Loving The Sinner…My Mother Came At Me With A Butcher Knife Edition
In a week where headlines announcing two more gay bashings glided across my computer screen, along with the murder-by-bullying suicide of an 11 Year Old Boy who couldn’t take the fag baiting he was getting at school anymore, this headline somehow managed to grab my attention…
After asking the conversation-opener of the group — "So, would you like to all share your coming out stories with me?" — a young woman on my right named Angie* immediately burst out, "My mother came at me with a butcher knife!"
Stunned, I was trying to process this when a young woman to my left whispered, "You don’t want to hear my story, it’s too violent." More violent than your mother attacking you with a butcher knife? How is that possible? What does that mean?
Maybe you don’t want to know. The author of this AlterNet post, Bernadette C. Barton, has done these Gay/Straight alliance visits previously, as she says, "…during my campus visits". Apparently this was the first time she’d done that in the God fearing Jesus loving South. Never mind the stories you heard that day Ms Barton…all the stories you didn’t hear are staring you in the face right here:
Meanwhile, the alliance students, although attentive and respectful to Angie and one another, did not act disturbed or even very surprised by the butcher-knife story or the ones that followed. Their general demeanor suggested that these kinds of horror stories were simply business as usual in their lives.
I am 55 years old and ever since I came out to myself in the early 70s, and began to wander my way through the gay community and this never ending scorched earth war on our hearts and souls, I have heard stories from gay teens and grown adults alike, bearing wounds from their childhood days that would make a stone cry, if not a fundamentalist. That time in our lives, when we are just discovering desire, and what it is to love another, and be loved by them in return, ought to be one of the most magical times in our lives. Instead, it gets turned into this:
"My father called me an abomination and quoted Scripture."
Remember this the next time you hear some drooling numbskull yap, yap, yapping about how they’re not anti-gay, just pro-family, and that same-sex marriage will irrepairably harm children. Presumably in some sort of way that a butcher knife, or their own parents calling them an abomination won’t.
Back Home From The Happiest Place On Earth To…Earth…I Guess…
First time I left Disney World and walked back into the real one it was to headlines screaming at me that over 170 people had been killed in coordinated terrorist attacks in India. This time:
An ambush that resulted in the shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh policemen was precipitated by an emergency call from the gunman’s mother over a dog urinating in the house.
…later identified as Richard “Pop” Poplawski, 22. A dishonorably charged Marine, he adhered to a number of right-wing conspiracy theories and expressed fears of a “Zionist nation” revoking his right to own guns.
He jumped in a car with oldest daughter Maxine, 16, who tracked her mother through a cellphone global-positioning system.
They homed in on a convenience store 20 miles away in Auburn, north of the Muckleshoot Casino. James confronted his wife, who was with another man. He wanted her home. She said she wasn’t coming back.
He stormed home, consulted relatives and calmed down. Maxine went to bed about 11 p.m. with her four younger siblings. She sent a classmate a text message from her cellphone: “I’m tired of crying. I’m going to bed.”
Within hours, James Harrison, 34, grabbed a rifle and shot each child multiple times. Four were found in bed. One of the girls died in the bathroom after a violent struggle.
Armed with a second rifle, he returned to Auburn on Saturday morning, perhaps in hopes of finding his wife. Perhaps to kill again. Instead, sitting inside his running SUV, he turned the rifle on himself. His body was discovered about 8 a.m. by children playing in the area.
Welcome back to Realityland Bruce…
Oh…and the Iowa Supreme Court Unanimously decided that not letting same sex couples marry was an unconstitutional denial of equal protection. I should be happy about that and I am, but I dread reading the news accounts because inevitably they have to give the gutter a chance to spit on gay people, happy couples, and all their hopes and dreams. But more and more I’m seeing words like these, finally…
There was a time, not that long ago, when it was possible to imagine, however inaccurately, that gay sex was in and of itself a self-destructive pathology, something no happy, healthy person would willingly engage in. That time is past. The evidence of stable, loving relationships between well-adjusted, successful people is all around us. Indeed, this abundant evidence–and not the tides of the sexual revolution, which peaked more than three decades ago and have since receded–is the reason that gay rights, and in particular the question of gay marriage, have moved so quickly in recent years.
That time is past… Yes, for the people willing to let reality speak for itself. I am of a generation of Americans who were taught all kinds of horrible, filthy lies about gay people, and not simply in school, but in church, in the movies, in magazines and newspapers, and on TV. Where we were not dangerous sexual psychopaths we were contemptible faggots. When I was 17, and just beginning to grasp that I was gay myself, I got the message about how people felt about homosexuals from just about every direction I looked…
Mad #145, Sept ‘71, from “Greeting Cards For The
Sexual Revolution” – “To A Gay Liberationist”
At the beginning of James Burke’s PBS series The Day The Universe Changed, he tells a story of some students of philosophy, bragging to the teacher about how ignorant people were to think that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun orbited around the earth rather then the other way around. How ignorant, said the students, when all they had to do was just look up and observe the sun rising as the earth turned. Yes, said the teacher, but I wonder how it would have looked to them had the sun actually been orbiting the earth? The point being that it would have looked the same. Sometimes what we see is what our knowledge tells us we’re seeing. And for generation upon generation, people have been taught to see gay people as monsters…sick, perverted, disgusting, pathological monsters.
Which was how we saw ourselves for so very long. That time is past. And years of living openly and proudly are having their effect on anyone open to the evidence. But there’s one more movement to go in this civil rights dance…
A 62-year-old man assaulted in an alleged hate crime in a Vancouver gay bar remains in hospital care.
In the wake of the attack, the local GLBT community has mounted protests against the attack, as well as a string of earlier incidents that may also have been anti-gay hate crimes.
On March 17, Xtra.ca reported that a witness described how the suspect, 35-year-old Shawn Woodward, declared, “He’s a faggot. He deserved it” after allegedly striking Richie Dowrey in the face, knocking him down.
The suspect also reportedly declared, “I’m not a fag. The faggot touched me. He deserved it.”
The alleged bashing took place at a gay bar, The Fountainhead Pub, in Vancouver’s West End.
Said the witness, Dowrey’s friend Lindsay Wincherauk, “[Dowrey] fell like a board to the ground so hard that a hollow thud could be heard throughout the bar.”
Dowrey reportedly suffered severe brain damage.
Said Wincherauk, “There’s a chance if he survives he won’t walk again.”
The sun doesn’t just suddenly rise on a day when we are an equal and respected part of our communities. What happens is gradually, step by step, the chains that hate put on our lives slowly loose their power over us, and we walk free. But we are not free yet. The simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of couples simply holding hands as they walk together, is still enough to get us beaten to death. What happens is that as we walk out of the shadow of hate our heterosexual neighbors begin to see us, finally, as the people we really are. What happens is that hate, greedy, envious, hungry, follows us out of the shadows also, and into the light, where it can be seen by everyone too…
The two men charged in the gay bashing of two University of Cincinnati students near the Main Campus will each reappear before a judge within the next week.
