Mr. Gay Pride: The Blog

Residual Love — and Resentment. Let me share an email I sent in August to someone I had a month earlier reconnected with, after more than 40 years. We met in a (gay) dance bar in Toronto. There was a seating area, and I found an empty spot alongside a cute little guy I hadn't seen before. The song "1-2-3" by Len Barry — which I loved — came on, and I wanted to dance. I was 1 guy who was 23. So (I found out later) was he. I didn't know anyone there, so I looked around, first to my left, and there was this cute little guy right there, so I asked him if he'd like to dance. He said no. I was a little startled, and maybe a little offended, but not much. If somebody doesn't want to dance with you, you ask somebody else (if you're an asker rather than a wait-to-be-asked-er; most of us have been both, but at least at that point, of that nite, I was the asker). I walked around, but did not find anyone else, because the guys inclined to dance had paired off and were already on the dance floor. So I decided to sit down again. There was no open seat but right back where I started, next to the guy who had refused to dance with me. I was adamant that that was not going to stop me from sitting.
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As soon as I sat down, he turned to me and apologized, saying that he had never danced with a man before, and he was shy and embarrassed. He did me the courtesy of telling me that, and I was no longer indignant, nor angry (the "How dare anyone refuse to dance with ME!" thing. We can be very arrogant in youth). We started to talk, comparing notes about where we were from (he: the Acadian (French-speaking) part of the Province of New Brunswick; I, from NYC (I don't know if I mentioned that I was really from NJ before I moved to NYC)) and that kind of thing. He was SO cute! I had thought he might be cute when I asked him to dance, from a quick sideways glance, but when, later, I looked into his pale blue eyes (I have medium-dark brown eyes, as had most of the people I knew), I knew that he was VERY cute. When another song came on that I wanted to dance to, I asked him again, and this time he said yes. We wrapped our arms around each other, during either that song or a later, slow song, and I knew there was something special about him, and about that encounter.
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I don't recall the specifics of how many days I was to be in Toronto (on that occasion) because I have been in Toronto on other occasions, and it was over 40 years ago. But at some point, we wanted to be together sexually, and he said he knew of an area of town that had cheap hotels, one of which we might check into. We found one, and did check in, without luggage. We got undressed and were happy to be together. There was a mirror on the dresser, and I tried to take a picture of us together, but it was dark, and I put the flash on, not realizing that we were so nearly head-on to the mirror that the flash as reflected would obliterate everything. This was The Olden Days when there were no digital cameras, and I didn't have a Polaroid with me, so we didn't know that our one foto together didn't turn out. I didn't find that out until I returned to NY and had the roll of film developed. (Remember film? How quaint!) We had, as I recall, a brass bed to share, and I love brass beds; did before, and especially did that nite. We spent a wonderful nite together, and felt after it that we didn't want to part.
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Geography was not with us. Nor was immigration law. I assuredly was not about to (try to) move to Canada, a both/and - neither/nor country for which I have now and had then no use. He was on his way to Vancouver, "British" Columbia (as stupid a name then as now) from Montreal, where he had lived for a while after leaving NB. But we didn't want to go our separate ways after only the one nite together. So we persuaded ourselves that the enthusiasm we had for each other after that short time together was love, or something so like it that it made no difference, and took each other's address and phone information to keep in touch.
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We actually did keep in touch. I don't know what he was feeling, but I felt I was in love. Maybe he felt that he loved me, or knew that he liked me, and contemplated living with me in golden Manhattan, center of multitudinous dreams, where I would be part of one of those dreams. I didn't know, and didn't ask. At first, I wouldn't have thought of anything but that he wanted to be with me. (I was adorable, did I mention?) Later, I wouldn't want to think that I was merely his means to achieve the end of living a Manhattan/USA dream.
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He put off his trip to western Canada, and remained in Toronto, so he could come down to see me. I remember him visiting me in Manhattan once. He says he visited more than once. What do I know? I didn't keep a diary, so can go only by what I remember. And I remember one disastrous visit.
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For some reason, I didn't have a regular mattress at the time, for having moved recently or something, so was sleeping on a makeshift pad of some devising. When you're 23 and don't have all the comforts of home but do have a place of your own, a mattress as such isn't the indispensable item it is when you're older. But Normand (that's his name, Normand, pronounced naurh.mónn, where RH represents the uvular (gargled) R of French and NN represents nasalization of whatever vowel comes before) had spent 10 hours or so on a bus to get to NY from Toronto, and insisted he needed a comfortable bed to recover in. My friend Paul R. (name withheld to protect the guilty) offered to let Normand stay with him 8 blocks up. That seemed a sensible solution to me, so Normand spent his first nite in NY at Paul's place. Only later did I discover that Paul, my friend, my buddy, my one-time sex partner, had made a move on Normand that Normand had accepted. So while I was sleeping alone, without my lover, my "lover" was playing around with my friend. I know that this is a very old story, but it wasn't for me at the time.
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The following nite, I had a party in my apartment for over a hundred friends, and friends of friends, and while I was trying to be the good host, Normand was playing around in my bathroom with several guys. His excuse later was that he had had very little sexual experience with men, and when so many offered themselves to him, he just couldn't resist. Had we been only friends, that would have been fine, and I'd have been glad that I had secured for him a number of guys to play around with. But he was NOT just my friend. He was supposed to be, I thought, my lover. And he shouldn't have been playing around with anyone but me. So we broke up. He went back to Toronto, then resumed his trip out west to Vancouver. I returned to thinking of myself as uninvolved, and resumed a life alone except for when I actually went out of my apartment to hunt for sex and find the men I could find, some of whom were very nice men, with whom, however, I never clicked as I did with Normand.
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On January 6th, 2009, out of the blue, I got an email from Normand to my MrGayPride email address (which is mainly for publications of the organization Homosexuals Intransigent!), asking "HOW DO GET IN TOUCH WITH LEE G SCHOONMAKER I MET MANY YEARS AGO", and giving his full name. I of course recognized him instantly, and emailed back to tell him he had found me.
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He was planning a visit back East to friends and, mainly, relatives, in Eastern Canada, and wondered if we might get together while he was in this general vicinity. After some back-and-forth and change of plans regarding whether he would come down to the NYC/Newark area or I would go up to Montreal, we agreed that since he had a lot of traveling to do from Montreal to the Province of New Brunswick and back to Montreal before he flew back to Vancouver, it would make best sense if I could meet him in Montreal. His sister, in whose apartment he would be staying for a couple of weeks, would herself be with relatives in NB during part of that time, so if I came up then, I could stay free at her place in Montreal, where Normand would also be staying (in a separate room). So we arranged that, I decided to drive to Montreal so I could see things along the way going and returning, and Normand and I would have a car with which to run hither and yon without waiting for public transportation, nor trying to figure out the best way to go, then waiting at each stage of a multi-leg trip.
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I arrived at his sister's place around 9pm on a Friday nite and left on Sunday a little before noon.
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We were both much changed, but recognizable. Over 40 years had altered us externally. How much of the us of 40 years earlier remained? I can speak only to what I felt, which is that Normand and I were not strangers. I felt at ease with him as we planned what to do on each of our two days together.
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Yes, we had communicated by email a number of times before meeting again, but I didn't react to seeing him as I might have to someone I had 'met' via email. I reacted to the Normand I remembered, from seeing and being with him in person, intimately, sexually, and emotionally. I remembered his body (then: slender; not slender now; same as mine, then and now). I remembered his voice. I remembered his sweetness and (relative) innocence. I felt older, but in fact he is about half a year older than I. That's pretty darned close for guys who meet in the unorganized, haphazard, everybody-together-in-the-same-bar situation we met in.
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We parted amicably this July, and I stopped in Saratoga Springs, NY, on my way home. I knew he was going to be traveling in eastern Canada for a couple of weeks after we had parted, so didn't attempt to contact him. (I have also traveled in his ancestral area, but years before.) Once I got an email from him that indicated that he had returned to Vancouver, I told him by email what I had felt on my return from Montreal. He has never replied, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes you need to express your feelings and not hold back because of concern that you might lose whatever you have in the way of a relationship. But Normand and I in 2009 had almost no relationship to lose. He was back on one side of the (North) American continent; I was on the other. We had no meaningful, ongoing relationship. It was time to be frank.
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If you read my email to Normand, below, consider what it arose from: that is, what I remembered 40 years later — and resented 40 years later. Human beings like to think that they are the only animal that benefits from the experience of earlier individuals of its species — that is, that learns from one generation to the next the mistakes not to make, the wisdom that one individual's experience can, by process of generalization, convey to others. Thus do I commend to you my words to Normand, below.

