Q-Bomb

Where I'm blogging now

2007-04-05T11:49:00.000-05:00

OK, Q-Bomb is pretty much defunct at this point. I'm keeping it around because I sometimes refer to old things I posted here and I need something to link to, but that's about it.

But my Site Meter tells me I still have quite a few people visiting this site. If you're looking for fresh content, I've pretty much moved my blogging to three other sites.

First, I'm mostly posting at Bilerico on queer politics and culture. So if you were interested in what I have to say about that, you can check it out over there.

Second, I've moved the Qomics for Queers archives and started to post more often about comics-outing here. I'm going to keep on posting a weekly post on that at Bilerico, but there's some other stuff that won't make it to the Sunday QFQ post.

Third, I've started a completely different blogging venture at Street Economics. I'm kind of fed up with the way laissez-faire economic theory is accepted uncritically considering how ridiculous some of its tenets are, so I'm posting news stories there that show that Econ 101 doesn't quite describe the way that the world works. I'm trying to get some other people involved with that project to make it more comprehensive, and I'm sure that'll be fun.

So I don't know what's going to become of Q-Bomb. It'll sit here as archives until the bug to start some new blogging project that could involve this content springs up.

Qomics for Queers, providing 24-hour coverage of Dennis the Homosexual Menace

2007-03-18T11:33:00.000-05:00

OK, folks, sorry about not having a Qomics for Queers last week. I didn't have anything from that week that really jumped out at me, and then I was going to do a few re-writes, and I never got around to it, and it became one of those things, and before I knew it it's today.

First is Monday's Dennis the Menace:

The question on everyone's mind is: Where are Dennis' parents right now? They apparently got him all ready for bed. I don't think that if he asked "Can I go bother our elderly neighbor now that I'm supposed to be asleep and it's all dark?" that they would say yes.

One of them should be supervising him....

One possible explanation is that both Alice and Henry are simultaneously having affairs (I just watched Desperate Housewives). Think about it, neither would leave Dennis at home if they thought the other wasn't, so there would have to be a situation where each of them is away for something secret. Since this is supposed to be outing the comics, let's make them gay affairs. Hot, sexy woman- or man-loving affairs. And neither made an excuse, Alice and Henry each snuck out of the house so well that the other thought that it was safe to sneak out as well. That leaves Dennis, all alone. I suppose he woke up and asked for a glass of water, only to find no one there. Where a normal 5-year-old would start crying, Dennis is a true professional menace, so he takes this opportunity to do his thing.

And really, I can't see anything else that's gay in this comic.

Sunday's Dennis the Menace throwaway panels:

Oh, kindergarten. Where candy is sweeter, life is simpler, and kids sit around talking like the characters in Queer as Folk.

The throwaway panels from last Sunday's Beetle Bailey:

You know, from what I know about the army, it's not really common for a Sergeant 1st Class to be hanging out with a private when they have some time off. But not only is Sarge going out with Beetle here, Otto implies that this happens quite often. Their smiles indicate that they're happy, really happy, going-to-get-some-head level happy.

Now, I may not be the first person to say that Beetle and Sarge are gay, but I am probably the person who says it the most often. I think its particularly apropos right now in light of Pace's comments this week (I know, I know, this one was drawn weeks before his comments, but hear me out). Wouldn't it be great if they're setting Beetle Bailey up for a huge publicity stunt involving Beetle and Sarge coming out to everyone when DADT is repealed? It'd be great, and all the characters could be there in one big coming out party (do people do those ever or was that just Ellen?) that would be one big panel on a color, large-format Sunday feature, with doves holding up pink banner that could say, "We're here, we're queer, and you did get used to it!"

Uhhhhhhhhh..... That revealed a little too much of my personal Beetle Bailey fantasies. Maybe I should stop now.

Qomics for Queers - For the record, I blame King Media Features

2007-03-06T11:36:00.000-05:00

Well, my fears from last week were misplaced; there's absolutely no shortage of gayness in this week's comics. It did, however, take me all of two days to actually put this together. It definitely couldn't have been caused by a lack of motivation. This Wednesday's Slylock Fox (after the jump) was, for a comics-outer, like looking into the face of God and having Him whisper back, "I love you". I was reminded why I got into this business: immature penis jokes. Because, even with all its bells and perks and whistles, isn't that what being a comics-outer is really all about?

Let's start with Saturday's 9 Chickweed Lane:

Wow! An actual gay reference in a real comic! Inclusive! Well-drawn! Wonderful! Well... except for that tiny, tiny detail: it makes no sense. Here are some possible explanations:
1. Cartoonist McEldowney thinks that "Oh, sweetie, if only" is some kind of universally known gay pick-up line, like "Lookin??"
2. The first two panels have nothing to do with the joke; Seth just really doesn't like Mark's goatee.
3. For the length of time that is panel 2, Seth thought that Mark was a carnivorous lion, making him envy the quick instincts of real gazelles.
4. I joined the boat way too late on 9 Chickweed Lane, and the strip has developed its own alphabet and language that only looks like English, and the above conversation is really a mother-in-law joke.

Friday's Family Circus:

This pretty much explains itself, I guess. One little gay boy drew a Village People moustache on his infantile brother. Seriously, people, nothing to look at here.

This Friday's Dennis the Menace:

Considering the outfit you're wearing, cowboy, I don't think it was your room she wanted you to straighten.

Wednesday's Rex Morgan, M.D.:

It's funny because it's true! It happens like this every time when I have to pull away from my vapid, self-absorbed life and boyfriend to show some sort of affection towards my wife after she talks me into mentoring a teenage near-orphan with flattery, and I'm closing in and closing my eyes like someone would plug their nose to take bad medicine, and it's always like, BANG!, saved by the gunshot!

This Wednesday's Slyock Fox:

Any more? Let's see.... Banana? No, that has seven letters. Penis? No, five. Johnson... no, no no, that has seven letters. Hmmm, these puzzles are really hard!

More responses to Ann Coulter, comedian extraordinaire

2007-03-03T15:22:00.000-05:00

The NY Times blog has a post up about the Coulter affair from yesterday afternoon. John McCain's spokesman said:

The comments were wildly inappropriate.

Romney's said:

It was an offensive remark. Governor Romney believes all people should be treated with dignity and respect.

Edwards's campaign manager said:

John was singled out for a personal attack because the Republican establishment knows he poses the greatest threat to their power. Since they have nothing real to use against him, Coulter's resorting to the classic right-wing strategy of riling up hate to smear a progressive champion.

And the CPAC frontpage as of five minutes ago:

Speaks for itself.

That's it so far. I'm not going to update anymore on this until Monday, unless something huge happens.

But a few things about this whole incident. First, I'm not surprised and honestly don't care what Ann Coulter said. Really. I've stopped caring about anything that this woman says because she focuses on being shocking instead of being informative, as evidenced here or when she called Gore a fag or suggested that both Hiillary and Bill Clinton were gay or called Helen Thomas a security risk for being "an old Arab" or.... The list goes on and on. That's not the point. The important part is the reaction of the people attending. This wasn't a far-right fringe crowd - this is the mainstream conservative movement. Cheney and almost all the potential GOP presidential candidates were in attendance and a whole lot of people in the audience laughed. Who can say whether or not any of presidential candidates were laughing at this "joke"?

Moreover, Coulter basically did the same thing last year when she referred to people of Middle Eastern descent as "ragheads". At the same conference. She can't be surprising anyone on the Right by going over the edge; inviting her to speak at anything is a known risk. Yet the conservative movement continues to ask her to speak at their events. One can only assume that they not only agree with her comments, they value them as insight.

Second, while McCain responded (even though he wasn't there) and Romney "responded" (What does he think about the fact that she endorsed him in the same speech? Will he put himself at risk for losing her "constituency" or will he do what's right?), we still haven't heard anything from the coordinators of the CPAC, the leadership of the American Conservative Union that put the whole thing together, the other potential candidates there, the leadership of the GOP, or vice president Cheney. If they answer on Monday, just know that they were calculating their response. This should be a no-brainer, but when a good part of your party thinks that what she said was not only funny but the spot on (Edwards should be labeled as gay because he is progressive, being gay is bad, using the word faggot to attack someone is A-O-K), you've got to navigate your way around this carefully.

I don't mean to say that the entire Republican Party agrees with her, just that a very large part of them does. So when these specific Republicans who were there and yet have not responded ask for your votes, remember that they are worried about losing votes for thinking about you as anything more than a faggot.

Third: Come on, Mr. Cheney, say something. Coulter was attacking your daughter....

(Crossposted to bilerico)

Coulter calls John Edwards a "Faggot", shines as conservative star

2007-03-02T18:48:00.000-05:00

Y'all know how Republicans whine so much about how reliably Democratic GLBT folk are? Well, maybe it has something to do with the Conservative Movement's sweetheart. Ms. Coulter said:

I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot', so....

Don't worry, she was at some small, fringe crowd, introduced by a no-name, and was booed as a result.

Oh, wait, what's that? She was at the CPAC conference? And she was introduced by Mitt Romney? And everyone laughed and cheered?

Kagro X at DailyKos said:

Click here for video of Romney walking out in protest.

Oh, wait. There is no such video.

Video at and h/t to Crooks and Liars.

UPDATE: The HRC responds:

"To interject this word into American political discourse is a vile and disgusting way to sink the debate to a new, all-time low," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. "Make no doubt about it, these remarks go directly against what our Founding Fathers intended and have no place on the schoolyard, much less our country's political arena."

[....]

The Conservative Political Action Conference was attended by 2008 Republican Presidential candidates: Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and former Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA). Vice President Dick Cheney also attended the event.

'nuf said.

UPDATE II: Media Matters has more. Coulter endorsed Romney in that speech too. I'm sure that makes him happy. But also this was interesting to show how out-of-touch with reality Coulter is:

Well, you know, screw you, I'm not anti-gay. We're against gay marriage. I don't want gays to be discriminated against. I mean, I think we have, in addition to blacks, I don't know why all gays aren't Republicans. I think we have the pro-gay position, which is anti-crime and for tax cuts. Gays make a lot of money, and they're victims of crime. I mean, the way -- no, they are. They should be with us. But the media portrays us.

Besides the fact that she's flat wrong on her claims about queer incomes, she plays the big, bad media card in the same speech where she calls John Edwards a faggot.

I'm updating this story a lot tonight because this is starkly honest compared to the majority of conservative rhetoric on gay and lesbian people. Here we have, at the largest conservative conference of the year, one of the most if not the most prominent conservative commentators of our time calling another prominent figure a faggot in front of almost all the potential presidential nominees of the GOP and the Republican vice president, and not one of them has repudiated what she said. Media Matters already did. The HRC already did. Governor Dean already did. Even Michelle Malkin did... well, kinda sorta mentioned it and implied that she thought it wasn't cool. It's not that hard to put out a press statement on the matter. I've put out this whole long post this evening and I went to the gym and ate dinner and listened to Nas and watched Las Vegas all since Coulter's comment (great Friday night!).

So if they come out with a statement tomorrow or next Monday, remember that they needed time to calculate their position. That's the only thing that could be causing this delay. And if they never denounce her, then they should at least have the decency to stop playing the media bias card when people call Republicans anti-gay. But I won't hold my breath.

Kafka couldn't write a more kafkaesque story

2007-03-02T09:18:00.000-05:00

From 365gay:

A gay man held for two years in a dank Cameroon prison without ever having a trial has been released after he was discovered by an attorney working with the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

There are plenty of gay men being held in prison throughout the world for no reason other than their sexual orientation. Are they trying to turn these people straight? Because, you know, that's so possible.

But this story just seemed to be beyond the pale, because the person wasn't charged with anything. I don't know how the judicial system in Cameroon was able to let something like this slide by, but I can only imagine the hopelessness that this man had being held without charges, without an attorney, without any means of serving his time and being freed, even if we accept that sexual identity is a legitimate crime.

So when silly people say that queer people haven't really suffered enough to deserve equality, they apparently forget that many queer people live their lives in states worse than Kafka stories. They want Suze Orman and Elton John to be representative of all GLBT folk, and that reason should be enough for us not to forget our queer brothers and sisters stuck in prison or in the closet throughout the world.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

Back to blogging

2007-03-02T08:56:00.000-05:00

I took a day off yesterday because I had so much to do that I found myself at 12:30 at night finally in front of the computer and ready to go... and ready for bed. I'm trying to catch up with things that I wanted to blog about today, some of yesterday's news, some things from the past week, and of course things that are happening today.

As I'm writing this I'm also wondering about why I'm maintaining this separate space since most of what I do is crossposted to Bilerico. All I can say to answer that is that I like maintaining a space where I can post with the knowledge that anything I say will not reflect on anyone else but me. Well, that and revenge. Sweet, vague revenge. I also like writing things here because Blogger has all the quick keys for HTML tags that don't require my browser to open up separate windows and makes it a little easier to get things out.

So for the time being I'm going to keep this going so I can post things about the Argentine gay marriage bill and hook-ups and things without having to pretend to be smarter than I am. :)

Viva la Republica!

2007-03-01T00:46:00.000-05:00

From 365gay:

Legislation will be presented in Argentina's Parliament this fall that would give same-sex couples all of the rights of marriage.

Currently the law limits marriage to opposite-sex couples. However the country does afford gay and lesbian couples some rights including inheritance, adoption and survivor pensions.

Two regions of the country permit civil unions - the province of Río Negro and the federal district of Buenos Aires.

In 2003 Rio Negro became the first area in South America to permit civil unions.

A poll released this week shows that three-quarters of those surveyed in the capital believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry. Only 25 percent disagreed.

I'm of Argentine descent (first generation), so this is awesome news to me.

College student in Colorado attacked

2007-03-01T00:40:00.000-05:00

Speaking of hate crimes, there was another attack this past week against a lesbian student at Naropa University. 365gay has more:

Police say the young woman had met two men in a mall who said they were from California and did not have enough money for a hotel. The woman invited them to sleep on a couch at her home.

When they made a sexual advance to her she told them she is a lesbian and at least one of the men began beating her. She was punched and kicked in the face.

The student said that she is doing better every day.

Now I'm noticing a trend with these two cases, the student's and Anthos'. The assailants always pick victims who, regardless of sexuality, were far less able to defend themselves against their attackers than their attackers would have been able to defend themselves against the victims. In this case, it was two men against one woman. The article said that only one of the men attacked her, but it didn't say that the other helped her out. In Anthos' case, the attacker came up on him from behind, had a weapon, and was far younger. It goes on and on like that in other cases.

There is something more than hating gay people going on here. These people need to feel big, so they choose victims who they know won't be able to fight back. They probably also think that no one will care about GLBT victims, making it easier to get away.

That's why hate crimes legislation is so necessary - these people have to be shown that the law is not on their side and that they aren't more powerful than the collective moral will of the American or the Hoosier people.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

Andrew Anthos passed away last Friday

2007-03-01T00:39:00.000-05:00

Andrew Anthos, the 72-year-old man who was attacked after getting of the bus on February 13th, passed away Friday. The assailant apaprently asked him if he was gay while on the bus and then followed him when he got off and hit him in the back of the head with a pipe. Anthos was helping a friend in a wheelchair, and that friend was able to give the police a description.

The police still haven't found the assailant almost two weeks after the attack, and the only witness who came forward was the friend. I'm sure that other people saw this person while on the bus, I mean, it was 6 pm on a Tuesday in Detroit. More people probably saw this guy berate Andrew than saw Janet's boob pop out of her outfit two years ago. I don't know why more people haven't come forward with a cold-blooded murderer on the loose in Detroit, but that just may be a question for the ages.

But I do know some people who are partly responsible for this who won't be doing any hard time. Shakes has a post that describes how I feel about this. Here you have an elderly gentleman who was taking the bus home from the library. That's it. But following him were the specters of years and years of heterosexual supremacist rhetoric and millions if not billions of dollars pumped into that machine that labeled him in a way that was neither accurate nor kind.

You have people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who put the blame for 9/11 on Andrew. You have people like Paul Cameron who said that Andrew was out to molest your children. You have Gary DeMar who says the Bible calls for killing Andrew. You have Fred Phelps who will probably organize a demonstration to show how happy he is with Andrew being killed. And you have presidents like GWB who normalized and legitimized all those accusations against Andrew by trying to get an amendment into the Constitution to solidify his status as a second-class citizen. Yeah, they pretend like they're talking about some non-specific group of people, but it's only reasonable to interpret what they're saying as an attack leveled against each and every GLBT person individually.

So I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

Because when you set up a by any calculus powerless minority to be the demon for all of societies evils, some people out there are going to take matters into their own hands. Have we heard any condemnation of this from any of those people mentioned? The most we can expect is a statement that says the killer gives them a bad name. Probably in the same way that a sloppy hitman can get the person who hired him into trouble.

