on and totaled what was left of it.  I was really grateful for that massive hood in front of me when I saw that Capri careening toward me.  It slammed my Newport backward three feet and pretty much creamed the front-end, but I walked out without a scratch.  Getting my face slammed into the all metal dashboard of a Rambler American one day when I was seven years old, had taught me the value of seatbelts long before I’d even heard of such things.

I entered a period of carlessness.  I was utterly dependent on public transportation to get around any further then my own two feet could take me…which wasn’t a trivial distance since I have always loved to walk.  But don’t ever ask me to depend on public transportation again.  At least not in America.  New York City and Portland Oregon exempted.

The last junker I ever owned was another 1974 model.  It was fall of 1991, and I’d just gotten my first good job as a software developer.  Problem was I had to commute to Baltimore from Rockville.  I tried taking the metro to Union Station in Washington, and the MARC rail to Baltimore, and the Baltimore Light Rail to Timonium.  Once.  It was three hours each way.  So I needed a car.  Another friend stepped forward and arranged for me to buy the car owned by the mother of another one of his friends. 

Common attributes include a gaping hole where a stereo might’ve once been, a stench which demands that the windows never get rolled up, and interior which constantly sheds various bits of material on anyone unfortunate enough to be within its confines. A thief looks at your car and says “man, sucks to be that guy” and moves on. Criminals pity you. That’s where you’re at right now.

It was a white 1974 Ford LTD panel wagon.  She’d used it to service her gumball machine business in West Virginia.  It had 240k miles on it, and was powered by a 400 cubic inch V8 with a collapsed hydraulic lifter in it somewhere.  I could make the tap, tap, tapping of the lifter go away for a few hundred miles after a fresh oil change, but it always came back and fixing the lifter would have meant serious engine work I was unwilling to put into it.  The interior roof cloth was delaminating and sagging to the point where it had started to block the view out the back window.  So I cut it all down.  The foam lining then began to flake off and I’d get out of the car with my hair full of it.  Big as the Newport was, the LTD wagon was immense.  I named it The Great White…as in great white whale.

After driving it for a year and a half to and from Baltimore I was at the place where I could finally believe that this earning a living as a computer programmer thing wasn’t a fluke and I moved into my first apartment of my very own.  I was thirty-eight years old.  Having that station wagon was a big plus during that move.  But shortly after I’d settled in, I wandered into a car dealer to see, just out of curiosity, if I could talk myself into a new car too.  That evening I drove home in a brand new 1993 Geo Prism and felt like I’d hit the big time.  I named it Aya.  The dealer took my LTD in for a hundred bucks trade-in and I felt grateful they hadn’t made me pay them to take it.

Aya was the size of my first new car, the Pinto.  But technologically it was light years away.  It had the same size engine but it was an overhead cam fuel injected little goer.  I could do 85 in it no sweat.  The Pinto labored at 60.  I did the Rocky Mountains in Aya and it just hummed along.  The Pinto gasped for breath in those mountains.  I owned Aya for twelve years, put just a tad over 200k on it, and the main reason I sold it was I was ready then to step up a bit.

Two junkers, and one Ford Pinto that became a junker simply because Ford hadn’t built it to last even if you took care of it.  But they encouraged me to buy good tools and learn how to take care of a car.  They taught me to keep emergency stuff in the trunk, jumper cables, flares, this and that for quick repairs, and not to panic if the car broke down and left me stranded somewhere miles from anything.  In retrospect for all that I am grateful.

After the Prism came a brand-new 2005 Honda Accord which I named Beauty because it was just so lovely to look at. Beauty had all the options…it was the first car I’d ever bought with a shopping list bigger then "whatever I can afford that rolls off the lot under its own power".  It had leather seats, fake wood trim, satellite radio, a power driver seat, seat warmers.  Seat warmers!  The rear seats folded down so I could transport large items.  I had to unbolt the back seat to do that in the Prism.  And after the Accord came a brand-new 2008 Mercedes-Benz C300.

A Mercedes-Benz…  I stood there just staring at it after I got it home, thinking of all the places we would go, and I named it Traveler.  I’d dreamed of owning a Mercedes since I was a teenager, when an uncle had driven down for a visit in his new 220D.  By the time I was thirty-five I figured it would always be just a dream.  But I never thought I’d ever have a house of my own either.