As I was driving home from Montreal, the old song "Still the Same" (1978) pushed into my consciousness — and not from the radio, because I wasn't listening to the radio most of the way (and there was only one station for over 100 miles, a religious broadcaster). The song "Still the Same" stayed in my head for HOURS. Once I got home, I looked for the lyrics on the Internet, and found not just the lyrics but also the original recording that I remembered. Its reference to gambling fitted very well, to my mind, into our two days together. Does anything from that song fit, to your mind?
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(By the way, this is, as you might realize from the scrollbar alongside this message, a long missive. If you don't have time to deal with a long email right now, please put off reading the rest till sometime more convenient.)
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You mentioned at one point that we sounded like an old married couple (squabbling, but not bitter nor viciously). I felt, as one only rarely does when meeting up again with people you haven't seen in decades, that we still had some kind of connection, however tenuous. You were not, it seemed to me, a stranger. So much had changed, but your eyes are still as pale-blue now as they ever were. People you have known for a long time but been nearby thru all that time are not the judge of whether you have changed. People who haven't seen you in a very long time are better at that, but then we get into the issue of distorted or lost memories. You and I have both assuredly changed greatly, outside. How much, however, have we changed inside?
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I felt that if we lived in the same city we might talk occasionally but might not be really close. (Did you ever go to see that friend in Montreal whom you found a little tedious?) After all, you did go off to Vancouver knowing my address in NYC but never tried to contact me there. I did NOT know your address in Vancouver, and I THOUGHT I had tried to look you up in the phone book during my couple of days in Vancouver in about 1990. You said you were listed, but then thought that maybe you weren't listed under your own name. In any case, I'm glad we got together this year.
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You have always been very special to me, and a disappointment to me, because I felt that I really loved you, and was disappointed when you played around with Paul R., something I did not expressly mention nor even make direct reference to in Montreal. (We won't talk about your behavior with other men in my bathroom during a party I had when you were visiting.) In that I had also slept with Paul (and I don't know if he's even still alive now; probably/possibly not, since he was much older than we were; and he and I ceased to be friends after that little incident, so I was never tempted to look him up), I knew what likely transpired between the two of you. Masturbatory sex with another guy is still infidelity, and tho I can be philosophical about it now, it stung at the time.
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In any case, pls listen to the song. You may not have anything like my reaction (it made me cry the first time I had something to drink[ ,] rum and cola once home, listening to it online). The premise isn't necessarily sad. You (Normand, not just some generic person) ARE still the same, in key regards. Maybe I am too. Indeed, I probably AM much the same. How, after all, is one to improve upon perfection? (Not serious.) Or imperfection. How, indeed, does anyone ever change or improve? And why, under what impetus, does one even try?
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(By the way, the main reason I did not stay near when you were speaking to the guy at the bar to whom you introduced me is that I could not hear any conversation at that distance, with music blasting. I have very great difficulty separating sounds, near from far, in-person vs. recorded. And I thought your friend probably spoke French and, as you know, I can only READ French, poorly. I certainly did not want to seem rude to him, or you, but it is hard enuf for me to converse in English in a unilingual noisy bar.)
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"Some things never change", as the song says. You found other men who wanted to be connected to you for months or years. I didn't. A few multiple, sexual repeats over the course of a few months, but nothing like a relationship.
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We were both cute, then, weren't we? I had crooked teeth, top-front, but we both had hair, then. We were adorable, separately, and were probably sickeningly adorable together, to other people. I'm very glad you had years of happiness with those other guys, and I'm very sad that one of them may die soon, much before his time, even tho you are no longer intimately connected. I'm sad for you, sad for him. I'm always sad when a good gay man dies.
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That's the only good thing about never having been involved in a long-term love relationship: you aren't traumatized to the point of barely surviving when someone dies. It's not much, but it does save terrible, terrible hurt.
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I'm very glad you said "keep in touch", whether you meant it or not. I know that I can be grating. One of my aunts (my (late) mother's (late) older sister — how do you indicate in French that someone you are referring to has died?), whom I never met but spoke with by phone a few times (unfortunately when I had been drinking, which is the only time I was inclined to call her) told me I came off as "abrasive", even tho I was talking to her in what I thought was a pleasant manner. Her son, Pete(r), my first cousin, is gay, and we met when I was in the San Francisco area (he lives in Marin County, north across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Fran). We met once, and he also apparently found me abrasive. Can't be helped. I am what I am. Some people will mesh with any personality; others will be alienated by the very same personality that others find [ ]intolerable.
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I have been drafting this message not in my email server (AOL) but in my word processor (WordPerfect) for fear of losing it if my connection to AOL should fail. When I went to store the draft before I was finished, I found that I had already opened a subdirectory ("folder") on my computer under the directory "Family & Friends" for "Normand ". I create subdirectories only when I expect to have a lot of things to store to it. But I certainly do not want to impose upon you an obligation to reply to emails you'd rather not get from me.
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No one really knows how he is either perceived or received by other people, because sometimes people are too polite to be blunt, and other times, people play games. Sometimes they are coy to people they do want to hear from. Other times, they lead on people they don't really want to hear from, to make them think they like them, just to gain their confidence, for whatever (nefarious) purpose. Sometimes an outsider can see no advantage to one person's leading another on, but what outsiders see is not the issue. A person can play games with other people's heads (that's a very 1960s-sounding phrase, but how else would one express the same concept?) for reasons that are not at all clear to other people. They may seem to have nothing to gain from it, but they do it anyway.
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I hesitated to push you to read this long message. But we're on opposite sides of a great continent, so what do I have to lose in offering to you info you may actually want to see? If you aren't interested in what I'm saying, that's fine. I have an audience for my thoughts in other forums, including two blogs, one political and one specific to Newark. [At that point, I was not updating this third blog, about gay issues. Now I am, but only occasionally.]
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I am involved in a very small group trying to organize a 50th-year reunion of my high-school graduating class (of 1962). Once we leave school, we tend to lose connections to people our own age, but are thrown into the chaos of general society. The problem with that is that we may lose the benefit of talking to people who are going thru the same thing we are, at the same time. We in the organizing 'committee' (not yet called that, however) of my impending high-school reunion want this reunion to be more thoughtful than prior reunions have been. They were dinner-dances, on one evening, with music so loud that it was hard or impossible to talk. We didn't communicate for any significant amount of time, about anything significant in our lives, even tho many of us were going thru exactly the same kinds of things at exactly the same time.
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You and I are within about six months in age. If there's something you are thinking about, a lot, that you can't talk to anyone you are now close to, maybe I can serve as sounding-board and adviser. I'm a pretty smart feller (that is an oblique reference to a 'confused' comedic reference to "fart smeller"), so you could do worse than confide in me thoughts about, for instance, an elderly parent, thoughts of one's own mortality, or a loss of physical or mental acuity (for instance, tonite I actually went thru a red lite — first time I ever noticed this particular problem — because I saw a green left-turn arrow as a green lite to go straight ahead. That could have been very serious, if not from the point of view of causing an accident, then in terms of getting an expensive traffic ticket; fortunately, no cop saw my mistake. But I did, and an indignant (black) female driver shouted at me for being "stupid". She was not out of line, tho I might prefer "insufficiently attentive and discerning". My reflexes are still very fast, and not just for my age (because I am ordinarily faster at a green lite than almost everybody else at the same lite). It's a brain-function thing, and I have been blessed/cursed with an unusually good brain and thus a high and fast brain response. But I wasn't, somehow, expecting a green left-arrow (even tho I had been at that same intersection a number of times), but only a green lite, indicating that it was alrite to go in any direction, and as soon as my mind took in the green lite, I stepped on the accelerator pedal. It could have been disastrous, and it never would have happened 20 years ago, or even 5 years ago.
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I had hoped to hear from you since I left Montreal, and did not know (or is it only "remember"?, if you told me) how long you would be in the East before returning home to Vancouver. I will not abuse the polite "keep in touch" clause in your latest email, but I did want to convey to you, tonite, some things that struck me as important. You might also like not just the "Still the Same" webpage but also some of the many songs linked to in the table at the bottom of that webpage.
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I have always known that part of me still loved you, and always been sad that your behavior and the attitudes of our respective governments kept us from forming a long-term relationship. Seeing you again confirmed that there is, from my point of view, something special about you, whether you feel the same about me or not. The ravages of time have made plain, if ever I was confused on this matter, that my feelings for you are emotional rather than physical. I don't know if every one of the men you had relationships of consequence with has told you that no matter what has happened, part of them will always love you. Maybe they have all made plain to you that that is the way they feel. Whether I am the only one or am just one of a group of ex-lovers who feel this, I want you to know, and always to be secure in this, that I really did love you, then, and still do love you, in a residual, fond, way now. I even dare think, in that you did finally contact me after these many years, that part of you will always love me too. You can correct that, if it is a misimpression. Truth trumps kindness, always. You contacted me for your own reasons, not necessarily including some kind of residual love. If it was only curiosity, I can deal with that. But it doesn't matter what you felt for me before you contacted me, and it doesn't matter what you felt when we were together in Montreal, or what you felt immediately after I left, or feel now. (A (black) woman friend of mine wondered to me in email how I could have stayed beyond my welcome if I was in Montreal for only two days. I didn't say that when you haven't seen someone in 40+ years, you dare not assume that three days wouldn't be too much.)
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You have always been special to me, before we reconnected, during our brief time together in Montreal, and after. I want you to feel free to feel special. Meeting you was very special to me. Connecting with you was very special. Sleeping with you was very special. It wasn't that it was my first time, because it WASN'T my first time. But it was special.
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When I looked into your eyes this year in Montreal, and heard your (silly) accent (really, now, you've had 40 years to lose your accent, but you have chosen to maintain it), everything came together. We were 23 years old again. Young, beautiful. And in love. Oh, yes, of course I knew, as you knew, that we lived hundreds of miles apart, and there was very little chance that we would spend the rest of our lives together. But you were so hot,so adorable, that it didn't matter. I wanted you, I got you, I adored you (a matter of sexual and affectional enthusiasm), I loved you, and when we kissed and hugged, I felt loved. It doesn't matter whether I was deluded, and you were just going thru the motions. I FELT that you loved me, and I felt honored and privileged. I would not, of course, have held back even if I didn't feel that. I held you, and hugged you, and kissed you -- and the rest -- because I felt it, and wanted you to feel it too. I feel lucky that we got together, all those years ago, even tho we couldn't manage, for all the obstacles, to stay together. And even if this email so embarrasses you because you don't know how to respond, especially if you never felt for me the intense emotions I did for you, I will never regret sending it to you. I don't want to sleep with you now, but I am very glad I did when we were young. Cheers.

