There’s a lot of verbiage out there already on the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage, but candidate for congress Angie Paccione, during an exchange with homophobe and co-author of the Federal Marriage Amendment Marilyn Musgrave (via Pam’s House Blend), said it all, perfectly…
"I think that’s the ideal environment for children to be raised," Musgrave said, of opposite-sex marriage.
The remark got a smattering of applause but Paccione’s response was quick earning her wide clapping and several cheers.
"You want to protect marriage, you know what’s a threat to marriage? Divorce is a threat to marriage," she told the crowd of about 1,000
"You know what else is a threat to marriage? Infidelity is a threat to marriage. Domestic violence is a threat to marriage. Losing your job is a threat to marriage. Marriage is not a threat to marriage. I support equality."
Just so. But taking the bigots at their word that they’re about defending marriage is for rubes. They don’t give a shit about marriage. What they care about is keeping their right to persecute gay people, simply for existing. What they care about is defending the lie that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. What they care about is maintaining the cultural perception of homosexuals as something other then human, something grotesque and ugly and no more deserving of human regard then scarecrows or punching bags. We can’t be the scapegoats for every cheap sin they couldn’t keep themselves from committing, if we can have lives of our own. The only threats to their marriages are themselves. That’s why they need someone else to take the blame. If gay people can enter into marriage, if same sex couples can walk proudly together through life, in trust, in honor, in mutual love and affection, then what does that leave them, except responsibility for their own lives? What do you do when all the scapegoats are finally gone, and there is no one else to blame, but the face in the mirror?
It’s hard to imagine that when Sabrina Farber sent out an e-mail Wednesday she had any idea what kind of firestorm it would set off.
At 9:08 a.m. Farber, who together with her husband, Todd, owns Garden Guy Inc., a landscaping company on Hillcroft, hit "send" on a message that delivered a painful blow with the verbal equivalent of a smiley face.
"Subject: Cancel Appt – Garden Guy
"Dear Mr. Lord,
"I am appreciative of your time on the phone today and glad you contacted us. I need to tell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work for homosexuals.
"Best of luck in finding someone else to fill your landscaping needs.
"All my best,
"Sabrina"
‘Marriage is under attack’
Michael Lord, who is building a house in the Heights with his partner, told me he had found the company through an Internet search. He liked the "before and after" photos on the company Web site.
He said he didn’t notice, at the bottom of one of the pages, under a photo of the Farbers and their four children, this:
"The God-ordained institution of marriage is under attack in courts across the nation, and your help is needed.
"Go to: www.nogaymarriage.com to take action."
Lord said he filled out a form on the Farbers’ Web site and received a return e-mail expressing enthusiasm for the project. He called the company Wednesday morning to set up an appointment.
"Mrs. Farber kept referring to me and my wife," said Lord. "I told her it was actually my partner."
One-word message: WOW
He said she didn’t say anything about that on the phone, but five minutes after they agreed to a Sunday appointment and hung up, he received the e-mail quoted above.
At 9:17 a.m. Lord forwarded the message to his partner, Gary Lackey, with a one-word message: "WOW."
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone our employer would serve…
(Minneapolis, Minnesota) A bus driver who says homosexuality is against her religion will be allowed to refuse to get behind the wheel of vehicles displaying gay ads.
Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit agreed to the demand by driver despite objections from her union according to an internal transit authority memo obtained by the Star Tribune newspaper.
The controversy arose after the authority accepted an ad from local LGBT magazine Lavender. The ad shows a photo of a young man and carries the slogan "Unleash Your Inner Gay."
The ad runs on about 50 city buses.
When the driver objected the companied issued a memo to dispatchers instructing them not to assign the driver, identified only by her employee number, to any of the buses running the ad "under any circumstances" the Star Tribune reports.
"The decision has nothing to do with the content of the advertisement," he said. "It has everything to do with the employee’s religious beliefs," Metro Transit spokesman Bob Gibbons told the paper.
Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit says it made a mistake in the way it handled the case of a driver who refused to operate a bus as long as it had an ad for a local gay publication.
Metro Transit says it was trying to do the "right thing" by the diver based on her religious beliefs, but in doing so sent the "wrong message" to the gay community.
…
"We are not persuaded that advertising, per se, infringes on religious practices and would be reluctant to make similar accommodations in the future," Gibbons said in a statement.
"We deeply regret any impressions of intolerance … Metro Transit employs and serves a diverse population, and we do our best to be respectful of all views."
"We deeply regret…" Right. Notice what’s missing? Any hint that the driver in question won’t be allowed to refuse to operate a bus with an ad for a gay publication again in the future. Kinda reminds me of Macy’s pusillanimous "apology" for yanking a Pride Week display from the window of its Boston store during Pride Week there, at the behest of local bigots. Sure enough afterward came the "We deeply regret…"s but nothing changed. Doesn’t look like it has in Minneapolis either. I was a loyal Hecht Company customer until Macy’s bought it out.
WASHINGTON, October 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In their semi-annual meeting held in Baltimore in November of this year, the American bishops will be voting on a new document meant to help clarify the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality and "those with the homosexual inclination." The document is entitled "Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care"
Catholic News Service reports that the document condemns homosexual activity of any sort but is careful to reinforce the necessity of treating those individuals with a homosexual inclination with "respect, compassion and sensitivity."…
Hahahahaha! Respect, compassion and sensitivity anyone…?
A gay-rights advocacy organization is denouncing the firing of a campus safety officer at Marian High School, saying she was dismissed because she publicized that she’s a lesbian.
"It’s a horrible lesson to the young women at that school," said Jeffrey Montgomery, executive director of the Triangle Foundation in Detroit.
The officer, Charlene Genther, 55, was in her sixth year at the Catholic, college-preparatory school for girls. A former Detroit police officer, she has a daughter who graduated from the Bloomfield Township school in 2001.
Her firing has prompted Marian alumnae to action. A petition at www.petitionspot.com/petitions/genther that seeks an apology for Genther and the gay and lesbian community had gathered 136 signatures by Wednesday.