They can hide behind their "religion" to justify what they say, but let's remember here, this is not what Jesus would do. Straight up, 100% certain on that one. Look at how Jesus treated the Pharisees. He disagreed with them, and he told them so. Did he protest their funerals? No. Did he blame them for Rome taking over the Holy Land? No. Did he say that they were going to molest everyone's children? No. Did he say that fighting them was the greatest war of his time? Hell no. So if they want to use their junk theology to defend their positions, they should at least have the decency to not take the Lord's name in vain while doing so.

So now, after all that, a man was killed because someone thought his singing on the bus was too gay. Is it any surprise that the murderer, like the far right, picked someone who was more defenseless than he? A 72-year-old, who had his hands full pushing a wheelchair, and he came up from behind to hit him. I want to see the Dobson, et al., crowd to find the honor in that.

Oh wait, they haven't put out their statement about how they're the ones who were really hurt by this.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

I'm not a psychoanalyst, I just play one on the internet

2007-03-01T00:19:00.000-05:00

Some guy sent a question into Savage Love asking if it was ok to continue to masturbate to Anna Nicole's Playboy work. Here's Dan's answer:

But not because it's disrespectful--there's nothing you can do to Anna Nicole Smith in death that could possibly outdo the shit Anna Nicole Smith subjected herself to in life. No, the reason you feel creepy about beating off to Anna Nicole's photos now, MAN, and the reason you must stop, is this: Whacking off to the dead violates the hope that masturbation represents. When Anna Nicole was alive and young and beautiful, MAN, a tiny part of your brain somehow managed to convince your dick that your fantasies existed within the realm of possibility. If the right set of circumstances, however improbable, were to occur, you might actually find yourself in bed with Anna Nicole Smith. So long as she lived, MAN, you lived--and whacked off--in hope.

But masturbating to the dead inspires only feelings of hopelessness and despair. Which is why no one beats off to James Dean or River Phoenix or Marilyn Monroe or Mary Todd Lincoln without feeling a little creepy, a little hopeless, and a little closer to the grave himself. Knock it off.

Makes ya think.

Really, about what what pornography is. There's something more to it than just pictures of naked people - otherwise Anna Nicole pics and anatomy books and National Geographic magazines would all be good material for the 16+ crowd. If one were to create a more precise definition, it would, of course, include fantasy fulfillment, as Dan suggests.

Now I wouldn't be the first to say that people can project their own fantasies of controlling others onto pornography. Any gay boy who's accidentally clicked on a straight porn site knows that it isn't just gay male porn with a woman involved - there's an element of degredation and mass consumption towards women that doesn't appear in gay male porn towards men. And real lesbian porn versus heterosexual male girl-on-girl action vids are worlds apart in their treatment of women as full and equal human beings with control over their sexual choices. I don't think it's a coincidence that society's sexism gets projected into pornography.

But maybe the fantasy fulfillment aspect of pornography is a little bit more independent of the nakedness part than people would like to think. Could anti-gay literature be such a text? I mean, those homophobic pamphlets make up facts about our lives, take one tiny aspect of the gay community and blow it out of proportion, and do it all with an intention of controlling our sexualities. The creation of a complete narrative so detached from the lives of real gay people and the collective unwillingness to challenge such a narrative bear striking resemblence to a guy who jacks off to fantasies of sex with Justin Timberlake. If Dan's right, then the latter is taking the small chance of that fantasy being possible, blowing that chance out of proportion, and using it construct a reality in his mind. The difference may only be that the latter knows, intellectually, that it isn't really true.

So when I read from people like the folks at Pure Life Ministries or NARTH or the anti-sex, anti-gay site du jour about how pornography is bad and gays are always unhappy child molesters, I wonder about where the energy to read that tripe came from. Does their anti-pornography lifestyle cause them to seek out other sources to create narratives of domination and control over people's sexualities? Consider this from Kathy Gallagher at Pure Life Ministries:

[I] personally would not trust a guy who has been involved in pornography--especially one who has shown such a flippant attitude about it. His reaction tells me two very important things.

First, this young man could not possibly have a relationship with God and believe that something as evil as pornography is acceptable.

It's nothing new - disliking pornography for no real reason and then saying that all Christians have to think the same way about it. She sometimes goes on pornographic tirades about how porn will turn women into lesbians, cause husbands to cheat, and destroy heterosexual marriages, all the while not presenting any statistics or facts and just writing stories about how what she says could come to be reality. It reads like a Nifty story. The realities she and others like her construct in their writing seeks not to challenge the readers' beliefs like is kind of the point of Jesus' life; rather they attempt to create a narrative that affirms one belief that the reader may already have and give it prominence over his/her knowledge of the real world, in the same way as the guy who masturbated to Anna Nicole pics was using the pictures to affirm one fantasy over his knowledge of the way the world works.

So what's the point of all this? I think that by having a better understanding of the heterosexual supremacist mind can help us find ways to fight it. Like I've said before, heterosexual supremacy isn't just a few mistaken beliefs that can be cleared up by presenting the facts; it's a complicated structure that seeks to privilege heterosexuals over everyone else.

This is also why I don't in general refute homophobes. I mean seriously, with what we're up against, logic is not the correct weapon to use.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

We gays could learn a lot from Asian-Americans

2007-02-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

From CNN:

Asian-American leaders are calling on a weekly newspaper to apologize and cut ties with a writer who penned a column titled "Why I Hate Blacks."

In the piece, which appeared in the February 23 edition of San Francisco-based AsianWeek, contributor Kenneth Eng lists reasons why he supports discrimination against blacks, writing, among other things, "I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years."

An official at the nationally circulated paper apologized and called the column's publication a mistake.

Leaders at the Asian American Justice Center, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Coalition for Asian Pacific Americans and other groups are circulating a petition denouncing the piece as "irresponsible journalism, blatantly racist, replete with stereotypes, and deeply hurtful to African Americans."

The petition calls on AsianWeek to cut ties with Eng, issue an apology, print an editorial refuting the column, and fire or demote the editors who published it.

Notice how the response from Asian community leaders to an Asian person in an Asian publication insluting Blacks was swift, unified, and unrelenting.

Compare that with the reaction from gay community leaders to a gay man performing a character in gay night clubs that's pretty hard-core racist against Black people. The NGLTF released a statement about Shirley Q. Liquor a couple of years ago. GLAAD jumps in several years too late. Yup. And after that a mainstream queer publication questions whether our advocacy groups should have gotten involved at all. (Jasmyne Cannick answers the line-by-line).

It's frustrating to me that GLAAD could not have seen on its own that Chuck Knipp's act helps fuel stereotypes that Black gays and lesbians have to experience every day and that it doesn't reflect very well on the rest of the GLBT community. More importantly, they should have realized their unique position to help bring about an end to this act.

Imagine being in Kenneth Eng's position. Since he works for an Asian-American cultural magazine, I'm going to guess that he has a love for his community. When he was told by a united front of Asian-American advocacy groups that what he did was wrong, I'm sure that he was more affected than he would have been by any other community group.

I would think that a person like Knipp would be more likely to change his ways if the GLBT community took such a stand on his act. It's one thing to have a group of people for whom he has little respect say that he should change; it would be quite another for a coalition of LGBT organizations to tell him to stop the act. Since he identifies with the latter, I could only imagine the pain of being ostracized from one's own people in that way.

Imagine receiving letters from the HRC, GLAAD, the NGLTF, the NCLR, the NBJC, and GLAD all in the same week telling you personally that something you were doing was deeply offensive and hurtful. I know I'd have to have a lot of chutzpah and a pretty good reason in order to stay the course, and whether I did or not, I would still feel the pain of ostracism from the community that I love deeply.

And it's that power and that sense of duty that the Asian community demonstrated in reacting to Eng's column. What makes that so difficult that we can't understand it?

It's baaa-aaack

2007-02-27T20:37:00.000-05:00

Remember that bill I blogged about earlier on bilerico going through the Utah House to block GSA's from forming in schools, and reader Lynn pointed out in comments that it was gone? Well, it's back. From the Salt Lake Tribune (sometimes I just love how local papers cover issues):

Lawmakers gutted it and then restored it.
Passed it and then pulled it back.
No bill has been tweaked more than the one targeting gay support clubs in high schools but also affecting many other student groups.
The tinkering ended Monday with a final compromise among Republicans.
Over the objections of Democrats, the House sent the bill, sponsored by Springville Republican Rep. Aaron Tilton, to the desk of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

So like yeah, it's there. The governor said he opposed the version of the bill last year that was so complex that it prompted one state rep to say: "it was easier to start a corporation than it would be to create a high school club".

Of course, the right wing there (not all Republicans in Utah support it, but you can fill in the blank: "The bill is supported by the far _____.") said before that it wasn't targeted at GSA's, which is laughable, but the Tribune printed this lovely paragraph:

Buttars, on the other hand, hopes to give administrators the ability to block clubs such as the Gay Straight Alliance without fearing a massive legal bill. He expects the attorney general's office to handle any lawsuits that would stem from a school district blocking a club.

Because when you're passing legislation you know goes against federal law, the main point has to be that challenging it requires the Attorney General to be on your side.

This story has irked me on so many levels. Besides the total acknowledgement that it goes against the Federal Equal Access Act and it being an attempt to circumvent federal law by just making it harder to challenge homophobic school administrators, the whole point of the bill is to hurt our community's children. GSA's often do a wonderful job of helping build awareness of GLBT issues at an age where such awareness is, to quote Salt 'n' Pepa, very necessary. The only point in getting rid of them would be to further marginalize those kids at an age when being accepted by one's peers is a key component in developing a positive self image.

Then again, that's heterosexual supremacy. It's not about opposing homosexual acts or preserving the family or whatever else they say. It's about materially and psychologically hurting GLBT people both as a community and as individuals because of that identity. They say they are against GSA's to keep us from recruiting, but there's no excuse for not knowing that that's impossible in 2007. None.

Respected trans woman fired for being trans, being respected still OK

2007-02-27T18:45:00.000-05:00

From 365gay:

Largo city commissioners voted Tuesday night to fire its longtime city administrator less than a week after she disclosed she is embarking on sex reassignment.

For 14 years Steven Stanton was an admired overseer of the Tama Bay community's local government. Last week after a local newspaper acting on a tip began asking questions Stanton sat down with the St. Petersburg Times and divulged her status.

Wow. That's what a reputation built on fourteen years of service is worth to those folks in Largo. Is it just me, or didn't keeping a job use to be about doing it well and taking pride in your work, not what's in your skirt or fabulously tailored Armani pants? I guess I'm just old-fashioned that way.

Note to Canada's government - Our Canadian brothers and sisters aren't ATMs

2007-02-27T12:37:00.000-05:00

Really.

A ruling is expected in the largest gay and lesbian class action suit in the history of... man this is huge. The Canadian government gave widowed partners in same-sex couples the pensions of their partners when it opted for full and equal marriage - for all those whose partners died after January 1998. Now those surviving partners of people who died before that date are suing for the pensions and accrued interest going all the way back to 1985. The total is over $100 million Canadian, which is about $78 American (man that joke never gets old).

I'd say there's a good chance that Team Q will win. From the Globe and Mail:

In two lower court rulings, Ottawa lost its argument that survivor benefits should only be extended to gays widowed after 1997. The judges agreed with the roughly 400 gays and lesbians in the class-action suit that the cutoff date should coincide with the Charter coming into effect.

In the latest decision in November, a panel of justices at the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the view of the Ontario Superior Court that the government's 1998 cutoff wasn't "rational."

That's three courts so far....

Canada is, of course, way ahead on the gays-are-real-human-beings game than the US is. Can you imagine a suit like this happening here? I mean, we have an international reputation for being letigious, but we not so recently had to win the right to exist. So this amount of money, while it's huge, could have been paid out evenly throughout the last 22 years so that it wouldn't be so much all at once. Instead, the Canadian government treated its own citizens like ATMs all these years, took their tax money and pension contributions, and kept the real and material benefits of paying those taxes away from a segment of their population. They made their bed, and now they have to sleep in it.

Also, one thing I love about Canadian newspapers is that they refer to their supreme court as "the Supreme Court of Canada", as if there's a need to clarify.

Jimmy Kimmel, seriously

2007-02-26T00:38:00.000-05:00

Kimmel from last Thursday (h/t to Autumn at the Blend):

What do we expect from the former co-host of The Man Show?

Seriously, this guy needs to wake up and get himself an education. Not only does he make fun of trans women gratuitously, he also implies that they should be killed because they're not really women. Wow. As After Elton's Mike Jensen said: "Perhaps Gwen Araujuo's mom should pay Kimmel a visit."

But not only did Kimmel mess up here, ABC did. I mean, he didn't just photoshop, print, and mount those pics, stuff them in a briefcase and secretly carry them on-stage only to whip them out on camera to Mickey's horror. No. A producer hired by ABC had the idea of getting those pics, a techie who works for ABC photoshopped them and printed them, a lackey on ABC's payroll mounted them, another stage-hand that works for ABC put them on his desk, that first producer worked with Kimmel to get his comments prepared while a writer, hired by ABC, read at least parts of Romijn's book and thought of the ax comment. And each of these people thought that it was fine to belittle and threaten transwomen. Makes ya think.

So while GLAAD is looking for Kimmel and his staff to apologize, all of us need to just remember that ABC hired them all because it liked their brand of humor. But I wouldn't hold my breath for corporate ABC to say anything about this.

Qomics for Queers - Belated Presidents' Day Edition

2007-02-24T22:58:00.000-05:00

I begin every week with a sense of dread about the upcoming QfQ post, rooted in a fear that there might not be any queer comics the entire week. What if every one of the comics' artists are completely aware of what they're doing? What if my usual suspects stay away from anything remotely related to sexuality? What if I'm stuck doing a re-write of The Family Circus and photoshopping the word "cock" into an Archie and calling it a day?

What happens when your work is completely dependent on the silliness of others is you live in constant fear of other people wising up.

Fortunately, this week there are oh-so-many comics to look at. I wanted to save some of them for next week in a special place (my underwear drawer?) just in case there are slim pickin's. Alas, I cannot; they'll grow stale and become useless. This week we have everything from gay dead presidents to gay high school athletics hijinks.

Let's start with this Friday's La Cucaracha:

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that President Lincoln was gay. So when he showed up at The Barrio Bugle earlier this week looking to place a personal, my ears were all a-twitter. After appearing a little uneasy about doing what it takes to impress straight women on Thursday, though, we see his actual personal ad.

What's that? 100% gender neutral "running mate" instead of Single Professional Woman? "No fatties"? "Splitting logs"? Do I need to spell it out?

Now, the question on everyone's mind is undoubtedly "What has become of Lincoln's lover Joshua Speed?" Well, the answer is quite simple. It's 2007. The dude's long dead. That may make one question why Lincoln's still alive, but it's La Cucaracha, and it doesn't have to explain nothing to no one.

Here's Thursday's Gil Thorp:

I'm sorry to take everyone's attention away from the Tyler-got-attacked-and-Brynna-is-framing-RJ drama unfolding at Gil Thorp, but is RJ grabbing his teammate's cock in panel one? Is this part of some desperate and elaborate scheme to prove his innocence?

Also, Coach Thorp's advice in panel two seems to be walking the fine line between Yoda-like wisdom and Nifty-like dialogue.

Wednesday's Family Circus:

If Jeffy's going to be the comics' token gay kid, then does he have to be dumb as a brick? Where's GLAAD on this one? And just what is Jeff Keane trying to say here? I demand answers!

Friday's Beetle Bailey:

The comics censor foul language in a way unlike any other medium. TV bleeps out the middle part of a word, letting one know exactly what was said, print media use dashes or asterisks corresponding to the exact number of letters of the word in question and leaving enough of it there to let anyone over the age of 8 know what word it was, and movies have a ratings system so they can just say the word to anyone able to sneak in. The comics, though, use old-school wingdings to get the point across.

Of course, no one can actually know what's really being said. In this example, @-squiggly-star can mean anything.

So I'm going to read @-squiggly-star to mean "cocksucking".

So, yowza, Beetle! Not only is he insulting his superior officer, he's making fun of his lover for being gay. That hurts! I'd know!

Now, this might make it seem like a pretty unhealthy relationship, but Beetle and Sarge have always had a relationship that was like a violent version of The Lockhorns' love/hate-but-mostly-hate relationship. Wait, no, their rhetorical deathgrip on one another is just about as unhealthy as a relationship can get. Oh Beetle, just end it gracefully.

This Friday's Bizarro:

Yep, just giving a foot rub to get the job. Totally a foot rub.

