When I was 16 I had a dark secret.  Something that embarrassed me deeply.  Something I knew I could never tell my friends about.  No…not my sexual orientation, although this secret of mine really should have spelled it out for me in neon lights.  But I was young, and naive, and full of all the myths, lies and superstitions about homosexuality that the adults in my life had fed me, so I was sure I wasn’t one.  I didn’t swish…I didn’t lisp…I enjoyed most of the typical boyhood pastimes and had little to no use for girl things.  Well…except one.  My private stash of Tiger Beat and 16 Magazines.  That was my embarrassing secret.

Every month when the new issues would come out, I would sweat blood walking to a drugstore miles away from the nearest ones to my apartment, to get my fix where hopefully none of my school mates would recognize me.  Once there I would load up on several other magazines and stuff the ones I really wanted in the middle of the stack and hope the checkout clerk wouldn’t notice too much that a teenage boy was buying teenage girl magazines.  Occasionally an eyebrow would arch in my direction, and I would lamely say I was buying them for a non-existent sister.  More often then not, the statement was greeted with smirking disbelief.  Checkout clerks probably know more about human nature then priests do.

I would take my swag home and immediately open the teen mags and go right to the pages with photos of my favorites on them…my teenage heart-throbs if I had enough courage back then to acknowledge it.  But I didn’t.  I’d been told all my life that homosexuals were dangerous psychopaths who killed and mutilated strangers while having horrible, perverse sex.  And I, being a bit of a late bloomer actually, was still too young to have all that much interest in sex.  But I knew I liked looking at beautiful guys.  I knew that something about them made my heart sigh.  I would lay awake some nights imagining how it would be to be their best friend.

Looking back on all of it, in a different world I could have had my own sweet little teenybopper adolescence.  It would have been nice to be able to grow up like most other kids without fear or shame of my own sexuality, and just grow into it naturally.  I picture myself sometimes at that age, sitting at my desk, pen or brush in hand, working on a cartoon for the school newspaper, or alternatively soldering iron in hand, circuit boards and a tray of components in front of me, working on a new Heathkit stereo, photos of my favorite funny cars on the wall in front of me, side by side with those of my current male teen heartthrob, the radio next to me playing bubblegum pop.  But for a change it’s something that isn’t afraid to speak to the gay teens in the audience too…

David Cassidy…man oh man…what a bitchin’ Fox!!!

I picture myself being open and cheerful about my developing romantic interests in guys.  At home and at school, among my friends, among my family.  Bruce is growing up…and, oh look, he’s discovered…boys.  Well, well…  His friendships always were a bit intense…  So different I would have been from the shy, quiet boy who kept himself slightly apart from the others, because he didn’t understand himself, and was so afraid how people would react to him if he let his guard down.  I would probably have been just another bubbly adolescent…a bit artistic, a bit of a techno geek, typically boyish but with a positively girlish streak in him whenever it came to boys I found too cute for words.

But I wasn’t allowed that adolescence.  Instead I hid my teen magazines under the bed, and listened to my bubblegum pop alone, never really realizing that I was on the threshold of one of this life’s most wonderful moments…the time we discover what love is all about.  I could have walked into it happily…joyfully even.  Instead I struggled, stumbled, and hid my heart fearfully.  My mom would remark with great sadness in her diaries (which I inherited after her death) how I had changed from a cheerful young boy into one of sullen moods, and a sudden angry temper.  It makes me cry to read those entries.

I look at my record collection from back then…mostly the 45rpm singles I bought in my middle teen years because back then I wouldn’t spend the price of a whole album unless it was a band I really liked a lot, and I see almost nothing but love songs among them.  Granted, that’s mostly what rock has always been.  But there was a lot of it back then about life and politics, the war and the struggles our generation was going through.  Songs I loved like For What It’s Worth, and Incense and Peppermint…and interestingly enough in retrospect, Hold Your Head Up.  

I don’t think I need to analyze very much why I liked that one.  But the songs I turned to again and again alone in my bedroom were the love songs, and what is amazing to me about that in retrospect is that at that age I really didn’t care much for all that gushy love stuff.  I was going through my stacks of 45 rpms  the other day and it just floored me how much of it was surgery sweet love songs.  As I remember that part of my life, I didn’t have much interest in all that love stuff.  But then, nobody told me I could fall in love with a guy either.

I wasn’t paying much attention to the lyrics in those songs, but something in the music itself spoke to me, in a way that the lyrics, speaking only to the straight boys in the audience, never could.  I would connect with it instantly when I heard it on the radio, and like a flash I was down to the record store to by the single.  It would be years before I would find myself listening to the lyrics.  I had to grow into myself as a gay man first, and then learn the trick a lot of gay guys have to learn in this world, of mentally changing a pronoun as I listen…

I never really paid much attention to those lyrics at first.  Just the music, and the sultry sound of Morrison’s voice.

Something in the music spoke to me, in a way the lyrics just didn’t.  My record collection is full of these kinds of songs.  Bubblegum pop mostly, as they called it back then.  In another world, there would have been some that spoke directly to gay guys, or at least was gender neutral enough that I could have taken the lyrics to heart as much as I did the music.  But even back then, well before I came out to myself as a gay man, I had a soul for sweet love songs.  Perhaps…a tad too sweet. 