Normand has not replied to my message, but I anticipated that that might happen. My words might nonetheless be of value to other people. There are things you forget, and things you never forget. Be kind to each other is always good advice, but there is a sharper message in warning people away from being unkind. Kindness and unkindness can both shape one's view of the world, so be careful how you deal each out. Sometimes you need to be hurtful to make a point that cannot be made any other way. That's the message of the 1979 song "Cruel to Be Kind". The other side of what happens when one is blunt is expressed in the 1968 song "Easy to be Hard" from the musical Hair, which is perhaps best known from the version recorded by the American band Three Dog Night. Normand thought about coming down from Montreal to the New York/Newark area while he was back East, knowing that a revival of Hair was running on Broadway. As it happened, however, he had so much traveling to do by bus to get to New Brunswick and back to Montreal that he begged off on venturing to my area, whereupon I offered to drive to Montreal, which I ended up doing.
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Far too often we edit or censor ourselves to avoid saying things that might embarrass others or ourselves. That can be considerate. Or it can be cowardly. It can spare other people's feelings, and save us embarrassment. But it can also leave so much unsaid that should be said that we end up concealing our feelings and not letting other people who might be important to us, know that they are important to us. Yes, sometimes it will embarrass another person to let him or her know that they are important to you. Other times it may be liberating, either in allowing them to express similar feelings or in letting them express feelings of their own about which they cannot know what reception they would find. There may well be some things that are better left unsaid. But how many they are, and which they might be, are two very difficult questions.
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You have to listen carefully, either to what someone else says, or avoids saying; or to your own heart, and what you need to say. If you HAVE listened, but haven't heard "No", and if what you need to say is more important than any embarrassment you might feel if you completely misunderstood someone else's behavior, then SAY IT. I did. Normand is 2,431 miles from me. He is not about to knock on my door to complain that I embarrassed him. What I said may not do him the slitest bit of good, but it has done me a world of good. Maybe you have someone you need to confront/tell something to. Do it. If you can't do it face-to-face, do it by mail, email, text message, voicemail, or suchever method that you get off your chest things that have been bothering you. If you record it in some permanent form, that allows you to review from time to time exactly what it is you said, so much the better.
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If you think my message above is a bit TOO direct, you should see the letter I sent my father to tell him I am gay. Hm. Now, where is that full text? I guess I should put that up on the Internet for young gay guys today to be able to point their own father to. It's a doozy.

Note: I have not been keeping this blog going, in favor of writing in my two other blogs, one about political matters and the other a fotoblog about Newark, NJ. Recently, however, some things have drawn my attention again, so I will be updating this more like regularly.

Extended Conversation

An oldline gay activist, Billy Glover, sometimes sends out email messages to other long-time activists, who sometimes then reply, back and forth. Here is one such recent exchange, starting last Friday, October 16th with a message from Billy titled "What the homosexual community/movement really needs is not a 'leader'". Further steps in the conversation follow, in chronological order, oldest to newest.

Once again we hear voices, after the recent March on Washington, saying that the glbt community/movement needs a "leader." This seems to me to indicate a total lack of understanding of how this movement has been so successful in going from a single closeted organization in 1950, and a single lgbt publication in 1952 to the thousands of organizations and hundreds of publications and resources that we have today. The only question we should be asking ourselves is why there are so many glbt people who are unaware of just what this community and movement does have. There is lack of communication among the various elements.

It must be said that anti-gay bigots seem to know more about what is going on in this movement than we do. It is doubtful that many of us have actually thought about all the resources we have. I urge everyone to take a look at Gayellow Pages, the print verison or online version (gypages@gmail.com). Each group or publication is so busy trying to do the job it chose to do that they do not know what others are doing. It may be good that today we can have specialized resources, much as medicine now has "specialties," but we then face the same problem medicine is facing, a lack of general physicians, since everyone wants to "specialize" and have more influence.

But the reason we have been so wildly successful is that mostly we have all worked for the main purpose of gaining our civil/equal rights. Only in the last decade have we started specializing in having organizations for each of the areas, thus we have Lambda Legal and National Center for Lesbian Rights, GLAD, etc (as well as the ACLU) to work on legal issues. We have organizations for religious work, such as Dignity, Affirmation (Methodist and Mormon), Kinship (Seventh Day Adventist), etc. We have an organization working for youth, GLSEN, and there are groups for each profession; medicine, anthropology, law, journlism, etc.

And while most of our lgbt newspapers and magazine try to give coverage to all of our areas and groups, they don't always seem to do a good job. It seems that many editors and journalists think that we want to know more about the latest celebrity to come "out" than we do about what activities are going on in our community. How often do papers cover our libraries/archives? Do we know of the glbt book clubs? and the travel articles seem to think we would not want to know where the local gay center is in major cities, but only want to know where the closest bar and bathhouse or cafe is. We don't need a lgbt guide to tell us where a local museum is, general guides do that.

And too often when an issue is in discussion, a "specialized" group says they are not interested in it but only in their little domain-as if a religious organization has no interest in gay bars being attacked by police, or a legal organization has no interest in films that are pro or con.

There are a few efforts to get us informed on coverage of glbt issues. Daily Queer News (dailyqueernews@yahoo.com) tries to give us links to what is in the news that we should be aware of. For entertainment news there is Coming Out Support Weekly (onqyb@aol.com). There are others. But if we don't know about these resources they can not help build communication and cooperation within our movement. And thus the hundreds of good leaders working in various organizations, local and national, will not be able to support each other.

Celebrate our diversity. There is no competition among us except to se what we can all do to educate ourselves and the public on the truth about homosexuality. There is no reason to oppose a "march' or say we must only work on a federal/national level or that we must attack an organization that has chosen to work on only one aspect.

We must practice what we preach. We have to acknowledge that there are really gay Republicans as well as Democrats. That some of us are members of PLAGAL and are pro-life, while many of us are pro-choice. There are those who are allies and work with PFLAG, many of whom have lgbt children. And there is COLAGE, for children who have glbt parents.

There is no reason those who fear the lies of the religions can not work with those who choose to stay in the religious community and try to bring about better understanding and change.

We can be proud, of each generation that has added to our work, from the founders of Mattachine, ONE/HIC and DOB in the 1950s to those at Stonewall, and those who did the various "marches" and those who join us each day. THOSE WHO MARCHED Sunday will someday be pioneers. We are all pioneers, and we must have done something right, we are slowly but surely changing the world.

I replied.

You're certainly right about lack of communication. I didn't know anything about a march on Washington until I caught the end of a brief news story on TV. Yet, I have a website that has been up for years, and has an email address plainly shown and clickable!
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However, we have NOT been "wildly successful". "Don't ask-don't tell" is still in place, as is the Defense of Marriage Act. NJ still, despite a pledge from Governor Corzine to sign a bill after the 2008 election, does not have same-sex marriage — and his opponent in the current gubernatorial election has pledged to veto any such measure if it comes to his desk — even as NH, a much more conservative state overall, does have same-sex marriage. 45 states do not permit same-sex marriage at all. There are gay-bashings even in liberal places, such as a well-publicized case in NYC last week. But apart from the legalities and bigotries of straight people, gay men are still isolated, gender-confused, unloved, unloving, and self-rejecting for much of their lives.
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You are also wrong about religious organizations arising only in the last decade. The Episcopalian group Dignity, a Presbyterian group, and others, have existed for at least 35 years. And a Catholic group also called Dignity claims an origin in 1969!
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Anything that uses the word "queer" is the ENEMY, and you must not recommend it, nor tell gay men that they have an obligation to see themselves as grotesque.
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It is NOT POSSIBLE for gay men to work constructively with lesbians if to do so requires men to identify as women and take on women's issues — such as militant condemnation of pornography — that are diametrically opposed to what gay men want, sexual freedom. And it is NOT POSSIBLE to work constructively with gender-confused loons if to do so requires well-adjusted gay men to "accept" the "legitimacy" of their confusions, and identify with gender confusion and even PROMOTE it, as those loons do. Any engagement of well-adjusted gay men with gender-confused people should be to try to UNCONFUSE them and give them back their manhood.
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So I'm not sure what the purpose of your email is. There is no unified information source because each group has its own agenda, and most are anti-gay, in the sense of being hostile to gay men as MEN, and promoting self-hatred and confusion by promoting a "community" that does not exist, membership in which requires each real community to give up some of its own identity and take on the incompatible identity of the others. Confused losers who really do see themselves as "queer" — grotesque, bizarre, extremely rare and deformed — cannot teach anyone anything.