Last, but not least, Monday's Slylock Fox:

Alex: Did you see that one Slylock Fox with that massive and muscular bull who was almost naked and pretending to take a bath?
Friend: Yeah....
Alex: Were you turned on by that?
Friend: No, that's stupid.
Alex: Uhhh, yeah! It's totally dumb. Just, uhh, making sure you thought so too.

Ex-gayism is one big yo' mama joke

2007-02-24T14:02:00.000-05:00

If you spend enough time going through the literature of people who sell ex-gayism as a cure, you begin to hear a near-constant blame-the-parents message. Sure, if their cure doesn't work, they blame you, but when they talk about why someone is gay, it's always the parents fault. They say that the parent of the same sex was distant or absent, that the kid was sexually abused, that, for boys, the mother was smothering and overprotective, and that, famously, the father didn't show off his penis to his son often enough.

I know, I know, their evidence is completely and intentionally skewed, they don't know what they're talking about, they just don't like the gays. I know. But I can't help but actually take some of this as a direct insult to my parents, who were great. Honestly, I can't think of any major mistake that they made, they were supportive and loving, but also gave me enough space to grow up fine. They were good parents, and I don't like how they're the target of the religious right. I know that the reason they developed this narrative is to take away rights from me, but I can't help but wonder if all the digs at my parents aren't a bonus for these people.

One elaborate yo' mama joke against all queer people. Like, really pro-family.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

Those parents in Massachusetts got their suit tossed

2007-02-23T16:05:00.000-05:00

That Massachusetts couple suing the school district because the book King and King was read in school, brainwashing their kids into the homosexual agenda, just had their suit dismissed.

They thought the school was out of order. The judge told them that they were out of order, that this whole heterosexist society was out of order, and that their son was fully capable of handling the truth.

The judge also went with #9.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

Who'd want to be oppressed?

2007-02-23T15:18:00.000-05:00

Well, those people with full legal rights and privileges who'd like also a little bit of the sympathy that sometimes comes with being associated with that word.

There's a story up at the Bay Area Reporter about this family that's suing the Santa Rosa school district because they think that the school administrators oppressed her for being a heterosexual supremacist. She said "That's so gay" and got sent to the principal's office, a lesbian student "threatened" her, and her backpack was searched (the school said that it was an accident - someone else with the same name was the one who should have been in trouble). By any rational calculus, queer people are not politically powerful. We don't control a majority of the wealth (not even a proportionate amount of it), we don't have full equality under the law, we're small in numbers, and our allies, if they choose to, can completely ignore us with impunity. But somehow in this family's mind, we're so politically powerful that we're forcing our agenda on them and threatening them with violence without anyone caring. That's pretty warped and paranoid, but how did they get there?

I think it's telling that they're accusing another lesbian student of threatening to beat up their daughter at a rally:

But, after interviewing the rally speaker, an honor student with no history of causing trouble in school, [principal] Klick said he concluded that there was no real threat of physical danger to Rebekah Rice. Because the Rices were so concerned, however, he said he elected to "shadow" Rebekah, a process by which school administrators and security officers kept continual watch over the girl to protect her.

"Nicky [the lesbian student] said she didn't remember her exact words, or making a threat to any student on campus," Klick testified.

For social conservatives it's obvious that their daughter is the one who's right. The other girl's a lesbian, right? That means she's violent and a liar. Duh. The narrative's already been established, and they selectively see the facts that fall into it.

The Eagle Forum themselves, though, should know better. But, of course, for money and power, they've created and perpetuated such a narrative. Who would otherwise donate to the politically powerful class along an axis of identity so that they could further oppress the less powerful class?

(Crossposted to bilerico)

There's so much wrong with this story

2007-02-23T01:55:00.000-05:00

A new development in the case of the Rev. Lonnie W. Latham. He was a pretty outspoken Baptist fundamentalist who didn't really like the gays. According to the AP:

Latham had spoken against same-sex marriage and in support of a Southern Baptist resolution that called upon gays and lesbians to reject their lifestyle.

Well, on January 3, 2006, he invited an undercover cop up to his hotel room for a blow job. He was charged with misdemeanor lewdness for which he could face a $2500 fine and one year in jail. (I'm guessing that he will probably have to register as a sex offender as well, but I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on the internet.)

His attorney has filed a motion to have the charge thrown out, because basically a blow job isn't illegal post-Lawrence, and this is just gay-baiting. I think he's 100% right. These lewdness laws are usually written so vaguely that police can use them to play Capture the Fag. The ACLU is also jumping in and saying that the good Reverend's First Amendment rights were violated. The judge is expected to rule on this in about two weeks.

But what's so wrong with this is, first, that he's being charged and faces a rather large punishment for something that, really, wasn't illegal. The act of giving a blowjob isn't illegal, so asking someone else to do it can't be either. He's just being picked on because he's gay. Furthermore, it's an even worse punishment if he has to go to jail, and if the other guys there find out what he's in for.... Straight up, it's terrible what's happening to him, it's unjust, and I'm glad that Lambda Legal was able to get the Lawrence precedent to help him and that the ACLU is stepping in.

The obvious other half of this is that Latham was pretty anti-gay. He seems pretty mean-spirited to me, to be supporting such a resolution and being against marriage equality. Considering the dismissiveness of Justice Scalia in describing Lawrence as being based on a "right to sodomy", and that Latham probably agreed with him before his arrest, to see him turn around and use that case and to argue, according to the AP, that he "has a constitutional right to solicit sex from an undercover policeman", just makes me cringe. There's part of me that wants someone who fought against those rights, such basic privacy rights, to have no access to them at all. Some poetic justice for him. Burn, burn, burn for being a bad person.

But then I remember that he, like me, has a drive for sex and physical intimacy that no amount of Pauline erotophobia can erase, and that drive is at least partly directed at men, and no amount of ex-gaying can erase that. Getting/giving a blowjob in a hotel room might not seem that intimate or all that good, but for such a troubled man as he had to have been, that was probably the best he could do and the least he had to do. It's good that such a man got exposed, but it would be pretty heinous crime to send him to prison for it.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

Illinois's moving on up

2007-02-22T21:26:00.000-05:00

Or at least proposing legislation to do so. From 365gay:

Illinois state Rep. Greg Harris filed legislation Thursday that would permit same-sex couples in the state to marry.

Harris (D-Chicago), who is gay and represents a district with a large LGBT community admits he faces an uphill battle. Still he believes it is a matter of basic civil rights and that the people of Illinois are behind him.

"From my community, we believe we should have the full, equal rights as our heterosexual siblings to marry who we choose, and we should call it marriage. We should not call it civil union," Harris said.

The legislation would do three things. First, it would repeal the state law limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. Second it would give same-sex couples the right to marry. And thirdly it would allow clergy opposed to gay marriage the right to refuse to conduct a same-sex wedding.

That third part's a nice touch, really. That silly argument that recognizing gay marriages will force churches to perform same-sex weddings is beyond moronic - many churches currently refuse to perform certain marriages, like LDS churches don't marry non-Mormons - but this legislation at least addresses it in a way to make that talking point work a little more easily. The facts are already on our side; it's all a discursive battle. Control the narrative, gain equality....

(Crossposted from bilerico)

72-year-old man attacked in Detroit, and some other stuff

2007-02-22T16:52:00.000-05:00

From Detroit's WDIV:

The victim, Andrew Anthos, was riding a city bus back to his residence at Detroit's Windsor Tower apartments on Feb. 13 when another male passenger asked him if he was gay, Anthos's niece, Athena Fedenis said.

Anthos was followed by the man from the bus and beaten with a pipe in front of his apartment, Fedenis said.

"It just doesn't make any sense," Magealine Hloros, the victim's aunt said. "Why do people have to hurt each other?"

Anthos is barely able to speak above a whisper and is paralyzed from the neck down. He is currently at Detroit Receiving Hospital, his family said.

The police haven't arrested anyone yet, but they're searching the area and seeking people who have information.

Of course, the report didn't disclose the victim's sexuality. That would be highly unprofessional for a news service to post that sort of information without first getting the guy's consent, and at least waiting until a more appropriate time to ask for it.

But that doesn't stop me from wondering, and, more importantly, wondering why I'm wondering. Would his sexuality have some sort of effect on my ability to empathize with him? Is the distinction between actual and perceived sexual orientation, written into anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation, one that actually gets translated into a differing ability to see someone as "like me", a perversion of the philosophy of making the political personal?

Hmmm... good questions! Maybe the answer lies in the drawing of such distinctions. I mean, isn't all sexual orientation perceived on some level? Like, how do I know I'm gay unless I'm basing that notion on the predominent content of sexual fantasies and differing emotions I feel with regard to the Same Sex and the Opposite Sex. I'm still perceiving those feelings, and when I tell someone else that I'm gay, they're perceiving (hearing) what I say, making that my perceived sexuality to them. For example, someone like Ted Haggard's (I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF HIM, I KNOW) sexuality causes slippage in such a distinction: if my actual sexuality is gay because I tell people that I'm gay, then shouldn't his actual sexuality be straight because he tells people that he's straight?

I don't mean to be queering the planet, as queer theorists would put it, calling into question the idea of monolithic sexuality. I'm going in a different direction and wondering how we know what our sexualities are, how we know the sexuality of others, what it means to be GLBT, and by extension, how we subconsciously include and exclude people who don't wear their sexuality in the same way.

Without a doubt, what happened to this man was wrong. Michigan does not have hate crimes legislation that covers sexuality, but if it did, it would probably include a phrase about "actual and perceived sexual orientation". And it is definitely a GLBT issue if it went down like it was described in the press because of the assailant's invocation of the word "gay". But the revelation of parts and aspects of one's identity can humanize, and someone whose identity includes some modicum of GLBT would be easier for me to identify with. When someone's identity includes "perceived as gay", I wonder about how easy it would be to consider someone like that "like me" considering that everyone could potentially be "perceived as gay". Maybe that leads to the best conclusion - a comradery with all people because of such potential perception.

Or I could just be like a friend of mine and think that everyone's either gay or lying.

I'm not a lawyer - I just play one on the internet

2007-02-22T11:24:00.000-05:00

Utah's state legislature just passed a bill to restrict GSA's in that state. More from 365gay.com:

The bill would allow schools to ban clubs they believe would threaten the "moral well-being" of students or faculty.

It would require parents to sign a consent form before their children can join clubs and it would force clubs to provide school principals with information that would be presented to the club a week in advance so parents can review it.

The legislation also requires the state to cover the costs of lawsuits involving the restrictions of school clubs. That provision is seen as a move to use the power of the state to prevent lawsuits if Gay-Straight Alliances were banned at schools.

Gosh, they just don't stop trying, do they? Didn't Lawrence say that states couldn't use morality alone as a reason for justifying a law? Didn't the Federal Equal Access Act say that schools had to allow all clubs regardless of content the same access to school facilities? And doesn't restricting lawsuits to overturn the law imply that they already know that there's good reason to overturn it?

Silly me for thinking that the law should apply to some situations where it explicitly applies.

But maybe if we look at it this way:

Both [UT Senator] Buttars and [UT Representative] Tilton say the bill will survive a legal challenge because it imposes the same restrictions on all clubs equally.

Yeah, all clubs, from the Chess Club to the Astronomy Club, will have to be equally non-gay. Why didn't I think of it that way? (More importantly, why did Chess Club and Astronomy Club come to me first as examples of high school clubs?)

(Crossposted to bilerico)

NJ schools have to fight systemic harassment (Oh, hell yes)

2007-02-21T15:11:00.000-05:00

From the Daily Record:

Public schools can be held liable for repeated, prolonged student-on-student sexual harassment, the state Supreme Court ruled today in a case brought by a New Jersey boy who contended he was victimized by years of homophobic taunts and attacks until he finally withdrew from school.

A bill to a similar effect is being debated in Iowa.

It's about time for this to be happening. One has to wonder if school officials who know about that sort of harassment and do nothing to stop it aren't tacitly endorsing it. Like they're outsourcing gender policing to kids. Especially since in this case the bullying went on for years and was so bad that the kid had to go to a private school instead (an option that the vast majority of GLBT youth don't have).

I think that many queer people can identify with this kid and the need for GLBT-specific anti-bullying programs. While Iowa "Republicans wanted all references to specific groups removed from the bill so that it would simply ban bullying of any kind," not mentioning sexual minorities is basically saying that harassment of GLBT students is A-O-K. Bullies of queer students think that it's different enough from other sorts of bullying, and many school officials look the other way because they think that it's different from other sorts of bullying, that it's boy-will-be-boys or girls-will-be-girls gender policing.

I know, because, like many of you, I lived with it.

When I was fourteen, in ninth grade, I ran Cross Country for my high school. I wasn't all that great, but I liked it enough and I had some friends on the team. A couple weeks into the season an eighteen-year-old Senior decided that it would be fun to start making jokes, calling me names, and taunting me because of my perceived sexuality. (I say "perceived" because I wasn't out at that age. Even though that silly Guy Quiz said I'm a "Level 2", let's just say that I'm not fooling anyone.) It eventually escalated to include other eighteen-year-olds, more physical harassment (like holding me down and grabbing at my genitals), and harassment during school hours.

One thing that seriously bothered me about it was that it was done in full view of many other students (making it humiliating) and in front of several teachers and coaches. And the adults did nothing about it. I can only guess that they thought it was funny too, especially since one of the coaches called me a pussy in an unrelated situation.

When they graduated, it ended, but I was left with a feeling of embarrassment in front of my peers and a jumpiness at physical intimacy that followed me through part of my adult sex life. It also added to my distrust of culturally masculine institutions and authority figures.

Like I've said before, GLBT people are uniquely traumatized during adolescence in our culture, and I can only wonder what we'd be like as a people if we weren't. This ruling in New Jersey recognizes the school's responsibility, first, to react to such harassment, and, second, to fight against this discrimination as a systemic problem instead of individualized instances of bullying.

Oh, yeah, and no exceptions for religious schools. This is not what Jesus would do.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

The Anger Gap

2007-02-20T21:51:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Feldman has a great post up over at the Huffington Post about answering the anti-Christian charge that conservatives often level at liberals, especially during the recent Edwards campaign hullabaloo. One thing that I found really interesting was in a table (above, from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, here). Notice how in one year and a half the number of people who thought that religious folk were discriminated against rose by 12%, and the number who didn't dropped by a similar number. There may have been people who interpreted this question differently and thought it was referring to people with strong non-Christian religious beliefs, but that doesn't account for the change.

What this is telling us is that many people who think that Christians are discriminated against aren't basing their opinions on reality. Really, could anyone argue that there's been a significant enough change during 2005, a year where both houses of Congress and the White House were controlled by the GOP, to account for such a change? (Well, they wouldn't have very good arguments if they did.) So, if the change wasn't based on a change in actual policy, the next most likely culprit is a rhetorical shift, which would imply that those who think that such discrimination exists do so because of the rhetoric of Bill Donohue and his sort.

Which is why the solution to this problem (of a potentially very progressive institution being hijacked by the Right) is going to have to be a rhetorical one as well. Like everything in American politics, the religious debate is going to be more about form than substance.

(Crossposted to bilerico)

What your tax dollars aren't doing

2007-02-20T16:58:00.000-05:00

There's no such thing as a non-queer-related issue, and to disabuse anyone of that idea, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq’s Human Rights Report (links to pdf) has a section on queer people being hunted down in Iraq:

Attacks on homosexuals and intolerance of homosexual practices have long existed yet they have escalated in the past year. The current environment of impunity and lawlessness invites a heightened level of insecurity for homosexuals in Iraq. Armed Islamic groups and militias have been known to be particularly hostile towards homosexuals, frequently and openly engaging in violent campaigns against them. There have been a number of assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq.

The report goes on to give examples of queer people hunted down and killed in Iraq, like five men who were kidnapped by a militia this past December and two children who had been forced into prostitution (apparently they didn't prostitute to the correct gender).

The report doesn't have any specific numbers, but it does say this:

According to the Iraqi LGBT society, twenty-six of their members have been killed since 2003.

I'm going to guess that the Iraqi LGBT group mentioned isn't as easy to join as volunteering at the local GLCC would be here in the US. So the number that the LGBT group knows about is probably a very tiny fraction of those queer people who have been killed. Especially considering:

Allegedly, three Fatwas would have been issued by Islamic clerics authorising “good Muslims” to hunt and kill homosexuals.

Indeed, their ultimate goal is the elimination of every queer person in Iraq:

One of the self-appointed judges in Sadr City, believes that homosexuality is on the wane in Iraq. "Most [gays] have been killed and others have fled," he said. Indeed, the number who've sought asylum in the UK has risen noticeably over the last few months. (…) He insists the religious courts have a lot to be proud of, "We now represent a society that asked us to protect it not only from thieves and terrorists but also from these [bad] deeds."