Almost eighteen years passed from the first time I laid eyes on The Great White to the first time I sat down in Traveler.  It wasn’t that long.  It was twenty between the time I bought the Pinto and when I was able once more to afford another new car, the Prism.  I was eighteen years old when I bought the Pinto.  Thirty-eight when I bought the Prism.  The time between them were some of the worst years of my life.  For eight of them I had no car at all.  When I finally did get a car again, the insurance companies wouldn’t touch me because I hadn’t owned a car for so long.  I had to get state funded insurance, at drunk driver rates even though my license was spotless.

I can sit here and close my eyes and with very little effort remember, vividly, struggling under the Pinto with the transmission, trying to get it threaded back through the clutch pack after replacing the clutch because yet another new clutch they’d sold me turned out to be a crappy rebuilt clutch instead which had failed after only a few miles.  I can recall sitting in the Newport with the hood open and the engine idling, tapping the gas pedal ever so slightly, and seeing the engine try to jump out of the car because one of the motor mounts had just broken off.  I can recall driving to Baltimore on a sunny February morning up I-95 listening to the loud tap, tap, tapping of the collapsed lifter and wondering if I had enough money that week for another six quarts of fresh oil or should I just let it rattle.

If it seems sometimes here like I never stop gushing over the Mercedes, there is a reason for it.

[Edited a tad…and then some more…]

I was noticing in the server logs this morning that someone came in from an ip address at the University of Maryland on the following Google search string:

coming out comic garrett

Well…that made my day right there.  Someone went looking Specifically for my cartoon series, A Coming Out Story. They didn’t know or couldn’t remember the title exactly, but they knew what it was about and at least the last name of the guy who did it. 

Nice.  Cartooning was the first love.  I gave up hope that I’d ever make a living at it for pretty much the same reason I gave up on being a professional photographer.  I’m just not competitive enough, and when I was younger too timid, shy and scared to try making a go of things as a freelancer.  Ironically, I ended up spending most of my life freelancing in other fields, only one of which, architectural modelmaking, even remotely touched on my artistic skills.  But there it is.  I gave up dreaming about seeing my cartoons in print anywhere.  Then along came the internet and I could just put up my own web site and see if my stuff attracted anyone.

It does.  I have put zero effort into advertising anything I do here and yet after just a few years I get hits on my cartoons from all over the world.  Not a torrent of hits.  But the steady nature of what I do get is more rewarding then you can imagine. 

Which is why I’ll be spending the weekend down in the art room…

From SLOG…   Here is the letter one gay bar in Seattle received…

Read between the lines of every love the sinner hate the sin sermon you have ever heard, and you will see these words.  There must be no homosexuals…  The ex-gay movement gets back to basics…

Steve Fidel over at the Mormon Times complains, Thusly ….

For those who have (correctly) assumed the editor of a Web site called MormonTimes.com is a Mormon, I’ve been called on to be an insider in this discussion by those looking for support for their views against same-sex marriage. As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right.

Angry threats and rhetoric?  Goodness gracious.  

Another Gay Bashing Mars Vancouver

Two men walking in Vancouver’s Davie neighborhood were targeted for attack in still another anti-gay incident in the gay-friendly area.

The attack took place on the evening of Dec. 4 at around 8:00 p.m., according to a Dec. 8 article posted online at Canadian Web site Xtra!.

Chris Hiller was quoted as saying that he and his boyfriend had just come out of a gay bar and were walking along the sidewalk holding hands.

Hiller noted that he knew another person was following behind, but the presence of the other individual did not alarm him until, Hiller said, "my friend goes, ’Come on, Chris, let’s keep walking,’ and next thing I know I’m on the ground with my face covered in blood and dazed, and my friend’s gone to get help."

Hiller did not see his attacker, but he said that he heard the man utter the words, "You fag, I’m going to beat the shit out of you, I don’t like you, stay away from me."

Added the alleged attacker, "Don’t even come near me, you fag."

The article said that Hiller recounted being stuck on the jaw and then receiving a blow right to the teeth.

The article quoted Hiller as saying that he was down for "about four to five minutes," at which point, "I got up and I’m woozy and staggering a bit."

Hiller continued, "I couldn’t see for a few minutes, and then I sat down."