Billy responded:

It may not be easy, and young people sure have no idea of how it was, BUT I can testify that my life is much easier today than it was in the 50s when I grew up and the 60s on when I got involved in this civil rights movement. There is a scale, let's say, from 0 to 100 and I can tell you that I believe we are 60-% there, from 1950 which was 0.

That prompted an email from someone I don't know.

I understand Craig's points, but I think some of them seem cranky — except for the "Cheers" signoff, which I like. I agree with you, Billy, that we're at least at 60% if not a bit further. I also agree that there's too little awareness by the gay man on the street of the extent of the gay "community," even as the word "community" itself has become something of an unthinking cliché in his mouth.

Craig is right that the growth of specialized groups, including religious ones, began much longer ago than 10 years--though the Episcopal group is called Integrity, not Dignity. [Oops. I couldn't keep the -ity's 'straight' in my memory after decades.]

I think Craig is a little behind the times when lamenting feminist anti-pornography crusades. Their day is largely past, and many feminists today take a much more enlightened, sex-positive view of such matters — even though, of course, to the extent that the pornography industry actually does exploit women, they still decry it. I think, by and large, it's quite possible to work with feminists, even though too many of them take one look at a white male face and assume the worst. I also think that, even though most states don't allow same-sex marriage, the day when many more of them do is coming fast. I just got back from a nephew's heterosexual wedding in Dubuque, where even though it's in a notably conservative part of a rather conservative state (which paradoxically allows same-sex marriage), and even though part of my family is bigoted and religiously backward, other parts have been surprisingly accepting of me and my partner of 30 years.

Cheers--

Bill Kelley, Chicago

I replied first to Billy.

You are more easily satisfied than I. Even if one were to concede a 60%-of-the-way progress mark, I don't regard that as a great leap forward for 60 YEARS. 1% a year?

Then I responded to Kelley:

Feminists demand that gay allies endorse all (lesbian-)feminist demands, including abortion-on-demand, even if that means that women kill boy babies and if a test is developed that detects a "gay gene", women then selectively kill gay babies. Allying with people other than gay men imposes upon gay men an insistence that they compromise away their principles and identity. No thanks.

Kelley followed up.

Does this mean you favor abortion rights as long as there's no targeting of male or gay fetuses?

Or are you just against abortion rights generally?

Either way, there are feminists who will ally with people who support some feminist goals (for instance, an end to sexual stereotyping, or equal pay for equal work) even if they don't support other feminist goals (for instance, abortion rights).

I clarified:

There's no such thing as a right to kill a baby, whether that baby be "yours" or someone else's. No child's life depends upon his/her parents "wanting" them. That gay men, many of whom suffer child-hunger at some point in life, should feel themselves compelled to back abortion-on-demand, even of gay baby boys, as part of the crazy bargain to seek larger numbers for political purposes, is tragic and insanely contemptible. The im/morality of abortion becomes plain when one does a very quick check. Offer a compromise where black babies could be aborted on demand but not white babies. Would blacks regard that as being granted superior rights or as being an attack upon blacks? For gay men to be told that women have the right to kill their child, and gay men have to support that "right", is to say that the powerful have the right to kill the weak, which is a very dangerous stance for gay men — and lesbians — to take.

Wayne Dynes joined in, addressing the hazards of allying with feminist women.

I agree with Bill K. that we can, in principle, ally with other groups working for social change on an issue-for-issue basis. However, it takes two to tango. All too often the groups we seek to woo either ignore us or ask that we sign on he dotted line for all of their causes — that is, be auxiliaries.

Abortion is a good example of such a nonnegotiable demand. My own position, for what it is worth, is that under certain circumstances abortion is justified in the first trimester. Not after that, because one is clearly dealing with a human being. Both sides of course demand absolute obedience: either abortion a gogo, or never at all.

At a recent meeting commemorating GLF John Lauritsen recounted his experience in 1969 of being in a delegation to the local NYC branch of the Black Panthers to bring them some money. They reluctantly agreed to take the "faggot donation." Lauritsen rightly called them out on this. During the seventies I remember trying to work with lesbian feminists. All I got from this was a reputation for being a misogynist, which I am not.

In 1993 a leftist-feminist cabal brought down my Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, which has been out of print ever since. I understand that feminists have moderated. As a result of my experiences, however, I want no part of them.

I followed up.

MANY organizations were destroyed by lesbians, deliberately by malice, happenstantially by driving away men who wanted a place where they could be comfortable with men. Of course, there are many ways organizations are destroyed. The group I founded at City College in April 1969, Homosexuals Intransigent!, was destroyed by a pathological liar and thief who worked his way into a position of power, divided the membership, stole the small treasury (about $107, a bit more meaningful in 1972 but not a huge amount), and skipped town, leaving the group too shattered to recover. Another small group I founded, Homosexuals In Mensa, was destroyed when National Mensa said it would recognize only one National Special Interest Group around the issue of homosexuality, and pitted us against a West Coast group that permitted women and straights. My guys didn't want to fite, so I abandoned the group — and left Mensa. The West Coast group didn't do much, but since I left Mensa, I have no idea whether it is still going. (The founder, by the way, died young, of a brain tumor or something.)
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The fact that too few people seem [to] understand (tho they actually must) is that gay men are, for the most part — and especially young gay men, and boys in advance of adulthood — "damaged goods", severely maladjusted to their own nature by being pushed and pulled from birth to be something they are not. Too little recognition of their weak ego and insecure, frail identity is given by organizations that misconceive the purpose of The Movement to be gaining political power and political change. It doesn't matter if the laws change and even some social attitudes change if a person has been wrecked by years of trying to live up to expectations. Those expectations and assumptions will long survive any change in law.
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This is why my focus has always been on what I proposed for the weekend around the first march commemorating Stonewall: Gay Pride, not Gay Power. Because you can have pride without power, and power without either pride or happiness.
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I had an email exchange on this topic with a leading Liberal activist here in Newark, who had forwarded to me notice of an "LGBT" event (note, of course, that L is always first; gay men are second-class citizens in their own Movement) for possible inclusion in my well-regarded Newark fotoblog, "Newark USA": >>We are exactly a week away from Newark Pride Alliance's fundraiser: A Toast to Newark's Future: In Support of the Safe Spaces Initiative to be held on October 13th. All funds from the event will be used to support an after school program for LGBT youth, co-developed by The Hetrick-Martin Institute and Newark Pride Alliance.<<

I replied: >>I WHOLLY disapprove of compelling gay boys to identify as lesbians and gender-confused loons. In no way will I advance the corralling of gay boys in a demi-monde where their identity will be confused and they will be forced to regard themselves as freaks.<<

He then said: >>As a heterosexual I guess that I do not have a full understanding of all LGTB issues. It is my understanding the LGTB pride movement is akin to the freedom/civil rights movement.<<

To which I replied: >>NO, the comparison to a political movement in which the more people you can get, the better, is at best misleading. Even in political movements you have to be careful about whom you associate with, as the William Ayers tempest-in-a-teapot showed. In any political coalition there is risk of contamination of a movement by affiliation with an ideology that is inconsistent with or even antithetical to the base purpose of that coalition. And members of a political group from different ideologies can strive for primacy, and produce the splintering of the group. That would be bad enuf.
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But the other side of the movements among gay men, lesbians, and people who are tragically confused about what they are, is a support group, in which people find others like themselves, when they thought they were alone, and can share and get reinforcement, not subversion. When a troubled kid is thrown in with people who are completely UNlike him and told that they are in fact COMPLETELY like him and he has an obligation to identify with them, disaster can ensue. Kids who know they are NOT like, for instance, gender-confused losers who dress in drag and want their genitals chopped off and a slit sliced into their crotch, may have the good sense to leave that group before too much harm is done. Kids who do NOT know what they are or want may be drawn into a nitemare world of confusion that could cause them to have themselves castrated. This is a very serious matter, and a firm gender identity is the sine qua non to happy personal adjustment, and without a happy adjustment to their own reality, political power is worthless. Of what value is it to gain the right to marry if nobody wants to get married and you can't find anybody to marry because you don't know what gender you are and the people you encounter are as confused as you? There is no such thing as an "LGBT..." community, but there is such a movement, and that movement is the enemy of gay men.<<

That is how the conversation ended — pr at ;east stands as of late Monday.