The Iraqi's government response, from the AP via The Seattle P-I:

Iraq's government on Thursday strongly criticized a U.N. report on human rights that put its civilian death toll in 2006 at 34,452, saying it is "superficial" and discussed subjects that are taboo in Iraqi society such as homosexuality.

That's right. They don't disagree with the contention that LGBT folk are being rounded up - they just criticize the messenger. They have learned a thing or two from our government!

This is all related to the speech Outrage!'s Ali Hili gave today in London. From UK Gay News:

He told the conference that some ministers in the US and UK-backed Iraqi government were colluding with death squads responsible for the “sexual cleansing” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) Iraqis.

“Iraqi LGBTs are at daily risk of execution by the Shia death squads of the Badr and Sadr militias,” Mr. Hili told delegates at the conference.

“Members of these militias have infiltrated the Iraqi police and are abusing their police authority to pursue a plan to eliminate all homosexuals in Iraq.

“This is happening with the collusion of key ministers in the Iraqi government,” he pointed out.

The US government created this "government" in Iraq, and it has a responsibility to protect those least able to defend themselves under it. Hili points out that the US and UK's current policies are to turn down LGBT folk applying for asylum based on their sexuality. One wonders how much our current Decider-in-Chief agrees with this policy. (Remember how Nixon cracked jokes and ranted about a Jewish conspiracy in private?)

(Crossposted to bilerico)

Cultural ex-gayism

2007-02-20T00:59:00.000-05:00

Anyone who knows me knows that when I hear queer people describe themselves or their desired mate/fuck buddy as "straight-acting", it's like nails on a chalkboard. I cringe, because there's too much internalized homophobia and self-contempt packed into that one phrase. And it's hard not to take it as a personal insult towards me, because what's wrong with acting gay? I'm not saying that gay men and lesbians should act like walking stereotypes, but that we should all be free to be ourselves, and, in that way, we can create our own identities and collude to construct archetypes of queerness that are diverse, inclusive, and constantly falling apart.

In other words, we should be who we are and love ourselves for it.

So when I found out about this, I just wanted to throw up. It's a site for gay men who describe themselves as straight-acting. Not much of it is up right now, although they do have a cool site intro, which makes me wonder how much work people have put into this. But you can take their Guy Quiz, think hard about the inane details that normal people don't obsess over, and, like I did, get told:

Hardly anyone would be able to pick you as a homo boy. All your actions are carefully crafted in a way that they never appear to be considered too fem. Only a fellow level 2 -- buddy might suspect you with the proper gaydar and it's just the way you like it.

After that, stroll into the message boards and read tens of thousands of posts about how everyone's just "relaxed" and "just being me". Funny how for gay men the act of not caring about your gender performance is itself a gender performance that one has to carefully maintain (c'mon, we all know what "chill" means in a gay.com personal). I wonder if that's developed the same way in lesbian culture?

Anyway, I'd have to say that this site actually affected me more when I first found it than Fred Phelps' page. Not because it made me angry, and it didn't make me sad either, it just made me rethink a lot about gay male culture. I knew that we definitely have an issue with trying to be like straight people. I just didn't think that people would make a snazzy webpage out of that sort of internalized homophobia. All that effort, and do these people really think that homophobes are going to accept them because of it?

Oh, and their T-shirt model doesn't wear pants. WEIRD!

Episcopalians rebuked over the Issue that Dare not Speak Its Name

2007-02-20T00:39:00.000-05:00

In a move that was called unprecedented, the Anglican hierarchy has rebuked American Episcopalians for being OK with the gay. The NY Times article is good, but the Washington Post article says it more concisely:

Anglican leaders concluded their five-day meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, yesterday by issuing a demand that the U.S. Episcopal Church unequivocally stop blessing same-sex unions and consecrating any more gay bishops.

In a statement issued in the final hour of the tense meeting, the Anglican Communion gave the U.S. church until Sept. 30 to comply. Otherwise, the leaders said, its relations with other Anglicans will remain "damaged at best."

While they can pretend that the conflict is about Church teaching and the Bible, it's really the same only do-you-choose-to-be-gay "debate":

Anglican traditionalists believe that gay relationships violate Scripture, and they have demanded that the U.S. church adhere to that teaching or face discipline.

[snip]

Supporters of ordaining gays believe biblical teachings on justice and inclusion should take precedence.

The only way that gay relationships could violate the Scripture is if gays choose their sexuality, because a Biblical interpretation that doesn't apply to everyone isn't a proper interpretation. And the only way it's a social justice issue is if sexual orientation's immutable.

So what are the chances that they'll actually discuss that issue? Zero to none. It's very easy for each side to get distracted from the fact that that's the heart of the issue, and the other side wants to avoid it like the plague because they're on the wrong side.

So this whole thing is just getting decided by an appeal to an authority, specifically the international leaders of the church. I'm going to guess that's because they're experts.

(Crossposted onto bilerico.)

More and more Haggard stuff

2007-02-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

From the CO Springs Gazette:

Concerning Ted and his family, we have done extensive fact-finding into his lifelong battle with a “dark side” which he said in his confession letter has been a struggle for years. We have verified the reality of that struggle through numerous individuals who reported to us firsthand knowledge of everything from sordid conversation to overt suggestions to improper activities to improper relationships. These findings established a pattern of behavior that culminated in the final relationship in which Ted was, as a matter of grace, caught. We learned most of those circumstances through confidential pastoral communications that, because of their pastoral character, cannot be disclosed.

Oh, yeah, that's right: This church investigation found "numerous individuals" who had "firsthand knowledge" of "improper activities" and "improper relationships".

Translation: Ted's been a busy boy!

Too bad they aren't giving out details. If anyone out there reading this is one of those numerous individuals, please, please let me in on the secret. I'll be your best friend!

Either way, though, if not finding others that he was involved with makes him completely heterosexual, then I guess that he's not. Not that there was anyone on the planet who believed he was in the first place.

Thanks to Kevin of Holy Moly for pointing me to this article.

(Crossposted onto bilerico.)

OK! It's Q-Bomb 2.1!

2007-02-19T23:05:00.000-05:00

I'm starting this thing up again. For the third time. Pretty much everything's going to be the same as before except that I changed the "s" to a "z". I found out no one knew how to pronounce it the way I do, and I already hear my last name mispronounced enough in real life. There's no reason that my nom de clavier should be mispronounced over cyberspace.

Other than that, version 2.1 only has to offer the same things that version 2.0 did, with the same promise to learn a thing or two about web-design.

Qomics for Queers - The Office Closet Case

2007-02-18T14:58:00.000-05:00

While it's easy for the rest of us (or maybe just me) to judge the comics as not quite queer enough, when you think about them as being stuck in a time-warp, you realise you have to look a little closer at the closet cases involved in order to pick them out. Television might have its L-Word's and Will and Grace's and lesbian sisters of Jamie on Mad About You, and the silver screen can have its fancy pants Jack and Ennis and Kissing Jessica Stein, but the comics are just fine without all the bells and whistles. No, they don't need your pity; all they want is your respect and your time as you kids look more deeply into them for their queer folk. Yeah, it might not be as easy as calling someone on your cell phone or whatever it is the kids are doing these days, but if you read between the lines, reinterpret the artwork, and just make things up, you can find the representation you're looking for.

First, check out this Friday's They'll Do It Every Time:

Don't let the fashion fool you; this is supposed to be now. This single panel is about a guy who calls the women in his office "sweetheart" and "m'love". And he's somehow singing at the same time. Now there's really only one sort of guy who can get smiles for that sort of behavior - the office "glad" (maybe Scaduto means that he's just happy?).

I just reread Richard Isay's Becoming Gay, and I must say that even though it was written in 1991, there is a cultural difference between the gays of his time and mine, so much so that I can't wrap my mind around a statement like this: "[I] was concerned about the effect coming out would have on my marriage" (37). The clothes tell me that Buttbrain here might be a part of that generation.

So TDIET, like an anachronistic Seinfeld, is supposed to poke fun at different types. This type, with whom those two guys in the Bronx are so familiar, is a great guy deep down inside. Buttbrain is that type of person who has just come out to himself, later in life, and has come out to some of his women friends far from home and has become a sort of desexualized confidant and office mascot because of it. But being partly in the closet, especially to one's close family, is only going to help build his self-esteem about this one part of his identity and create resentment towards compulsory heterosexuality, which ultimately will be transfered on the most visible representative of The Opposite Sex in his life - Helgar. I've seen this misdirected anger a lot among partly out queer people; in fact it seems that's the fuel of the Catholic hierarchy.

So what's Buttbrain to do? Well, he has to take that final step. No, it won't help his relationship with Helgar, but maybe he can become a better role model for his son who can't stop wearing the same blue-vest-striped-shirt outfit.

This Friday's Blondie:

Aversion therapy for heterosexuals.

And your Judith Butler rewrite of The Family Circus:

Qomics for Queers: Beating around the Bush

2007-02-11T19:09:00.000-05:00

Did you ever notice that Comic strips fall far behind every other medium out there when it comes to any representation of queer people? Sure, the political cartoons seem to realise we exist, but the joke-a-days and soaps printed in mainstream papers do everything to can to pretend like there are no queer people.

Which is why I started Qomics for Queers over at Q-Bomb, where I read between the lines, reinterpret artwork, and completely make junk up to get some representation.

Here's this Friday's Apartment 3-G:

For those of you who don't follow the travails of Tommie Thomson, LuAnn Powers, and Margo Magee at Apartment 3-G, then you've missed most of the Friday that Never Ends. LuAnn and Margo are both away from the apartment that evening working, and Tommie is left to her own devices. Of course, without the women she lives with, her life is meaningless until her neighbor Gina whisks her away to her play and the ensuing cast party. At that party, Tommie makes out with the director, only to be pawned of on our friend Gary, seen above.

Now you're all caught up on the greatest telenovela to ever grace the funny pages!

While people have been following the closeted lesbianism of Tommie Thomson for years, I don't think we've ever seen her definitively express herself one way or the other. Sure she's kissed a few men drunk, made a few sly looks at women, and generally tried to be the non-sexual one of the bunch.

Now, dressed as a character from a Lynne Cheney novel, Tommie is face-to-face with a man who's hitting on her, who by all accounts is sweet, but something's missing, a spark, a certain je ne sais vagina. When this party is all said and done (maybe four weeks from now?), Tommie's going to be thinking about why she subconsciously thwarts chances at heterosexual love every time they come her way. And then, and only then, can we celebrate Tommie and Gina's new romance.

This Wednesday's Hagar the Horrible:

Not particularly gay, except that have you noticed that most of the Hagar-at-the-restaurant-making-fun-of-food-and/or-pop-culture strips involve Lucky Eddie instead of Helga? One can only wonder why Lucky Eddie prefers to dine with his boss instead of his family or friends or why Hagar doesn't go out with Helga.

I know, I know, he travels a lot for work, but I don't think that in between raiding the English and pillaging the French that he would have time to stop at a restaurant without anyone else from his army. Nor would a blood-thirsty viking be welcome in those just pillaged countries' restaurants. No, this has to be near home. And that's the same waiter who serves Helga and him.

I can only imagine what life would be like as a closeted viking, constantly escaping home life as resentment towards heteronormativity builds, all the while finding my only relief in a member of my own army. Of course, in my imagination, we wouldn't sit around at restaurants and make jokes that fit easily into a two panel setup, one panel punchline format.

Alas, I'm not a student of viking history.

Here's this Tuesday's Family Circus:

Jeffy doesn't stop! He continues to attempt to defend himself from castration! Good work, Mom, because you know that snowball is destined for the back of your head.

Qomics for Queers moved

2007-02-11T18:28:00.000-05:00

Over to my new pad at Bilerico.

I'm moving....

2007-02-09T15:44:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone. I'm moving on over to Bil Browning's Bilerico. I don't plan on putting any content up here that isn't cross-posted over there, unless a Q-Bomb version 3.0 gets launched. I hope you join me at Bilerico!

Last Call

2007-02-08T22:34:00.000-05:00

Until Saturday. I have the LSAT Saturday morning and I will be too busy to post tomorrow. I'll be back with the weekend features and posts about whatever catastrophically gay things happen tomorrow.

So here's Jeffrey Lewis' "Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror":

Question: What do you think about the usage of male-on-male sex as a symbol for violent hierarchy?

I'm like GLAAD: Late in responding

2007-02-08T21:21:00.000-05:00

To GLAAD, that is. They finally released a statement condemning Chuck Knipp's character Shirley Q. Liquor:

"This performance perpetuates ugly racial stereotypes that are offensive, hurtful and simply unacceptable."

Well, good. They realise that we can't separate the fight against stereotypes of one group from another's. We're all in this together.

It's also just wrong. They say that they get that. But here's something that rubbed me the wrong way:

While our work at GLAAD is about promoting fair, accurate and inclusive media representations of the LGBT community[....]

No, of course it didn't. Because it absolutely didn't play into the stereotype that gays are elitist, out-of-touch, racist, and shallow. Such a stereotype exists, and here's one example:

Knipp is a visible representative of the queer community, and while I'm usually the last person to say that a LGBT person should avoid playing into a stereotype, one has to wonder if he's exploiting this stereotype of gay men for laughs as well. Would the same people who like his show right now find it funny if he were a straight man who played an "ignunt" Black man with 19 kids...? Are people laughing at stereotypes of Black people and gay men simultaneously?

Knipp is playing into that same stereotype that we see of gay men used on everything from SNL to The Family Guy to mensnewsdaily.com for humor: shallow, hyper-sexual, and alcohol-addicted. This is not to take away from the obvious fact that his minstrel show is racist. But just because Knipp is gay himself, doesn't mean that he can't exploit a heterosexist mindset for a few dollars.

Colombia's moving on up

2007-02-08T19:33:00.000-05:00

Like the Jeffersons, to the metaphorical East Side of equal rights for same-sex couples.... No, no, no, silly analogy, good TV show.

Anyway, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled yesterday that same-sex couples should have the same property rights as heterosexual couples. This should not be confused with civil unions or marriage, but it's a step in the right direction. Here's a bit more:

The Constitutional Court ruled late Wednesday that if a gay couple of two years separates, the assets accumulated during the relationship will be divided between the two, and in the case of death, the survivor will receive all the assets.

The article goes on to describe the next steps that LGBT groups are taking there to advance the rights of same-sex couples, a step-by-step approach to eventually achieve full equality.

365gay has more:

Under the law same-sex couples who wanted to share their property had had to create a business, put the property in the company name, and list the domestic partners as joint shareholders in the company. But, even that did not always guarantee that in the case of death of one of the partners the shared possessions would go to the surviving one.

What a novel idea. It's interesting to me that the bond that people develop gets recognized as a contract here in the US, an agreement between two people that does not exist on its own. Rather that bond is a way for people to negotiate their actions as individuals. Gays in Colombia have taken this in another direction, moved well beyond setting their bond as a valid contract between two individuals and made it an entity of its own by incorporating it, with its own identity and rights.

While I'm sure that the primary reason for coming up with that idea was the same reason behind the fight for same-sex marriage in the US (protecting one's family), I can't help but wonder how something like this could play out with the highly-libertarian ethos of the US. If you look at people as individuals, and marriages as contracts, where does that leave love and desire? Up in the air, not legally recognized or recognizable, that's where. It would be an absolute denial of reality to say that such bonds don't exist or aren't important, but isn't that the logical end of the "Marriage is a contract for people to start making babies" argument?

This ruling is based on such an understanding of relationships. The ruling did not give the rights of heterosexuals to queer people. It gave some of the rights of opposite-sex couples to same-sex couples. Indeed, that is the ultimate goal of the US movement for same-sex marriage, but the reliance on the Fourteenth Amendment and it's equal protection of individual people under the law might preclude the possibility of such a goal. Gay and lesbian people are hurt by their relationships not being recognized even though we are recognized as existing, so maybe adopting an ontology that can accept relationships and bonds as entities separate of the individuals who form them can help to articulate the hurt caused by the dismissal of such rights.

How are you wrong? Let me count the ways

2007-02-07T21:45:00.000-05:00

Oh man, this is awesome, awesome, awesome. Here's an article about Tonia and David Parker's lawsuit in Massachusetts by those parents who didn't want their kid to have read King and King. OK, the lawsuit isn't awesome, but at least this time they're on the defense, not us. But here's a fun quotation from the plaintiffs' lawyer:

What they fear is that their children are being brainwashed.

Brainwashed, of course, into thinking that GLBT people are full and equal human beings.

Since everyone in this "debate" thinks that the other side is actually insane, I'm going to try to avoid labeling this family as insane. Let's just say that they're coming from a very different place from very different experiences than I am. So let's try think of all the assumptions that are necessary to go into a statement like that, ignoring the legal issues and thinking of it just as an intellectual argument.