Police arrived a few minutes later in response to the call Hiller’s boyfriend placed, but by then the alleged attacker was long gone.

Hiller was taken to a local hospital.

Angry threats and rhetoric?  Wow…

Assault Conviction Tossed Out in 2005 Dwan Prince Attack

A state appellate court reversed Steven Pomie’s conviction on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree assault as a hate crime in the 2005 anti-gay attack on Dwan Prince, ordered a new trial for Pomie, and said he could only be tried on lesser charges of second-degree assault and second-degree assault as a hate crime.

The assault, which happened in Brooklyn’s Brownsville section, left Prince permanently disabled and unable to work.

Note that three of the four appellate judges in that case, Peter B. Skelos, Robert A. Lifson, and William F. Mastro, were appointed by Republican Governor George Pataki.  Oh…and Skelos is the brother of Dean Skelos, currently the Republican majority leader in the State Senate.  You know…the guy who has been single handedly blocking a vote on same-sex marriage in New York for the past several years.

In 2005, Lifson was one of three judges on a five-judge panel who barred a gay man from bringing a wrongful death suit against St. Vincent’s Hospital after his partner died there. The majority ruled that only a spouse could bring such a case and that the couple’s Vermont civil union did not confer that status on the surviving partner. That same gay man won a 2008 case that sought a benefit from an insurance company for his partner’s death. Mastro was one of two judges who dissented from that ruling from a five-judge panel.

We can only assume it would have been even worse for the spouse, had he been a heterosexual Mormon suing for the wrongful death of his legally married wife.  Who knows what angry threats and rhetoric he’d have had to endure then.

So…I write back to Mr Mormon Times Fidel…Thusly…

"As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right."

I see.  Tell you what…  Walk down almost any street in America holding another man’s hand and see what kind of angry threats and rhetoric you get.  That’s all.  Just holding hands.  That simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of heart-to-heart love is enough to get your head bashed-in, in a lot of places.   And you don’t even have to be gay to get gay bashed either, as Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay found out.  A couple brothers walking down the street arm-in-arm and suddenly an SUV full of angry young men jumps out at them and one of them has an aluminum baseball bat in his hand.  And now Jose, alas, is dead.  And his brother will take the memory of that night to his grave.  Or if holding another man’s hand is too much for you, just try putting a rainbow bumper sticker on your car.  You might get what happened to a lesbian in Richmond California last week when four young men saw the rainbow sticker on her car.  All those ads your church paid for warning Californians that the homos were coming into the schools for their kids sure paid off didn’t they?  You wrote that sentence I quoted above for your fellow Mormons to read so you could all nod your heads together about how hateful the gays are, didn’t you?

I love it when the faithful complain that teh gays are trying to elevate behavior to the level of a civil right.  You’re a Mormon…right?  Well…no.  You aren’t.  Mormon is just a behavior.  It isn’t what you are, it’s what you do.  You attend church.  You do whatever church activities it is that Mormons do.  And it came to pass you read the Book of Mormon.  You wear the magic underwear.  Mormon is something you do, not something you are.   See?  And we don’t want to be elevating behavior to the status of civil right now do we?

Jackass. 

—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.

Which is about as much calm and respectful dialogue as I can manage at the moment.  It’s too early in the morning here in Baltimore for me to be getting angry at knuckle-dragging morons. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was flitting around the web and came upon some posts about a newly animated version of the tale of Peter and the Wolf.  The YouTube clips absolutely fascinated me, both in their artistic style and the interesting modern take on the story.  I discovered it was available on iTunes for a couple bucks so I bit. 

It’s the first video I’ve ever downloaded from iTunes and it was the best couple bucks I have ever spent on a movie, even a short one (it’s about 32 minutes).  If you enjoy good stop motion animation, and fresh takes on old childhood tales, and beautiful classical music, then you should definitely go grab a copy.  It’s available on DVD at Amazon for about 18 bucks, but as I said, you can get it off iTunes for only two and the video quality is excellent.  I was skeptical as to how good the video from iTunes could be considering it is so compressed, but it displayed on Bagheera’s HD monitor as well as any DVD, and the sound quality was excellent.