Which brings me to the one other thing that embarrassed me slightly back in those days, but not so much that I felt I had to go to great lengths to hide it from my friends.  That was my taste in music.  On the one hand, it was The Doors, and Airplane, and Led Zeppelin.  On the other, it was The Monkees, Buddha Records, and Crimson and Clover.  In retrospect I’m surprised more of my classmates hadn’t figured me out long before I’d figured out myself.  But as it turns out, even were I straight I’d have had to hide most of my record collection from my friends.  In another world, I would have been allowed to enjoy that music.  In this one only teenage girls are allowed to like those kinds of songs.  Because…well…they’re girls.

In most respects I was your usual adolescent male.  But there was this definite girlish streak in me that would just pop out at various times.  And well before I came understand myself as a gay man, I knew better then to let people see it.  I kept it to myself alone in my bedroom.  That knowledge had been driven into me in the usual way it is with boys like the one I was, on the school yards and in the hallways, and around corners where no one could see, I would get beaten…badly sometimes…by other boys who thought it was so much fund to beat the crap of out kids like me.  But let’s face it, they’d been given permission to by the adults in their lives, and by the culture they lived in.

Girly boy.  Consider that phrase for a moment.  The knuckle dragging morons who throw it around can be driven by homophobia at times…maybe even most times…but not always.  Even among gay males, you see the occasional contempt for those among us who are not 200 percent masculine.  There is more misogyny in that phrase, then homophobia.  I wouldn’t call myself effeminate.  I don’t think any of my friends would either.  A bit nerdish, yeah.  A bit wonkish.  I am no John Wayne by any means, but no Liberace either.  But there is this definite girlish streak in me and I have struggled for most of my life now to let it just be itself because I repressed it so deeply when I was a teenager, and then again as a young adult male.  Never mind being gay.  Gay or straight, guys are not supposed to be sweethearts.

Which brings me to a post a read just yesterday over at Pam’s House Blend…

The Ugly Homophobic Truth About the Rickroll

The writer gives an interesting history of Rickrolling, and then this rather poignant little personal story…

I was introducted to Rickrolling by my teenage nephew about a year or so ago. My nephew told me that he and his friends amuse themselves by sending music and video clips of Rick Astley via e-mail, and cellphone.

When my nephew showed me the video of Rick Astley singing Never gonna Give You Up on YouTube, he laughed out loud uncontrolably. Then, I asked him, "Why do you think this is so funny?"

Silence.

Uh, oh. I’d seen that silent response before. My nephew suddenly remembered that his favorite uncle is gay. He was at a loss for words as to how to explain why he finds Rick Astley to be funny.

I had to press him for the truth, "Is it because he looks gay?"

"Uh, it isn’t that he looks so gay, Uncle Fritz. It is because, uh, his voice doesn’t fit the way he looks."

"Gay?"

Silence.

Of course, ‘gay’ has been turned into an all-around put-down in schools these days…sort of like the way ‘Jewish’ used to be used as a synonym for someone who was cheap or stingy or selfish.  I was Rickrolled a few days ago…by a gay friend no less…and I picked up on what was going on immediately.  It’s not homophobia specifically.  The joke isn’t that Astley or his music is gay in the sense of…well…homosexual.  It’s gay in the general put-down sense.  It’s gay as in lame.  It’s gay as in wimpy.  It’s gay as in weak.  More to the point, it’s gay as in Sissy. 

Now people have been putting down each other’s music since humans were making tunes with drums and sticks, so I don’t think it’s all about gender bullying.  Music just reaches in to a place deep inside of us, past our logical rational parts, and strums our feelings directly.  Music that rubs our emotions the wrong way can be really, really annoying and it’s no more a rational distaste then seeing someone you find unattractive naked is.  I’m sure Never Going To Give You Up gets on a lot of people’s nerves.  But enough people liked it that it became an international hit.  How many songs do that?  Why the disrespect?  Simple:

Here’s the thing I want you to notice: it wasn’t Eltonrolling.  Say what you want about Elton John, but that he’s a large presence in the pop music world is undeniable.  He’s made millions, and that gives him a measure of power and respect.  Rick Astley is the too cute for his own good boy-next-door who likes to bring his girl flowers and write her pretty songs and gets the crap beaten out of him by the other kids on a regular basis.  That’s why it’s Rickrolling and not Eltonrolling.  It isn’t about gay.  It’s about wuss.

Sissy is in fact, a put-down applied to gay people out of contempt.  The stereotype is that we’re all limp-wristed, swishing lisping effeminates.  And yes, you meet some pretty girlish gay guys.  But then you also meet some pretty girlish straight ones too.  Sometimes those are called Effete Intellectuals.  Sometimes they are Bleeding-heart Liberals.  This chest thumping de-masculinization of the hated other is about as primitive as it gets, which is why you see a lot of it in school yards and hallways.  But more then that, it is a deeply perverse attack not just on the humanity of the target, but on humanity itself.  Cold hearted brutality does not build civilizations, it only and gleefully destroys them.  It is our ability to love and trust one another, cooperate and protect one another, that keeps the jungle from our streets.  The deeper, more ancient animal parts of us may be our bedrock, but it is our capacity to love and cherish that takes us out of the ancient wilderness and into civilization. 