In a hierarchical relationship like student/teacher, it is possible to avoid indoctrinating kids.
The kid cannot think for himself when he gets to be a bit older.
It is impossible for parents to brainwash their kids. (Their word, not mine.)
Avoiding discussing GLBT people at all is value-neutral.
Their kid isn't queer.
No one in their family is queer.
No one in the classroom is being raised by same-sex parents.
The kid will not know any queer people until he is eighteen.
The parental right to teach their kid their morals always trumps any obligation for him to learn to be a good citizen.
There is something inherently wrong with being gay.
There is something inherently wrong with gay people.
Same-sex parents don't have the same parental right to remove their kids from the classroom when anything related to heterosexuality is being discussed.
Morality is relative. (This is funny considering how often GLBT folk get accused of being relativists, but this whole parental rights thing is really just saying that two individuals should have the right to tell their kids whatever and there's no need for it to be right or wrong and no one can interfere.)
It is possible to make every statement value-neutral to all kids in a classroom.
It is practical to have a revolving door for kids to leave and enter the classroom whenever there is material being presented that their parents don't agree with.
Class material can and should be separated into neat categories of "straight" and "not-straight". (Like, think about when they have to learn about Alexander the Great or the song "America the Beautiful", which was written by a lesbian.)
Straight people can lay claim to the first category and exclude the latter from everyone's experience.
There isn't a legitimate interest in fostering diversity in schools.

OK then! I think I'm out, how many can you think of?

Anti-Catholic "oppression" and Edwards' netroots outreach

2007-02-07T15:34:00.000-05:00

From 365gay:

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, demanded that Edwards fire Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.

"John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots," Donohue wrote in a statement. "He has no choice but to fire them immediately."

If Viacom had not pulled everything from The Colbert Report from YouTube, I'd have the little clip here from Bill Donohue about how most of the anti-Catholicism in this country is from the political left.

But this is an interesting quotation nonetheless. There's been a brouhaha among conservative bloggers about hiring editors of Shakespeare's Sister and Pandagon to the Edwards campaigns. They tried to make the whole thing about saying a few naughty words (check out Michelle Malkin's juvenile post about Marcotte's language), but I think they're really just jealous that they're stuck supporting a party based on elitism that will be hard-pressed to hire bloggers and that the left-wing blogosphere has been hundreds of times more effective at supporting political campaigns.

Anyway, here we have this accusation from Bill Donohue, who is the leader of the Catholic League (Catholic version of Focus on the Family), that, when taking Marcotte and McEwan's actual statements into account, amounts to saying that anyone who disagrees with the political pronouncements of the Catholic hierarchy is anti-Catholic. That's pretty much what he said on The Colbert Report as well.

That's pretty extreme.

He goes further in another statement today responding to The View, saying that show is anti-Catholic because co-hosts Joy Behar and Rosie O'Donnell said that celibacy is not part of the human condition, and that's why it's hard for the Church to get new priests and why some of them turn to molesting children. He calls them bigots in the end. (He goes for bonus points on this one for blaming straight Behar's comments on lesbian O'Donnell: "Ever since O’Donnell joined ‘The View’ in September, the show has gotten out of control.")

What's his point? He can't possibly believe the American people are actually going to buy that the most powerful and richest religious organization in the world is oppressed. I think what he's after is much more nuanced: watering down and confusing the idea of oppression. If everyone is oppressed, then we don't have to care. If everyone is a bigot towards everyone else, then we can throw up our hands and give up on sorting it out. Seriously, that's the best defense that they have.

Of course, if he wants to see an example of something that proves a materially oppressive hierarchy, here's a bit.

I'm on MySpace, among other things

2007-02-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

No, really. I just got on it this morning. Now I have to figure it out! Computers, computers, computers...

Also, I'm touching up a lot of the design of this site.... Any comments are welcome. Does anyone know how to change the header to something I've designed myself on Blogger?

Last thing: the number one search entry that found this site in the past week was "lame jokes".

Ask a politician a question? What what?

2007-02-06T21:32:00.000-05:00

Here's a great idea from France. They just started a network TV show called "I Have a Question to Ask You" where people can ask questions to politicians. I mean, that's a whole lot better than scripted "townhall meetings". Anyway, someone asked UMP presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy his stand on gay adoption. Seriously, imagine Bush saying something like this:

I want to defend minorities because they have rights, but I don't want to oppress the majority[....] I don't accept it when people call me homophobic because I oppose gay adoption. [Translation mine]

This is what a more open democracy is like. Yes, Sarkozy isn't all that pro-the-gays, but he gets asked about it and he answers, instead of being asked about it and calling the interviewer "out of line". If we're going to have a dialogue with our politicians about GLBT rights, we have to be able to have a dialogue with them at all.

A drag queen in Pakistan...

2007-02-06T19:27:00.000-05:00

And she's hosting the most popular show on late night television in that country. And get this:

However, even the country's religious leaders have appeared undisturbed, even amused, by the drag queen's manner.

And we don't even have a late night network talk show hosted by a non-white, non-heterosexual man.

Haggard Update

2007-02-06T17:20:00.000-05:00

When I saw this last night about Ted Haggard wanting to become an psychologist online, I laughed and decided to save it for TWIP this weekend. But then I saw this on the Denver Post, and couldn't wait. According to one of his "overseers":

"He is completely heterosexual," Ralph said. "That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing."

Uh, yeah, whatever. If anyone needs an explanation as to why a guy who hires a male prostitute for three years is not completely heterosexual, check out this post at Good As You.

There's just so much to this, I don't know what to say. Here we have a 50-year-old gay man, who by any account from anyone credible, is stuck in an unsatisfying relationship with his wife and, until recently, completely cut off from the outside world (why does this sound like a cult?), a (presumably) straight woman who's married to this guy, who has remained silent on this issue and will remain married to him, at least in the near future, and four kids who have to move around a whole lot now because no one will acknowledge the truth about this whole thing. There are other characters, like the team of fundamentalists who are trying to manage this "crisis" and push their politics at the same time so they can keep pushing the "gays can change" narrative, his congregation who lost their pastor but support him and hope he ex-gays himself for his own sake, the GLBT community and allies, who, while we make fun of this whole drama, would really like for him to come out and live his life honestly for both his sake and because of the personal political stakes, and the heterosexual population at large who's just shaking their heads wondering what's happened or just waiting for the next juicy piece of gossip but otherwise don't care about how this works itself out.

Isn't this a crazy drama?

When exposed, Mark Foley came out through his attorney while in rehab, Jim West denied it until he died, and James McGreevey embraced the GLBT community. Haggard, an anti-gay authority figure who was also outed through scandal, has "ex-gayed" and decided to stay in the closet and not speak about his sexuality publicly, only through spokesmen. While those of us not in positions of authority have developed a set of coming out rituals, these people, so far removed from out-n-proud GLBT people, through their own choice, cannot respectably come out.

As much as his "overseers" want to claim him for the anti-gay community, he is one of the most publicly visible queer people in the country. For better or worse, he is, in a small, nuanced way, representing us.

More Snickers stuff: Let's just try to silence the debate on this

2007-02-06T11:57:00.000-05:00

Snickers has released a statement about their Super Bowl ad, not apologising, that you can read more here. Here's a bit:

“As with all of our Snickers advertising, our goal was to capture the attention of our core Snickers consumer, primarily 18-to-24-year-old adult males,” said a spokeswoman for Masterfoods, Alice Nathanson. “Feedback from our target consumers has been positive, and many media and Web site commentators on this year’s Super Bowl lineup ranked the commercial among this year’s best.”

“We know that humor is highly subjective and we understand that some consumers have found the commercial offensive,” Ms. Nathanson said, adding: “Clearly that was not our intent. We do not plan to continue the ad on television or on our Web site.”

I completely agree with humor being "highly subjective". All texts are highly subjective - theater, literature, television, music - in that people will interpret them differently based on the values and experiences they have while viewing. Even reality itself can become such a text. That's why witnesses to a crime are interviewed separately: to keep each interpretation of reality from mixing based on who among them has the strongest personality.

Of course, that's not what the Snickers company meant. What they meant was It's highly subjective, but some viewpoints are more subjective than others. Notice that the statement implies that the focus groups were not subjective, that Snickers' intent was objectively clear (i.e. anyone who doesn't agree that that was their intent is stupid), and that "some" consumers found offensive (marginalizing us in the democracy of public opinion). As John Aravosis said today, the statement "hardly reeks of 'I get it'".

So considering all that, Outsports.com has this commentary up about the advertisements. Quote:

The sophisticated message seemed to be that the overreaction of "straight" men to homosexual contact is completely irrational, and, in the case of the proposed threesome, maybe that contact is not entirely shunned.

This is a possible interpretation, especially of the ad that aired on TV. The others, I don't know, hitting someone who just did something one thinks is gay with metal objects doesn't seem to me like a "sophisticated message" that makes fun of the bashers. To a lot of GLBT people it had an air of "well, that's what you gotta do sometimes".

He goes on to criticise Aravosis' interpretation of the players' reactions with:

Aravosis seems to be saying that not only are people not allowed to be uncomfortable watching something, but certainly no one can show that discomfort.

Yes, yes, the ultimate goal of anyone who disagrees with a high-production value, significantly edited recording of hired athletes' responses to a commercial is to be a fascist and silence free speech in their autocratic rule of the world. Please. No one's saying that people aren't allowed to feel uncomfortable anywhere, just that a major company shouldn't use it to sell candy bars.

The column closes with:

And if I were Mars Inc., which produces Snickers, I wouldn't worry too much about the boycott that Aravosis is threatening: Containing a high fat content and more calories than you could burn running a 5k, Snickers bars don't get eaten by gay men anyway.

HA HA! All gay men are always dieting! And they would never actually run the five kilometers necessary to burn those calories because they're sissies! YUK YUK! And lesbians don't exist! HA HA!

Oh, I suppose his humor is "highly subjective" as well.

Last Call

2007-02-05T23:30:00.000-05:00

Laurie Anderson's "Smoke Rings":

Here's one that the back-up singers don't answer:

What is more macho: iceberg or volcano?

Why is Michael Devlin not an alleged rapist?

2007-02-05T20:17:00.000-05:00

I found this on CNN about Michael Devlin, that guy who kidnapped those two kids in Missouri:

A 41-year-old Missouri man accused of kidnapping two boys was charged Monday with multiple counts of forcible sodomy.

St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch has filed 71 charges against pizzeria manager Michael Devlin.

The first 18 counts -- one count of kidnapping and 17 of forcible sodomy -- relate to last month's abduction of a 13-year-old boy; the remainder are kidnapping and forcible sodomy charges related to the 2002 abduction of a now-15-year-old boy.

Not knowing what "forcible sodomy" is, I looked it up in the Missouri penal code:

A person commits the crime of forcible sodomy if such person has deviate sexual intercourse with another person by the use of forcible compulsion. Forcible compulsion includes the use of a substance administered without a victim's knowledge or consent which renders the victim physically or mentally impaired so as to be incapable of making an informed consent to sexual intercourse.

Forcible rape is:

A person commits the crime of forcible rape if such person has sexual intercourse with another person by the use of forcible compulsion. Forcible compulsion includes the use of a substance administered without a victim's knowledge or consent which renders the victim physically or mentally impaired so as to be incapable of making an informed consent to sexual intercourse.

That's right, forcible rape and forcible sodomy, in Missouri, are exactly the same thing, except forcible sodomy is for "deviate sexual intercourse". Both carry a penalty of five years to life.

What Michael Devlin is accused of doing is absolutely terrible. He, if he did what he's accused of, chose to ruin the lives of two young boys. This is not a gay issue; it's a criminal issue. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about the gay issue that's being inserted into this criminal issue by the state of Missouri.

While both crimes carry the same punishment and have the same surrounding legal issues (follow those links; the two laws are cut-and-paste versions of each other), "forcible sodomy" carries the extra word "deviate". I'm guessing the word deviate is there because of the assumption of anal sex, because according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook:

Oral or anal sexual intercourse with another person, forcibly and/or against that persons will; or not forcibly against that persons will where the victim is incapable of giving consent because of his/her youth or because of his/her temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity.

"Rape" is defined by the same handbook as "carnal knowledge" done forcibly. Straight sex deserves euphemism; gay sex is labeled as deviate. Not just when it's forced, but in general.

It's hard to see any reason for this but to label a rapist off on the gay community and insult our sexuality at the same time. But why, in this day and age, is such a rhetorical device necessary? Why can't Devlin be an alleged rapist, not an alleged sodomist?

Perhaps I care too much...

2007-02-05T19:23:00.000-05:00

From just now. SIGH!

Oh! That's how you sell candy bars! Gay-bashing!

2007-02-05T18:22:00.000-05:00

Oh my, you have to see this. A friend sent me the link last night during the Superbowl, and let's say it's not pretty. (UPDATE: Snickers has since taken down the ad from their site, but here it is from YouTube. Expect that to be taken down soon.)

Snickers had a vaguely homophobic ad during the game, in which two men were working on under the hood of a car, one takes out a Snickers bar and holds it in his mouth, the other starts to eat on the other end (I guess that candy bar is that good), they eat from each end like in Lady and the Tramp, their mouths meet, they jump back (I watched it several times last night and wondered how the candy bar breaks apart that easily, but that's not the point), and they do something "manly": pulling out their chest hair. Alternate versions of the commercial showed the guys beating each other up with a wrench and the hood of the car (because beating up gays is funny) and the guys drinking anti-freeze and motor oil (because it's better to commit suicide already than to be gay).

The worst part was that you could watch football player reactions to the commercials, where they say "That ain't right" and visibly react with disgust. Apparently when they hired the football players, instead of giving them a candy bar and having them say how much they like - like a normal endorsement - they had the football players just comment on male homosexuality. The only ways this could have worked in a Snickers ad producers head was:

1. People want to see football players make fun of gay people, so they put that up to keep people on the site.

2. People identify with homophobic companies more, so they'll want to buy more from the ones that are obviously so.

3. They want the image of Snickers to be anti-gay, so homophobic people will be more likely to want to buy Snickers (wink, wink, real straight men eat Snickers).

4. They want to shock people, and people are more shocked when others are shocked as well.

Any way they intended it, this is not an accident. They tried to make it look like a candid reaction from the players, but when you have all those lights up and cameras going, it obviously wasn't candid, and, more importantly, they didn't have to put it up.

I don't see why they had to take a happy and exciting event like this and ruin it for some people.

AmericaBlog, Pam's House Blend, and TowleRoad have more. The HRC responds.

UPDATE: Since they just took down the ads from their site, they're going to probably be saying soon that it was an accident, but we're going to see right through that.

Qomics for Queers - Hillbillies can l'arn to love too

2007-02-04T13:50:00.000-05:00

Here's this week's Qomics for Queers, where I turn my expectations of fair representation in the comics into innuendo. All I can do is read between the lines, reinterpret artwork, and completely make shit up about the past week's comics.

This week, we have some music to set the mood for the first comic:

And here are the top panels of last Sunday's Snuffy Smith:

Post-Brokeback, there have been a whole lot of fun made regarding men going off into the woods, being manly, going "fishing", etc. All it is, really, is silliness. There's an older idea of what it means to be masculine, and it includes a whole lot of things that Jerry Seinfeld wouldn't do.

That being said, I have to say that this is the first time that I've seen John Rose draw a man who could be interpreted as attractive. In fact, all we know about this guy is that he's big, comics-world attractive, and he enjoys singing. Snuffy and Lukey seem pretty attached to the privacy of their "fishing spot" when they don't have full picture of this guy, so attached to their privacy that Snuffy is already undressing before he gets there. Once they see him, the mood changes, and all Snuffy can think about is l'arning to share. Share what? Well, I'll let you fill in that blank. But whatever it is, the gulp!!, wavy lines, and eyebrows tell me that they're afraid of the consequences should their plan to share not work out.

This Friday's Hi and Lois:

These girls to whom Chip is talking, who don't have names, remind me of a teenage version of Peppermint Patty and Marcy. In fact, the Glasses Girl on the right in panel two has the same no-eyeballs-thick-glasses-straight-hair look that Marcy sported back in the day. But the similarities to the funny pages' most famous Sapphic story are a bit deeper.

First, we know that GG is sending romantic emails to Curly Hair Girl. That's right, one female character in Hi and Lois is sending romantic emails to another. Chip may think this is a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerec situation, but CHG betrays GG in saying "those" while he said "email", singular. There are a lot of other emails that CHG didn't send off to Chip, that she's printing out and keeping for herself in a shoebox under her bed. I really wish that she lived in a world where she didn't have to hide her true feelings, but she lives in Hi and Lois World, where no one is allowed to express their true feelings.