Genther said Wednesday that she has been in a committed relationship for 28 years and that it was no surprise to anyone at the school that she is a lesbian. She and her partner often attended school events, chaperoned dances and went to parent-teacher conferences.
But last week, when she began publicizing her autobiography, "Badge 3483: A True Story," which addresses the relationship, she was fired.
Genther said Sister Lenore Pochelski, the school’s president, gave her the news Friday, two hours after a local newspaper reporter interviewed her about the book. She said Pochelski said she wouldn’t have gotten fired if she hadn’t gone public with the book.
"She was very clear," Genther said. "She said it was because my lifestyle does not coincide with the teachings of the Catholic Church. I personally felt she was having a hard time firing me. …
"But she was firm that she had to go along with the teachings of the Catholic Church."
Pochelski confirmed that Genther was terminated, but said she would not comment on her termination out of respect for personnel and confidentiality issues.
"She was a great employee," Pochelski said. "We’re grateful for her generous service."
Their gratitude is worth its weight in gold. But it isn’t just gay people who need to be beaten over the head every now and then with all the respect, compassion and sensitivity the catholic church can muster. Anyone who dares regard the homosexual as their neighbor, as fellow citizens, clearly needs a little respect, compassion and sensitivity too.
CORNWALL, Ont. – The altar rail is no place for confrontation between Catholic politicians and the clergy who want them to fall into line, Washington’s archbishop emeritus said Tuesday.
But if a politician consistently and publicly defies the church, he should be denied communion, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick told the Conference of Canadian Catholic Bishops meeting here this week.
”You have no choice in the matter. That person should not partake of communion. Sometimes you just have to do it.”
In Canada, some priests threatened to bar MPs from communion and church activities over their stance on abortion and same-sex marriage.
In the last U.S. election, McCarrick was caught between hard-right Catholics and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a Catholic who supported access to abortion and gay rights.
Hardliners said bishops who gave communion to pro-choice candidates were spineless and not ”real Catholics.” Others were horrified that something as sacred as the eucharist could be withheld as a punishment and used as a political weapon.
Respect. Compassion. Sensitivity. What these things actually mean, depends on your point of view. Is the homosexual your neighbor, or an inferior being of some kind…an emotional cripple with an intrinsically disordered sexuality at best, if not a willing tool of Satan, part of a new ideology of evil, whose struggle for equality is a threat to the existence of civilization itself? How you answer that question, defines the meaning of respect, compassion, and sensitivity with regard to gay people. Which makes these occasional avowals of respect, compassion, sensitivity, and so on from the Catholic church far less important, then that consistent and immovable affirmation of dogma, that homosexual relationships are against god’s plan.
Against that standard of measure, respect, compassion, and sensitivity simply cannot mean the same thing when extended to gay people, that it does when extended to everyone else. And if you think that the staggering mountain of evidence that the love of same sex couples is as meaningful, as essential, as life affirming for them as the love between opposite sex couples, might one day convince the Catholic hierarchy that god’s plan is a tad bigger then their dogmas, then you are a moral relativist. The Bishops here in Baltimore have something to say about that too…
The document addresses the fact that America is suffering from "moral relativism in our society" and a "widespread tendency toward hedonism" which makes the Church’s teaching on homosexuality difficult for some to hear.
A Catholic man I met on the job once, told me that it isn’t so much access to God that the church provides, as Truth. That’s important to understand. What "the church" provides, is Truth. When the Catholic hierarchy talks about "moral relativism", what it means is "seeking Truth from a source other then the church". That’s not the same meaning most people get from that phrase. When you think "moral relativism" you generally think of a kind of subjectivism, where every belief is held to be equally valid. But that’s not what the Catholic hierarchy means. As far as they are concerned, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, James Dobson, Fred Phelps, Dr. Laura…everyone…who thinks Truth can possibly be anything but what the Catholic church tells them it is, are all moral relativists.
To let the facts guide you is moral relativism. To judge a thing based on the evidence at hand is moral relativism. To let nature speak for itself is moral relativism. To believe what you see with your own two eyes is moral relativism. Truth is what the church says it is, because only the church Has Truth. If you believe anything else, you are a moral relativist. And if you’re wondering how an institution that not only turned its back on the victims of child abuse, but actively protected the abusers can even think of itself as embodying Truth, then consider that it is precisely because they believe it that those abuses, of the children, of the trust of the faithful, could happen in the first place.
It isn’t the quest for Truth that turns people into gutter crawling thugs, it’s the belief that they and they alone embody it.
There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts – obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.
It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. it was done by ignorance. When people believe they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken".
…We have to cure ourselves of the itch of absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
-Jacob Bronowski "The The Ascent Of Man "
It is precisely the same callow vanity that feels no qualms whatever in firing "a great employee", in demanding politicians ultimately heel to their will as a condition of grace, in turning the joy and happiness of same sex couples into ash, that imposed itself on helpless children, over and over again, and then demanded they and their parents suffer in silence. Truth. What does it mean to extend respect, compassion, and sensitivity to the homosexual? What does it mean to extend them to an altar boy? To his parents? To the faithful? It isn’t power that corrupts absolutely. It’s arrogance.
Via Steve Gilliard… If the Russian mob joined in the fight against gay rights, Randy Thomasson would applaud them as "shining models for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community" too…
Sacramento’s large enclave of immigrant Slavic evangelicals is becoming a force on social issues. Their actions shock many.
SACRAMENTO — Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble.
The Q Crew, a local "queer/straight alliance," distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground’s cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol.
Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization.
"So far, so good," he said. "No Russians."
The festival, held last month amid the gay bars, restaurants and shops of midtown’s "Lavender Heights" neighborhood, went off without conflict. But the elaborate security preparations reflected growing tensions between Sacramento gays and the city’s large and vociferous community of fundamentalist Christians from the former Soviet Union.
Over the last 18 months, Sacramento Russian-language church members have picketed gay pride events, jammed into legislative committee meetings when gay issues were on the agenda and demonstrated at school board meetings.