The story takes place in a more modern day Russia, in the forest outside a small village Peter lives with his grandfather, in a ramshackle house surrounded by a high wooden fence.  Grandpa is terrified of the dangers of the forest, and the howl of the wolf, and as the film opens we see him doggedly reinforcing his fence and plugging all the openings in so nothing can get in…and it seems, so Peter can’t get out.  Grandpa is very protective…perhaps a bit too much so.  When Peter pries a piece of scrap metal off a small opening in the fence so he can look out, grandpa drags him away, nails it shut again, and sends Peter to town to get some food (presumably the boy doesn’t have to go through the forest to get to town…but never mind…).

Peter and grandpa are a couple of poor folk living in a run down shack in the sticks.  As he walks into town the town’s kids, in their nice new winter clothes, all stare at him like he’s from another planet.  He makes his way to a small shop, accidentally bumping into one of the town bullies.  I’ve never seen the bully type so deftly and surely brought to life as in this film.  They drag Peter into an ally and throw him in a dumpster.

Back home, and in tears, Peter is comforted by his pet duck…his only friend.  Suddenly, a bird with a broken wing crash lands in the yard.  Peter watches fascinated as the bird tries to tie itself to a balloon that Peter brought back with him from town, so it can fly again.

But the bird is too heavy for the balloon to hold it up.  Peter determines to help the bird go free again, and sneaks into grandpa’s bedroom and grabs his keys as he sleeps.  He unlocks the padlocks, pushes hard against the door, and then it gives way and Peter and Duck and Bird all tumble through…

…and the lovely Prokofiev music begins.  Up to that moment, the entire thing has been done with only the background sounds audible.  There is no dialogue throughout the film.  Just the sounds of the forest and town, the howl of the wind, and the random sounds Peter and Grandpa and Duck and Bird and Cat make as they go on about their lives.  When the Prokofiev score suddenly starts up, just as the boy and his friends break free of the confining fence, it is an almost magical effect. 

Peter gazes in wonder at an immense tree and a frozen over pond, just outside the fence door.  He helps bird up onto a limb and watches delightedly as it sails through the air dangling from the balloon.  Duck and Peter take turns sliding around the frozen pond.  They all have fun.  But eventually grandpa sees them and drags Peter back inside.  Then the wolf begins to howl, and Peter realizes his beloved Duck is still outside.

You have to watch this thing, to believe how much new life the artists have given to this old story.  It is breathtaking.  The stop motion animation is first rate and the characters are wonderfully drawn.  The expressiveness given to Peter in particular, a boy trapped in a hard life seemingly alone and apart from the rest of the world, is remarkable.  All the more so when you realize that this is traditionally done stop motion animation.  The art has come a long, long way from the original King Kong.  Duck and Bird and Cat and Grandpa, and even the random townsfolk and the bullies all are distinctly drawn personalities, and the Wolf is satisfyingly feral and menacing…almost as though Prokofiev’s Wolf theme assumed physical form.

It doesn’t end the way Prokofiev ended it though.  I won’t give it away, but you could almost wish Prokofiev had thought of this one instead.  It is perfect.  When you know you can defeat the wolf, the bullies don’t matter anymore. 

I was walking in it again last night.  I’ve spent so much time in it now that I can almost draw you a complete set of floor plans.  I haven’t a clue what it means, other then what I already know about my hyper imaginative brain.

It’s an oldish rowhouse style house.  Not located here in Baltimore, but on some residential street of a town somewhere, possibly the main street.  The street has two-lanes, is tree lined and has on street parking.  But the house has a small driveway of crumbly asphalt and pebbles.  And it’s not attached to the homes on either side: it’s a stand-alone.  There is one like it a few blocks from where I live in Baltimore: an odd looking house that looks like it was meant to be part of a row and only one of them was built. 

It is narrow like a rowhouse, made of red brick and a stone basement.  It is two floors and a basement, which is only half underground in the front and walk-out in the back.  There is a small front porch that goes the entire width of the house.  The door is in the middle, between two tall windows.  There are stairs leading up to the porch on the side, not the front of the house.  There is a small grassy front lawn between the front of the house and the sidewalk.  You can’t see it from the front, but there is an odd little room jutting off the side of the basement, almost like an add-on.  The back yard is overgrown, but not hopeless.  The house needs some TLC, especially on the second floor, which is mostly vacant.  There is another odd little add-on room jutting off the back of the second floor.  There is a wooden shed of some kind in the back yard, right up against the rear property line.  I haven’t been in it yet.  The grassy-gravelly driveway goes all the way back to the ally behind the house.  There are trees lining it and an dilapidated wooden plank fence that blocks your view of the alley, except where the driveway pokes through.  You can drive all the way from the street out front to the alley in back…a straight shot, but bumpy.