Second, GG seems to be following CHG at school. CHG's talking to a boy that she "likes", and GG is right there behind her. If only we could look beyond those thick lenses at her teenage despair as the object of her affection "hits on" a Flagston with an email that she wrote, but all we get is a wide-eyed sadness the size of a beached whale.

Thursday's and Saturday's Speedbump had a few references to queer people:

These don't need explanation, but is the peacock one an erection joke?

Oh, and about Kudzu's weeklong "same-self marriage" storyline (this is Thursday's):

HAW HAW! You let dem gays marry and what's next? Marrying dogs and box turtles? What about marrying ourselves? HAW HAW! And those Episcopalians! They bishopped a GAY? You only do that if you don't love God! YUK YUK! What about domestic violence? HAW HAW!

This Week in Pink - January 26, 2007 to NOW

2007-02-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

Here are some great posts by LGBT bloggers from this past week:

Pam Spaulding covers the current presidential candidates' positions on Don't Ask/Don't Tell. Interesting read, as 55% of Americans don't like it, and it's hurting America, why do we still have it?
Joe at Joe.My.God solves the mystey of Donnie Davies. Spoiler: It was a hoax.
Don Sherfick found out that Colts coach Tony Dungy is fundraising for a heterosexist group, the Indiana Family Institute. All I can say is: Go Superbowl!
Oh, you just have to see this post about the Connecticut marriage bill from the kids at Good As You.
Jasmyne Cannick blogs about her time working at GLAAD.

Queer Musical Interlude: Sleater-Kinney

2007-02-03T20:11:00.000-05:00

Now for this week's musical interlude, from Portland, OR, Sleater-Kinney performing What's Mine Is Yours:

The Washington Post on Sleater-Kinney's live performance:

Sleater-Kinney's sound is raw yet accessible, passionate yet mindful of the audience. The band directed its energy outward, pulling audience emotions up and down. "Rollercoaster" demanded -- and got -- spinning green lights. "Modern Girl," sung with a tough sweetness by Carrie Brownstein, offered the unexpected counterpoint of percussionist Janet Weiss on harmonica. And "Steep Air" began with a contemplative guitar intro -- reminiscent of, of all things, Shawn Colvin's "Sunny Came Home" -- that was overtaken by the building thunder of Weiss's drums and the ominous lyrics that signaled the escape of the desperate.

Guitarist Carrie Brownstein on gender deconstruction:

And in terms of redefining gender, I think, I have to say my main problem with it, although I do think, OK I do think that gender is a construction and I do think that redefining what a woman is part of an important debate. But, I think that’s it’s sort of a post-revolutionary concept in a very pre-revolutionary time.

Meaning that, sexism still exists. Women as a category, as an identifiable marker, exists in our society, whether we want it to or not. So, to simply claim that woman doesn’t exist for yourself might be OK. But to try to dismantle it as an entity in order to bring another form of politics in there, will only work after sexism is gone.

It’s hard to let go of being a woman, or the idea being a woman, when we still live in a society that oppresses women and objectifies women. I just think that in that sense, it’s problematic. And in terms of older feminists who worked really hard for things like equal pay, or maternity leave[....]

For someone thirty years younger to begin to say "Woman is just a construct, we need to totally let that go…" Are we there yet? Can we afford to do that? Hopefully those discussions can coexist. Instead of one trying to topple the other. I think we can be working towards different goals, but it means a complete toppling of the category of “woman,” not just by feminists, but by everybody. Until that happens, I just don’t see it as being really possible.

Visit their website here.

More ugliness, this time: Paris Hilton

2007-02-03T18:27:00.000-05:00

My first introduction to Paris Hilton was about a year ago, when a friend and I went to visit another friend in a town about half an hour away. I brought my laptop. While waiting for the afternoon train back, and without TV, all we had for entertainment was my friend's DVD collection. Although she had yet to watch it, she had the complete first season of The Simple Life.

We watched three episodes before going to the train station. If you haven't seen this show, let me just warn you to avoid it. It completely shook me. I had no realization that people like this existed. At all. She, and her friend Nichole Richie, were the most self-absorbed people that I had ever seen. They reached a level of selfishness that almost made me want to vomit. On the walk back to the train station, all three of us were silent. We were scarred from what we had just seen.

Since then I can't understand why she is respected by anyone, why she had her own show at all, why anyone cares what she does. Until she ups the ante:

In the video clip, which appears to be several years old, Paris repeatedly calls one person a "f*****t" as she is dancing with her sister.At one point in the clip, Paris pauses dancing to Notorious BIG's "Hypnotize," walks up to the camera and says she and her sister "are like two n******. [Asterisks Access Hollywood's]

All I can say about this scene specifically: Is anyone actually surprised? Considering how little she cares about others, is there anyone out there who thought that she would think about how her words can hurt others? Ugh, I digress.

While I honestly couldn't care about what she says, I did remember this little story from a year and a half ago, when she grand marshalled LA Pride. Yes, I remember wondering what in the world this woman did for our community, and, as Rosanna Mah asked: "Are there no gay people that could possibly grand marshal our own parade?" (I hope that there was an LA Pride official who has since apologized for this, and if there is I'll post the link).

So this is what we are left to understand: a city with one of the largest gay and lesbian populations in the country had a Pride parade grand marshalled by a woman who can't even avoid saying the word faggot and using hate speech against African-Americans. I'm not one to think that all someone has to do to be gay-friendly is not say "faggot", but it is definitely required. And Paris didn't even meet this low, low standard.

What's the point of all this? I don't have a simple answer, but we in the LGBT community need to take a long hard look at our own priorities. This embarrassment to LA Pride and the LGBT community was not unavoidable, it's not that no one saw it coming, so who's going to make sure that it doesn't happen again?

Queer Musical Interlude: Final Fantasy

2007-02-03T16:37:00.000-05:00

I think I short-changed last week's Queer Musical Interlude, so here it is better.

This is Final Fantasy performing Bloc Party's This Modern Love:

The New York Times says:

In Final Fantasy you hear how Mr. Pallett's art is born of contrast, not only between pop and contemporary composition, but between the organic and the electronic, the fantastical and the domestic, the abrasive and the sweet. A perfectionist who adores the rough-hewn, he is at once hopelessly nerdy and improbably cool.

And Owen Pallett on being a gay artist:

As far as whether the music I make is gay or queer, yeah, it comes from the fact that I'm gay, but that doesn't mean I'm making music about it. There does need to be art about sexual identity, but it's not really what I think a lot of successful gay artists focus on. Rufus Wainwright is not a gay artist, for example. Well, that Gay Messiah song is almost like a manifesto. He doesn't want people to be let down because his music's not gay enough, or not political enough. That's an attitude I personally identify with.

Visit his record label's page and his MySpace page.

The McGreeveys are still married?

2007-02-03T15:12:00.000-05:00

The AP, via 365gay.com, has an article about Former New Jersey Governor James McGreevy filing for divorce. After reading all those articles about state marriage initiative, I find this to be about the most informative thing I've read all day. I learned:

McGreevey isn't already divorced. He and his wife Dina have been gay marriaged for more than two years.
McGreevey has two kids from two marriages - he gets around!
One of his kids' names is Morag.
His wife has 35 days to respond.
Yesterday was a sad day for me.
I'm still a little weirded out by his use of the expression "a gay American" from when he came out.

Dan Savage responds to Mary Cheney

2007-02-03T15:05:00.000-05:00

Dan Savage responds to statements made by Mary Cheney at Bernard College. It's not nice, but really, she deserves it. It's going to take a little more than just reciting a few facts about gay people to undo the damage that she's done, and she has little intention of undoing it.

Gay marriage odds-n-ends

2007-02-03T11:30:00.000-05:00

Lots of developments this week, probably because this is the beginning of the year and all the legislative bodies are decided what will be debated this year. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these measures in our favor just fizzled out. The ones against us, though, have to be done before 2008, of course.

A Michigan appeals court decided that the anti-marriage amendment passed this past year in that state denies any benefit to same-sex couples who work for the state or state universities.
Two Democrats in Connecticut announced their intention to propose a bill to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.
Two bills (an anti-marriage amendment and a DOMA) were defeated in committee in New Mexico. Shocker, it fell along that party line.
An anti-marriage amendment passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in Indiana, once again along that party line.
In New Hampshire, a Republican will introduce a bill for "Contractual Cohabitation" for both same and opposite sex partners.
The Wyoming Senate passed a bill to prevent recognition of same-sex marriages performed out-of-state, because their own ban on same-sex marriage, the federal DOMA, and Massachusetts' own law preventing out-of-staters from marrying there aren't enough.
Hawaiian Democrats introduced bills in the state House and Senate for civil unions.
Christine Quinn, the New York City Council Speaker, introduced a bill to patch up the city's domestic partnership registry.

Gathering stuff...

2007-02-03T10:31:00.000-05:00

I'm getting everything together to start posting today, and I'll do a bit more than usual to make up for the lack of posting yesterday. I'm a second-shift blogger, and I fully intended to post yesterday, but a bottle of Skol vodka got the better of me. :)

The first post I was putting together was a summary of state marriage/civil union/domestic partnership developments from the week. I generally don't like to post about things like that because the constant relegation of agency to the government, which queer people on some level have to do regarding forming relationships, is demeaning. When framed in terms of being allowed to get married in such-and-such a state, we're relinquishing our ability to determine our own sexual destinies. The only other beings in our society that are told with whom they can have sex are dogs, horses, and livestock. This is why I prefer framing the issue as the state or federal governments respecting our relationships - they're going to exist either way.

With that in mind, I still see a lot of winning and losing rhetoric surrounding marriage equality. While it's true that we can win or lose some specific benefits from the state that have a material impact on our lives, it's not true that we could actually lose the overall war unless we let it happen. The stated goal of the anti-gay movement is theoretically impossible. They say they want to eliminate same-sex relationships (they already exist in abundance), prevent queer people from becoming parents (we already are in many ways outside of same-sex marriage), and, ultimately, prevent people from being gay (fat chance of that happening).

Since their stated goals are impossible, it leaves us to decipher their real goals. First, they want to materially harm us just because they plain don't like us. You can see it in their "gays are going to Hell" mentality because the Bible doesn't say anything about gays going to Hell. Sure, there are passages about male prostitutes or male-on-male rapists going to Hell, or not inheriting the Kingdom of God, but gay and lesbian people as we know them? I think the reason that they say we're going to Hell is more an outgrowth of them just putting anyone they don't like in Hell, which people have been doing ever since Dante's Divine Comedy. The result of that guttural antipathy is to be as mean and demeaning as they can be to us in this world.

Second, they want us to disappear, also because they just plain don't like us. They say that we're taking over television, when we don't even get represented in a fair 5% of TV relationships. They say we're throwing our sexuality in their faces, but considering the lengths most queer people go to to hide their sexual orientation from others, if they think we're throwing it around, it can only be because they get stuck on whatever small representation of queerness that they might have the occasion to see.

So while their first real goal is definitely possible, and is definitely worth fighting against, we shouldn't tie our self-worth to such legislation. I know that you're thinking, Well, duh, Alex, thanks for the heads-up. But every time I read or hear queer people getting into heated discussions about the state of marriage equality law, I have to wonder how much of our self-esteem is whittled away by our opponents' attempts to disrespect our relationships.

Anyway, this is (partly) why I don't post every little detail of marriage equality news here as it happens.

Welcome to Bizarro Canada, Population: 300,000,000

2007-02-01T23:42:00.000-05:00

Read this from the Sacramento Bee:

Freddie Oakley, Yolo County's clerk-recorder, will distribute "certificates of inequality" to same-sex couples on Valentine's Day to protest the state's ban on gay marriage.

She said she designed the certificates herself as a way to "ease her soul" over having to deny marriage licenses to gays and lesbians.

Oakley's "Certificate of Inequality" claims that California wrongly deprives gays and lesbians of the right to marry.

"I issue this Certificate of Inequality to you because your choice of marriage partner displeases some people whose displeasure is, apparently, more important than principles of equality."

Contrast that with this from the Canadian Press via 365gay.com:

The rights of a same-sex couple to marry faced off Wednesday against the rights of a Saskatchewan marriage commissioner who said he couldn't perform the service because of religious beliefs. But Nichols, a 70-year-old devout Baptist, testified that performing same-sex marriages goes directly against all he knows. "My religious upbringing, my religious beliefs don't allow me to do same-sex marriage," he said.

It's like looking at opposite land. The US has a heterosexual woman who wants to marry gay and lesbian couples but can't, Canada has a heterosexual man who doesn't want to marry gay and lesbian couples but can't not.

The difference is that the American woman still does her job but finds a creative way to protest. The Canadian man just doesn't do his job. This is a hurdle that we will have to overcome: our straight allies are honest people who generally play by the rules, the other side doesn't.

Nichols could just quit, which he should if he doesn't want to do his job. While I would be weirded out to get one of Oakley's Certificates of Inequality, it'd be good to know that at least one person there is on our side.

GOP will have an edge against the Democrats, we're stuck in the midde losing something we didn't have

2007-02-01T22:56:00.000-05:00

Bil Browning has a post up about the Indiana Senate Judiciary Committee's "debate" about the anti-marriage constitutional ballot that we have going in this state. Here's what the whole thing came down to:

Senators Lanane and Broden tried to amend the resolution, but both amendments failed along that damn party line vote - 7 to 4. Senator Steele asked the pertinent question that I was waiting for. "Will this set the amendment back?" In other words, if we agree with your amendment and vote for it, will this take this off the 2008 ballot? (That's when it would go in front of the citizens for a vote. *gasp* It's also the same year that the governor and president are elected. Coincidence? I don't think so.) Senator Lanane responded that it would indeed set back the amendment, but perhaps it was best that we be deliberative about amending our constitution. Sen Steele brushed him off though. If it wouldn't make '08, he wasn't interested - no matter the damage just described to him.

The whole thing ended up being passed along the same party line. *Sigh* This isn't about us, really. It's just about, as Coolio said in Gangsta's Paradise, "Power and the money, money and the power, minute after minute, hour after hour." I really feel the speech that should have been made would have just explained that having this on the ballot won't help the GOP in 2008. It would have at least cut to the point.

Book It: Heather Has Two Mommies

2007-02-01T22:04:00.000-05:00

My town's library continues to surprise me. I had pretty much given up on finding anything fun there, when I found out that they didn't have any volume of Foucault's History of Sexuality when I wanted to reread it last year. So I was pretty surprised after reading about all the controversy surrounding gay and lesbian children's books that they have seven copies of Tango Makes Three and a copy of Heather Has Two Mommies.

I hadn't read Heather before, and considering the mark that it's made on pop culture, being referenced in reading lists, TV, movies, and by the religious right, I thought it was high-time that I got to reading it.

I found there isn't much to say about it, actually. It doesn't really have a story arc, it's just about Heather and some of her classmates talking about their families. Like, they're all different. That's a pretty basic message that I remember hearing on Sesame Street, of course they didn't show any same-sex parents there, and it's obviously a message that some people ought to learn when they talk about the heterosexual model. The artwork was nice. Not really my style, but one of the mommies is a carpenter and one wore a "No Nukes" T-shirt, and I got a kick out of that.

I guess what I'm trying to say in this whole thing is that there really isn't anything here to cause any controversy. It's pretty non-political, and the political controversy was just applied to it. It's worth reading, if only to see that everything surrounding this book was totally made up. Well, that and the way the kid whose parents are divorced is dressed.

Last Call

2007-02-01T00:48:00.000-05:00

Now that the dust has settled, the champagne has been drunk, and the hangover is over, tell me, how do you feel being Time's Person of the Year?

Entitlement knows no bounds

2007-01-31T23:08:00.000-05:00

I live in Indiana, about an hour away from downtown Indianapolis, in the far corner of a small town. A suburban kid who came to visit recently told me that I live, gosh, out there.

So it wasn't unusual when I was returning from a visit with two new gentleman friends that I stopped at a grocery store at 2 AM. It's a big-box grocery store, at the heart of suburbia, surrounded by a sea of cookie-cutter houses. It's one of those reminders to me about how weird American culture is. We have vast expanses of houses, all designed pretty much the same, with stores and restaurants that are large and bland, repetition after repetition, like Warhol's soup cans without the color change. In the middle of all this, we put a school system and some sort of "small town downtown area" that no one really wants to have to visit, and then replicate the entire system around every major city in the country. It's a vast organization of repetition that one could spend his or her entire life in not knowing that there's an outside, except, of course, for those urban areas where the last person from here who ventured down there was shot by a gang member, didn't you hear?