Ethan Kirkwood, 20, of Meadow Creek Drive in Anderson Township, and Matthew Kafagolis, 20, of Ramundo Court in Anderson Township, were arrested on two counts of felonious assault and released on bond. Since the arrest, the charges have been dropped to two counts of misdemeanor assault, according to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Web site. The charges were lowered on March 20 and March 19, respectively.
The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor assault charge is less than one year in jail.
…The two men are being charged with allegedly assaulting two men – both are UC students – after the men found out one of the victims was gay, around 4 a.m., Friday, March 6, in the 2500 block of Clifton Avenue.
The gay man was knocked to the ground, kicked and punched after the assailants found out he was gay, according to court records. The other victim was attempting to defend his friend when he was also beaten.
That our neighbors see us for the fellow human beings we are is good, but it is not the end of it. They must also see the hate for what it is too. That will be the end of it, finally. But it is going to destroy more lives before this thing is over.
I was wandering through Disney-MGM Hollywood Studios yesterday when I saw him again for the first time in years. I almost didn’t recognize him. Then I knelt down and gave him a great big hug and told him it was all okay…
The Hollywood Studios park entrance way is playfully similar to the Main Street U.S.A. walkway everyone must pass though on entrance to the Magic Kingdom…only this is Main Street Hollywood, circa 1930s and it is as if you’d traveled back in time to when everything was art deco. For someone like me who adores the art deco style, in part I am sure because in my early childhood there were still a lot of buildings standing that were like that, it was like a kind of paradise. For like, the upteenth time here in Disney World, I could only just wander around with my jaw hanging open.
There’s a plaque in central park that explains what they were trying to accomplish with Hollywood Studios, but by the time I had walked up to it, I already knew…
This is similar in kind to the poster for Tomorrowland which reads: The Future That Never Was Has Finally Arrived.
I entered a replica of Gorman’s Chinese Theater and took a ride through the movies. You get on in a old sound stage set and a cast member dressed up as a 1940s stereotypical Hollywood talent scout hops on and informs you that you’ll not only be taking a tour through the great Hollywood films, but actually go inside them. And then you’re off…first through a Busby Berkeley dance film and then into Hollywood gangster land where the talent scout is chased off the ride by a gangster who informs you that he’s taking over the ride and oh by the way, please had over all your valuables. It goes on like that for a while and I won’t give it all away…there were the usual Disney animatronics, but of a better quality then the older Magic Kingdom rides…there was a trip through the Alien movie and for a moment you’re completely socked in a fog bank waiting for the beast to jump out at you. Eventually you end up back at the soundstage where a voice yells "Cut…that’s a wrap…" and you get off the ride and go back out into Disney Hollywood…which is not all that different from Disney Tomorrowland. It isn’t real. And yet, for the moment anyway…it is.
I am not one to be easily amused, and yet the whole time I am thoroughly enjoying myself…and I find my whole attitude is different here. I’m smiling at people. I’m patient with idiots. Small screaming children don’t irritate me. Morons who block the road as if they own it don’t bother me (When did America get so goddamned fat?) I just walk around them and the happy little smile never leaves my face. I’m living in a world that never was, that’s finally here. I can be a happy little nerdy kid here and It’s Okay. In fact, it’s Expected of you. All those relentlessly cheerful Disney cast members who are nowhere and everywhere with their perpetual smiles and earnest desire to make sure you "have a magical day" aren’t annoying me nearly as much as I was afraid they would. In fact they are a blessing. They’re my barrier between me and the world not two feet from the gates here, that voted last November to cut my ring finger off. They’re here to keep it off me for a little while. I wish I could give them all a great big hug.
And now the kid I used to be long ago, the one who smiled at everyone, the one with the big imagination, who wore his heart on his sleeve never thinking that people would take that as an invitation to cut it to ribbons, who trusted the world and in the goodness of people, has come back out of me. At least for a while. I thought he’d been beaten out of me in junior high school.
It’s raining here in Charm City and I’m packing my car and heading for what would have been the Experimental Prototype City Of Tomorrow had Walt Disney not been a cigarette smoker. But what’s there now is still very nice, and so is the rest of it. Disney World is Huge, and the first time I went there last November I spent most of my time just gawking at the immensity of it. Now I have a better idea of what I want to do, and more time to do it. I also want to wave ‘hi’ to a certain someone, and maybe see him smile one more time.
I’m spending a week, but not in the park this time, which will make it harder to just tune out the entire world like I did last time. But the hotels inside the park are way too expensive…even the so-called "value" hotels. There are so many other nice hotels and motels crowding around the entrances to the park that it’s not hard to find something even nicer then the mid priced Disney hotels at, I kind you not, about a third of the cost. But then you are not in the park the entire time, and being wrapped completely inside that park almost makes it worthwhile. You really can just leave the world behind for a while, and live in a place where it really is a small world after all, and there’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day, and find yourself believing that dreams really do come true.
Once upon a time I viewed all that as nothing more then cheap escapism. But the world, and my life, just stresses me out too much now. I’m single, I’m desperately lonely, and I’m living in a world that never seems to let any chance go by to tell me it hates my guts. And there is still that sense in the land of Walt, of all those things I thought the world was, and the future would be. You can see it slowly fading as Disney’s handiwork is overlaid with newer things, some of which I doubt he would have liked, and some which just don’t hit the mark he would have. But even as it fades, it lifts the spirit. At least in someone of my generation.
You have to experience the parks to realize, again if you’re my age and remember watching him on television, how wide Walt Disney’s imagination ranged. People think of Disneyland and they think of the part of the park called Fantasyland. But there was Tomorrowland and Frontierland and Adventureland. There was the little Main Street where everyone entered the park. There was the hall of presidents, and the river boat and the monorail and the people movers. There was the ground breaking animation, but also tons of live action film, and nature series and documentaries. Look a little deeper, beyond all the eye candy and the rides and the exhibits, and you see, astonished, a park infrastructure that is still held in awe by architects. This operation is Huge and yet it runs smoothly. And Disney World in Orlando is several orders of magnitude bigger, and it Still runs smoothly. Chuck Jones once told Disney he wanted his job (Disney told him that position was already filled), and Jones was himself an fantastically creative animator. But there was no city of tomorrow in Chuck Jones, let alone a World.
Last time I walked through the parks down in Disney World, it all came back to me…that it’s a small world after all…that the search for knowledge is a great adventure…that tomorrow was something to look forward to with a smile. People told me after I came back home last November, how much better I looked, how more at ease I seemed. One person insisted I must have gotten laid. I hadn’t of course…but it was almost like that in terms of how good life seemed again. For a little while…
So now I’m packing the Mercedes for another trip south. Before I leave I briefly scan the web. I see Andrew Sullivan reporting the Rod Dreher has replied to Damon Linker, who has in turn replied back. Linker, you may recall, asked Dreher if he had something, anything, besides The Bible Says So to justify his obsession with the Homosexual Menace. Dreher gives the expected answer back…
If homosexuality is legitimized — as distinct from being tolerated, which I generally support — then it represents the culmination of the sexual revolution, the goal of which was to make individual desire the sole legitimate arbiter in defining sexual truth. It is to lock in, and, on a legal front, to codify, a purely contractual, nihilistic view of human sexuality. I believe this would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human. And I fully expect to lose this argument in the main, because even most conservatives today don’t fully grasp how the logic of what we’ve already conceded as a result of being modern leads to this end.