The front door is made of wood and painted a dark green.  It has three small windows across the top and a simple brass door knocker.  Walking in, you find yourself in a room that goes almost the entire length of the house.  There is a kitchen along the left hand wall (as you walk in).  And oldish stove and sink and cabinets.  A row of small wooden framed windows runs over them, just high enough that you cannot look outside while you are working at the sink or stove, but enough of them that there is plenty of light to see by.  The floors are bare wood without even a few area rugs covering it.  There is a staircase in the middle of the room leading upstairs.  A couple small rooms in the back are for storage, and a small bathroom.

For some reason, the second floor spooks me.  Whenever I go up there I become very apprehensive.  Like the first floor, it is vacant.  There are two rooms in the front which I have yet to enter though the doors are open and they seem just as empty as the rest of the floor.  There is a large open area around the staircase.  In the back, is that odd little add-on room.  It is way more rickety then the rest of the house, and seems to have been slapped on by some previous owner who had little to no carpentry skills.  But it is the only room on that floor with anything going on inside of it.  You walk into it and find yourself in a room packed with tools.  Hand tools of all kinds are hanging from every available space on the walls.  There is a large table saw that seems ancient.  Likewise a band saw and both wood and metal lathes.  The floor is dark with soot and decades of grime.  There are only a couple of small windows letting light inside.  This was somebody’s workspace.  You can see parts of things that have been left uncompleted.  There is a doorway on the right, leading outside to what looks like a fire escape.  Next to the door, an ancient powerbox with switches and old style screw in fuses.  Old, cloth covered electrical wires run from the box, to various power tools, and bare overhead lights.

The basement is interesting.  Like the add-on room, it is full of tools.  But it seems more a storage area then a workshop.  There are old cardboard boxes full of parts for god knows what, and wooden shelves packed with…stuff…more small cardboard boxes full of hardware and small parts.  Metal poles go from the cement floor to the beams above to give the floor above support.  The sides of the basement are stone.  There is a doorway in the back leading out into the backyard.  But there is also a doorway in the right hand wall.  That door is always open.

Here’s were it gets really odd…at least so it seems to me.  That door should lead outside, since it’s against the right wall of the basement…but it doesn’t.  It leads instead to another room.  At first I didn’t know it was even there.  When I found it on one of my journeys through the house I was amazed.  Unlike the rest of the house, it seemed as if it was still being lived in.  Except it isn’t.  This is a house that I have bought in some strange recurring dreamscape I keep having.  That much I know.  The house is mine.  The previous owners are gone.  I’m not sure if I ever even met them but I think I didn’t.  I bought it from a real estate agent somewhere.  For some reason, this one room was never moved out of.  It was left as it was, almost as if the people who sold the house, whoever they were, didn’t even themselves know it was there.  I get the sense they never looked in the basement at all…or in that second floor workshop.

You walk through that door and find yourself in what looks like a middle aged man’s den.  It’s got a threadbare carpet, wooden paneling, and what looks like a small kitchenette in the back.  There is a fishtank on a stand against one wall, an old TV set sitting in a corner with a pair of rabbit ears on top.  There are a couple small book cases built into the walls with a few paperbacks and some magazines.  In the middle of the room is an old over-stuffed recliner chair, well broken in, that looks like it’s been there for decades, and, oddly, a small ottoman in front of it.  Next to the recliner is a small wire metal stand with a phone, an ashtray, an empty glass and a magazine.  There is a large window on the side opposite the door from the basement, and another door in the back leading out into the backyard.  Something that looks like an old space heater is under the window.  Next to it is a small table with a lamp on it.  Behind the TV set is a bookcase that has mostly a jumble of old knick-knacks on it, and a few books here and there that look as if they’ve never actually been read.