But that’s a world the gutter cannot cope with.  A world where the smaller gentler boys aren’t afraid, are happy and carefree, is a world where the survival skills of thugs don’t get them anywhere, and that’s a world they will not endure the sight of.

It was more then a cheerful adolescence that was taken from me.  It was a part of me that I lost in those years.  So different I would have been from the shy, quiet boy who kept himself slightly apart from the others, because he didn’t understand himself, and was so afraid how people would react to him if he let his guard down.  Instead I struggled, stumbled, and hid my heart fearfully, and changed from a cheerful young boy into one of sullen moods, and a sudden angry temper.  This is how the gutter wins.  I’ve been trying to reclaim this part of myself ever since.  Maybe some day the human race will stop allowing its children to be abused. 

Via Box Turtle Bulletin…  Now what the hell was this supposed to accomplish…?

We commented earlier on how the mainstream media omitted all mention of Major Alan Rogers’ orientation or of his efforts to overturn the military’s ban on open gay servicemen. We told you how the Washington Post ombudsman wrote a column to repair that deliberate exclusion. Now there’s a new twist.

According to the Washington Blade, Rogers’ profile on Wikipedia has been modified

The user on Monday redacted details about Rogers that appeared on the online encyclopedia site. Information that was deleted included Rogers’ sexual orientation; the soldier’s participation in American Veterans for Equal Rights, a group that works to change military policy toward gays; and the fact that Rogers’ death helped bring the U.S. military’s casualty toll in Iraq to 4,000.

And while the individual responsible isn’t known,

The IP address attached to the deletion of the details and the posted comments is 141.116.168.135. The address belongs to a computer from the office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) at the Pentagon. The office is headed by Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, who was present at Rogers’ funeral and presented the flag from Rogers’ coffin to his cousin, *Cathy Long.

The factual information has been reinstated in the Wikipedia entry.

* Long is the cousin that was unaware of Rogers’ orientation and thought it should be left out of the Post article.

Alan Rogers’ was a soldier and a gay man.  He was dedicated to equal rights for gay soldiers.  He kept his sexual orientation at least partly in the closet, so he could continue to serve.  That is the devil’s bargan Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell demands of gay soldiers.  He could have easily avoided the FUBAR that George Bush made of Iraq by coming out of the closet and getting his discharge.  He didn’t.  Whatever you think of Bush’s splendid little war, Alan Rogers’ was obviously proud of his service to the United States.  While in uniform, bearing arms for the sake of his country, he made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.  The least his country could do, is be proud of him too.

And I think his country Is proud.  Even the piss ignorant jackasses who still believe in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Some of them anyway.  Probably not James Dobson or Sally Kern.  But I think even louts like Charles Krauthammer would salute this man’s memory, just as he was.  Maybe.  However, as you can see, it is still far too much to ask of the stars and bars in their comfortable air conditioned pentagon offices, that they be proud of All their fallen heroes.  

This isn’t good…

Group Claims Near Required Signatures To Put Gay Marriage Ban On Calif. Ballot

The organization collecting signatures for a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage in California says it is close to meeting the requirement.

Protect Marriage says it has collected 881,000 of the 1.1 million signatures needed. The deadline for turning in the petitions to county registrars is April 21.

Registrars are then required to take a random sample of signatures to verify.  If that sampling shows at least 10 percent more valid signatures than required the petitions will be certified and the measure will be placed on the November ballot.

"The numbers are good, solid," Ron Prentice, a spokesperson for Protect Marriage told The Christian Examiner, a conservative Christian publication.

"We are well toward our goal. There are thousands more yet to be counted with a steady stream still coming in."

Among the major donors to Protect Marriage are a group of San Diego County businessmen. Developer Doug Manchester alone has contributed $125,000 prompting gays to urge a boycott of his properties.  Manchester owns the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.

Mission Valley developer Terry Caster has donated $162,500, Carlsbad car dealer Robert Hoehn gave $25,000, and La Jolla businessman Roger Benson has given $50,000, according to state records.

It would just break my heart if the land of my birth did that to me.  I’ve noted before that the only reason I can travel freely around the United States is that I’m single.  If I had a spouse, there are many states in this so-called union that we simply could not set foot in because if one of us had a sudden health problem, or there was an accident, it would become a nightmare for both of us.  Even with a so-called durable power of attorney, we could be denied the right to simply be with each other in a hospital…even with a medical directives document…we could be denied the power to make medical decisions for each other should one of us become suddenly incapacitated.  Some state constitutional amendments, like Virginia’s are so stringently and thoroughly crafted to ostracize same sex couples from the protections of the law, that they can even be read to deny same sex couples the right to hold a joint checking account.

There are simply not that many people in this country who hate us enough to want to do that to us.  The problem, like it was for another hated minority group over in Europe back in the 1920s and 30s, is that the rest of the nation doesn’t care enough to tell them to stop it.  So when these amendments are put up to a vote, they stay home and allow hate to have its way.  These are the people who say later, "We heard the rumors, but we didn’t believe them…"

Once upon a time I planned to move back to California after mom passed away.  Then I got the job I do now, and my little Baltimore rowhouse, and I stayed in Maryland.  But even now I think sometimes that when my time to retire comes, if it ever does, I’d like to spend the last years of my life back there where I was born.  It’s a lovely state.  It would break my heart if the day ever came that I couldn’t even visit California again.