Note the hyperbole. The horror of individual desire being seen as more legitimate then his cheapshit barstool prejudices. The knee jerk slandering of that desire as essentially nihilistic. But what Dreher is afraid of here isn’t that the human heart is nothing, but that he is. In the end, the Homosexual Monster, like the Dangerous Black Man and The Greedy Jew represents nothing more then the abyss he stares into every morning in the bathroom mirror.
This is why I am going back to Disney World. I want to spend some more time in a place where I can have that vision of the world and tomorrow I had as a kid back again. Where it’s a small world after all. Where I can return a stranger’s smile and not wonder if they want to cut my ring finger off and stick a knife in my heart, so they can go to heaven.
In 2004, Michelle, a project manager for a financial services company, and Marc, a draftsman, planned to marry in Philadelphia and get their license in Bucks County – a decision influenced only by the office’s proximity to their home in Hatboro.
They were acting within the law, of course. Couples can buy their marriage licenses in any one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties and hold their ceremonies in any other.
So how, the Toths now wonder, is their marriage considered legal in Montgomery County, but possibly null and void in Bucks?
The short answer is that the people responsible for issuing marriage licenses – the 67 elected clerks of Orphans Court – are at odds with one another. And the growing ranks of couples using a nontraditional officiant or no officiant at all are getting caught in the conflict.
On one side are clerks, such as those in Bucks and Delaware counties, who want the state marriage-license law tightened. They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.
On the other side are clerks, including those in Philadelphia, Chester, and Montgomery counties, who say the law is clear as long as it is read without bias. Their position has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union. (This issue does not exist in New Jersey.)
Once, getting the license was not among the wedding minutiae that might drive a sane person to "go bridal." But now the process has become complicated and, some would say, needlessly politicized.
Pennsylvania has two types of marriage license: One that involves some registered official, either a clergyman or a judge. The other is a "self-uniting" license, which is used by couples who wish to take their vows in the presence of witnesses, but without a the clergy or judge. Quakers, being the most frequent self-uniters in the state, this license has come to be known as the "Quaker" license. But note, it isn’t just for Quakers.
The clerks are trying to get rid of the self-uniting license, or severely restrict it to Quakers or other approved religious groups only…they claim to protect the interests of the married couples. They’re telling couples they can’t use the self-uniting license unless they’re Quakers, and warning couples who have already been married using that license to come in with a real minister for a re-marriage.
The ACLU is fighting the clerks over this and so far they’ve won every court case. But the clerks are apparently ignoring the courts and doing what they damn well please.
In an Allegheny County case, a federal judge ruled that self-uniting licenses were not just for Quakers – and that clerks were barred from asking religious questions.
In Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties, judges issued rulings that conflicted with York County’s. Clergy from the Universal Life Church were indeed authorized to solemnize marriages, Bucks County Court Judge C. Theodore Fritsch Jr. ruled in December 2008.
Still, Bucks and Delaware Counties are ignoring the rulings in the ACLU lawsuits.
Reilly says she is protecting engaged couples from future problems. Hugh Donaghue of Delaware County goes a step further. He requires marriage-license applicants to supply Social Security numbers (not required under federal law) because he suspects that some foreign nationals see the marriage license as a valid form of identification.
"Getting a marriage license allows you to establish identification for other purposes and change your status in the country," Donaghue says.
And, speaking of identification, Donaghue’s office requires a photo ID, and he is suspicious when individuals (mostly followers of Islam) don’t have them.
"They say their religious beliefs do not allow them to have their photos taken," Donaghue says.
Like Reilly, Donaghue says his interest is in protecting well-meaning individuals.
Pull the other one. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the welfare of couples in love. They care about this:
They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.
That’s the problem here. That’s the only problem here.
What you need to understand about the fight over same-sex marriage is that it isn’t a fight over same-sex marriage. It’s a fight over the freedom to marry. My freedom and yours. If you have been sitting back watching the religious right take a torch to the marriages of same-sex couples because you didn’t figure it had anything to do with you, I have two words for you: You’re next.
Gay marriage is banned in France. But about a decade ago, France’s Socialist government created a compromise — a civil solidarity pact, known by its French acronym PACS — as a form of quasi-marriage for homosexual couples.
This is France’s equivalent to the so-called "civil unions" that exist in some U.S. states. And naturally, France’s right wingers denounced it as a cheapening of marriage. But it was a cheapening they’d had a hand in creating, by their dogged resistance to letting same sex couples simply marry. PACS were seen to be a compromise, just as they are here in the United States, between the needs of gay couples and the hatred of homophobes.
Then, as Hinkle puts it, a funny thing happened. Large numbers of straight couples started opting for PACS, too…
MARRIAGE IN France has been on the skids for years. The French marriage rate has fallen more than 30 percent in the past generation. Marriage has been declining in other European countries as well, but in France the slope has been steeper. By 2005, 59 percent of all first-born children in France were born out of wedlock. More and more French couples live in "free unions," or what Americans might think of as nonbinding common-law marriages. They simply shack up, often for life.
Now France’s experience with PACS helps clarify a very muddled point in the debate over gay marriage here in America. Social conservatives commonly argue against gay marriage for a multiplicity of (often dubious) reasons, from the necessity to protect children to the importance of subsidizing procreation. But perhaps the most often cited reason is that gay unions threaten the "institution" of marriage.
How, precisely, they do so is not intuitively clear. No one seriously argues that a marriage between John and Steve somehow undermines the bonds of affection that keep Ted and Amy together. Nor is it clear how encouraging homosexuals, who sometimes are condemned for libertine promiscuity, to enter a contract requiring lifelong fidelity weakens the appeal of lifelong fidelity.
So opponents of gay marriage fall back on the idea that letting gay people marry somehow cheapens the currency — as though a marriage between Ted and Amy weighs less in the cosmic scales because John and Steve have entered into a similar contract. That is akin to the argument that letting gay people open bank accounts weakens the institution of banking.
FRANCE’S EXPERIENCE teaches a different lesson. It is not gay marriage, but the attempt to deny gays the chance to participate in marriage, that has cheapened the currency and further imperiled the institution. By creating a second-class — call it a "subprime" — form of marriage, France gave both gays and straights a watered-down option that let people enjoy all the privileges with none of the obligations…
…and then, he puts his finger on the heart of it:
And that points to the real issue at the heart of the argument about marriage as an institution. To say that letting gay people marry cheapens the currency of marriage holds true only if gay people have less intrinsic worth than straight people — just as the argument against interracial marriage, that it would lead to the "mongrelization of the human race," made sense only to those who saw blacks as less than human.
To let gay people enter into sacred matrimony, then, requires recognizing something sacred within them…
There’s the problem. How do you recognize it when from nearly every pulpit in America gay people are called abominations in the eyes of God? How do you recognize it when in one statehouse after another gay people are called a bigger threat to America then terrorists?