Incited by firebrand Russian Pentacostal pastors and polemical Russian-language newspapers, the fundamentalists turn out en masse for state Capitol protest rallies.
Last June, urging readers to attend a massive rally, the Russian newspaper the Speaker told them:
"Make a choice. It’s your decision. Homosexuality is knocking on your doors and asking: ‘Can I make your son gay and your daughter lesbian?’ "
In most instances, the Russian-speaking demonstrators far outnumber representatives from all other anti-gay groups combined. Anti-homosexual rallies that a few years ago attracted a few dozen participants now regularly draw hundreds and sometimes thousands, many with a heavy Russian accent.
It’s worth noting, and the L.A. Times article does note, that not all Russian communities in this country are as crazy bigoted as the one in Sacramento. But this one community is different. How?
The Sacramento community, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly evangelical — Baptist and Pentecostalist. The charismatic Pentacostal church, introduced in the Ukraine in the 1920s by missionary and martyr Ivan Efimovich Vornaev, includes speaking in tongues and washing of feet. The churches’ social views are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
And I’ll just bet, relentlessly antisemite too. Russia has had a problem with that for untold generations…the Protocols of the Elders of Zion originated in Russia…and my understanding is that it is among precicely these fervent religious types in Russia, the kind that like their Christianity loud and gilded and glittering and all controlling, that the hatred of jews is the most vehement.
Well…hating jews doesn’t gain you a lot of traction here in the United States, no matter how proudly you wear Christ around your neck…just ask Mel Gibson. But you can still hate homosexuals and demand respect for your sincere religiosity…
Many credit the Slavic Christian immigrant community with filling a void left by the traditional American church and providing reinforcements in the ongoing culture wars over what should define family, acceptable sexual relationships and marriage.
"Russian Christians bring a fresh faith and uncorrupted family values to this country. They are a shining model for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.
Behold a shining model…
Gay civil rights activists, meanwhile, accuse the demonstrators of hateful and aggressive tactics that they say sometimes lean dangerously toward violence.
Signs displayed by the demonstrators often equate homosexuality with pedophilia and describe the AIDS epidemic as a message from God. One of the common tactics of the demonstrators is to tap gays forcefully on the head and announce that they have been "saved."
"They’ve declared war on us for some reason," said Stand Up for Sacramento founder Nathan Feldman, a jewelry store clerk. "They got it into their heads that California is the land of sin and that it is their duty to cleanse the state, starting with homosexuals."
What Thomasson means is that they are more aggressive and willing to physically attack gay people then even Fred Phelps’ group. Thomasson is a well known opponent of gay rights in California. What he sees and values in the ethnic Russian community around Sacramento isn’t faith, it’s their willingness to bring fear into the lives of gay people. Because of his new allies in the war on homosexuals, Sacramento Pride Days now require heightened security. This is what brings Randy hope. Or at least, satisfaction.
Mark Foley, co-author of the Internet Child Protection Act, supported by the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children, is discovered having Internet Chat Room Sex with a 16 year old former congressional page boy. At one time he had an 84 percent rating from the Christian Coalition. He’d voted for the Defense Of Marriage Act, refused to commit to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and after being outed by a reporter for the Advocate, offered lukewarm opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. He consistently refused to acknowledge his sexual orientation, even as it was an open secret on Capital Hill. But in the world of republican virtue and morals, being homosexual is alright, so long as you’re ashamed of it, so long as you keep your sexuality in the shadows, in the gutter, where they think it belongs…
Kinsey never said that ten percent of the male population is gay. What he did was construct a range from the behavior of his subjects, the Kinsey scale, which went from zero, which was exclusive heterosexuality, to six, which was exclusive homosexuality. It was only later, as gay people began to fight against oppression, that the data for 5s and 6s were combined to come up with a figure of ten percent. Kinsey never said it, but when you looked at it that way it was a figure that made sense to throw out there. Ten percent of the male population is exclusively homosexual, or nearly so.
It’s a figure that the kook pews have challenged ever since, because it is in their interest to claim that we are a tiny, insignificant, worthless part of the human family. Except when we’re the vast conspiracy of militant homosexuality that controls the news media, Hollywood, liberal churches and the democratic party. Then we’re a looming menace. But a looming menace mind you, that only amounts to 1, or maybe 2 percent of the human family at most.
Almost one in 10 straight men on the `down-low,’ study finds
PHILADELPHIA – Almost 10 percent of men who say they’re straight also happen to be having sex with men, according to a new study, one of the largest ever to specifically address "down-low" behavior.
The study, based out of New York City, found that most of the down-low men did not use condoms and that 70 percent were married. Researchers said they hoped their report would change the way doctors asked patients about their sexual behavior.
"Everyone talks about it, but it’s the first time I’ve seen data on this issue," said Thomas J. Coates, a psychologist who specializes in sexual behavior at the University of California at Los Angeles. Even so, he said the numbers were probably low estimates.
"It’s probably above this, because it’s hard to get people to admit to this kind of behavior."
What’s really interesting about Kinsey’s figures is how well they’ve withstood the test of time, considering what it was he actually looked at. All he studied was the behavior of his subjects over a three year period. But why three? Why not just one? Why not five? It’s like Mendel and his damn beans. Mendel was the monk who did that now famous experiment in which he showed how traits are inherited. For his subjects, he used a bean plant, and he tested for seven characteristics. And as it turns out, seven is the most you can cleanly test for, without getting some cross linkage on the genes, because the bean plant only has seven genes. But Mendel knew nothing of genes. As Jacob Bronowski once put it, you can be elected abbot of your monastery, you can even be elected pope, but you can’t have that luck. Mendel had obviously done some background work with his beans prior to his experiment, which told him which traits he could test for. Kinsey had to have done something similar, that told him three years of sexual history was all he needed to know about his subjects, to have a good idea of the whole.