But, grocery store's a grocery store, and I was in need of produce that I can't get out there. Walking past the entrance, though, there were several men who were outside, laughing and smoking in the cold, their uniform shirts untucked and hanging out from underneath their coats. I don't see this when I shop shop shop for bell peppers during the day. The workers have to go around the back of the store to have a smoking break. Smoke is smoke; it pollutes the same either way. But in order to make the whole operation less offensive, someone took it upon him or herself to force these people to not just get out of the way (they were already at least ten feet away from the door) but completely out of sight. At that point I realized that that someone had to think, and probably with good reason, that people would choose not to shop there simply because they don't want to see the workers taking a break and smoking. It was only in this slippage during the who-gives-a-fuck hours that I was reminded, not at all unpleasantly, that these workers exist outside of the workplace. (Contrast that with an experience from when I lived in France: I was mis-billed for my cellphone, so I went to the store to work it out, and the guy working there told me three unique lies to get me to leave so he would not have to do the five minutes of work to fix the problem. I was to know that he was a human being, and he plain didn't feel like working at that moment. But I digress.)

So it's only in that context of willful blandness, an absolute attachment to not-feeling any momentary discomfort to which a large part of the American population has convinced itself (with the enabling of a few large corporations) that it has a right, that we can have a story like this. I otherwise cannot wrap my mind around how a man could get so riled up over a video being shown to kids that depicts families of queer people. Nor can I comprehend without a primer in dominant group entitlement how a woman could say: "When does Evesham Township or any school have a right to show to my grandchildren something I believe to be morally wrong?" Somehow in the middle of the most diverse country in the world people believe not that they just shouldn't be forced to do something that they feel is wrong, but that they and their extended family should not even have to acknowledge the existence of anyone they disagree with.

And out here, we call that pretty fucking spoiled.

Mary Cheney speaks

2007-01-31T22:07:00.000-05:00

The NY Times has an article up about some questions Mary Cheney took about her pregnancy at Bernard College. Cheney said:

"This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate, on either side of a political issue. It is my child.[...] Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years has shown there is no difference between children raised by same-sex parents and children raised by opposite-sex parents; what matters is being raised in a stable, loving environment." She said Mr. Dobson was entitled to his opinion, "but he’s not someone whose endorsement I have ever drastically sought."

Why, if she actually believes this, was she the chief of staff of her father's reelection campaign? Didn't she know that he was flatly against this sort of situation? Or maybe she knew that his opinion was that he and his family can do pretty much whatever they want, and us peasants out here have to play by the rules that His Lordship sets up? She doesn't seek out Mr. Dobson's approval, but didn't she work (albeit indirectly, but knowingly) to pass a constitutional amendment so that the rest of us would have to get his endorsement?

Ugh, but I'm more interested in what she said about her baby not being a political prop. Absolutely. It's really easy to forget when discussing these issues that these are real people and real people's lives that we are discussing. Wait, maybe a better way to put that is that when you're against marriage equality, etc., you have to force yourself to forget that these are real people and real people's lives that you're dealing with.

It grates me the wrong way when she says "on either side of a political issue" because she must know that on one side of the issue people know that the baby isn't a prop, that's why they're on that side of the issue. On the other side, they say silly things like she's having the baby for the "express purpose of denying it a father", making the baby into a political prop in a way that pointing out the contradiction between her public persona and her private life never could. It's just painting a fuller picture to show what kind of people we're dealing with.

But she's probably just making that old conservative argument that they've made about race and class and gender and sexuality for ages, the kill-the-messenger idea that the person who fights an inequality is just as responsible for it as the people committing it because, well, if either of them stopped then I wouldn't have to hear about it.

YouTube Rorschach

2007-01-31T18:21:00.000-05:00

Via Queerty:

Steve Malzberg, judging from his smug interruption of Keith Boykin towards the end, thinks that he's making headway for people who want the right to use the word "faggot".

I see a group of three people trying to discuss an important issue despite the presence of a conservative shock jock.

Last call

2007-01-30T23:59:00.000-05:00

Question from GLSEN's No Name-Calling Week curriculum, appropriate for K-5, late night bloggers, and internet surfers bored at work:

What names do you like to be called? What names do you not like to be called?

I like to be called "Alex", but I'm also ok with "dude", "sir", or "man". I don't like to be called "Al".

What about you?

Great new columnist up at Bilerico

2007-01-30T23:21:00.000-05:00

Michele O'Mara, a therapist for the LGBT community in Indianapolis, has started a letter-advice column over at Bilerico. Her first column just went up today. I really look forward to reading what she has to say.

One thing, though:

I've been thinking a lot about this whole, "heterosexuals don't advertise their sexuality, why should I" mentality. And in thinking about this I've decided that it's true. Heterosexuals don't really actively promote what they are. It seems to me, that the way it works is not so much about advertising what we are, it's all about announcing or shall we say, advertising, what we are not. In most cases, a heterosexual is unlikely to announce their sexual orientation unless they are being perceived as gay.

I'm thinking that she and I interpret the concept of "advertising" differently. All I see, all the time, is straight people advertising their sexuality. I see them having huge weddings, announcing it in the paper, chatting with Oprah about an hetero-sex lover, holding hands in the movie theater, making 99% of movies, TV shows, and songs about heterosexual love (and 99.999999% of those media directed at kids radically heterosexual), having their heterosexual partner give speeches while campaigning for public office, or even having sex on a sidewalk (I've seen that one). Those aren't necessarily bad things, but heterosexuals are constantly advertising their sexuality, throwing it in my face, if you will.

And much of it is intentional. Like that one episode of Seinfeld in which the pro-shop owner Milos, upon becoming insecure in his ability to provide financially for his family, yells: "Jerry's not a real man! He's not even married like I am!" There are a lot of heterosexuals who are so insecure about their sexual orientation, sexual prowess, attractiveness, or masculinity or femininity that they need to yell and scream about their heterosexuality.

So correcting someone who accidentally refers to your partner as a roommate isn't all that much of a dramatic situation. Really, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what heterosexuals do.

What I'm feeling like right now

2007-01-30T22:18:00.000-05:00

Those "drugs" that Jessie's taking are caffeine pills.

It's 10 o'clock. Where are our children right now?

2007-01-30T22:00:00.000-05:00

Here's a great article on the recent findings of studies done by the NGLTF on homeless gay youth.

While there are a lot of people who believe that most gay people are rich, this is a reminder that that is simply false. This goes part of the way to explaining the income gap between gays and straights. If "roughly one-fourth of gay and lesbian teens are kicked out of their homes after their parents learn of their sexual orientation", then what does that mean for their self-esteem, their ability to get and maintain a good job, and their ability to become equal members of society? How does this provide for equality of opportunity?

And what does it mean for the other 75% who weren't thrown out of their homes? And the ones who didn't come out at all?

Being queer in this culture means being traumatized in the formative teen years. How different would our community be if we weren't?

Jorge Soto Vega: A case study in narrative inevitability. Or: What if the cast of Blossom were appointed to immigration judgeships?

2007-01-30T15:47:00.000-05:00

Jorge Soto Vega, a gay Mexican, was granted asylum today to escape harassment and death threats about his sexuality.

In 2003, a Southern California immigration judge ruled that there was credible evidence that Soto Vega was persecuted in Mexico because of his sexual orientation, but rejected his application for asylum in the United States because Soto Vega didn't "appear gay" to him and, in the judge's opinion, he could pass as straight if he so chose.

After the Board of Immigration Appeals summarily affirmed that opinion, Lambda Legal in 2004 petitioned the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco for review.

On June 2, 2006, the Ninth Circuit held that both the immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals decided incorrectly by not recognizing that, because Soto Vega had been persecuted in the past, he was entitled to a presumption that he had a well-founded fear of future persecution were he forced to return to Mexico.

The Ninth Circuit further held that it was the government's burden to show that Soto Vega's life would not be in jeopardy if he were forced to return home to the country where his life had been threatened in the past.

The decision by the immigration judge after today's hearing concluded that the government had not been able to refute that presumption and that Soto Vega therefore is entitled to asylum in the United States.

Notice that both judges made the assumption that Soto Vega's sexuality was immutable. There are many narratives (I use that word instead of "idea" or "theory" because they generally have less proof than a theory and less logic than an idea but more invested on them than either of those two terms imply) about the origin of sexuality, but they can be broken down into two groups: those that say that one's sexual orientation is changeable by choice and those that say that it's unchangeable by choice. And both judges' decisions were based on the latter, which means that the first judge's inevitably led to the second.

I don't mean to imply that people who think that sexuality cannot be changed are automatically pro-gay. What I am saying is that people who are heterosexist enough to believe that gay people should be legally discriminated against in the letter of the law have no choice but to say that it is changeable considering another, even more important, narrative: that of equality of opportunity. The folks like the AFA and Focus on the Family who aren't necessarily stupid enough to think that people choose to be gay have to say that they believe it because it's a whole lot easier to convince people of that than to convince Americans that equality of opportunity in the letter of the law should be violated.

What does this all have to do with Soto Vega? Well, the more judges that think that sexuality is not a choice, the better off we are. It's a deeper indicator of progress than what the decisions actually say.

I also wanted to link to this because a straight judge used his gaydar in a decision. We're in good hands!

Rehab is the new black; it goes with everything.

2007-01-30T00:02:00.000-05:00

From 365gay.com:

Haggard and his wife, Gayle, completed a counseling program in Arizona and are back in Colorado Springs, Brendle said.

So he's out of part of his rehab. Pam Spaulding thinks that it's not the end of the ex-gaying of Pastor Ted.

But it reminded me that he was in rehab for being too gay. And it reminded me of this story I read earlier today on The Advocate:

The cast of Grey's Anatomy accepted a Screen Actors Guild award for drama series ensemble on Sunday night in Los Angeles—minus cast member Isaiah Washington. The actor is in therapy for his use of an antigay slur.

He's in rehab for being too anti-gay.

This all made me wonder about how incredibly divisive gay issues are. Each side on the are-gay-people-complete-and-equal-human-beings debate (depressing that we even have to debate it) thinks that anyone who disagrees with them must be crazy.

Maybe that's telling us something. Maybe it's telling us that this debate isn't really a debate - there isn't any statistic or logic that can change people's minds - rather it's, at best, a battle over framing and symbolism or, at worst, a complete impasse.

I'm an optimist, so I think that equality can be achieved with work - deep, dirty, political work to change the dominant narrative about queer people. But the next time someone says that we just need to present our arguments, remember that the far right thinks that we're actually insane.

Someone I'd absolutely love to meet in 20 years...

2007-01-29T23:58:00.000-05:00

Or at least watch the inevitable documentary on.

Hypocrisy isn't such a good thing

2007-01-29T20:42:00.000-05:00

The Advocate has an interview with Alexandra Pelosi about her HBO documentary Friends of God. She touches on something that I've been thinking about:

We talked about gay marriage. He said, “I think the gays should be lobbying for civil unions, because that’s more doable.” He wasn’t a hater. And I know everyone likes to talk about how he was a hypocrite, but I think Stephen Colbert said it best [originally about Mark Foley]: Ted Haggard is not a hypocrite—he didn’t try and gay-marry anyone. He knows homosexuality; he preached from the pulpit that homosexuality is a sin. That’s what he believes because that’s in the Bible. Now, he did it…that doesn’t mean he didn’t know it was a sin.

OK, this touches on why I think that the hypocrisy narrative related to outings like those of Mark Foley and Ted Haggard is both inaccurate and ineffective in trying to get queer equality.

Alexandra Pelosi basically says why it's inaccurate: these Christians think that homosexuality is sin. They believe that every single human being sins. When they commits this specific sin, it's not hypocrisy; it fits quite neatly in the way they see the world. In fact, it bolsters their view that homosexuality is a fleeting desire; part of the fall from the grace of God that can be solved through salvation and prayer (ignoring his repeated attempts at praying away the gay, which they do). Ted Haggard as a closet case is much closer to their ideal than Ted Haggard as a out and proud gay man would be.

Second, it's not an entirely effective way to interpret the phenomenon of gay gay-bashers. Let's think about Lisa, the hypothetical person. Lisa is big on getting people to donate money to breast cancer research. She tells everyone she meets about how important it is to get money for this sort of research, tries to get sponsors for her to Race for a Cure, and vocally laments the lack of such funding from the government. But she herself, even though she lives quite comfortably, doesn't donate any money at all to breast cancer research. She's just plain selfish.

Does this make Lisa a hypocrite? Absolutely. It would be much better if she donated money as well. But she would also cease to be a hypocrite if she just stopped being such an advocate for breast cancer research as well. Supposing there were no way to pry this money from her hands, would it be better if she just shut up about the whole thing? What if she were effective at getting people to donate?

This is the way heterosexists view the Ted Haggards and Mark Foleys. You can even read about it in their press releases, how the views that a certain politician holds and his or her legislative actions are far more important than his or her personal actions. They have a built-in answer to the hypocrisy charge that is quite persuasive, if one buys into heterosexual supremacy.

A better way to frame these instances is to label it for what it really is: proof of a direct refutation of their argument that being queer is a choice. Here are people who would absolutely choose not to be queer if they could. No doubt about that. Haggard tried to pray away the gay, as he said in his public statement just after Mike Jones outed him. But he couldn't. If he couldn't, how are we to believe that anyone else can?

By speaking the language of fact, truth versus untruth, instead of the language of morality, I think that we stand a better chance of interpreting this situation in a way that conservative Christians can understand. They already think that we're morally bankrupt, and they have a more than logical answer to that interpretation, so it's not going to change any minds.

While I've said before that heterosexism is more than just a lack of information, it's also something that can be changed. It's a worldview that people invest a lot of energy into, but if we seize on opportunities like to show the obvious (to us) contradictions is heterosexist thought, we can change a few minds.

Qomics for Queers

2007-01-28T20:08:00.000-05:00

Every week, like a good little gay boy, I turn my expectations of fair representation in the comics into innuendo for the weekly feature Qomics for Queers. I'll do my best to read between the lines, reinterpret artwork, and completely make shit up about the past week's comics.

We start the week with the Family Circus, h/t to the Comics Curmudgeon, because I don't usually read the Family Circus. These are from Sunday and Monday:

Well, well, well, Jeffy. I don't know many 4-year-old straight boys who want to hurt their mothers as much as Jeffy apparently does. That's probably because they're sexually attracted to them and act out against their fathers out of fear of castration in retaliation. Of course, Freud thought that all people were constitutionally bisexual and that resolution of the Oedipal conflict led to heterosexual sexual expression; a failure to properly resolve the oedipal complex because of a distant father or an overbearing mother inhibits a boy from identifying with his father and makes him identify with his mother as a role model, making him express homosexuality.

Uhhhh, yeah, advanced for the 1800's, I guess. Dr. Richard Isay returns to the psychoanalytic subject of male homosexuality in the mid-90's in Becoming Gay, starting from the idea that some men are constitutionally homosexual. He says:

I had found that, like the population of heterosexual men who recalled opposite-sex attraction from an early age, many homosexual men could remember experiencing same-sex attraction when they were as young as four, five, or six years. For gay men, this earliest attraction is to the father or father surrogate.

Isay goes on to say that the boy's non-traditionally-masculine behavior causes rejection from the father and for the gay boy to seek protection from his mother.

But what if a father were totally OK with a non-masc boy? (I think that, since the Family Circus is all things wholesome, Jeffy's father is probably unconditionally loving.) It would follow that the boy would expect his mother to retaliate against him through castration, so he would act out against her. In Jeffy's case, he's using snowballs to protect his own balls. (Yuk yuk yuk)

This Wednesday's Beetle Bailey:

The incredible gayness of Beetle and Sarge continues. Beetle is all too willing to get his beard hitched because he knows that this farce cannot continue forever. Dumping a woman who is totally out of his league isn't an option for him, but he's right there ready to pass her on to the next guy who shows any interest in her at all. All I can say is that Beetle should either come out or give up on sexuality altogether, because acting as Miss Buxley's boyfriend/pimp is not becoming.

Here are my improvements to this Wednesday's Archie:

This Week in Pink: An Ode to my Sugar Daddy

2007-01-27T11:08:00.000-05:00

This week's queer musical interlude: Final Fantasy's cover of Joanna Newsom's "Peach, Plum, Pear".

And what we have to remember this week by in queer blog posts:

The kids down at Good As You obsess over Donny Davies, internet star extraordinaire.
Bil Browning's out to take down some gay-ish Indiana lawmakers. The question remains: will he catch my heroin-addicted, orgy-lovin' sugar daddy on the IN House judicial commit... oops! I said too much!
Pam Spaulding raises some interesting questions about the legitimacy of Hillary's stand on GLBT rights. She'll answer your questions, Pam, once she's finished her national polling on them, analyzed the results according to respondent's current likelihood of voting for her in the primary, and then triangulated her position with likely Republican cross-overs and found the right framing for swing voters. Gosh! Give her a minute!
Jasmyne Cannick defends Isaiah Washington and tells gay community to look in the mirror when it comes to discrimination.
Jim at Box Turtle Bulletin points out that Americans are exporting homophobia to Europe. And I still can't find a bottle of Ranch dressing in Paris!