You can’t. You don’t. You are incapable. They are not human beings. They are some strange, alien, dangerous, evil other. There is nothing at all sacred in them. You are not putting a knife in their hearts, because they have no human heart. Only degenerate lust. You are defending the dignity and the honor of your love, against the animal passions of sub-humans that threaten to devour it.
There can be no dialogue as long as we are not human. There just can’t. Only war. We have seen time and time again how we appeal to our common humanity and we get slammed in return with one filthy lie after another, after another after another. We hold out our hand in fellowship and our enemies jump at us like a pack of pit bulls. As long as we are not human, they will continue to put their knifes into our hearts and put their wreaking balls to the lives we try to make for ourselves, and call it self defense. And we, because we are human, will continue to fight back. Because we must. Because the only alternative is to live with the knife and the wreaking ball. And it will never end. Until the day comes that they can finally look at us, and see human beings.
How to make that day come, I honestly don’t know. Large swaths of the U.S. still cannot look at a black man and see a human being either. Or a red one. Or a brown one. Or a yellow one. Too many U.S. males still seem to think that the female half of the human race is sub-human…good only for making babies and cooking dinner. How do you fight that? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said that a bigot’s mind is like an eye…the more light you shine on it the tighter it closes. But for the sake of our common future, our survival as a species, those eyes have to open.
I have no idea how to make that happen. But I know this full well: until they do, this fight will never end. It will only grow more bitter, more damaging, more violent. The word people are choking on in the fight isn’t "marriage". It’s "homosexual". And we are not only being preventing from marrying because of it. We are targets…
"A 4-pound stone, one of several door stops hurled at patrons in a bar that includes gay people among its clientele, left one man with 12 staples in the back of his head and two brothers and an acquaintance accused of a hate crime. Marc Bosaw, 57, said Monday he has little recollection of the Sunday night attack, in which police said one suspect held open the door to Robert’s Lafitte bar while two others launched an assault shortly after 8 p.m. Bosaw sat at the corner of the bar at 2501 Ave. Q just a few feet from one of two entryway doors. ‘I thought I had just been slapped, and the second rock hit me here,’ Bosaw said of the mark on his hand. ‘Everything went white in my mind, and I thought that was it. I even said ‘goodbye.’’ The barrage also hit another patron, James Nickelson, 39, who police listed as a Houston resident, but bar patrons said Monday they believed he had recently moved to the island."
Other bar patrons reportedly struggled to keep Bosaw conscious before he was transported to a regional medical center.
The Houston Chronicle reports: "The three men fled, but were apprehended by police about 10 blocks from the bar, Alvarez said. They were then brought back to the bar, where witnessses identified them. One of the men arrested told police they targeted the establishment because it was a gay bar, Alvarez said. All three men were charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon along with hate crime charges. They are being held on a combined bond of $120,000."According to the Galveston News, "Bonds for Lawrence Henry Lewis III, 20, Lawrneil Henry Lewis, 18, and Alejandro Sam Gray, 17, all of Galveston, were set at $120,000 each on two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with the enhancement of a hate crime, said Lt. D.J. Alvarez, a Galveston police spokesman."
KOMO news reports: "The latest attack came a week ago near 13th Avenue and Columbia Street, about a block from the Seattle University campus. Forty-one-year-old Jerry Knight was on his way home when two men confronted him. And now he says the horror of that weekend might always haunt him. ‘I remember being hit hard, where I fell and my hands were bruised falling directly on the ground,’ he said Saturday in an interview. He acknowledges it could have been worse.’I am grateful,’ he says. ‘I am grateful I did not wake up in the hospital. I am grateful I am not in a coffin. I know that, and honor that.’ He says he was attacked by two men as he walked home alone in the early morning hours. The assault was first reported online by The Stranger newspaper."
In March 2007, Skipper’s body was found by the side of a rural road in central Florida with more than 20 stab wounds. His car and laptop had been stolen. The car was abandoned and recovered by authorites, who reported that the assailants had attempted to set it on fire but did not succeed. They had also cut out a seat belt because it was so bloody they couldn’t clean it. Bearden, then 21, and William David Brown Jr., then 20, were later arrested and indicted for the killing. A witness brought in by authorities at the time told police that Brown had killed Skipper because he was gay.
Bearden’s co-defendant, William Brown, is to be tried at a later date on charges of first-degree murder and robbery.
Blabbeando: "27 year old Isaac Ali Dani Peréz Triviño was born in Spain. 32 year old Julio Anderson Luciano was born in Brazil. They lived together in the Spanish province of Vigo and were planning to get married. Both were stabbed to death by Jacobo Piñeiro Rial in their apartment in the early morning of January 13th, 2006. The bodies showed a total of 57 stab wounds, according to forensics. After killing them, Piñeiro took a shower and cleaned himself up. He filled a suitcase with some of their belongings to make it look like a robbery and then spilled clothing all over the place. He poured alcohol over everything, including his victims’ bodies, turned on the gas spigot on the stove, and set everything on fire. The local fire department said that little evidence would have survived if it wasn’t for their prompt response to the 5-alarm fire"
The jury bought the killer’s ‘gay panic’ defense…
This fight isn’t about marriage. It was never about marriage. It has always been about our human status. The sacred is within us too. But you have to want to see it. That is the problem. That is the only problem.
Jonathan Rauch, who writes from time to time like he has common sense, joins hands with a bigot to announce they two have found common ground. Wow…common ground…
In politics, as in marriage, moments come along when sensitive compromise can avert a major conflict down the road. The two of us believe that the issue of same-sex marriage has reached such a point now.
It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.
I see. Well that sounds like a plan all right. And it would work too…right up to the point that something like this happens…
One moment everything was fine. You were in your stateroom on the cruise ship — it was to be an anniversary cruise — unpacking your things. The kids were in the adjoining stateroom playing with your wife. Suddenly, they banged on the door crying that mom was hurt.
So now you’re in the hospital — Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami — waiting for word, and it’s not coming. They tell you, Joe (we’ll call you Joe) you can’t be with her. You plead with them, to no avail. No, Joe, sorry, Joe, we can’t tell you anything.
One hour turns to two, two to four, four to six. Your wife is dying and no one she loves is there.
Finally, in the eighth hour, you reach her bedside. You are just in time to stand beside the priest as he administers last rites.
Your wife is dead. Her name was Lisa Marie Pond. She was 39.
It happened, Feb. 18-19, 2007, except that Pond’s spouse was not a man named Joe, but a woman named Janice. And there’s one other detail. Janice Langbehn who, as it happens, is an emergency room social worker from Lacey, Wash., says the first hospital employee she spoke with was an emergency room social worker. She thought, given their professional connection, they might speak a common language.
Instead, she says, he told her, "I need you to know you are in an anti-gay city and state and you won’t get to know about Lisa’s condition or see her" — then turned and walked away.
Now consider what the legal status of that couple would be in a hospital run by a "religious organization", as many increasingly are, within the scope of your…compromise. Oh…I know…just tell the ambulance driver not to take your dying spouse to the closest available emergency room if it’s owned by a church.