Clearly, the stigma surrounding homosexuality is still strong here in America, and in particular in minority communities. While many of us are now able to live lives out and proud, many cannot. The religious right would like to bring the stigma back down on all of us in the name of righteousness and morality. But the human identity isn’t a blackboard anyone can scribble their will upon. Homosexuality they say, brings only disease and pain and suffering. No. Shame does. Here is what shame buys you.
"We found that those who identified as straight but had sex with men were also less likely to be HIV tested within the last year and less likely to use a condom," than men who said they were gay, said Preeti Pathela, a research scientist at the department.
Pride has the power to lift us out of the gutter of self abuse and self destructiveness. And that is why the religious right hates gay pride. In the relentless logic of knuckle dragging fundamentalism, if we’re not bleeding, they’re not righteous.
By late Sunday night, I was in so much pain I became delirious. Terry took me back to the hospital, where an emergency-room doctor took one look and admitted me. It wasn’t the flu after all—I had bacterial meningitis, a potentially life-threatening infection of the fluid in the spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain. While I was curled up in a ball on the bed, the doctor tried to ask me questions. But I couldn’t answer, or consent to medical treatment; I didn’t know where I was or what was happening. So the doctor turned to Terry—who was standing across the room, DJ at his side—and asked if he could make medical decisions on my behalf.
This is the nightmare scenario for same sex couples. One is left incapacitated in the hospital, while the other is denied even the right to be by their bedside, let alone give direction to the hospital staff. It’s what happened to William Robert Flanigan Jr., and Robert Lee Danial at Maryland Shock Trauma back in March of 2002. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center insisted he would not be allowed his partner’s bedside. Only when Daniel’s mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel’s room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel’s final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints. He died two days later.
Things turned out better for Savage and his partner Terry…
Terry quickly okayed a morphine drip (the nicest thing he ever did for me); he okayed a spinal tap (the worst thing he ever did to me); and okayed a course of powerful antibiotics. The doctors and nurses treated Terry like my spouse, like my next of kin—not just allowing him to remain at my bedside, but also empowering him to make crucial medical decisions for me in a crisis.
The next day I was sitting up, still in a great deal of pain, when the doctor came by. He directed his comments and questions to Terry, not to me; Terry was still in charge, still making medical decisions for me. The only thing I was in charge of was the button in my hand that delivered drops of morphine into my veins.
I was sent home three days later with a catheter in my chest, a cooler full of antibiotics, and a warm feeling in my heart. Wasn’t I lucky to have a boyfriend who cared so much for me? And weren’t we lucky to live in a place where our relationship was respected? The medical personnel didn’t have to treat Terry like my spouse, but they did. Our experience at the hospital left me feeling uncharacteristically optimistic.
Then the painkillers wore off.
Right. Go read the whole thing. If anything the experience of having their relationship treated with dignity and respect made the couple even more worried. What if… It could have been a nightmare. It could have literally killed Savage because absent Terry, the doctors would have run aroung trying to contact someone who was "legally family" and the time they lost doing it could have been fatal. It’s one thing to understand this theoretically, and another to actually live it yourself. They were damn lucky, and they both know they were damn lucky.
The gay haters claim all we have to do to prevent the potential heartbreak here is fill out the proper forms. But they want to bring the nightmare and the heartbreak down on us, because they hate us, because if we aren’t in pain, they aren’t righteous. So if they say same sex couples can protect themselves in one round about way or another you know right then and there it isn’t true. In fact, Flanigan and Daniel had filled out the proper forms and the hospital ignored them anyway. Only having the same right to marry as heterosexuals do, will put our relationships on the same playing field as theirs. Only an equal right to marriage will give same sex couples the kind of legitimacy they need in the eyes of others, whose snap decisions can mean life or death.
For a change the gay channel Logo had something on that lived up to its (Logo’s) potential. It was a history of the gay migration to Fire Island and The Pines, and it covered parts of the island’s history prior to Stonewall, as well as the changes that came after, and with the AIDS crisis.
There’s a reason why documenting the history of our movement prior to Stonewall is so important, while there are still people alive who lived it first hand. When I was a kid I’d heard about Fire Island…it was practically a byword for queerness. Back then Fire Island and Greenwich Village was where all the queers were. You didn’t go there unless you were queer yourself. Even Mad magazine, which was aimed at teenage males mostly, would toss out Fire Island jokes from time to time in it’s pages and magazines for teens weren’t supposed to so much as breath a word about homosexuality back then. But in those days we all thought Mad was cool, because it was something our parents hated. Two years after Stonewall, this is the image I was getting about gays from Mad…
Mad #145, Sept ’71, from "Greeting Cards For The
Sexual Revolution" – "To A Gay Liberationist"
This is what the pop culture was telling me about gay people when I was 17. Three months later I came out to myself. I have to say in all fairness that Mad Magazine isn’t hostile to gay people now, like it was back when I was a gay teen struggling to understand myself. In fact, they’re positively amazing, even by today’s standards. I suppose they understand now that some of their readers are dealing with their own process of coming out. But the late 60s and early 70s were not nearly so tolerant and it’s hard to grasp now, when we’re to the point of fighting for marriage rights, how bad it was back then. Which is why histories like the one Logo was showing tonight are so important. There are a lot of people who would like to take us all back to those days.