You can tell a lot about the people in the boardroom by how well they treat the workers who are the public face of their business.  I think I just learned today everything I need to know about Starbucks: they steal tip money from their servers.

Starbucks won’t pay back barista tips

Thousands of Starbucks employees got a personal message from their upset boss, who said the company was being “grossly mischaracterized” in the media over a recent tip pool controversy that could cost the company more than $100 million.

Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz, in a voice-mail message to employees Wednesday night, called last week’s ruling by a California judge "extremely unfair and beyond reason" and said he wanted employees to know the truth.

"I want to personally let you know that we would never condone any type of behavior that would lead anyone to conclude that we would take money from our people," he said.

In a separate statement, the company also said, "Contrary to some reports, Starbucks has not taken money from any of its partners, and nor is there money to be refunded or returned from Starbucks." A spokeswoman said Thursday that Starbucks Corp. has no intention of ending the practice of sharing tips among baristas and shift supervisors in California while it seeks an injunction.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett, in her ruling last week, said there was "uncontroverted testimony that Starbucks continues to utilize the distribution of tips from the tip pool to compensate shift supervisors as well as baristas." Cowett ordered Starbucks to pay thousands of California baristas $86.7 million plus interest for breaking the law.

Now…read that again, particularly that second to last paragraph.  Starbucks is saying that "contrary to some reports" they don’t take money from their "partners"…and then in the next breath they insist they’ll keep on doing it.  The weasel word there is "partners".  Starbucks doesn’t take any money from its "partners".  But "partners" isn’t the issue, however Starbucks chooses to define who is and who is not a "partner".  The issue is, are they taking tip money from their servers.  And…yes as a matter of fact, they are.  That’s what, specifically, they were found guilty of doing, and that’s what, specifically, they’re insisting they’ll keep right on doing.

The tips belong to the servers.  Customers aren’t tipping the business, they’re tipping their servers.  In most cases, the tips are what the servers depend on for a decent income.  Taking their tip money is not only immoral, it also happens to be illegal in many states, including California.  Now…it’s one thing to insist you weren’t breaking the law.  It’s another to insist that the law is unconstitutional and you’ll fight it all the way to the supreme court.  And it’s another still to insist that you didn’t do it, in the same breath as you assert that you’re going to keep right on doing it.  Starbucks isn’t just giving the finger to it’s servers and customers here, it’s laughing in the face of anyone who can read plan English.

A dear friend of mine works as a waiter, but that’s not the only reason this behavior makes me angry.  I never worked for tips in my life…I’m just not outgoing enough to make a go of that kind of work.  You have to have a bit of the stage in you I think to be good at that and I am more stage crew then stage.  But I know very well what it’s like to work in the service sector and it’s many hours of of hard, thankless work for mostly uncaring, rude and overbearing bosses, usually for not enough money to make ends meet.  From what I hear, most folks who work service sector jobs these days need two jobs to earn a bare bones living.  And a lot of those businesses nowadays do their damndest to avoid having to pay their service people a decent wage…from limiting their hours so they don’t qualify for full time benefits (and federal protections), to creatively placing them into pseudo-management positions so they don’t have to pay them overtime. 

I guess stealing your employee’s tip money is just another way of lining your pockets being a successful businessman in Republican Party Of Moral Values America.  How Howard Schultz can live as well as he does and take his servers’ tip money and still look at himself in a mirror every morning and think he sees a decent man looking back at him and not a slimeball is beyond me.  Thankfully.

Jonathan Rauch has a good column up concerning tomorrow’s supreme court hearing on Washington D.C.’s inane gun ban.  Rauch is one of the few conservatives, and the only gay conservative I can still trust to be making his arguments in good faith.  And I can actually read him with the expectation that I’ll find myself agreeing with him, at least to some degree, more often then not.  Sometimes, like in this column I’m in complete agreement with him.
 

Via Dan Savage over at SLOG… Seems like this is my week to revisit some folks I’ve done political cartoons on. This time it’s Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern, who back in May of 2005 demanded that all Oklahoma public libraries move any book with a gay or lesbian character or theme into a restricted adults only section. Not that Oklahoma has any shortage of office holders who like to gay bash for votes, but Kern if anything, represents a portion of America distinctive for the authenticity and the stamina of its hate. Hear it speak:

Gay America doesn’t really need to hear this. This sort of thing is nothing new to us. We hear it all the time. We know what it is that we’re facing. It is straight America that needs to hear this. All of you, who think that the gay community exaggerates the threat we face every day in a nation where this kind of poisonous vitriol remains largely unexamined, unacknowledged, and unconfronted. The reason Sally Kern can feel free to say that gay people, Gay People, are a cancer spreading throughout America isn’t that she was speaking before a small group of like minded bigots, but that the larger community of heterosexual Americans don’t bother paying attention to the torrent of hate right under their noses. Until it actually kills some poor kid like Matthew Shepard, or Lawrence King. For the sake of your country, for the sake of your own personal safety because more and more these days, straight people are getting gay bashed too, you need to listen to this.