The room feels cozy, yet…weird.  Weird because it looks like its previous owner just got up and left and never came back and now I have acquired it just as it was.  The basement storage area and the second floor workshop have that same feeling too.  This room was somebody’s retreat from a hard days work, or maybe someplace they spent all their days in retirement.  Watching TV, reading the papers, fixing the random snack from the kitchenette and having the occasional smoke.  The phone is handy so either they had friends to talk to or just didn’t want to be bothered getting up to answer the phone.  I haven’t noticed if there is a remote.

I started having this recurring dreamhouse when I bought my little real-life rowhouse here in Baltimore’s Medfield neighborhood.  It couldn’t be more different.  For one thing, the dream house is a lot bigger.  For another, it’s way older.  My little rowhouse was built in 1953 and it’s only 1500 square feet.  At a guess, the recurring dream house is a 1920s artifact. 

Sometimes I don’t even have to visit the house for it to occupy my dreams.  Lately, my dreams about it are I’ve been in the middle of something and suddenly started worrying that I needed to go check on the house, because I hadn’t been there in a while.  In some of these dreams I’m still living in one of my old apartments and I’m doing this and that and suddenly I realize I haven’t checked on the house.  Sometimes the feeling rushes over me that if I don’t check on the house soon I might somehow loose possession of it.  Sometimes I find myself wondering what to do with the stuff in that odd basement room.  Actually, when that house enters a dream I’m having, I find myself wondering about what to do with that basement room frequently.  It’s very odd.

When I visit the house, I try to avoid going upstairs.  There is something about the upstairs part of that house, particularly in the front, not the back where the workshop is, that makes me very apprehensive.  I’m getting the creeps right now just recalling it.  The rest of the house doesn’t bother me so much, other then it clearly needs some TLC and I’m not sure I can fix it up all by myself.  But it seems like a cute house overall, with a lot of potential, and it has a nice yard around it with a really nice big old tree on the right hand side by the front near the street.  There’s a house something like it on Falls road a few blocks away.  One of these days I’ll post a picture of it so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about.

I’ve often heard of people having recurring dreams.  I have recurring dreamscapes.  This house is one of them that started happening recently.  I was there again last night…the first time in a while I’ve actually been in the house in one of my dreams about it.  I was checking the house over and wondering if I should get rid of any of the stuff in that basement room, or try to find its owner and see if he wants any of it.  Probably it was related to all the intensive house clearing I’m doing this week.  But when something keeps coming back in your dreams, you wonder what the significance of it is…if there isn’t something it’s trying to tell you.

Maybe I’m just a bit nuts.  You wonder sometimes about the line between creativity and craziness.  I have co-workers who insist they never dream.  I dream all the time, and most of it vividly. 

Andrew Sullivan ponders what Pope Ratzinger said…

You’ve read the press accounts in which the Pope allegedly spoke of protecting the rainforests from destruction in the same vein as protecting heterosexuals from homosexuality. The actual text, brought to us by Rocco, is more complex, but essentially argues that the forms of male and female as created by God can know of no complexity or variance.

Unlike…oh…rainforests.  One of the major reasons why the civilized world wants to protect them is that we don’t know and are no where near knowing the full extent of the bio-diversity there is in those things, let alone exactly how all the pieces all fit together to make a whole.  There is so much still waiting to be discovered, possibly so much those discoveries can provide to humanity in terms of curing sickness, feeding the hungry, and maintaining the environment of planet Earth.  The richness of the diversity of the rainforests is what people are calling on the world’s powers to preserve, and that is the categorical opposite of what authoritarian institutions like pope Ratzinger’s church want to do for the human race.  If the human race was the Amazon rainforest, Ratzinger would be bellyaching about the need to clear cut it, so he could put a Christmas tree farm in its place.

I wonder how many folks who oppose doctor assisted suicide, also oppose letting doctors participate in executions…?

No matter how slowly you heat the pot…sooner or later the water comes to a boil…

Anti-same-sex Marriage Amendments Spark Distress Among GLBT Adults And Families, Says New Research

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — Amendments that restrict civil marriage rights of same-sex couples – such as Proposition 8 that recently passed in California – have led to higher levels of stress and anxiety among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults, as well as among their families of origin, according to several new studies to be published by the American Psychological Association.

…

Participants reported feeling not just alienated from their communities, but fearful that they would lose their children, that they would become victims of anti-gay violence or that they would need to move to a more accepting community. Some of these anxieties were mitigated by social support.