And so here I am, 35 years later, watching this history of Fire Island on Logo raptly. I was too young to be part of the pre-Stonewall era, but not so young that I didn’t hear stuff about homosexuals. And now I’m hearing from them, the people, gay and straight, who experienced that first wave of gay migrations to the island what those times were like from their point of view…
…and I’m hearing about how a certain hotel/club got started there, called The Botel, and how it’s ownership passed into the hands of a gay man…and how the tradition of "Tea Dances" started there (late afternoon, when the dances were held, was called "low tea"…I guess it’s a New England thing…). And I learn that back in those days it was illegal for men to dance with men. Not illegal as in, get a ticket and pay a fine, but illegal as in get arrested and thrown in jail and have your life ruined when your name is printed in the newspapers the next day and suddenly your boss and your neighbors and everyone you know finds out you’re a faggot. That kind of illegal…
…so the male Tea Dancers would form a kind of cabaret line and find one woman…she didn’t need to be heterosexual herself…to dance with all these guys who were really dancing with each other but had to be careful about not dancing too much like they were dancing with each other or they might get arrested. The gay owner of the club would watch the dancers and warn them if they started being too obvious, and tell them they had to stop or leave…
…and there are several people in this Fire Island documentary explaining this as I watch and listen, and one of them explains that the police would regularly raid The Botel anyway, and another man says that sometimes the police would patrol the streets around the club and arrest random young men as they left. On those nights, this man says, the bartenders would get the word somehow and warn people not to leave the club alone, but go out in large groups. Another man says that the police had arrest quotas when then went on these raids. Typically, he says, they had to arrest at least twenty gays…
…and I listen to another man explaining that there was a large telephone pole near the Botel, and that it had a chain fastened to it…and the police would randomly arrest gay men as they found them leaving the Botel and cuff them to this chain…one by one…until they had their twenty for that night…and they would put them all on the boat back to the mainland and to jail.
This happened on Fire Island, in the 1960s, during a time when a lot of gay men and lesbians regarded Fire Island as a place they could go to get away from the oppression they felt in their daily lives. It was a place where could be "among your own kind", the people in the documentary were telling me as I watched. You felt like you were in a world apart, they said. Back home was the closet, the constant fear of discovery, the need to keep your head down. On Fire Island you felt like you were getting away from all that, they said. But you never knew when the police might grab you off the street, handcuff you to a chain with twenty or more other homosexuals, and take you by boat to a jail on the mainland. Because you were a homosexual.
And now you know another reason why Stonewall finally happened.
Allegations arise after failed gay rights referendum attempt
The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office is investigating alleged election fraud in the failed attempt of a group called Equal Rights Not Special Rights to force a ballot referendum on whether over gay people should be protected by Cincinnati’s anti-discrimination law.
Equal Rights Not Special Rights officially withdrew its petitions Thursday, saying it discovered one paid signature gatherer had fraudulently signed 18 names in the more than 7,600 signatures that were validated by the Hamilton County Board of Elections last June.
Thousands of those validated signatures were to be challenged Thursday by a pro-ordinance group called Citizens To Restore Fairness, which said the referendum sponsor was systematic in its use of fraud and tampering of petitions to push the issue onto ballots this fall. A protest hearing at the Board of Elections, scheduled for Thursday, was canceled when Prosecutor Joe Deters started his investigation.
According to 365Gay.com, Fidel Castro and Cincinnati Reds owner Bob Castellini were among the signees. Maybe Castro gave Phil Burress a box of his best Cohibas while he was there…
Phil Burress, chairman of the group behind the referendum, said he referred to Deters the name of the signature gatherer who he thinks committed fraud. Burress said his staff alerted him to the 18 questionable signatures, and he didn’t look at any beyond that because it was clear they wouldn’t have enough signatures to force a referendum.
"No one else from staff has said anything about (other) signatures that are corrupt," Burress said.
"Why would I be required to check that out, when it’s the homosexual activists making the claims (of massive fraud)."
They pulled the petitions because they went a little too far this time, and Phil has somehow sensed this. The election process in Ohio has been corrupt for so long now under republican rule that the kook pews figured they could get away with anything now and threw caution to the wind. Citizens To Restore Fairness had only just started looking at the signatures and they found Fidel’s name in there and that was too much, even by Ohio standards. And true to form, Phil is looking for a scapegoat. Oh yes…it was that guy we paid to collect signatures. You sure it isn’t the gays Phil? Isn’t it always the gays?
No Phil, it’s you. Someone who feels utterly no compunction about lying through their teeth to incite the mob cannot possibly have any moral brakes when it comes to a little thing like election fraud. Your kind will lie, cheat and steal any election you come anywhere near and not feel the slightest twinge of guilt or remorse about it either, because you’re on a mission from God and God doesn’t mind it when people lie and cheat and steal for Him. God is that big mafia boss in the sky…right Phil? He likes it when you bring Him bling.
This is the republican party in a nutshell. I wander the liberal and progressive blogs and constantly I see amazement over how completely amoral the republicans have become. There’s Bush wiretapping Americans right and left at will as though he can do as he damn well pleases a fuck the rule of law. There’s the bogus rationals for the war in Iraq, in-your-face lies like Saddam was involved in 9-11 that have been debunked over and over again and yet the Bush administration keeps repeating them. There’s the whining petulant sense of entitlement and bitter resentment towards everyone who isn’t One Of Us. I’ve been seeing it for decades in the anti-gay kook pews: That Fuck The Constitution, Fuck Democracy, Fuck The Rule Of Law we’ll do to you as we damn well please attitude…that ritualistic waving around of one damn stupidly transparent lie after another, long after the lie has stopped convincing anyone, because as long as the lie can still incite the mob it’s still useful…that whining, petulant sense of entitlement by virtue of heterosexuality, and bitter resentment toward gay people who stubbornly refuse to hate themselves like they hate us. I’ve had to face that open sewer of arrogance and hate and resentment ever since I left puberty behind. And then I watched as the republican party became that.
A ceremony to honor the achievements of six high profile gay Californians erupted into a political fight at the State Capitol Monday with some Republicans storming off the Assembly Floor.
The Legislature’s Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender Caucus (LGBT) sponsored the first Pride Recognition Awards, a program they say is designed to recognize the accomplishments of people who happen to be gay in their respective fields.
Conservative Assemblymembers boycotted the program.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I rise to point out the ridiculousness of the exercise," said Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia, R-San Diego. "We’re wasting a lot of time we have a lot of bills on the floor."
The honorees included several celebrities, including former NFL tackle Esera Tuaolo and Reichen Lehmkuhl, the million dollar prize winner of the "The Amazing Race 4" reality television show. Watching quietly from the back of the room was Lehmkuhl’s partner, Lance Bass, a singer with the former boy band ‘N Sync. Bass recently went public with the fact he is gay.
Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he hoped the event would benefit Republicans by showing them the "strength of our diversity and the many accomplishments in a variety of disciplines." But about 10 Republicans either walked out or boycotted the event altogether.