The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation.

Not everyone’s lifestyle is equal. Just like not all religions are equal.

No society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more then, you know, a few decades.

It’s the death knell for this country.

I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has. Even more so then terrorism.

They’re going after…in schools…two year olds.

They’re going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle.

Gays are infiltrating city councils.

Have you heard that the city council of Eureka Springs is controlled by gays? There are some others…Pittsburgh Pennsylvania…Kensington Maryland…Oregon, West Palm Beach Florida and many other places in Florida… What’s happening? And they are winning elections.

If you’ve got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say, you know I’m going to just forget about it because the rest of me is fine? It spreads. Okay? And this stuff is deadly and it is spreading and it will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.

This is what republicans have been driving voters to the polls with for decades now. And it’s been killing people. And they don’t care, as long as it wins them elections.

Via Pam’s House Blend… Right Wing Watch has this video up on McCain’s new buddy, Ron Parsley, whom I’ve done a political cartoon about previously…

“This so-called hate crimes legislation would preferred status to people based on entirely on who they choose as a sexual partner. What if they change their mind the next night!”

“Why is marriage under attack?!…Why is the family coming under such brutal attack from the forces of darkness…”

“I will lift my voice against THE AGENDA of America’s tortured and angry homosexual population…”

“In essence the Supreme Court of the United States on June 26, 2003, legalized the perverted act of sodomy. And we said nothing…”

“This is not about homosexual rights or lesbian rights…this is about THE DESTRUCTION of the VERY COVENANT (organ music rises up in the background as he waves his finger desperately) They are seeking to “redefine” marriage. In other words, they are intending to PERVERT God’s original intention!”

Parsley, an Ohio megachurch pulpit thumper once shouted out at the “War on Christians” conference in 2006, “A spiritual invasion is taking place! Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! Lock and load!” When these righteous men of god, these men of high moral values speak of war, people listen. And here’s the blood payoff…

The mistake when these people rail against hate crime laws, is to take the rhetoric at face value. They’re babbling that those laws will restrict their ability to preach lock and load sermons from the pulpit, but it’s not the loss of their the first amendment rights they’re worried about. When Parsley shouts “lock and load” he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s calling for blood on the streets. If his useful tools, the young male thugs he’s counting on strike fear into the hearts of gay people, suddenly find themselves being held accountable for their actions, then they might think twice and Parsley’s work, and that of his fellow hate mongers will all be in vain. They’re not worried about being silenced. They’re worried that their words won’t have the desired effect anymore, that the bloodshed will stop. A fearful homosexual, is a good homosexual. A dead homosexual, is an even better one.

Whenever someone starts preaching to me about how the sex lives of gay people are sad and broken I just cheerfully point them to the tons, literally tons, of articles out there written by heterosexuals, for heterosexuals on how to fix their own broken sex lives.  If the grass is any greener on their side of the fence I’ve yet to see it.  Other then the fact that their marriages are given some security in the rule of law that ours are not, their intimate sex lives don’t seem any less difficult to manage then our own.

And believe it or not, single though I’ve been most of my life, and gay ever since…well, puberty…I read those articles now and then, mostly for clues as to what pitfalls to avoid in the event that my own sex life happens to improve.  Even though they’re written with a basic premise of gender difference in the relationship, a lot of it can I think, apply to same sex couples too.  Conversely, I think opposite sex couples could learn a thing or two from our households too.  How gender equality works in practice being one of them, but also how it is to keep things together in a hostile world.  When all you have is literally each other, and you have to find a way to make it work without the support of the world around you, then you really know what your union is made of.  The same sex couples who have made it in this world, under that kind of relentless emotional stress, are my heroes.

So anyway…I see this this CNN fluff piece about how sexual incompatibility is troubling some marriages and I start reading…

He’s a 38-year-old executive. She’s a 34-year-old homemaker. He says they never fight, and in many ways they’re compatible — but not when it comes to sex.

"It’s almost like a checklist," says Jon (who asked that his real name not be used) of their once-a-month lovemaking. The problem, he believes, is a lack of desire.

Sexually unfulfilling marriages aren’t limited to new parents or aging baby boomers with hormone imbalances. They can ensnare even the relatively young and the recently married. When they are unable to blame kids, stress or physical issues, many couples struggle unhappily to identify — and resolve — the problems behind their lackluster sex life.

Couples end up in sexually unfulfilling marriages for a variety of reasons, says Marty Klein, a licensed marriage counselor and certified sex therapist in Palo Alto, California. One reason, he says, is America’s obsession with marriage.

Laura Berman, a Chicago sex therapist and relationship expert, agrees. "We put the blinders on when we’re dating," she says. "We focus so much on the wedding, we don’t notice the warning signs."

That obsession with marriage being fueled in part, by the fundamentalist kook pews here.  Not everyone is temperamentally suited for marriage, and in any case, after you’re married is the wrong time to find out you’re not sexually compatible.  Having sex while dating and before marriage, or for that matter when marriage isn’t even a goal, isn’t unhealthy unless it’s unloving.  Much as the right hates the sex drive, it’s an important part of our being.  Just ask your gay and lesbian neighbors: It does us great harm to put sex in the closet.