Right. Something like this happens and that artifice of civility you’re trying to prop up comes crashing right back down in flames again Jonathan. And what we see in the wreckage, once again, sickeningly but clearly…very clearly…is how much your new found friends hate us, how bottomless that hate is. And…oh by the way…they hate you too. You knew that, right?
I have a question Jonathan. Who do you think you are talking to? Someone who can see a human being when they look at homosexuals? Someone who wants the same decency and common civility to flourish in society, and nurture the best within its citizens? Are you smoking crack? Are you drunk? Did banging your head against that impenetrable wall that is Blankenhorn’s cheapshit bar stool prejudices for years make you simple? Read your own goddamned newsprint jackass. The open sewer that is your pal’s conscience is right here, laughing in your face:
Whatever our disagreements on the merits of gay marriage, we agree on two facts. First, most gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage. Second, many Americans of faith and many religious organizations have strong objections to same-sex unions. Neither of those realities is likely to change any time soon.
I’m sorry…you’ve been "discussing" this issue with Blankenhorn for…how long now…? And finally…Finally…you get him to agree with you that "gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage"…? Well that’s a giant step forward all right. Look at that goddamn it! Just look at it! He isn’t agreeing that we need anything whatsoever, let alone the perquisites and protections of marriage, but only, and grudgingly, that we Feel like we do. I suppose Janice Langbehn was only pretending to be in anguish while her spouse was dying. But then don’t we all. Someday Jonathan, if either you or your husband find yourselves in that same situation, you’ll pretend to feel anguish too. It takes a lot of practice to mimic how attached heterosexuals are to their spouses and their families, doesn’t it Jonathan?
You’d think a civilized, let alone civil society would recognize such a basic human need. Certainly your pal Blankenhorn believes it does. But there’s the rub. Homosexuals aren’t human. They don’t need marriage, they only feel like they do. I guess because we’re jealous of how heterosexuals have real human needs and we don’t, or something. And you think that this is an improvement over whatever it was that he was thinking about gay people before you started having your discussions with him? What could that have possibly been? That we were only making noises about marriage to hear ourselves talk? Either you’ve never really looked down into that Pit that is the human capacity to hate, or you’ve been staring into it for too long. Either way, you just don’t seem to appreciate, or care, how much damage your bigot pal and his fellows in the kook pews have done to American society, let alone to civility.
A compromise…you say? I have a compromise for you. It’s called the constitution of the United States. That first amendment thing? What it doesn’t give your pal is the right to drop his church onto my back, or yours, or anyone else’s. He can build his church. He can worship in it. He can live his life as he sees fit. And all that America ever asked of him in return, is that he give his neighbor the same right. The compromise used to be this: in the public square, we were all equal, if not in the eyes of God, then at least in the eyes of the law.
Your pal and his neighbors in the kook pews absolutely despise that idea. And they have been waging a relentless scortched earth war against that American compromise for generations. How do you agree to compromise for the sake of preserving civil society with people who think being civil to heathens amounts to condoning sin? How do you agree to compromise for the sake of preserving civil society with people who believe that the basic premise of America is itself evil? They don’t call it a nation where Christians have freedom to worship…they call it a Christian nation. What is the compromise between those two things? I’ll tell you what it isn’t: The United States of America. Liberty and justice for all? Yes. So long as "all" means just the folks in the pews of Blankenhorn’s church. Civility doesn’t mean you have to allow your neighbor to sin. Why…that’s just the opposite of civility…
Meanwhile, back in Utah…another doomed search for common ground goes on…
A legislative committee defeated the last in a group of gay-rights bills presented to Utah lawmakers this year. As was the case with the others, committee members said the bill was not necessary and voiced concern about the law opening the door to gay marriage.
The bottom line is most conservative lawmakers just don’t believe any of these bills just address civil rights. Instead, the Common Ground bills were viewed as a "threat" to traditional marriage.
The last Common Ground bill would have affected medical visitation and inheritance. Changing the law could affect people outside the gay community as well. But the focus—and concern—was predominantly centered on gay rights.
They can’t even let same sex couples visit their spouses in the hospital. Civility anyone? Common ground? Here’s your common ground…
Today, the Utah state legislature “dealt a final blow” to the last of five gay rights bills taken up under the Common Ground Initiative, when it defeated a bill that would have granted gay couples rights of inheritance and medical decision-making. Yesterday, the state House rejected bills that would have allowed gay adoption and protected gays from housing and employment discrimination.
Last night, Utah’s local ABC station received leaked portions of an interview with state senator Chris Buttars (R), which will be highlighted in an upcoming documentary on Proposition 8. Buttars is an outspoken opponent of gay rights; in the latest interview, he compares gays to alcoholics and Muslim terrorists, and warns that gay people are “probably the greatest threat to America.” Some excerpts from the interview:
– To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts! But I don’t care.
– They say, I’m born that way. There’s some truth to that, in that some people are born with an attraction to alcohol.
– They’re mean! They want to talk about being nice — they’re the meanest buggers I ever seen. It’s just like the Moslems. Moslems are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side. And the gays are totally taken over by the radical side.
– I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society, because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman, the family. … And I believe that they’re, internally, they’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of. Yep, the radical gay movement.
He also said that gay people have no morals…that "It’s the beginning of the end. Oh, it’s worse than that. Sure. Sodom and Gomorrah was localized. This is worldwide." Oh…and bragged that he’d killed every bill in his judiciary committee that so much as smelled of gay rights. When this blew up in the media, the Utah Senate took swift action. They removed Buttars from his chairmanship. Oh…but not because they disagreed with him mind you…
"I want the citizens of Utah to know that the Utah Senate stands behind Senator Buttars’ right to speak, we stand behind him as one of our colleagues and his right to serve this state," [Senate President Michael] Waddoups said. "He is a senator who represents the point of view of many of his constituents and many of ours. We agree with many of the things he said. …We stand four square behind his right [to say what he wants]."
Waddoups refused repeatedly to clarify which of Buttars’ opinions are shared by himself or Senate leaders.
Emphasis mine. And to further clarify…
He said the decision to remove Buttars from the committees was ultimately his own as president, a move he made so the Senate could function smoothly. The judiciary committee, in recent years, has heard most of the bills dealing with gay and lesbian rights, and removing Buttars from his position would remove the "personalities" and focus on the issues, Waddoups said.
This was a PR move. They weren’t disgusted with the man…they just wanted him to stop saying to publically what they all believe. That homosexuals are not human beings. That homosexuals are destroying the world.
Civility. Common Ground. So you got Blankenhorn to agree that homosexuals Feel as though they need the protections of marriage did you Jonathan? Wow. Peace in our time. Do let us know when you’ve got him to the point where he agrees that we Feel a human heart beating in our chests. That would be…awesome.
A House committee rejected Rep. Jennifer Seelig’s HB160, which would have offered two, unmarried cohabiting adults — including same-sex couples — rights of inheritance and medical decision making for one another.