Equality for Us, Not You. Amid all the celebrating over the election of a (half-)black man as President, only a relative few people realized that on Election Day 2008, bigotry won three big triumphs. Existing same-sex marriage was undone by the yahoos of California, and banned by other yahoos in Arizona and Florida. That would be bad enuf. Worse, blacks and Hispanics — no: niggers and spics; if they can be bigoted against us, we can retaliate in kind — joined in the bigotry, voting in large majorities to take away from gay and lesbian Californians, rights that they assert for themselves, and to keep people in Arizona and Florida from ever having equal rights. This is not, for gay men, "the land of the free and the home of the brave".
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So bigoted, at essence, is this country that you couldn't even hear that story until the second half hour of extended broadcasts of the network evening news on Wednesday, not even Tuesday nite. It did not even make it into the standard half-hour nitely newscast, because antihomosexual bigotry is of no importance to the straight people who control media, as they control government.
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Obama and Biden helped take away gay men's and lesbians' rights in California, and to keep them second-class citizens in Arizona and Florida, in forthrightly standing against same-sex "marriage". So how are we supposed to rejoice in their victory? They are a tad less bigoted than the Radical Right, but still bigoted. Their election is not a big advance for human rights. Where was their bravery, to stand against bigotry in this "land of the free and the home of the brave"? What do they care about our rights? They've got theirs. Our not having ours is not their problem.
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So much for brave words like "Freedom is indivisible", something we used to say in the Sixties. Who coined that expression? Here's a longer quote. You should be able to guess the speaker before you get to the end:

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

— Speech in Berlin (26 June 1963)

It would seem that Barack Obama is the poor man's JFK, not a "new, improved" version. He might nonetheless meet the same fate, as the alienated white people who voted 57% against him decide to "take back this country". They may have lost it by the ballot, but feel they can take it back by bullet. Should that happen, do not be surprised if gay men do not join in the wailing and moaning over the death of a man who wanted equality for black people but opposed it for gay people.

Logo's Militant Antimale Propaganda. Most people may not be aware of it, but there is now supposed to be a "gay" cable channel, called Logo. Unfortunately, Logo is, quite the contrary of what you might expect, viciously anti homosexual. Gay men are marginal to Logo's concerns. Most of its schedule is given over to women and "transsexuals", and the bulk of its programming about gay men shows them (well, us) as diseased and dying, or as murderers. Yes, you read right: murderers.
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While channel-surfing at 3:30 this morning, I checked Logo, and, once again, it is showing Swoon, a 1992 movie about the Leopold and Loeb case, in which two demented Jewish faggots in 1924 Chicago abducted and killed a little boy just to see how it felt. Oh, that's very gay, and gives us such a warm feeling about ourselves, doesn't it?
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Another Logo offering about gay men is a lovely little 1997 film called The Delta, which ends with a gay Vietnamese man in Mississippi luring a gay black man to a boat, then strangling him to death! Isn't that charming?
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Again and again, Logo shows gay men as peripheral to the "gay" (meaning "lesbian") world, dying from AIDS, and killing people. How on Earth did this happen?
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The 'people' responsible for Logo need to be beaten, preferably to death, or at the very, very least, sued for hundreds of millions of dollars for group slander against gay men. The picture of gay men on Logo is unrelentingly negative: we are supposedly confused about gender, shot thru with disease that kills us (rightfully, it would seem from Logo's endless focus on AIDS as "gay plague"), and filled with homicidal rage toward each other — not homosexual lust.
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I have tried to watch Logo, on average, twice a day every day since it started operations on June 30, 2005, but have had to turn it off in disgust, or rage, essentially every time, within at most 5 minutes. Typically, the first thing you see and/or hear when you tune to Logo is a woman. If there's not a woman onscreen that moment, there will be within three minutes. Never are men alone with men on Logo for more than five minutes. The commercials are essentially all straight. And Logo even shows HETEROSEXUAL commercials for "male enhancement", not just victimizing but also attacking gay men in trying to defraud them.
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Logo has ONE program for gay men on its entire schedule, Noah's Arc, which is all-black. White gay men have no place on Logo, even tho we are the bulk of the community.
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Queer as Folk, Showtime's odious Canadian "lesbigay" drama, takes up much of the time that is supposed to be devoted to programming for gay men, but it is heavily lesbian and heterosexual. Men's relationships with men are completely subordinated to the various heterosexual or lesbian plotlines, and, again, the longest that men are shown alone with men is approximately three minutes. Ever. The men (several, including the most central character, played by straight actors) are shown involved in various combinations of self-destructive behaviors, from smoking to using hard drugs: to quote Wikipedia, "(cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, GHB, ketamine, cannabis)". But the AIDS developed by the drug-soaked "fast lane" homosexuals who used most of those drugs, in combination!, had nothing to do with the chemicals in drugs but only with sex. (Of course it did.) Some of the characters are effeminate. Some are airheads, even prostitutes (hustlers). Ah, so accurate a portrayal of our lives and loves.
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Not surprisingly, Wikipedia says:

The American version of Queer as Folk quickly became the number one show on the Showtime roster. The network's initial marketing of the show was primarily targeted at gay male (and to some extent, lesbian) audiences, yet a sizeable segment of the viewership turned out to be heterosexual women.

Certainly Queer as Folk is unfit for gay men's eyes and ears. It is horrible, horrible, antigay garbage that should be destroyed in every copy.
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Logo is a project of Viacom, one of the world's largest media companies, which, according to Wikipedia, comprises:

Film Production and Distribution: Viacom International, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Republic Pictures, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies, Go Fish Pictures
Television Networks: Comedy Central, Logo, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, Noggin, The N, Nick Jr., TEENick, MTV, VH1, MTV2, CMT, MHD
Television Production and Television Distribution: DreamWorks Television
Video Gaming: Xfire, Harmonix, GameTrailers, Neopets

It plainly has the resources to create quality programming directed to self-respecting, well-adjusted gay men. The refusal to create such series or even TV movies speaks volumes about media hatred of gay men.
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If comparable, viciously negative stereotypes about blacks were aired by a cable network proclaiming itself "black", the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons would be leading demonstrations in the streets. Gay men, almost completely absent from mainstream media, are expected to shut up and accept crumbs, even if those crumbs are laced with rat poison.
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Logo's sole real focus is lesbians and "transsexuals", who are praised explicitly and implicitly. Gay men are NEVER to be seen unless their presence is 'balanced' (overbalanced) by equal or greater numbers of lesbians, within seconds or at most a very few minutes. The idea of so much as a half hour being given over to gay men, WITHOUT women, is unthinkable. Again and again the message is sent: women with women is OK; men with men but WITHOUT women is just plain wrong, utterly evil and insane.
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Gay men who choose to keep their genitalia are viciously and repeatedly defamed, and encouraged to redefine themselves as women, then have themselves castrated to conform to the anti-gay, antimale prejudices of the lunatics who control Logo.
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A firebomb or three tossed into the executive offices of the subhuman scum responsible for Logo, at the height of the business day, could do a lot of good.

Saving a Senator. Idaho Senator Larry Craig is expected to announce his resignation today. I am trying to head that off. A few minutes ago, at about 7:20am, I sent the following message via feedback form at the Senator's website.

DON'T RESIGN; FIGHT BACK!