In more ways then one.  As I was scanning down that CNN article, I saw this on the page…

When your spouse announces he’s gay…  Which, wasn’t one of those Surprising reasons you’re not having sex either as it turned out.   A lot of right wing pulpit thumpers say that sex before marriage is responsible for weakening the institution of marriage, but it isn’t.  It’s the padded cell they’ve put marriage into on the one hand, and sex on the other, that’s weakened it.  There is nothing wrong with sex that is truly loving and joyful.  The more gay people know that and accept that there is nothing wrong with them and that their sex drives are as legitimate and as beautiful as those of heterosexuals, the fewer surprised spouses there’ll be.  And the more intimately couples know each other before they tie the knot, the more likely they’ll go into it with that beautiful body and soul union that can make a marriage endure anything.

I’ve seen it happen.  Maybe someday it’ll happen to me.  If the pulpit thumpers would just get the fuck off our backs and out of our beds, it might happen to more of us.

Now…this is nice…this is really cool…if it’s real…

Straight-friendly destinations – the new trend in gay travel

Travel experts at the Gay & Lesbian Travel Pavilion at the world’s largest tourism fair have said the a new niche market for heterosexuals has emerged.

"Apart from gay and lesbian cruises, we have noticed a clear rise in hotels and resorts that are not only gay-friendly but targeted mainly towards gay men.

"Straight people are, in most cases, allowed to stay, too. The magic word is straight-friendly," said Robert Kastl, Managing Director of Publicom GmbH, the organisers of the Pavilion.

ITB Berlin, the world’s largest tourism fair, is being held in Berlin from March 5th to 9th.

He claims that destinations that have already established a gay-friendly image are increasingly putting their bets on explicitly gay and lesbian events, which are open to heterosexuals too.

"The range of special travel products has increased and even within the gay and lesbian travel market we are noticing more and more diverse sub-niches," says Kastl. 

The reason I prefer to go to gay friendly places while on vacation is because it’s nice to be able to actually relax and let my hair down and enjoy myself and not have to worry that some asswipe is going to bash my skull in to prove how manly he is and/or much he loves god.  But what I would really like is to be able to enjoy a mixed and diverse crowd of folks who all get along and just want to have a good time wherever we all happen to be. 

You have to figure that a heterosexual who goes to a gay friendly resort goes knowing that they’re going to be in the company of gay people and will likely find themselves witnessing PDAs between same sex couples, if not being the recipient of a cruising glance or two themselves.  If they’re the sort that doesn’t faze then far as I’m concerned I’d love to share a vacation space with them.  Be really nice to, at least for a few brief vacation days, imagine you’re living in a world where being gay (and for that matter, the color of your skin, or the country you’re from or the specifics of your religion) is no more an issue then the color of your eyes or your hair.  It’s hard to believe in that world if everyone around you is the same…even if that sameness is something you need to make you more comfortable.  Especially if, actually.

I’ve never been so busy in my life over a weekend, which is why I haven’t been posting.  But it’s been exhilarating.  And these people, these decent, good-hearted courageous people, have provided a much needed tonic to my chronic anger.  To witness so much pain and emotional anguish, so many raw wounds, and still see such essential human decency shining though it all, is astonishing at times.  I could never loose my belief in the human status after this weekend.

John Holm, Jacob Wilson, Peterson Toscano, Daniel Gonzales and Brandon Tidwell,
before entering the Love Won Out Conference. All five are survivors of various
forms of ex-gay therapy.  John, Peterson, Daniel and Brandon are holding collages that
depict their individual journeys through the ex-gay movement, which they presented
to Exodus conference organizers.  They were able to talk briefly with some of them,
before being ejected from the conference building.

Peterson, Branden, Jacob and John on their way back from presenting their
collages to the Exodus conference organizers.  No…Daniel didn’t get eaten…he
just walked quickly ahead of the others so he could get back to his video camera
to record the others walking back.

Why I am going to Memphis tomorrow…

This is tough to watch, and all the more if you’ve ever met Peterson and know what a good heart he has and how much he loves his parents. Never in his life would he have ever wanted to hurt them. What happened wasn’t his fault. But all of that…what happened to Peterson and what happened to his parents…all of that is part of the horrible trail of scar tissue these ex-gay outfits leave behind. There is little enough love in this poor world. To leave the world poorer for it is crime enough. To leave people so wounded inside they have trouble for the rest of their lives finding love and intimacy, to then also drive a stake between them and their parents and family…it is a crime against humanity.

These outfits would largely whither and die almost overnight from lack of money, were they not being bankrolled by the religious right for purely political ends. The ex-gay movement gives them rhetorical ammunition for the Kulturkrieg, and it gives their politicians political cover to oppose basic civil rights for gay people. The war on gay people drives voters to the polls. And…it brings in money. That is why Peterson Toscano, and his parents, and many many others like them over the years, had to bleed. And that is why people are gathering this weekend in Memphis, to shout love into this heart of darkness. Enough is enough. No more wounded people. No more wounded families. No more bleeding hearts. Enough.

I’ll be leaving for Memphis early tomorrow. The last weather forecast I read for Memphis is calling for possible freezing rain around midnight, so I want to be in my hotel well before then. They’ll probably be no blogging tomorrow. But I’ll be posting updates on the events over the weekend as much as possible.