"So it’s a great disappointment that they’re acting like such children," Leno said.
MEADE – Two Meade boys have confessed to cutting down a rainbow flag outside a hotel here, the proprietors said Monday.
The Lakeway Hotel became a focus of controversy last month after owners J.R. and Robin Knight hung the colorful banner, a gift from their 12-year-old son, in front of the place. Locals uncomfortable with such a symbol – it also stands for gay pride – decried the flag’s presence and then, in the early-morning hours of July 31, someone cut it down.
The disappearance had remained a mystery, but the father of two local boys brought them to the Lakeway on Friday and they owned up to their involvement.
"They apologized and said they’d replace it," J.R. Knight said. He didn’t name the boys, and Meade County Sheriff Michael Cox said only that officials are investigating.
Meanwhile, Knight said replacing a 5-foot-by-5-foot plate glass window smashed in at the hotel’s restaurant – also apparently due to the flag flap – probably would cost about $500. Two neon beer signs destroyed in the same incident probably will cost another $1,000.
Someone tossed a brick through the window early Friday morning, according to the Knights and local authorities, who are investigating. Scrawled on the brick was the word "fag."
An 18-year-old gay man who was badly beaten in Edgewood on July 30 might have been assaulted because a man at the party believed the gay man had touched his butt, a statement of probable cause filed in state District Court says.
William York, 21, of Edgewood, and Leroy Segura, 19, of Moriarty have been charged with aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Bond for each man was set at $100,000 cash only by District Judge Michael Vigil on Monday. Two juveniles, a boy and girl, are also being held in connection to the case.
York believed the victim tried to grab his butt while they were at a party in Edgewood on July 30, the statement says. He said Segura, who is known by the nickname “Half Pint,” told him the victim tried to grab York’s butt, the statement says.
In an interview, York told state police the comment upset him and made him want to fight the 18-year-old man, the statement says. York said everyone at the party made fun of the 18-year-old man because he was gay, the statement says. York said he wanted to “scare” the victim to “make him straight and to get him to stop acting the way he was,” the statement says.
The juvenile male arrested in the case said he, York and Segura tied the gay man’s hands, placed a torn black T-shirt over his head, walked him into a deserted field, pushed him onto a downed fence and beat him, the statement says. The juvenile, the statement says, said he egged on York by calling the gay man joto, a derogatory Spanish word meaning gay.
The documents did not contain statements from Segura, who wore a rosary around his neck in court Monday.
The gay man suffered bleeding on the brain, a concussion, facial lacerations and bruising from the beating, which lasted for hours, state police have said. York, Segura and the juvenile male have been charged under New Mexico’s hate-crimes law.
The 18-year-old victim went to the party with a girl, who was also beaten and held inside the trailer house where the party took place, the statement says. She told police “the male subjects would knock (the gay man) down and if he did not get up off the ground within a certain count or if he did not make any noise, they would jump on him, hitting and kicking him,” the statement says.
The female victim said the beating stopped as “the sun was coming up,” the statement says.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I rise to point out the ridiculousness of the exercise…"
I am blessed with a body that reacts…strongly…to mood altering drugs of any sort. Alcohol, marijuana, whatever. It never took much to get me blasted as a teen, and beings as I was usually zonked pretty quickly, I never really had more fun if I did more…just pass out. I’m convinced this is why I never fell into any cycle of addiction and recovery. It certainly kept me from becoming addicted to cigarettes.
I still vividly remember my first toke on a cigarette. I was 11 or 12, and one day my friends and I found an unopened pack of Winstons in a construction site near our apartments. We took it to our private hang out and passed them around. That first puff was my last. It felt like my entire body was under attack. My lungs burned, my skin chilled, my head started to go Right Up Into The Stratosphere. I was hacking and coughing all over the place and for once my friends weren’t making fun of me for not being cool because they were all doing it too. For years after that I wondered why the hell adults smoked. And then I became one.
I smoke the occasional cigar now. It’s a gentler, more mellow nicotine buzz, and I don’t have to drag the smoke into my lungs to get it. And I can tell you exactly why I do it. Stress. Work deadline stress mostly, but also the stress of my life at times. I’m single, and when you’re single you don’t get the chance to have those heart to heart talks about life with someone you trust intimately. So I paint, I draw, I blog, and I go for solitary walks, sometimes with a cigar in hand, just trying to mellow out. And like those other highs it doesn’t take much, and that keeps my tobacco usage down. But I’m aware of the dangers, and when I walk past the Baltimore Gay Community Center sometimes, and I see a bunch of gay kids hanging out, and at least half of them are smoking, I get angry. Not at them, but at the stresses in their lives. It doesn’t take much to figure why you see more gay then straight teens smoking.
Not much that is, if you have half a brain and a functional conscience. Which brings me to the post I saw the other day on Stacy Harp’s blog. You’ll recall Stacy as the anti-gay activist who just the other week was pushing Guy Adams’ claims that raping babies is the newest trend among gays. But, baby sodomizers though we are, Stacy still cares about our health. Really. Stacy thinks the gay community should sue the tobacco industry.
…according to The San Francisco Chronicle the gay community has a higher rate of smoking than the heterosexual community. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, because according to the article gays smoke because of stress, they go to bars (DUH) and the advertisers are victimizing the gay community because they are intentionally targeting the gay community because they know they are stressed out more than any other community.
So much, so obvious. For instance, you’d be kinda stressed too if you had crackpots going around telling your neighbors that you were a having sex with infants because you thought it was trendy. But…no. The problem with linking higher incidence of smoking (and overall drug abuse) among gay people with stress is that’s a finger pointing right back at the likes of…er…Stacy. And the finger must always point to homosexuals. Whatever happens to gay people, whether it’s drug abuse, suicide or violence, it must always be their own fault. Their blood is upon them…
But this is interesting, according to the article…
Gay smokers have their own theories on why they smoke: the club and bar scene, trouble finding dates and falling in love, high alcohol- and drug-abuse rates in the community. Sometimes, smoking is related to a lack of family connections, which can cause stress and also remove pressure to stop smoking once someone has started.
and this….