(Note to staff: I know that Senator Craig is not in Washington today. I'm not even certain anyone is in his office on a Saturday, altho this Saturday of all Saturdays, someone assuredly SHOULD be. PLEASE contact the Senator urgently, as by cellphone, BEFORE he makes any statement to the press, to convey to him the sense of this message, if not even to read aloud every single word or forward it to his email in Idaho. He needs to consider this.)
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IF SENATOR VITTER, also a Republican, wasn't forced to resign despite his illicit heterosexual activity, why should you resign over illicit homosexual activity? It's time for you to come out fighting. That means first, to "come out" and come clean with Idahoans about your biological need for sex with men, and second, to fight, not just for yourself, but for the right of all men to have sex with men in dignified settings if they so desire, and not be forced into the shadows.
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I am the man who in 1970 coined the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used. You need to listen to me. I'm on your side (assuming you really are sexually drawn to men; but, then, why else would you resign? Resignation constitutes admission, and no one will reach any other conclusion if you resign).
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Vitter admitted to involvement with prostitutes. You didn't pay anyone – except the State of Minnesota, which should be ashamed of itself for entrapping you and other men seeking consensual sex, and extorting money from you. There is a fundamental issue of equality here that you as a United States Senator must stand up for. You weren't caught "in flagrante delicto" in front of little children. You were arrested for tapping your foot! How on Earth does that rise to the level of an offense that requires resignation from the United States Senate?
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There's another public-policy issue I have not seen discussed. Is it really proper for a police department to release to the public the tapes of a police interrogation? Aren't there serious privacy issues involved here?
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Moreover, WHAT ABOUT entrapment? You raised the issue when arrested, and it is a HUGE issue. Surely in a country as filled with robbery, drugs, gangs, violence, and murder as ours, there are far better uses for police than entrapping men who are merely looking for trivial physical activity that gives pleasure to both participants. Give the cops hell. Tell Minnesota that if it has police to waste on entrapping homosexuals, then its police department is too large, and should be cut drastically in staffing and budget, as to save Minnesota taxpayers, gay and straight alike, from the obligation to PAY for police misconduct.
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What you pled guilty to was not a felony, not a crime against humanity, but little more serious than a speeding ticket. You must not resign from the Senate over a speeding ticket. Sex is TRIVIAL, and every adult KNOWS it is trivial. Say so, repeatedly.
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Why should men who feel sexual attraction to men go along with society's preposterous prejudices? Don't play their game. For once in your life, stand up for yourself. Because it's NOT JUST YOURSELF that you would be standing up for. You need to stand up for all men struggling with an attraction to men that they did not choose to feel and can do nothing to deny. You tried, didn't you? You lost. Because in a contest between your authentic self and the person others may want you to be, the authentic self can be suppressed only so long. Eventually, he's going to win out. And that's a good thing.
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Stand up for the kid just starting to wonder what's wrong with him. Stand up for the men entrapped, arrested, intimidated, robbed, beaten, even killed by bigots and opportunists. If you had stood up ten years ago, and done something to change social attitudes, people like Matthew Shepard in your neighboring State of Montana might still be alive. Conversely, however, if you let the bigots win, and run away from the challenge, there may be other men who will suffer death or psychic destruction at the hands of a society that doesn't mean to be monstrously intolerant, but is.
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I have been to Idaho, twice, and do not believe the people of Idaho in general are vicious bigots, tho of course some are. You need to give Idahoans the chance to show their true colors, as understanding human beings who can appreciate how difficult it must be for someone who was raised to be straight but finds it's just not in him, or as narrow-minded yahoos who can't accept the right of anyone to be different from themselves.
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I think you, and the Nation, might be pleasantly surprised by the decency and tolerance of the people of Idaho. What disgusts Idahoans, as it disgusts Americans generally, is not so much your need for men but your disgraceful hypocrisy. Disown the hypocrisy. Own up to being homosexual, and the revulsion people feel for your conduct will drop to manageable proportions. Yes, some people will be offended that you want sex with men. Most people will understand that everybody wants sex with somebody, and it's all pretty much the same.
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What matters is not whom you want but how you treat the person. If David Vitter can get away with kinky sex with female prostitutes, surely you should be able to get away with nonkinky sex with men, in which no money changes hands. It's all in how you handle it (the issue, that is). Do not accept the right of straights to be perverts yet remain in the Senate while gay men must resign just for being gay. Jim McGreevey, Governor of my State (New Jersey) did that. He could have served as the first openly gay governor of a State!, but resigned. You can serve as the first openly gay member of "the world's greatest deliberative body". (And stop the definitional quibbling, "gay" as against "homosexual". You want sex with men, you're gay. You're "bisexual", as provocative Comedy Central comic Carlos Mencía says, you're gay. The DENIAL is what infuriates people. Stop denying. Own up. Take responsibility. Be yourself. Then people will respect you. They may not agree with you, but they'll respect you. And that's a lot more than you've got right now.
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Idahoans can grow, to accept the otherness of others, but they need leadership. You're supposed to be a leader.
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To understand what homosexual boys and then men go thru in trying to cope with their different nature when surrounded by people unlike themselves, Idahoans need an actual person to sympathize with. You are a person.
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The Republican Party also needs to grow, and stop being the party of vicious intolerance and closed-mindedness. If the national party won't support you, shame them. They want to shame you. No. Shame them! People such as the present leadership of the Republican Party are the ones responsible for making your life miserable. They are the ones who made you feel bad about yourself, who forced you into a lie of a marriage, who forced you to say terrible things about people like yourself, in order to curry favor with them. You owe antihomosexual bigots nothing. You owe homosexuals everything, because they are you. And you have an obligation to you.
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You need to accept your nature and become champion for gay men. You didn't ask for this responsibility. It was thrust upon you. If you are not up to it, then, and only then, the fault will be in you. Be certain of this: if you resign, you WILL regret not accepting the challenge and fighting your best fight, for your best self.
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So apologize to everyone you have deceived. Apologize for the terrible things you felt you had to say to cover up your nature. But don't "go along to get along" anymore. Break with the past. Be a man— a man who needs men. There is no shame in that. There is, however, great shame in denying your nature, turning against yourself and your own people, and sending the wrong message. Resigning would send the wrong message: that gay men should be ashamed of themselves, and that there is no room in the highest levels of government for an open, self-accepting, yes proud, gay man.
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The press is expecting a resignation today, which would send the message that homosexual men have no right to be in the United States Senate. Surprise the bastards. Tell them that 62 years of trying to be something you're not is enough, and that it's time now for you to be you, no longer ashamed, no longer intimidated, no longer hiding and playing the game.
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You're not going to live forever. You have the right to some happiness before you die. You won't get it by caving in to the bigots, sticking to the lie, and hiding in shame until you die in disgrace.
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Thirty years from now, you can be a footnote or a giant. How do you want to be remembered?

Gay men have no Senators to champion their interests. Larry Craig could be our champion. Will he? I have done what I can to persuade him. If he is intent on getting this whole thing behind him as soon as possible, he may rush to do the wrong thing. Will he understand that, subconsciously, he brought this exposure upon himself deliberately, because he wanted to be forced to deal with being gay, and to assume his responsibilities as a gay man in a powerful, political position? Darn. I neglected to make that point above. Ah well, he's unlikely to hear what I tried to tell him before he meets the press today. When one has no influence, one has no responsibility. But I tried anyway. If he makes the wrong decision, it's not my fault.