Nope. We can’t even allow same-sex couples to have inheritance rights, or make medical decisions if one is incapacitated. Let alone protect gays from job discrimination, let alone allow them to adopt. No common ground there. Same sex couples need to consider this carefully when planning trips that might take either or both of them into or through Utah. Getting sick or injured could be just the beginning of your nightmare in Mormonland.
I’m going to have a heart attack from this surprise.
This is why I read SLOG. I’m going to steal this entire post from Dan Savage, because it perked me up when I really needed it. But you should read SLOG from time to time.
Sitting in the fake Irish pub, eating my fake Irish chow ("Irish white cheddar" makes a burger Irish—who knew?), drinking my real Irish beer. Two women at the next table are talking up Jesus. They’re trying to save a man’s soul from the dark and sinister clutches of… I think he said "lapsed Catholicism" but I’m not sure. This fake Irish pub is located in the actual American south, and overhearing conversations like this is known risk of venturing outside your hotel room. I go back to my book.
But my ears perk up when the man cites the gays as one reason he can’t quite see himself converting to… whatever strain of Christianity the two women were pushing. Knowing what we know now about sex and what science tells us about what makes people gay—he’s referring back to an earlier point he made concerning what we know about the age of the planet and the evolution of the species ("God gave us brains and reason for a reason, so we could figure these things out based on the science and evidence, right?")—it seems to him that putting people to death for being gay, per the bible, is, "a little cruel."
No, no: the bible is without error. And if our nation were more Godly, if bible-believing people would only stand up for what’s right… well, we might not be putting gay people to death, say the girls, we wouldn’t be stoning them and stuff, but we would ban gay sex and gay marriage and gay adoption and gay/straight student alliances and repeal all gay rights laws and keep gay characters off the TV. Not out of Old-Testament style vengefulness, but out of New-Testament style love and compassion and concern. Because if persecuting homosexuals—a.k.a. "fighting back against the gay agenda"—convinces even one gay person to leave their lifestyle and come back to God, "it would save a soul."
I set my burger down. "Hello, I’m a fag," I say. I assure them that I’m not angry or upset or hurt by anything that they’ve said. I just wanted them to know that I was sitting there, a big fag, eating my Irish burger within earshot. "And you’re free to think I’m going to hell and say so while I’m forced to listen. But I’m free to think you’re ridiculous and that your God is a delusion and say so while you’re forced to listen."
One of the young women assured me that they didn’t mean anything they’d said, you know, personally. "And I’ll be praying hard for you," the other one of said, giving me a wink.
"And I’ll be fucking butt for you," I replied, winking back.
Yes! Just…Yes!
You people…you callous, fucking ignorant, gutter crawling maggots who think our hopes and dreams of love and contentment are your stepping stones to heaven… If I could wave a magic wand I’d make each and every one of you loveless soulless louts re-live every gay bashing victim’s final moments every night for the rest of your lives, until you figured out that the people you are knifing in the heart with your pusillanimous cardboard McLove are human beings, not your scapegoats.
I despise you. Every night I go to bed I lay my head down on the pillow despising you a little more. You took what ought to be this life’s most wonderful experience…falling in love, and being loved…and turned it into a nightmare for so many people, so that God would know how much you love him. It wasn’t enough that Jesus died for your sins…the rest of us have to die too. Because you’re afraid that even Christ on the cross can’t cleanse the open sewer that is your love. And you may just be right…
…Just really preoccupied with the house. On Wednesday I discovered that a leak in the roof, near the back of the house by the chimney, that I thought had been taken care of was back with a vengeance. Between that and other more routine maintenance here at Casa del Garrett I’ve been away from the den computer more then usual.
And…I really don’t feel talkative right now…for some reason…
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Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin, has the party line vote on the first of the so-called "common ground" bills put forward in Utah. These bills actually do very little to insure equal rights for gay and lesbian citizens…almost the bare minimum you could imagine. The first of these to come to a vote, simply made it possible for financial dependents, other then legally married spouses, parents and children, to sue if their breadwinner suffers wrongful death. Keep in mind that these so-called "common ground" bills were introduced after the passage of Proposition 8, when the Mormon church’s staggering level of involvement became widely known, and the Mormon leadership, while in the glare of the public eye, averred they had no problem with extending gay people many of the rights of marriage…just not marriage itself.
Many of us found that statement interesting, since nothing was stopping them from giving gay Americans in Utah those rights and gay Americans in Utah have damn few if any. The only places as bad to be gay are the deep south
The bill failed along party lines. Republican verses democrat? Oh my, no…
Let me be clear. There is no legitimate reason to exclude those who rely on someone for their livelihood from suing should that livelihood be taken away due to the wrongful actions of another. If a woman is killed directly due to the reckless or wrongful actions of another, why should her partner who stays home and raises the kids not be able to sue?
Chris Buttars, Mormon
Lyle Hillyard, Mormon
Mark Madsen, Mormon
Michael Waddoups, Mormon
The three non-Mormons either voted Yes or were absent.
As Kincaid notes, this fits pretty well with recent polls showing that Utah Mormons are hugely against granting their gay neighbors any rights whatsoever, other then maybe, possibly, the right to breath. So long as they don’t flaunt it.
Expect the Mormon church to claim it has no influence over the state legislature. They’ve shown repeatedly that they can look you right in the eye, smile, and lie through their teeth. Your hopes, your dreams, every smile you ever gave the one you love, and every smile you ever received in love, and placed somewhere deep within your heart: these things are their stepping stones to Godhood. Nothing else matters to them. Nothing. They will walk over your every hope and dream, and grind them into dirt, for that promise of Godhood at the end of the road.
I know…I know… But there are Mormons who don’t hate their gay neighbor… Yes. And they are either silent or they are on the road to excommunication. We, that is America, saw it all during the battle over Proposition 8. There are no Mormons who are not on board for the war on gay Americans…only Mormons who are about to leave, or be shown the door.
In the wake of the passage of Proposition 8, and predictably, you heard the voices from the back bench bellyaching that we were all fighting the wrong fight. Why are we making such a big deal out of marriage they asked, when we still lack basic anti discrimination protections in jobs and housing? Why are we putting so much energy into a fight about same-sex marriage, which most of the country is against anyway, when gay people can still be fired from their jobs, denied housing, denied service in stores and restaurants? Let’s fight for the basics first, they say.
Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative — a push for legal protections for gay and transgender Utahns — has drawn hundreds of marchers to a Capitol Hill rally, thousands of petition signatures and even broad-based support in statewide opinion polls.
The initiative also has ignited a backlash, led by defenders of "traditional marriage" who want to crush the effort.
Rather than "common ground," Gayle Ruzicka and the Constitutional Defense of Marriage Alliance are touting "common sense." And a Salt Lake City-based conservative think tank, The Sutherland Institute, wants Utahns to stand on "sacred ground" instead.
"The family is the central unit of society, and so our efforts in this regard are ultimately to protect the traditional family and protect marriage," said Sutherland spokesman Jeff Reynolds, who acknowledged Equality Utah has run a "very effective" campaign.