For instance, one interviewee said he became "petrified …of being raped or roughed up or killed, you know, for doing nothing, basically. I worry about being picked out as a gay guy because my mannerisms are not entirely masculine." Another said the marriage amendment supporters were using the Bible "like a brick on us. They are beating us with it."

Social support from religious institutions, families, GLBT friends and heterosexual allies led most of the participants "to greater feelings of safety, happiness and strength," the researchers wrote.

And in the third study, 10 family members of GLBT people living in Memphis were interviewed regarding how anti-GLBT initiatives and movements had affected their family. Their responses were also grouped into clusters of similar themes.

"Some participants identified so deeply with their family member’s experience that they felt equally attacked by these movements and policies," the researchers wrote. "They considered themselves members of the GLBT community and experienced rejection by others for being a GLBT family member."

"Typically, we tend to think of anti-GLBT policies such as marriage bans and Proposition 8 as affecting only GLBT people. However, our research suggests that others in addition to GLBT people are also impacted by this legislation and sometimes quite negatively. For example, we learned that some family members experienced a form of secondary minority stress. Although many participants displayed resiliency and effective coping with this stress, some experienced strong negative consequences to their mental and physical health," said Jennifer Arm, M.S.

Emphasis mine.  Hold that thought for a moment…

But of course…this is what was supposed to happen.  When louts like Lee Benson call us "sore losers" don’t be fooled.  They know exactly how we feel about having the knife in our hearts.  We’re supposed to feel that way.  And they take a good deal of self righteous satisfaction in seeing the impact hit.  We are supposed to be sore losers.  What we’re not supposed to do is fight back. 

What anti same sex marriage amendments are supposed to accomplish, particularly in states where same-sex marriages, and same sex couples, have no legal status to begin with, is further alienating gay people from their communities and their families.  That is the point.  Not that we aren’t supposed to marry, but that we are not supposed to exist.  God doesn’t want us here on this good earth.  The faithful are only doing their part to insure that we understand this.

At some point, it all boils over.  The wave of anger and revulsion after H8 passed was just a taste of what is to come if the religious right keeps hammering away at same sex couples.  Rex Wockner was getting a tad jittery a few weeks ago at all the rage being vented by gay people against their tormentors.  But it wasn’t just gay people who were out on the streets.  I suppose he was worried that the haters would start killing us in retaliation or something.  It’s easy to forget, because the deaths happen one lonely life at a time, that gay people are being killed all the time.  The struggle turned violent a long time ago.  Before Stonewall even.  And that’s not counting the suicides.  Humans kill themselves for a variety of reasons, most of which are personal and private.  But when a people are constantly and relentlessly driven to it, you have to ask yourself if that isn’t a kind of murder too.  There is already a lot of gay blood on the pavement.  What happens next, is that straight blood starts splashing down on it too.

Take another look at this article.  The stress is noticeably affecting the families and friends of gay people now too.  What happened after election night this year, was that hundreds of thousands of our heterosexual family members and friends stood with us on the streets, angry and outraged at what they can see now, finally, at long last, is happening to their gay family and friends.  What you have to understand is that isn’t going to make the haters back off.  It’s going to scare them.  And like the guy in Easy Rider said, it won’t make them running scared, it’ll make them dangerous. 

Over at Pam’s House Blend, Pam is reporting that some of the righteous folks behind Proposition H8 are planning to take out a full page New York Times ad, to accuse gay people of a campaign of violence…

According to our source, the ad will cite an incident where a white powder was sent to a church, and "document" disruptions of services at houses of worship. The Becket Fund is also allegedly contacting like-minded anti-gay organizations to request that they sign on to the ad. 

Matthew Shepard.  Nicholas West.  Scotty Joe Weaver.  Barry Winchell.  Thanh Nguyen.  Michael Burzinski, Gary Matson and Winfel Mowder and Billy Jack Gaither and Brandon Teena and William Metz and Carl Warren Jr. and Aaron Webster and all the others listed Here …and all the tens of thousands of tens of thousands more whose names we know and whose names we don’t.   A campaign of violence has been going on and on and on for generations against gay people.  It is considered so unremarkable by the bigots, and by most of the country still, that when gay people start fighting back they can accuse Us of creating a climate of violence without even smirking. They’ve been looking the other way at violence toward gay people for so long, they really think we’re the ones starting it.