Hypocritical, Puritanical Noise. Media have been abuzz the past couple of days about — heaven forfend! — sex. It seems a U.S. Senator from Idaho was arrested in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport for soliciting sex in a men's room. Except of course he didn't actually DO anything. He didn't touch anybody, didn't expose himself, didn't say a word to ask for sex. In short, he did NOT commit anything that the law should regard as a crime, not ANYTHING.
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He was entrapped by antihomosexual police in a supposedly liberal state. That is both unexpected and outrageous. If the police in the Minneapolis area have so little to do that they have to induce gay men into approaching vice officers, then the Minneapolis police force should be chopped drastically in size and budget, so Minnesotans — including gay Minnesotans — can save some money on their tax bill. Are all parts of the Twin Cities crime-free? Or are police too cowardly to face off against real criminals, preferring to work the men's room while armed thugs victimize Minnesotans elsewhere, free of worry that they might be caught by cops who are busy harassing homosexuals in safe areas?
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The evil cops working to trap gay men should be transferred to the worst neighborhoods of America's cities, to face down the Bloods and Crips, and protect college kids from being murdered in cold blood in schoolyards. Send them to Newark, L.A., or the South Bronx. Let them earn their pay and actually protect somebody.
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Hoping to avoid public exposure, Senator Larry Craig (Hm, "L. Craig". Now, where have I heard that?) pled guilty to disorderly conduct and paid a fine of several hundred dollars. He also got a year's unsupervised probation. For tapping his foot in a men's room stall. Has this society lost its mind?
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We have murders all over this country that the police can't solve, and we're misdirecting police resources to arresting men for tapping their foot in a men's room. Senator Craig should be fiting such nonsense, not paying extortion to the state. But it's worse than extortion by criminals. The typical blackmailer doesn't take the money and then tell the secrets anyway.
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The self-righteous claptrap — an appropriate word, considering how much venereal disease there is in this Nation of Whores — about how 'disgusting' it is of some gay men to seek sex in public places, is nothing but bullsh*t. Straight people, various media commentators declaim virtuously, don't cruise lavatories for sex. Oh? And why might that be? Because men's rooms and women's rooms are separated, that's why. And why, exactly, is that? Because if both sexes shared the same lavatories, nobody offended by sex could use them much of the day and nite because straight people would be screwing around in them at all hours, that's why. Late-nite cable TV runs a commercial for a phone-sex line in which a man and woman come out of a stall in a public restroom. But that's just fantasy, right? And, of course, 'normal', so not disgusting. Are we to believe that heterosexual sex in public restrooms never really happens? Then how is it we hear stories about it? Because it does happen. And heterosexual public sex doesn't happen just in lavatories when no one's around. Straights have sex everywhere!
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The delicate, antisexual sensibilities we hear all over the media would be persuasive in the Islamic Republic of Iran, but not in the United Whores of America. In the typical year, 1.5 million babies are born out of wedlock (36% of all births in the United States; 64% for black women). 19 million cases of venereal disease (or "STD's", to use this week's fad term) are recorded each year. Millions of (heterosexual) marriages have been destroyed by infidelity, including on the part of at least one leading contender for the Republican Party's nomination for President. There's an awful lot of illicit sex going on among straight people in this country, and everybody knows it.
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So why are so many people in media feigning shock over sex among gay men in supposedly 'public' places (tho plainly not in public view)? Straight people are having sex all over the place, in movie theaters, airliners (the "Mile High Club" we hear so much about), parks, parking lots, "lover's lanes" — hell, in the car at the curb outside their girlfriend's house. Under bleachers, behind garages, in alleys, in bars and dance clubs, in sex clubs, in strip clubs. Babysitters and their boyfriends screw on the couch while the kids sleep a few yards away. What about all those lapdances in "gentlemen's clubs"? Porno videos offered by 'legitimate' video rental companies? Porn on cable TV that is shown not just in one's bedroom but even in public places? Straight porno theaters and peep shows? Legal prostitution in Nevada? Brothels in other places that the police take payoffs to let operate unfettered? "Escort" services? Hardcore and softcore heterosexual porn magazines available on publicly viewable racks at newsstands? Talk Sex with Sue Johanson on Oxygen TV? The repellant dwarf Ruth Westheimer? As long ago as 1992-96, Bob Berkowitz had a sex-talk show on CNBC. Where there's talk, there's action. (More talk than action, perhaps, but still some action.) TV takes ads for phone sex. And the Internet is filled with sexchat. What about that ad campaign from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas"? I don't think those ads are talking about sightseeing trips to Hoover Dam. And do we really need to point out that the Internet is filled with fotografic and video porn?
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On the Tonight Show this evening, a young man told of staying at his girlfriend's house overnite. The girl's parents put him and their dauter in separate rooms. After they had all gone to bed, however, he sneaked into his girlfriend's room. They thought they had got away with it until the following morning when the family dog sauntered into the kitchen during breakfast, with a used condom in his mouth. What a deliteful, charming story about today's upstanding youth. (That particular youth was Canadian (as is Talk Sex hostess Sue Johanson), but American kids sneak around in their parents' house too, to screw around very quietly while their parents sleep in the next room.) So why the pretense that gay men's looking for sex wherever they might find it is somehow outrageous, but heterosexual society's obsession with sex is completely unobjectionable?
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Straight society needs to admit that it is saturated in sex. Four-year-old girls dress up like sluts in kiddie beauty pageants and 12-year-olds gyrate suggestively in talent contests, their face painted like that of an aging $5 hooker.
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John McCain, the Superloon among the announced Republican candidates for President, has disgraced himself yet again in urging Senator Craig to resign from what is called "the world's greatest deliberative body" because he tapped his shoe on a men's room floor! The 'crime' of which McCain complained was a misdemeanor, about as significant, legally, as a speeding ticket. I've said it before and will probably have to say it again: John McCain is out of his mind. I don't know if he always was, or if the North Vietnamese destroyed his mind in the Hanoi Hilton. At end, it doesn't matter. He's nuts.
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Mormon candidate for President, Mitt Romney, member of a cult that has ruined myriad lives with its lunacy, forced Craig out of his campaign committee, apparently fearful of being 'tainted' by association with homos. Romney is more than a bit too goodlooking to be seen as comfortable with "faggots". I wonder about him. That's called "gaydar", and mine pings when I watch Romney.
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I am indignant and contemptuous of all this ridiculous posturing by imitation-righteous straight people that gay men are somehow depraved for looking for sex in public restrooms. Straight society makes it impossible for gay men to meet one another in the wholesome places straight people go to "hook up". We can't look openly at each other at a church social, PTA meeting, supermarket, laundromat, or (straight) bar, and strike up a relaxed conversation, to find out if we have enuf in common to investigate forming a relationship or even just take a quick roll in the hay. No, we're forced into the shadows, and then bitched at for living in the shadows!
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By contrast, this supposedly antisexual society pushes boys and girls at each other from a very early age. It not only countenances sexual activity that it supposedly disapproves of, but actually facilitates it. Prom nite is almost a required virginity-ender, and despite the best efforts of modern-day Puritans to promote abstinence, the age at which Americans typically lose their virginity is 17, and only 4% of Americans remain virgins their entire life. Presumably many of those people have serious physical handicaps or are in religious orders that forbid sexual activity (not that that stops everyone in such orders).
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Last nite, on MSNBC Live With Dan Abrams, the host and fellow rightwingers Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson all played very innocent, as tho a sexual thought never entered any of their heads. Carlson bragged about having fought back against a man who "bothered" him in Washington. The poor baby was so scared he had to run for help to a friend, then bring the friend back, throw the offender against a wall, and have him arrested. For what? Today he clarified why he reacted so violently, while denying the violence he had admitted the nite before:

Let me be clear about an incident I referred to on MSNBC last night: In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men’s room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men’s room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.

Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That’s absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn’t angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.

Neither Hannity nor Abrams had ever had such difficulties, and gay men looking for sex are almost always easily discouraged by pointed shows of uninterest. If they persist, a firm "No" or "Hey, get away from me" suffices.
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Let me point out to these innocent babes in the sexual woods that WOMEN are harassed by heterosexual men all the time, everywhere they go. They are "hit upon" by men they have no interest in. They are whistled at and hooted at by men on the street as they simply go about their business. In bars, aggressive men crowd them, brush against them, say suggestive things to them, offer to buy them drinks (which would, the men think, indebt the woman to the man who treated them), put their hands on them, in innocent places and not-so-innocent places. If every heterosexual man who crossed the line with a woman were thrown up against a wall and arrested, our entire national budget would be spent on jails and prisons.
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So cut the crap. The little Mother Tucker was subjected to some of what women go thru every day, and it hurt his little feelings! Poor thing. That's the real issue here: heterosexual men's feeling threatened by being treated, to their mind, like women. That threatens their manhood. It shouldn't. A gay man's "hitting on them" proves not their lack of manhood but their masculine appeal, because gay men want men, not women. It is a compliment to his manhood that a gay man might be drawn to a (straight) man.
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Straight men need to get a life — and stick to it. That's the real problem, and the real reason there are police actions against homosexuality, even after the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws on the basis that they violate privacy rights. So cops go out of their way to entrap gay men into public "lewd conduct".
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Straight men are terrified of their own homosexual thoughts and desires. They are afraid that if society doesn't keep them on the straight and narrow, they are going to find themselves in the arms (and other parts) of a man, because they know that they have all had thoughts about guys and cannot find men's bodies disgusting because they would have to find themselves disgusting. They may never have been tempted, yet, but, they think, that might just be because they haven't met the right man. Yet. Maybe there is a man out there, somewhere, with piercing blue eyes or a smile that lites up the room who would make their heart pound and other parts push them to contact.
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I'm the last person in the world to say it couldn't happen. But straight men are much more commonly tempted to heterosexual sex. That does not argue for them outlawing heterosexual sex or forbidding all situations in which temptation might arise. Where is the insistence that Louisiana Senator Vitter, who cheated on his wife with (female) prostitutes, resign? Nowhere, that's where.
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Senator Craig's real offense, and the reason people who should be sympathetic to a man who has sexual desires for men that cause him anguish, are instead indignant and out to "get him", is hypocrisy. He has made all kinds of antihomosexual noise, working to prevent gay marriage and otherwise promote antigay bigotry. We react to such behavior on the part of a man with overpowering sexual desire for men as we would to a "high yellow" 'black' man passing as white and becoming Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.
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The hypocrisy of straight society about opposing gay marriage allegedly out of concern over the sanctity of (heterosexual) marriage is detestable. The bulk of states in recent decades made marriage so trifling and the legal causes for divorce so trivial that they catastrophically weakened the institution long before gay men pressed for the extension of marriage to gay couples. Nevada, which could be regarded as Satan's home state, dares to pretend to be concerned about the sanctity of marriage, and inserted a provision into its constitution to define marriage as a legal union of one man and one woman. So all those legal prostitutes in Nevada surely must determine that a man is unmarried before having sex with him, right? No? If not, then Nevada isn't concerned about defending the sanctity of marriage at all, just in reserving some rights for straight people, including the right to have sex for money, there being no legal homosexual prostitution in that model of propriety. Dare one ask how many marriages have been destroyed by a spouse's calling upon a legal prostitute in Nevada? Or by compulsive gamblers' losing fortunes they could not afford, in Nevada, land of virtue? I think the gay movement should promote a boycott of Nevada by all progressives, to make an example of Nevada for hypocrisy, and show there are costs to antigay bigotry.
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As for Senator Craig's state, Idaho, I have been to Idaho twice, once to Boise (which is pronounced with an S-sound, not Z) on my own and once to Coeur d'Alene with several members of my family. As I recall, there was a tiny gay contingent in Coeur d'Alene's Fourth of July parade who were not booed or threatened. I don't think Idahoans in general are vicious or fascistic, despite Idaho's reputation (like neighboring Montana's) for welcoming Neo-Nazi, survivalist groups. I don't think Idaho is a toxic place or that the people of Idaho mean to damage young gay people's self-acceptance. But they do, as all areas of the world do that assume that every child will be straight, and thus raise everyone to be heterosexual, and never so much as raise the possibility that something else will happen. Never raising the issue, they lead their young people to think that what the larger society has apparently not thought about is thus unthinkable. That causes kids who do think about such things, to think as well that there must be something wrong with them; that they are grotesque, abnormal, evil, not just something that most of the people around them haven't much thought about. Or admitted to thinking about.
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Senator Craig's story is hardly unusual. He was made to hate himself by an oblivious, intolerant, and insecure society that seems to feel that if homosexuality is given free rein, it will wipe out heterosexuality and the human race will disappear because, they fear, homosexuality is preferable to heterosexuality! Is the human race really in danger of disappearing from too few children? Or is the prime threat to our survival not depopulation but grotesque overpopulation? I don't really have to answer that, do I?
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If, as seems certain, Senator Craig is sexually drawn to men, he could still make the claim that he is not "gay", because he does not want a lasting, loving relationship with a man, and actively wants not to identify as gay. He is assuredly not "gay" in the ordinary sense, happy and carefree, which may be how he justified his denials. Bill Clinton was able to persuade himself that he wasn't really lying when he said he "did not have sexual relations with that young woman", because he played a definitional game in his head: "sexual relations" meant coitus. Senator Craig says he's not "gay". He may be able to say that with clear conscience because he has internally defined "gay" to mean wanting something more from men than sex, something emotional, something as to lifestyle and self-identity, and he doesn't want that (or so he may have persuaded himself).
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Senator Craig toed society's heterosexual line rhetorically, and may actually have believed what he said when he said that homosexuality should be proscribed, perhaps out of the misguided notion that if he didn't have the internal strength to fite off his homosexual desires alone, society's prohibitions could strengthen his will and keep him in line. He internalized the antihomosexual crap he was raised with and then publicly fed it back to an appreciative audience, just as a parrot — or perhaps more appropriately, parakeet — delites people around by making noises that sound just like meaningful words, when they are to the bird only imitative noise.
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Everything we hear from antigay activists is meaningless, empty noise. They have absolutely no basis for their hostility. They may, or may not, have reasons for any insecurity they may feel about society giving them, personally, too much freedom, freedom they can't handle. But temptations of many kinds are all around us. We find out, when first this ban is relaxed, then that, who has internal strength and who has not.
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When Prohibition was ended, some people became alcoholics. When states legalized various forms of gambling, some people with weak wills and addictive personalities became gambling junkies. Some ghetto kids who became sports stars saw all kinds of barriers drop, and they promptly fell into drug addiction, sexual abuse, and other outrageous vices, even dogfiting. It is not the availability of alcohol that makes an alcoholic, nor the legality of gambling that creates a gambling problem, nor the presence all around us of dogs that makes a person descend into staging dogfites and then killing poor performers. It is not what is outside us that is responsible for our internal feelings, nor our actions.
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Faithful people defeat temptations to infidelity, from any source, homosexual or heterosexual. People in love aren't interested in sex with strangers. And, most important always to remember, sex is TRIVIA. This country has got (literally) to grow the f*k up.
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Senator Craig should 'fess up and ask forgiveness. If he needs sex with men, he should be forthrite about that. If he really loves his wife, he should just control himself, just as he would if he were attracted to another woman. But if he married only because society demanded he play the game, and he would really be happy only as a gay man, he should apologize profusely to his wife, get a divorce, and live the rest of his limited days happy, as a genuinely gay man, in every sense. As Shakespeare put it in Hamlet, "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Then Idaho would have an honest man as its senior Senator.