"Gay people probably smoke longer because we’re not as family- oriented. If you don’t have kids and raise a family, you don’t need to stop," said John Daly, 41, who has smoked for 25 years. "We don’t have the same responsibilities. We can be reckless a little longer."
OH…okay…so now we know why the gay community smokes so much, and here I thought that we are being told constantly by the gay community activists that their lives are just like the normal heterosexual’s life. And yet, in the gays own words they admit that they use stink sticks because they are not as "family oriented", "don’t have kids or raise a family" and "can be reckless", as well as are "drug users" and "alcohol abusers".
Right. Our lives are just like the normal heterosexual’s life, if normal heterosexuals had multi-million dollar political hate machines working hard year after year to deny them the right to marry, the right to raise children, the right to so much as be with their spouse in an emergency room. Our lives are just like the normal life of heterosexuals who have to live under the cloud of one relentless propaganda campaign after another, telling their parents, their siblings, their co-workers, their neighbors that, for example, they’re all busy raping babies. Our lives are just like that of any other heterosexuals who have to listen to the sound of pulpits thumping from one end of the country to the other about how they’re going to burn in hell because god hates them, god condemns them, and everyone else should too. That kind of normal heterosexual family life.
Stacy thinks we ought to be outraged.
As for me, I’m not going to hold my breath (unless some stinky smoker is around) waiting for the gay community to go after the tobacco companies… or the bars or alcohol companies. But if I was gay, I’d sure as heck be very mad that these companies are targeting my community and hoping to snag my community with deadly substances that could kill my community off quicker than if we didn’t all drink and smoke.
Hmmm. Double standard…it’s okay for the tobacco and alcohol communties to push a deadly substance on the gay community, and no outrage. But when someone who is trying to help the gay community tells them they should stop having sex, especially sex with someone who has HIV, you get persecuted.
Not to mention being persecuted just for politely telling us not to have sex with babies please. Yes…we’re a cranky lot.
That last one being in reaction to a news article I came across in July of 2004, about a Utah anti smoking campaign directed a gay youth that lost its funding because…well…it was directed at gay youth…
For eight months, the "Queers Kick Ash" campaign hummed along, spreading its anti-tobacco message to Utah’s gay and lesbian community with help from a state grant.
During that time, records show the Utah Department of Health routinely approved and funded promotional materials – posters, banners, T-shirts, newspaper ads, even a Web site – for the campaign by the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Community Center of Utah. Then, in mid-May, several students were disciplined at Hillcrest High for wearing "Queers Kick Ash" T-shirts.
A few weeks later, the Health Department yanked the funding – an expected $200,000 over the next two years – and the anti-tobacco campaign fizzled. Ever since then, the community center has wondered why it lost the funding.
"We’ve made phone calls, mailed letters and sent faxes – and nothing," said Tami Marquardt, the center’s acting executive director. "They haven’t had the courtesy or the public decency to give us an answer. I don’t know why they won’t talk to anyone if this is all aboveboard. This is nothing but a homophobic cover-up. It’s discrimination, pure and simple."
For its part, the Health Department – in a June 1 letter from Heather Borski, manager of the department’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program – maintains that it opted not to renew the center’s grant to "prevent the anti-tobacco health message from being overshadowed by unrelated advocacy activity."
Richard Milton, the department’s deputy director, and two department spokeswomen would not define "unrelated advocacy activity."
"Our statement speaks for itself," Milton said Friday. "It’s a question of interpretation."
Let me hazard an interpretation: You can’t target gay youth with an anti-smoking message directed specifically to them, because that might lead them to think we actually care what the fuck happens to the little faggots.
Well if I was Stacy Harp I’d be outraged that the state of Utah withdrew funding for an anti-smoking program that targeted gay youth. Wait…no. If I was Stacy Harp I’d have probably taken up smoking years ago, due to the constant stress of trying not to see a gutter crawling bigot every time I looked in a mirror.
We saw small town gay bar, a documentary by Malcolm Ingram (it was exec produced by Kevin Smith, yes, the director of Clerks). It was a wonderful look at what social life is like for gays in the rural South. I mean really rural — the two Mississippi bars profiled were in Shannon (pop. 1,657) and Meridian (39,968). Durham, for comparison’s sake has an estimated pop. of 204,845.
Watching this film is like going back in time if you live in a progressive area or large city; the closet is a necessity here, as you might imagine. Being out can be a death sentence for these people. The bar is their only refuge, their only time to let their hair down, be themselves and feel safe to be who they are, as gays, lesbians, trans, black, white — all that matters is that you know you aren’t alone. Drag queens had a home to perform out and proud at Rumors and Crossroads (now called Different Seasons).
The audience howled as Ingram interviewed the unhinged Rotting CryptkeeperTMFred Phelps. Fred was his animated self, talking about "fanning the flames of fag lust" and it was clear he’s energized and surprised by "all the fags that come out to protest him."
The Phelps Klan picketed the funeral of Scotty Joe Weaver, who was killed right next door in Alabama. The 18-year-old out gay teen, known to many at the Mississippi bars, was murdered by a trio of backwoods homobigots; he was tied to a chair in his trailer, beaten, stabbed, and partially decapitated. His body was dumped in the woods and then set on fire. No wonder these people remain closeted.
And since this is Mississippi, Ingram had to stop by the HQ and nexus of homohate, Don and Tim Wildmon’s American Family Association, which is in Tupelo. Tim sat on camera and dutifully told the story about how it was a good thing for the community to have his local minions stand on a nearby bridge and take down the tag numbers of people who were going over the bridge to go to the gay bar.
The next day on his radio show, Don would read the tag numbers on the air. This, he said, "would keep people accountable."…
Right. Like Christopher Gaines, Nichole Kelsay and Robert Porter held Scotty Joe Weaver accountable. Love the sinner, hate the sin, tie the sinner to a chair, torture them to death and then burn their body.