Via Box Turtle Bulletin…  The Memphis Commercial Appeal has an article on the upcoming Debunking The Ex-Gay Myth events in Memphis this weekend .  It begins, heartbreakingly enough, with this testimony from Jacob Wilson, who was nineteen when he was checked in to Love In Action…

Wilson, then 19, was a part of Love In Action’s adult program, housed in a former Episcopal church in Raleigh, at the same time that a Bartlett teen was forced into since-closed LIA’s youth program, Refuge.

LIA catapulted itself into the national spotlight two years ago when the Bartlett teen wrote about his angst on his MySpace page.

…

The gay community’s outrage was instantaneous, as the saga of the then 16-year-old, whose first name is Zach, spread across the blogosphere.

Zach’s supporters protested outside of LIA, but Wilson says the men and women inside were told not to make eye contact with the protesters and not to read their signs.

After Wilson left LIA, he found out what the protesters had wanted him to know.

"These people weren’t doing it to be activists, they were doing it to show that we weren’t alone, that we were loved … It crushes me that that message was cut from us."

Crushing you was the point.  Separating you from the love of your neighbors in this life is how they do it. 

His parents promised they’d pay for his stay at LIA, but reneged when Wilson decided he would live as God made him.

…

For Wilson, the cost has been strained family relationships, mountains of credit card debt to pay off LIA’s charges and emotional damage from which he’s still healing…

I see John Smid still isn’t giving out any money-back guarantees.

Here, from Beyond Ex-Gay, is a list of scheduled events this weekend in Memphis.  If you can make it, I urge you to come and stand with the survivors.  Let them see the love they weren’t allowed to while inside.  Show them what Love In Action looks like…

• NEW!  Friday 2/22 noon Press Conference (Press only) at the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center MGLCC (892 S. Cooper). Ex-gay survivors, local leaders and experts release statements about the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered community in response to Focus on the Family and Exodus promoting an inaccurate picture about LGBT people.

• Friday 2/22 12:30 – Sunday 2/24 6:00 PM The Ex-Gay Survivor Art Show at the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center MGLCC (892 S. Cooper). The show is hosted by the MGLCC & Beyond Ex-Gay and curated by Christine Bakke.

• Friday 2/22 8:00 PM Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House–How I Survived The Ex-Gay Movement, at First Congregational Church (1000 S. Cooper)

• Saturday 2/23 2:00-5:00 PM Beyond Ex-Gay Mid-South Regional Gathering, MGLCC (892 S. Cooper)

• Saturday 2/23 8:00 PM Preview of the Morgan Fox’s film This is What Love in Action Looks Like  at First Congregational Church (1000 S. Cooper)

• Sunday 2/24 10:00 AM Art, Activism and Spirit a presentation by Peterson Toscano at the Memphis Friends Meeting (917 S. Cooper)

• Sunday 2/24 2:00-6:00 Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center‘s 5th Anniversary Party at 892 Cooper 19 Years in Memphis, 5 Years in Cooper Young!

• Sunday 2/24 7:00 PM Memphis premiere of Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible, at Holy Trinity Community Church (685 S Highland Street)

Reverend Ken Hutcherson, founder and senior pastor of the Antioch Bible Church near Seattle Washington, and one of the three leaders of the hate group, Watchmen on the Walls, is on the warpath over the Gay-Straight Alliance in his daughter’s school…

This poster is hanging in the window of a classrom at Mt. Si High School!

It’s time we wake up and realize we are in a culture WAR!

When teachers are allowed to hang posters like this in our local school, we’ve got a big problem. It’s time to take back our schools.

Pastor Hutch

Timothy Kincaid, over at Box Turtle Bulletin, has more.  Apparently Hutcherson is upset that his daughter is being called a stressful presence while "monitoring" those GSA meetings.  I can’t imagine why, other then that those kids probably know full well that everyone who attends those meetings, and everything that is said, is being reported right back to Hutcherson, and for all anybody knows, other members of The Watchmen on the Walls.  They might as well be holding their meetings in Hutcherson’s church.

Meanwhile…back in Oxnard…

1,000 march in Oxnard in tribute to slain teen

The Goths in their black T-shirts were there. So were the punks with fluorescent hair and multiple piercings.

There were even a few adolescent boys carrying skateboards among the nearly 1,000 Oxnard youth and other supporters who turned out Saturday for a hastily organized peace march to pay tribute to Lawrence King, 15, the Oxnard student shot to death in a classroom last week.

"Larry, Larry, Larry!" the crowd chanted before marchers clasped hands in a moment of silence for the fallen student.

There were no bullhorns, no speeches and no politicians. Just a mass of mostly adolescents wearing bright clothing, carrying signs and singing John Lennon’s "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance."

The size of the turnout surprised police, school officials and even the two Hueneme High School sophomores who put the event together just three days ago, spreading the word with fliers, cellphone calls and MySpace bulletins.

"We were expecting maybe 100 or 200 people," said Courtney LaForest, 16, as she gazed at a broad "peace circle" formed by march participants at Plaza Park in downtown Oxnard. "This is incredible."

Courtney said the turnout reflected a community’s anguish over a senseless shooting that has destroyed the lives of two young men. It was also a public plea for tolerance on school campuses for those who are different, she said.