Antigay Vandalism — By the Superintendent of Newark Schools! My friend Gaetano sent me links to two blog mentions of a Star-Ledger story yesterday about Marion Bolden's ordering the defacing of a yearbook to black out with marker what she termed an "illicit" foto of two boys kissing. The foto itself appears in the Star-Ledger, along with this information:

While the students waited, staff members in another room blacked out the 4½-by-5-inch picture from approximately 230 books [which cost $85 each; that's vandalization of $19,550 of private property by a public official; a felony?].

"I don't understand," said [Andre] Jackson, 18 [one of the two students shown kissing, who paid $150 for that page in the yearbook]. "There is no rule about no gay pictures, no guys kissing. Guys and girls kissing made it in."

East Side's is like most high school yearbooks. About 80 pages in the roughly 100-page tome is dedicated to class photos, formal shots of seniors, candids and spreads dedicated to a variety of sports teams and academic clubs.

The back of the book is a collection of tributes where students designed pages filled with pictures depicting them with their families, girlfriends and boyfriends, and friends.

Rules for publication of the pages prohibited shots of gang signs, rude gestures and graphic photos, said Benilde Barroqueiro, an East Side senior graduating with Jackson.

"You know, it couldn't be too provocative. No making out, no tongue," she said.

Students were surprised when they opened their books and found Jackson's picture had been covered with marker, Barroqueiro said.

"He purchased the page and fell under the rules," she said. "If they want to kiss, that's their page. If you don't like it, don't look at it."

It seems a teenage girl has more sense than a middle-aged woman.
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Note that this offense occurred during the runup to the 38th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, to be marked tomorrow, less than ten miles from East Side High, by the annual Gay Pride March in Manhattan that attracts hundreds of thousands of marchers and spectators. I was on the committee that organized the first such march, in 1970, and the term "Gay Pride" rather than the original "Christopher Street Liberation Day" attaches to that march because I offered that term in committee. Most of us on the first committee were scarcely more than kids, tho some were in their thirties. I was 25. Some of the stalwarts of The Movement have since died of the diseases of old age, never having lived a day without the discrimination we worked to end. Every now and then we think we've made progress — and then something like this happens.
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"Benilde" is a name I was not familiar with, so I researched it on the Internet:

Origin: Derived from the German and composed from berno- "bear," and hildjo, "battle, war," and means "who fights for the good."

Very appropriate.
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The first blog mention of this outrage I checked, carried a comment by someone who pointed out that the time to challenge a foto was before the money was accepted and the book printed, not after. That commentator also observed that some New Jersey employers are resisting the State's requirement that the partners in "civil unions" be granted the same rights as married people, which I had heard on TV last week. Such resistance must be crushed. It does, however, argue for converting the feeble "civil union" law into simple "marriage". That way, the simple box "Married" could be checked on forms of all kinds, and qualification for spousal benefits would be automatic. What do people who are 'civilly unioned' check? Hm. (By the way, I have seen both the awkward phrase "civilly unioned" and the more standard-English phrase "civilly united". I suspect those who use "civilly unioned" are making commentary on the awkward unnaturalness of that legal state. "Married" is so much more graceful, isn't it?)
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Alas, New York State may beat NJ to the punch in legalizing simple gay "marriage", which would reduce the advantage in attracting prosperous gay couples to New Jersey, people who would contribute to the community but make minimal demands upon government services, such as schools.
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I remarked to Gaetano:

DISGRACEFUL. If the objection was to the pose (with one guy behind the other, but fully clothed), the people in charge of the yearbook should have asked for a picture of the two face to face. If they didn't want to accept any foto, they should have said so before the guy paid for it, so he could either accept that and withhold his money — or sue the bastards, because antihomosexual discrimination is ILLEGAL in NJ. Marion Bolden should be ashamed of herself — and removed from office for violating the NJ Law Against Discrimination (LAD). There is no place in the Newark public schools for antihomosexual discrimination.

The second blogger, from Newark, rightly compared the discrimination in this incident to racial discrimination.

It's been noted that the bias seen today against homosexuals has parallels to discriminatory policies of the past. Consider if the administrators had blacked out a photo of an interracial kiss, and read the comments again. It's the same attitudes, by the same sorts of people, just in a new era. We've made a lot of progress on the civil rights and tolerance frontier (this couple is probably not in danger of being lynched) but to continue making progress it's necessary to be aware of and condemn behavior like this.

I left the following comment at that blog:

The superintendent's behavior was not just rude. It was also ILLEGAL. The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) bars discrimination on the basis of "affectional or sexual orientation". See this official webpage of the State of New Jersey: http://www.state.nj.us/lps/dcr/law.html#LAD. Superintendent Bolden said she did not review the entire yearbook. But she had a legal obligation to do so, in order to determine whether what she proposed to do was discriminatory. She could easily have ordered that every kiss in the yearbook be flagged so she could review all such pictures. She did not do that but chose to jump to suppress an image of two boys kissing. She violated the law and vandalized thousands of dollars worth of books. It's time for her to go. Everyone offended by this should write to Governor Corzine to demand her ouster: http://www.state.nj.us/governor/govmail.html.

I'll write to the Governor myself when I have time. I should also see if Mayor Booker has email. Bolden is a State appointee; Newark does not have control of its schools yet. But Booker can put pressure on the State to oust her — as might, incidentally, empower him to put someone of his own choosing into that key spot!
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Gay men have lifted marginal neighborhoods all over this country, and Newark could surely benefit from an influx of gay people. Shows of antigay bigotry by someone high in local government hurt the future of Newark, more than just the feelings of the students offended. At least the kids had the good sense to be offended. Do Newarkers generally?
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(This is borrowed from my Newark fotoblog.)