Next week, his group will kick off its Sacred Ground Initiative, a counteroffensive aimed at defeating the five gay-rights bills, all sponsored by Democratic lawmakers, that make up the Common Ground Initiative.
"The message [from opponents] is that our bills are an attack on marriage — which is exactly what they’re not," said Will Carlson, Equality Utah’s public-policy manager. The proposed laws range from protecting someone from being fired for being gay to establishing a statewide domestic-partner registry that would afford some legal protections, such as hospital visitation, to same-sex couples.
Emphasis mine. Here’s why we’re fighting for same-sex marriage. Because every fight we’ve ever waged as a people has been turned into a fight over same-sex marriage by our enemies. Watch it happen again in the fight for these so-called "common ground" gay rights bills in Utah. Just like it’s happened every time since the days of Antia Bryant and Save Our Children in Florida.
It’s ironic that the bigots understand our fight better then many of us do. The same logic that says it’s wrong to deny a gay man a job simply because he is a gay man, what do you know, leads in a straight and narrow path to the conclusion that it is also wrong to deny a gay man the right to marry the man he loves, simply because both of them are gay. To concede it in the one case is to concede it in the other. Though our enemies deny that rhetorically, you can see they know it perfectly well by how they turn every fight we engage in, for every meager right that heterosexuals take for granted every day, into a fight over same-sex marriage.
Deemphasize same-sex marriage all you want. Our enemies will underline it in neon. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for the right to hold down a job. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for equal housing. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for the right to adopt. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for safe schools. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for the right to serve in the military. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting to repeal the sodomy laws. The homosexuals are fighting to make their perversion morally acceptable. They are fighting for the honor and the dignity of their perverted sexual relationships.
Yes. Yes we are. That’s the heart of it. Marriage isn’t central to this fight, but it’s damn close. Closer then anything else in civil law. If our sexual relationships are morally and civilly the equal of heterosexuals’ then not only is there no reason to deny us a job, there is no reason to deny us the right to marry. That is why every fight in this struggle, is a fight over same-sex marriage.
The You Can Marry Anyone Of The Opposite Sex You Want Argument
I’ve considered this one a good test of mendacious jerk factor ever since I ran into a particularly loathsome creep on Usenet named Steve Fordyce, whose favorite hobby horse it was…
The marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.
They have the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that heterosexuals do.
Now, everybody…including the bigots who make this argument by the way…know that this is a bogus argument. Let’s apply it to a different set of people…
Laws that prohibit the practice of Judaism do
not discriminate against Jews, since
Christians have to obey those laws too.
The problem is it sounds perfectly logical. How can you argue that treating people the same is discrimination? But it’s a fallacy of ambiguity. To say that you are treating everyone the same is not to say you are treating everyone equitably. The trick here is that a word is being used in two different senses at the same time. Look at this again…
The marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.
They have the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that heterosexuals do.
The problem is with the word ‘discriminate’. In this statement, it is being used in two difference senses at the same time. Let’s look at its definition. This one I took from The Free Dictionary…
discriminate
Verb
[-nating, -nated]
1. to make a distinction against or in favor of a particular person or group
2. to recognize or understand a difference: to discriminate between right and wrong [Latin discriminare to divide]
So in the one sense, yes, the law makes no distinction between gay and straight. But it does not follow then, that the second sense of the word ‘discriminate’, to make a distinction against or in favor of a particular person or group is also not true. Let’s rephrase it…
The marriage laws do not distinguish between homosexuals
and heterosexuals. They give homosexuals the same
right to marry a person of the opposite sex they give
to heterosexuals.
This statement is both true and much clearer now as to adverse discrimination, in the first sense of the word, that homosexuals endure even though they are not being discriminated in the second sense of the word. Let’s try it another way.
The marriage laws treat homosexuals and heterosexuals
equally. Both groups have exactly the same right to marry
a person of the opposite sex.
Here the ambiguity is on the word ‘equally’. Once again, it is being used in two difference senses at the same time…
Equally
adj.
1. Having the same quantity, measure, or value as another.
2. Mathematics Being the same or identical to in value.
3.
a. Having the same privileges, status, or rights: equal before the law.
b. Being the same for all members of a group: gave every player an equal chance to win.
4.
a. Having the requisite qualities, such as strength or ability, for a task or situation: "Elizabeth found herself quite equal to the scene"Jane Austen.
b. Adequate in extent, amount, or degree.
5. Impartial; just; equitable.
6. Tranquil; equable.
7. Showing or having no variance in proportion, structure, or appearance.
n.
One that is equal to another: These two models are equals in computing power.
tr.v.e·qualed or e·qualled, e·qual·ing or e·qual·ling, e·quals
1. To be equal to, especially in value.
2. To do, make, or produce something equal to: equaled the world record in the mile run.
‘Equally’ is being used to mean both Having the same privileges, status, or rights: equal before the lawandImpartial; just; equitable. But one does not necessarily follow from the other. Let’s rephrase it…
The marriage laws treat homosexuals as if they were heterosexuals
and give them the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that they give to heterosexuals.
Now the problem is more clearly understood. The marriage laws deny that gay people even exist.
The fallacy is one of equivocation. It is using a word in two different senses, to prove a conclusion that does not follow from the stated premise, simply because the same word appears in both the premise and the conclusion.
A feather is light.
What is light, cannot be dark.
See how that works? Now look at this…
Marriage laws do not discriminate between homosexuals and heterosexuals.
Therefore marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.
It simply does not follow. Yes, the law does not discriminate between gay and straight. It does not follow that the law does not discriminate against gay people.
Nobody makes this argument honestly. Nobody. This is bad faith on its face. When you hear someone making this argument, you know you are dealing with either a bigot or an ass, and usually both.
I’ve never bought the idea that opposition to abortion is solely about controlling women’s bodies. I’ve just known too many people who were genuinely sincere in their religious beliefs that abortion is wrong. But I’ve seen little evidence that conservatives’ hostility to contraception, to methods that prevent unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions, from taking place, could be anything else. Steve Benenwrites, via Elana Schor, that Republicans are opposed to money in the stimulus bill that would help state governments assist low-income women in getting contraception coverage:
…
Beyond the fact that this policy would save the government money in the long run (a finding from the same office that didn’t produce that report on the stimulus), are Republicans really arguing that unwanted pregnancies don’t result in a significant financial burden for families that are already struggling in an economy that’s likely to get worse? What’s the moral justification for denying them the choice of preventing pregnancies they don’t want? That having sex should be predicated on yearly income?
Yes.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers, To Simple Questions…
43 years ago today, this is what the nation was being told about its gay citizens, by one of the big national news magazines…
It used to be "the abominable crime not to be mentioned." Today it is not only mentioned; it is freely discussed and widely analyzed. Yet the general attitude toward homosexuality is, if anything, more uncertain than before. Beset by inner conflicts, the homosexual is unsure of his position in society, ambivalent about his attitudes and identity—but he gains a certain amount of security through the fact that society is equally ambivalent about him.