"Extremism is a powerful alliance of fear and certitude; complexity and humility are its natural foes. Faith and life are essentially mysterious, for neither God nor nature is easily explained or understood. Crusades are for the weak, literalism for the insecure."
“I know that critics of homosexuality do not consider themselves to be hateful. They would say they "love the sinner but hate the sin." If the shoe were on the other foot, however, and someone were attacking their families, trying to take their children away, and constantly working to pass legislation to deprive them of basic civil rights, at some point they would understand that "homophobia" is too mild a word for such harassment. "Hatred" is the only proper term.
I was raised in Dallas, Texas and had classmates who were in the Klan. I remember that they did not consider themselves to be attacking other people. They perceived themselves to be defenders of Christian America. Their "religion" consisted of an unrelenting attack on people who were black, Jewish or homosexual. If anyone challenged these views, these Klan members considered themselves under attack and believed that their right to free exercise of religion was being threatened. In other words, they felt that harassing other people was a protected expression of their own religious faith."
Dan Savage got a chance to give Washington state supreme court Justice Gerry Alexander a little grief over his role in that court’s grotesque decision against the rights of same sex couples. The occasion was a previously scheduled interview with reporters from The Stranger for the upcoming election (supreme court judges in Washington state have to answer to the voters). The Stranger website has audio excerpts of the confrontation. There is a moment in these recordings that has to rank among the most telling of the gay civil rights struggle, and it isn’t even anything anyone actually says. It is a sound.
Posted by Unpaid Intern at 02:59 PM
Weeks ago, we—meaning I—scheduled interviews with the state’s Supreme Court candidates in preparation for our annual endorsement issue. Then, one day before the interview, the justices announced they were upholding the gay marriage ban. Coincidence? Entirely. Fortuitous? Very.
Imagine a justice who voted to uphold DOMA trapped in a room with Dan Savage (wielding a framed picture of his son, DJ) and the rest of the Stranger Election Control Board, for an entire hour Well, you don’t have to just imagine the showdown! Here is Justice Gerry Alexander starring in “An Inquisition”:
It’s nine minutes long, so here are some highlights: use of the phrase “child-rearing” (0:34), the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table (0:50), discussion of “suspect class” (5:19), eight-second pause as Alexander ponders response to “Is homosexuality an immutable characteristic?”(5:55-6:03)
…the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table… This would be in front of a justice who signed on to a decision writing same sex couples into second class citizenship because they cannot make babies when they fuck. By that logic every heterosexual couple who use contraception, or whose children were adopted, or who have no children of their own, or cannot have children of their own, shouldn’t be legally married either. But of course, we make exceptions for our fellow heterosexuals…
This has been a month in which the courts have simply walked away from their responsibility to uphold justice and protect the rights of minorities. One court after another has just thrown up its hands and announced that the basic civil rights of homosexual Americans exist only at the pleasure of the heterosexual majority. Justice is a concept that only applies to heterosexuals. What homosexuals get is forbearance.
But we are human beings too. We fall in love. We take our mates. We make our households, grow families, build lives together. Just like real people. And the silence of the courts to the injustices inflicted upon us, upon our homes, is shattered by the sound of a picture frame being placed on a table, before a man whose job it was to protect that family too.
Our friend Eric Rofes died two weeks ago, and his memorial was held here in San Francisco on Saturday. He died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 52, completely unexpectedly. He was a leading gay activist and scholar and his memorial was shattering- terribly, terribly sad, with a palpable sense of bereavement felt not only by his friends, but by an entire community. It was most heartbreaking to see and hear the agonized grief and bravery of his partner of 16 years, Crispin Hollins.
Eric and Crispin were of course at the forefront of the Gay Marriage movement. They had long held Californian domestic partnership, and also married when (briefly) we believed that San Francisco law permitted us to do so. They had made for one another all the necessary legal arrangements: powers of attorney, mutual wills, etc etc. All their bases were covered, so they thought. As soon as he heard the news, Crispin had flown straight out to Provincetown, where Eric died, to make funeral arrangements. A friend who accompanied them said that when Crispin began to detail the requirements for the cremation and commitment at the funeral home in Provincetown, the funeral director drew himself up and demanded to know what the basis of their relationship was. He told Crispin: "I don’t believe you will be making the funeral arrangements". It required the intervention of NGLTF lawyers and lawyer friends on both coasts to convince the funeral home that he was indeed authorized as a legal partner to make the arrangements. Crispin requested an autopsy, which was contested by the Medical Examiner on the same grounds, and the cremation was subsequently questioned as well (they called during the funeral to argue the case with Crispin).
This stands as a lesson to all of us. We are continually told that as Queers, we do not need to be allowed to marry because all legal avenues of partnership are open to us as domestic partners. For Christ sake- this happened in Massachussetts! They had the gall to question a 16 year old relationship, legally bound as far as two gay men can go. At a time when Crispin was utterly bereft and distraught they had the temerity to impugn his and Eric’s relationship, which was as closely legally covered as they could make it. (Eric’s family, by the way, have too much respect for Crispin to intervene- they would not, I think, dream of subverting his moral authority to decide the arrangements).
It makes me so fucking angry. Give us our bloody civil rights! Enough of this fucking heterosexual gobbledygook denying that our relationships are as worthy as a man and a woman’s- we are sick of arguing- just do it: not some paltry second-best, lesser citizen crumb from the hetrosexual table: give us what we deserve- marriage.
Right. Fucking. Now..
The republicans have there way and we won’t have Any legal recourse when people start fucking with us while we’re in grief. Hell…that’s the bet time to put the knife in and twist it and they know it. That’s why they are so vehemently against giving us the right to marry. It isn’t about protecting the sanctity of marriage or any of that crap. It isn’t about how marriage is a god ordained sacrament between and man and a woman. It isn’t about how children are better off being raised by heterosexual parents. It isn’t about any of that. It’s about freedom to twist the knife in the heart of a homosexual, because you just can’t stand homosexuals. It’s about the freedom to twist the knife. Nothing else.
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