What’s coming next, is that the families and friends of gay people will start dying too, because the bottomless hatred that moves the bigot is unable to distinguish between queers and queer lovers, anymore then it was able to distinguish between niggers and nigger lovers back in the 1950s.  The crime that finally shocked the nation during the struggle against race segregation in America, was the killing of three young civil rights workers in Missisisippi, two of whom were white.  I prophesy now, that somewhere, right this moment, their hearts beating, young and full of life, are one or more heterosexuals who have an appointment with a bloody and grusome death in the jaws of the same mindless sub-human beast that has been killing gay people for generations.  They will die for the crime of loving their neighbor as themselves.  And when love is put to death for loving, what is left within the human heart to take its place?  It isn’t the rage of gay people Wockner needs to be afraid of.

The Jonah Goldberg complains that things are getting ugly.  No…not that cutting the ring fingers off of devoted couples is an ugly thing to do…but that those couples are fighting back is ugly…

An ugly attack on Mormons

Did you catch the political ad in which two Jews ring the doorbell of a nice, working-class family? They barge in and rifle through the wife’s purse and then the man’s wallet for any cash. Cackling, they smash the daughter’s piggy bank and pinch every penny. "We need it for the Wall Street bailout!" they exclaim.

No? Maybe you saw the one with the two swarthy Muslims who knock on the door of a nice Jewish family and then blow themselves up?

No? Well, then surely you saw the TV ad in which two smarmy Mormon missionaries knock on the door of an attractive lesbian couple. "Hi, we’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!" says the blond one with a toothy smile. "We’re here to take away your rights." The Mormon zealots yank the couple’s wedding rings from their fingers and then tear up their marriage license.

As the thugs leave, one says to the other, "That was too easy." His smirking comrade replies, "Yeah, what should we ban next?" The voice-over implores viewers: "Say no to a church taking over your government."

Obviously, the first two ads are fictional because no one would dare run such anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim attacks.

The third ad, however, was real. It was broadcast throughout California on election day as part of the effort to rally opposition to Proposition 8, the initiative that successfully repealed the right to same-sex marriage in the state.

What was the reaction to the ad? Widespread condemnation? Scorn? Rebuke? Tepid criticism?

Nope.

This newspaper, a principled opponent of Proposition 8, ran an editorial saying that the "hard-hitting ad" was too little, too late.

It’s often lost on gay-rights groups that they and their allies are the aggressors in the culture war. Indeed, they admit to being the "forces of change" and the "agents of progress." They proudly want to rewrite tradition and overturn laws. But whenever they’re challenged democratically and peaceably, they instantly complain of being victims of entrenched bigots, even as they adopt the very tactics they abhor.

Here’s what I tried to post in the comments to his column at the LA Times…

Tell Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., who had to wait outside the hospital doors while his beloved partner Robert Lee Daniel, died at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center that he is the aggressor in the culture war.  Tell Janice Langbehn, who had the hospital door shut in her face while her partner Lisa Marie Pond died of a stroke in Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida that she’s the aggressor in the culture wars.  Tell Sam Beaumont, who was evicted from the ranch he shared with Earl Meadows, his partner of decades, by Meadow’s cousins, and then sued for backrent on top of that for back rent, that he’s the aggressor in the culture wars.  Tell all the loving, devoted cross-national couples who cannot marry their loved ones, and have to wave goodbye to them as their visas expire, that they’re the aggressors in the culture wars.  Tell Sharon Bottoms, whose son was taken from her because she is a lesbian, that she’s the aggressor in the culture wars.

Then look at yourself in a mirror, and ask the knuckle dragging lout you’re staring at what kind of person cuts the ring fingers off of devoted, loving couples, and then has the nerve to call Them aggressors?

…but the Times limits comments to 650 characters, so I had to whittle that down a tad.  It’s pending "approval".

Goldberg and his smarmy kind need to understand one thing if they understand nothing else…the days when we passively accept having our home lives torn to bits by gutter crawling bigots like him and then being spit on for good measure, are over.  No more Mr. Nice Gay.  Welcome to the morning after.  I’ll be your server today.  My name is Fuck You.