A vast majority of people retain a deep loathing toward him, but there is a growing mixture of tolerance, empathy or apathy. Society is torn between condemnation and compassion, fear and curiosity, between attempts to turn the problem into a joke and the knowledge that it is anything but funny, between the deviate’s plea to be treated just like everybody else and the knowledge that he simply is not like everybody else.
…In 1948, Sexologist Alfred Kinsey published figures that homosexuals found cheering. He estimated that 4% of American white males are exclusively homosexual and that about two in five had "at least some" homosexual experience after puberty. Given Kinsey’s naive sampling methods, the figures were almost certainly wrong. But chances are that growing permissiveness about homosexuality and a hedonistic attitude toward all sex have helped "convert" many people who might have repressed their inclinations in another time or place.
Homosexuals are present in every walk of life, on any social level, often anxiously camouflaged; the camouflage will sometimes even include a wife and children, and psychoanalysts are busy treating wives who have suddenly discovered a husband’s homosexuality. But increasingly, deviates are out in the open, particularly in fashion and the arts. Women and homosexual men work together designing, marketing, retailing, and wrapping it all up in the fashion magazines. The interior decorator and the stockbroker’s wife conspire over curtains. And the symbiosis is not limited to working hours. For many a woman with a busy or absent husband, the presentable homosexual is in demand as an escort —witty, pretty, catty, and no problem to keep at arm’s length. Rich dowagers often have a permanent traveling court of charming international types who exert influence over what pictures and houses their patronesses buy, what decorators they use, and where they spend which season.
…
There is no denying the considerable talent of a great many homosexuals, and ideally, talent alone is what should count. But the great artists so often cited as evidence of the homosexual’s creativity—the Leonardos and Michelangelos —are probably the exceptions of genius. For the most part, thinks Los Angeles Psychiatrist Edward Stainbrook, homosexuals are failed artists, and their special creative gift a myth. No less an authority than Somerset Maugham felt that the homosexual, "however subtly he sees life, cannot see it whole," and lacks "the deep seriousness over certain things that normal men take seriously … He has small power of invention, but a wonderful gift for delightful embroidery.
Homosexual ethics and esthetics are staging a vengeful, derisive counterattack on what deviates call the "straight" world. This is evident in "pop," which insists on reducing art to the trivial, and in the "camp" movement, which pretends that the ugly and banal are fun. It is evident among writers, who used to disguise homosexual stories in heterosexual dress but now delight in explicit descriptions of male intercourse and orgiastic nightmares. It is evident in the theater, with many a play dedicated to the degradation of women and the derision of normal sex. The most sophisticated theatrical joke is now built around a homosexual situation; shock comes not from sex but from perversion. Attacks on women or society in general are neither new in U.S. writing nor necessarily homosexual, but they do offer a special opportunity for a consciously or unconsciously homosexual outlook.
They represent a kind of inverted romance, since homosexual situations as such can never be made romantic for normal audiences.
…
Even in ordinary conversation, most homosexuals will sooner or later attack the "things that normal men take seriously." This does not mean that homosexuals do not and cannot talk seriously; but there is often a subtle sea change in the conversation: sex (unspoken) pervades the atmosphere. Among other matters, this raises the question of whether there is such a thing as a discernible homosexual type. Some authorities, notably Research Psychologist Evelyn Hooker of U.C.L.A., deny it—against what seems to be the opinion of most psychiatrists. The late Dr. Edmund Bergler found certain traits present in all homosexuals, including inner depression and guilt, irrational jealousy and a megalomaniac conviction that homosexual trends are universal. Though Bergler conceded that homosexuals are not responsible for their inner conflicts, he found that these conflicts "sap so much of their inner energy that the shell is a mixture of superciliousness, fake aggression and whimpering. Like all psychic masochists, they are subservient when confronted by a stronger person, merciless when in power, unscrupulous about trampling on a weaker person."
Another homosexual trait noted by Bergler and others is chronic dissatisfaction, a constant tendency to prowl or "cruise" in search of new partners. This is one reason why the "gay" bars flourishing all over the U.S. attract even the more respectable deviates.
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The once widespread view that homosexuality is caused by heredity, or by some derangement of hormones, has been generally discarded. The consensus is that it is caused psychically, through a disabling fear of the opposite sex. The origins of this fear lie in the homosexual’s parents. The mother—either domineering and contemptuous of the father, or feeling rejected by him—makes her son a substitute for her husband, with a close-binding, overprotective relationship. Thus, she unconsciously demasculinizes him. If at the same time the father is weakly submissive to his wife or aloof and unconsciously competitive with his son, he reinforces the process. To attain normal sexual development, according to current psychoanalytic theory, a boy should be able to identify with his father’s masculine role.
Fear of the opposite sex is also believed to be the cause of Lesbianism, which is far less visible but, according to many experts, no less widespread than male homosexuality—and far more readily tolerated. Both forms are essentially a case of arrested development, a failure of learning, a refusal to accept the full responsibilities of life. This is nowhere more apparent than in the pathetic pseudo marriages in which many homosexuals act out conventional roles—wearing wedding rings, calling themselves "he" and "she."
Is homosexuality curable? Freud thought not. In the main, he felt that analysis could only bring the deviant patient relief from his neurotic conflicts by giving him "harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed." Many of Freud’s successors are more optimistic. Philadelphia’s Dr. Samuel Hadden reported last year that he had achieved twelve conversions out of 32 male homosexuals in group therapy. Paris Psychiatrist Sacha Nacht reports that about a third of his patients turn heterosexual, a third adjust to what they are, and a third get no help at all. But he feels that only about one in ten is moved to seek help in the first place.
That is the crux: most homosexuals apparently do not desire a cure…
Focus on the Family? The Mormon Times? No…Time Magazine, issue of January 21, 1966 – The Homosexual In America
I was 12 years old. By the end of the year I would turn 13, and enter my teen years in an America where the common view of gay people were that we were sick tortured twisted sexual deviants who ought to be locked up for the safety of the community. When I was 14 I would sit with my grade school peers in a sex ed class, taught by our gym teachers, who told us that homosexuals typically killed the people they had sex with, and preferred to kidnap and rape children and seduce young heterosexuals, rather then seek out other homosexuals for sexual trysts, precisely because we knew how dangerous we were. They taught us that homosexuals would become so excited during sex that we often mutilated the genitals of the people we were having sex with. They taught us that we were confused about which gender we were, and hated ourselves, and would take out that hate on other people by killing them horribly. Most unsolved murders we were told, were committed by homosexuals. That was the world I came to know myself in.
How I managed to come out of my teen years into adulthood not completely loathing myself as others of my generation did is a story I’m (very slowly I’m afraid…) telling in cartoon form in A Coming Out Story. I was so lucky…especially in that my first high school crush was so completely decent to me. Those of us who made it out of there in one piece emotionally and mentally, pretty much swore to make sure other gay kids didn’t have to go through what we did, and to fight for the honor and the dignity of our lives, and our loves, so that future generations wouldn’t have to know what it was like to have your teachers look you in the face and try to make you and all your friends believe that you were a sexual monster…a deviant…a pervert…
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