However, "Pastor Hutch" and his friends think it’s time people realize they’re fighting a WAR!  And The enemy…?  Right here…

And…here… 

And…here…

Children are being shot by children.  Parents are burying their children.  Their friends are being torn apart by shock and loss and grief.  And Hutcherson says we’re in a WAR!  No shit Sherlock.  Two bullets to the head killed a sixteen year old boy and took away from this poor world everything he might have given to it, every moment of friendship and joy and love, every laugh, every smile.  Gone.  All gone.  In an instant.  And Ken Hutcherson’s words, and those of his fellow KulturKriegen, were the gunpowder.

Good for them!

Danish Papers Reprint Muhammad Cartoon

(AP) Denmark’s leading newspapers on Wednesday reprinted a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked deadly rioting in Muslim countries two years ago.

The papers said they wanted to show their firm commitment to freedom of speech after Tuesday’s arrest in western Denmark of three people accused of plotting to kill the man who drew the cartoon, which shows Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.

The drawing by Kurt Westergaard and 11 other cartoons depicting Muhammad enraged Muslims two years ago when they appeared in a range of Western newspapers.

It’s worth remembering that the cartoons in question barely got noticed until a Lebanese-born Muslim living in Denmark, Ahmad Akkari, began waving them around the middle east, in a dossier into which he’d inserted a number of cartoons that the Danes didn’t print, including one that portrayed Muhammad as a pedophile, and a photograph of a Danish man wearing a pig mask, taken during a Danish pig calling contest, that Akkari had re-captioned as being a photo taken of a Dane mocking Muhammad as a pig.

Akkari’s activities in the middle east arguably helped get the Danish embassy in Lebanon burned down.  When Israel later began attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon Akkari decided the Danes weren’t such bad folks after all and he hot-footed it back to the nation he helped rouse passions against, via his Danish residency and passport. Nice guy.

The sweet irony of angry mobs rioting and burning down embassies over a bunch of cartoons depicting Islam as a violent fanatical religion was, of course, lost on the protesters.  That kind of thing will reliably go past zealots of any faith, or none.

My friends Peterson Toscano and Morgan Jon Fox are helping to organize an event in Memphis, coinciding with yet another Focus On The Family/Exodus “Love (sic) Won Out” conference they’re holding there on On Saturday February 23rd 2008. The events will be held under the banner, Deconstructing the Ex-Gay Myth—A Weekend of Action Art, and will be held from February 22 to the 24th, and will include Peterson, giving a farewell performance of Doin’ Time In The Homo No-Mo Halfway House and the premiere of his new play Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible, as well as an exhibit of art by survivors of ex-gay therapy, which promises to be a very moving experience in and of itself. And Morgan’s documentary on the events of the summer of 2005, when a gay teen was dragged into ex-gay therapy against his will, and the world responded with outrage and action, will finally have it’s premiere. This Is What Love In Action Looks Like.

Here’s a short promotional video for the weekend events…

I plan to go, and I urge everyone who can to come to Memphis and participate. The ex-gay movement, funded and operated by right wing theocratic radicals for purely anti-gay political ends has done enormous damage over the years, to many innocent hearts, young and old. In his blog, Peterson writes…

As a Christian and lover of God, I know this to be true–God desires truth in the inmost part. We need each other. We need deep and meaningful relationships and that human touch—emotionally and physically. We need to depend on friends and lovers and loved one and have them depend on us to supply each other with the things only humans can give to each other.

As a Christian I recognize that this is how God set it up. Sure ultimately I know that God supplies all my needs, but just like God supplies my nutritional need through healthy veggies, legumes, fruits and grains, I receive God’s love through other people. God provides me so much of what I need from the emotional and physical intimacy I share with others.

In fact, in regards to these teachings, I see the ex-gay movement as an Ex-Human Movement. In some ways it mirrors what the modern world pushes on us, that we can make it all on our own, except instead of God, the modern world provides us with materialism.

No, we need each other, and when we don’t have our emotional and physical needs met, we mourn, we feel the loss and the pain of detachment, of emotional solitude.

I know that pain of loss and detachment intimately…for a somewhat different reason then the survivors, but nonetheless as part of the experience of gay people in America. It is hard in the best of worlds to find your other half, and make a life together. And in large measure my anger toward those who preach fear and self loathing to gay people, and unforgivably to our families, comes from knowing full well that I might have had a better chance to find my other half in this life, were it not for them. I might have been able to talk to my own parents when I was a teenager, struggling as teenagers do, with first love, and first heartbreak. I might have had a much closer relationship with them then I was allowed to have, because they just didn’t want to know, and the thought of telling them simply terrified me. I had to bottle up so much inside myself back then, and it damaged my relationship with them, and in particular with my mom. We have to bleed…gay children and parents alike…so the haters of humanity can be righteous.

If there is such a thing as Sin, capital ‘S’, in this world, then suffocating the ability to love, and trust in another, must surely be a big one. Our hearts are not blackboards that anyone can scribble their will upon. Our hopes and dreams of love are not their stepping stones to heaven. Please, if you can, come to Memphis and raise a voice for love. Show them what love in action looks like.

More details on the events in Memphis can be found at Beyond Ex-Gay.