My first (and last, I hope) words on the Isaiah Washington/T.R. Knight altercation

2007-01-27T01:42:00.000-05:00

I'm probably the only gay blogger not to have said anything about this, and probably because I really find it strange that this story gained so much traction. Here are some thoughts:

Isaiah Washington's usage of the word "faggot" is demeaning to all queer people, especially to gay men who grew up with that term being thrown around to make them hate their sexuality and buy into heterosexual supremacy.

Isaiah Washington apologized (way too tired to get a link, but it's everywhere). He acknowledged what he said and that it was hurtful.

All of us need to move on. He apologized, and if we can't accept apologies, then we can't accept progress.

I have no idea why this got to be such a big deal, with so many tangible and violent heterosexist acts out there that barely get any media coverage.

I am very glad that T.R. Knight has come out. I wish him the best.

I'm not going to watch Grey's Anatomy, mostly because I don't like its mopiness, unrealistic sex and relationships, and over-the-top dialogue.

Knock it off, Chuck Knipp

2007-01-26T22:50:00.000-05:00

I found this video on YouTube after a Jasmyne Cannick post prompted me to search there. (I was going to embed but the freeze-frame happens on an ugly scene, I really don't want that up here, so you're going to have to follow the link).

If you haven't seen this Shirley Q. Liquor act, it's done by Chuck Knipp, a white gay man who dresses up as a straight Black woman (in blackface). This character is an "ignunt" "happy-go-lucky mother of 19 children" who, according to Knipp, "is not afraid to embrace every cultural stereotype and subvert them for her own purpose". Knipp portrays her as an irresponsible, incoherent alcoholic, and if you look through the rest of the YouTube library of Shirley Q. Liquor, there's a whole lot of grossness involved. Read a good article about the performance by Keith Boykin.

I seriously hope Knipp isn't ignunt enough himself to think that he's doing any sort of favor to the Black or the gay communities. As a gay man he should understand thing or two about context. When such a performance is done (in fact, when any performance is done), every joke, every line, every word is itself a symbol designed to bring certain images to the audience's mind. This applies to simple words like "banana" making people think of the fruit (or a penis, I guess) to the symbol of blackface making people think of those old Vaudeville acts that used it to demean Black people. It applies to Eddie Murphy's homophobic "comedy" in order to justify every negative stereotype of gay people out there to Knipp telling jokes that sound like pages out of the Republican's old Southern Strategy.

Moral of the story is that Knipp is bringing more baggage into his act than he chooses to acknowledge. While it's theoretically possible that it could be funny to speak poorly, wear bad make-up, or make tired jokes about waking up late, when done by a white man performing in blackface, its subtext is white supremacy. Keith Boykin says:

If the results are to be believed, just 4 percent think the site needs "less offensive" humor. That may tell you a lot about Knipp's audience.

And this isn't helping out the pervasive stereotype that gay people are rich, white, elitist racists, either, which is probably why the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is against the performance as well. It's not to hard to see the effect of something like this on the ability of voters, judges, and Congress members to buy into silly arguments about how gays are too rich to need equality, too snooty to condescend to give back.

Take a minute to sign the petition against Knipp's performance.

Logic isn't an even playing field when arguing with heterosexual supremacists

2007-01-25T22:14:00.000-05:00

I've been a little late in showing love for Bil Browning's post that made it all over the world, far too late considering he's a fellow gay Hoosier. Basically he asked for any and all gossip about heterosexist Indiana politicians, but especially a few who he suspects are closet cases giving head in cars and visiting bathhouses. He wants to make it harder for them to oppose the Hate Crimes and Civil Rights legislation and to support the proposed anti-marriage amendment.

So I'll show him some love now by responding to what he says is the only negative feedback he's gotten: the Indianapolis Star's blog. There's a lot of "Let's repeat all the things we agree on", followed by some "Here're some broad, sweeping statements that aren't backed up and actually kinda contradict each other", and then a "Here's what I really wanted to write about". After that, there's this paragraph:

Given the comparisons gay activists make between their movement and that of the civil rights movement for Blacks in the 1960s, they should actually do more of the things that made the latter successful: Dramatize -- and humanize - their struggle; argue the legal merits of demanding recognition of their rights and privileges to marriage; fight the long-term political battle to stem efforts against gay marriage through grass-roots efforts.

There're a few problems with this.

First, while he's right that a lot of people compare the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement in the 60's, the two groups have some significant differences. One important one is that there were no secretly Black racist politicians to out. This strategy simply doesn't exist for Black people. Second is that since gay people often come from families where no one else is openly gay, they find it much easier to turn their backs on the community. I haven't heard of any prominent Black politicians in the 1960's who were in favor of segregation. But there are gay people in the government who do support heterosexist legislation.

Second, this is a grass-roots effort in a political battle. I don't see any established gay rights groups officially helping Bil Browning out. And this is part of arguing the legal merits of the case: it shows that the privacy and equality that we want exists in practice for a small privileged group of people.

But third I take issue with the idea that we haven't somehow articulated our position well enough yet. Time and time again we show why we are deserving of full equality, making logical argument after logical argument, all to be put on a CNN talking heads show with someone from Focus on the Family who shows up with no logic and no research, just lies and fear-mongering, and to be told, well, the conservatives are probably right that you're asking for too much. The logical argument playing field is not even; if it were, we would have won a long, long time ago. Heterosexual supremacy is not a momentary ignorance, it's a complex system of demeaning and understanding GLBT people as inferior. Facts can't enter that system, because if they did, it would collapse, and heterosexists have far too much riding on that system. Facts aren't going to change people's realities. A dramatic display of the hypocricy of that worldview will.

Consider on the national level - Mark Foley was outed, that aided the Democrats polling numbers dramatically and probably allowd for them to take back the Senate. Is a Democratic Senate better for GLBT people? Yes - far from perfect, but better. The Indianapolis Star wants us to keep playing by a set of polite rules that haven't worked because they just can't work, they're set up so that we fail, and we shouldn't keep repeating the same failed experiments over and over hoping for a different outcome.

At the very least, if Bil gets any dirt, it will be very entertaining. And when you live in Indiana, you take your entertainment any way you can get it.

Lesbians allowed to golf as a couple

2007-01-25T20:24:00.000-05:00

A settlement was reached in the Koebke and French case. 365gay has details:

The lawsuit California's Supreme Court ruled in August 2005 that that Bernardo Heights Country Club discriminated against B. Birgit Koebke and Kendall French. Bernardo Heights' membership policy allows a spouse to be included in membership. Koebke had joined the club in 2001 and sought to have French added as a spouse. Although Koebke and French have been together since 1993 and registered partners since 1998, Bernardo Heights Country Club refused to recognize the couple's relationship, limited how frequently they could use the course together, and forced them to pay additional greens fees whenever French seeks to play golf as Koebke's "guest." Lambda Legal argued that the club's rules violated California's civil rights laws. Lawyers for the club argued that the rules do not amount to discrimination because they apply to all unmarried people. The high court, in its ruling, said that allowing the families of married members to golf gratis while charging the partners of gay members who are legally not permitted to marry constituted "impermissible marital status discrimination."

It's interesting that the Court rejected that this isn't discrimination because all unmarried couples are discriminated against equally. I wonder if courts are going to start rejecting that whole it's-not-anti-gay-discrimination-because-the-gays-can-just-marry-heterosexually meme when it comes to marriage equality, because it's pretty much the same thing.

While I'll never get why some people have to join country clubs, I do enjoy the symbolism of the country club itself not just having to allow lesbians to join, but having to acknowledge the fact that a lesbian relationship exists. And not just acknowledge it, but respect it. It's so easy to let GLBT people do pretty much anything and pretend that you're not heterosexist when you condition rights on pretending to be heterosexual or asexual.

Welcome to Awkwardville, Population: 2

2007-01-25T20:07:00.000-05:00

You've seen the transcript, now watch the video. It's like the transcript but without all the reading.

Ba-zing! Watch as Dick Cheney can't defend his daughter! The awesome part about heterosexism is that the creates alienating hierarchy within families! Someone like Cheney can play both sides against himself causing him to lose any agency! Well, he does have one option left: make Wolf Blitzer feel like a jerk for giving the Vice President a chance to defend his daughter!

Happy No Name-Calling Week!

2007-01-24T03:01:00.000-05:00

Listen to this wonderful idea from GLSEN:

No Name-Calling Week is an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.

This week is GLSEN's No Name-Calling Week, and it seems like a really great set of lesson plans that tackle the issue of bullying in schools in a way that kids can understand (to read suggested K-5 lesson plans, click here). Bullying is a big-time LGBT issue because it's a powerful weapon that our heterosexist society wields daily against queer people. Gender policing through bullying is a constant, direct attack on GLBT youth's self-esteem, ensures that they feel meaningless and abnormal, and takes away their entitlement to basic rights by forcing them to internalize heterosexual supremacy. The resulting tangible impacts of bullying are a direct result of LGBT youth losing the right to achieve and translate into an economic disparity later in life.

So of course something like this is going to attract negative attention from anti-gay forces. The AFA has "Sodomy 101: Gay activists are transforming public schools into propaganda factories" as their top story today, and a group of anti-gay parents got riled up over this. These people are only concerned when the current hierarchy being upset, so this shows that GLSEN is going in the right direction. I don't recall ever reading anti-gay propaganda about how the HRC's Buying for Equality Guide is destroying families. (To clarify, I'm really glad that they have that guide for moral reasons, but as a strategy to fight heterosexism, let's be honest....)

The great thing about these lesson plans is how simple and age-appropriate they are, and how being opposed to the content of them really shows anti-gay folk for how callous they really are. For example, in the first lesson at the elementary school level, kids are asked to think of names that they like to be called and names that they don't like to be called, sharing those names with the class, and then making a list of "Names I want to be called" and "Names I don't want to be called". This gets kids thinking about the importance of constructing one's own identity, listening to others' feelings and respecting their wishes, and thinking about the consequences of their words. Truly radical, because the ability to construct one's own identity is at the crux of queer self-esteem.

Pastor Ted talks about his sex life

2007-01-23T00:53:00.000-05:00

Pelosi's daughter has a documentary that will show on HBO, and Pastor Ted's in it. Here's a bit from ABC News:

In the film, he proclaims that evangelicals have the best sex lives in the world. "You know all the surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group," he says. In the documentary, Haggard asks an evangelical next to him how often he has sex with his wife. The man replies, "Every day." Haggard then explains that evangelicals have a lot of love and says to Pelosi, "You don't think these babies come out of nowhere?"

Ew, ew, ew, ew.

And that's the mature response.

At least he's showing he paid attention in Conservative Statistics 101: "You know all the surveys say...." Yes, a vague reference to all the surveys. Touche, Mr. Haggard, touche. Although someone told me that you needed crystal meth to have sex with your wife.

UPDATE: Speaking of Evangelicals and statistics, Christianity Today has a great article up about just that. And no one can say the author's anti-Christian: He's a youth minister named Christian who writes for Christianity Today.

Closets are for political failures!

2007-01-22T20:34:00.000-05:00

An interesting article on Raw Story says that Democrats in New York looking for a replacement for the state Comptroller are worried that one of the possibilities is a closet case.

The column from the Post, a daily newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, continues, "'Though they would appoint an openly gay candidate, they worry about someone in the closet,' one Dem told Page Six. "After the Hevesi fiasco, they want honesty, and worry about the pressures involved for a statewide official to remain in the closet."

This is a turn-around from the normal position of wanting gay politicians to be open closet cases. The way one expresses his or her sexuality being used as a job (dis)qualification can't be good, but at least it's based on the idea that sexuality is not willfully mutable. Of course, the logical extension of that is full equality, so maybe these Democrats will be something to watch this year.

How are you spending the next two years?

2007-01-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

Not hearing about silly anti-marriage amendments being rejected in the US Congress!

Well into the new year and still going....

2007-01-22T16:40:00.000-05:00

Screenshot from 5 minutes ago. One word: C'MON!

Paying attention in class

2007-01-21T10:07:00.000-05:00

The kids at Good As You have been working on a new way to get rid of those pesky anti-gay equality amendments. Check it out.

Dr. Laura: You thought I hated homosexuals? I meant I hate happy people!

2007-01-21T07:54:00.000-05:00

That's about as intelligent of a response to the multiple campaigns against her as we get in this Radar interview. Seriously. While the kids at Gay Patriot caught it before me (I guess that's a hat tip) and just ate it up, beautiful people are a little more skeptical. GLAAD has a good list of her heterosexual supremacist comments up.

Quick summary of the Radar interview: she stands by her quotations about gays being inherently disordered, a biological error, but doesn't understand the huss-fuss; she's against same-sex couples adopting because they can't possibly be better than orphanages (Dr. Laura laughs in the face of facts); she insists on using the word "homosexual" instead of gay; and she is completely down with ex-gaying people. Yeah, so I can't see why people said anything.

But a couple of things jumped out at me. First, the editor notes that the interviewer "is not, in fact, gay. He is, however, gay friendly." I don't understand the first half because he keeps on referring to his male partner, but the second half just makes me mad. Some editor just sat down and decided that this guy was gay-friendly, objectively, and if anyone has a problem with him, well, they're being unreasonable, because if you remember from earlier in this sentence, the interviewer is gay-friendly! Especially when he goes into this strange hypothetical about adopting a child and says that someone will play the "mommy role" and if things don't work out with the surrogate mother they'll just abort, although it was hard to make heads or tails of it.

Anyway, the second thing was Dr. Laura trotting out the "I don't hate gays - some of my best friends are gay!" defense. In which case I think that the word "homophobia" has become obsolete in describing anti-gay hatred. It's an old idea that people who didn't like gay people were just woefully uninformed because they hadn't actually met a gay or lesbian, so they feared the unknown. That's not the case anymore. People like Rick Santorum, James Dobson, and Dr. Laura aren't uninformed.

This is why the term "heterosexual supremacy" should replace the term "homophobia". It describes how these people do know the gays and are willfully misinformed about us, all to support their gut feeling that heterosexuals are superior to non-heterosexuals. From Dr. Laura in 1998:

I contend [homosexuality]'s been twisted into a major interference with heterosexuality[....] if you're gay or a lesbian, it's a biological error that inhibits you from relating normally to the opposite sex. The fact that you are intelligent, creative and valuable is all true. The error is in your inability to relate sexually, intimately, in a loving way to a member of the opposite sex. It is a biological error.

In Dr. Laura's worldview, being gay is an error. She believes that God created every person and took his time to make everyone good, except of course the gays who were the ones He messed up on and was about to throw away but decided that Earth could use a little trash, those errors. That's not a fear of gay people; that's a complex structure of heterosexual supremacy.

So when she talks about gay friends and reads letters from gay people who are oh so glad that Dr. Laura directed them to NARTH, she's factually correct. She does like the gay people that she can control and feel superior to. Another old quotation, from 2000

Rupert Everett, that was it. He played -- he was so wonderful in "The Marriage," "The Perfect Marriage," I think it was. He was hilarious. That was a fabulous movie. "The Ideal Husband," whatever the heck it was.

After gushing over Everett when he played straight (so aggressively straight that the movie was titled after his character's heterosexuality), she goes on to say how much she hated his role in The Next Best Thing, where he played gay. She's OK with queers as long as they hide their sexuality and do a little song and dance for her, but for a gay man to play a gay character in a movie? They might get all uppity and think that they are equal!

That's heterosexual supremacism, and that's why the "I have gay friends" argument is irrelevent.

She did say this: "Hate generally eclipses good, because it has no boundaries." But she doesn't get any sympathy for pretending not to understand why gays and lesbians had a problem with her.

Qomics for Queers

2007-01-21T06:49:00.000-05:00

While in the 70's, 80's, and 90's television has been catching up with the reality that GLBT people actually exist, film about queers has been around for a century, and theater and literature with prominant gay characters has been around since who knows when, the comics have pretty much ignored the fact that gays exist at all. The only ones we know have that have mentioned gays are Mallard Fillmore saying how homophobia is A-O-K, Doonesbury's liberal/conservative talk-radio couple, and that one old boss of Elizabeth on For Better or For Worse. For a medium of this size, one would expect more.

So, like a good little gay boy, I turn those expectations into innuendo in the weekly feature Qomics for Queers. I'll do my best to read between the lines, reinterpret artwork, and completely make shit up about the past week's comics in order to feel like we're represented in this medium.

This week is all about Beetle Bailey. The first one is from Wednesday:

I've been following the gayness of Camp Swampy for the past month. (Click on "BEETLE BAILEY" on the topics list below to catch up.) What we see here is that the only person in Camp Swampy in whom Beetle can confide his feelings for Sarge is the only civilian who works there. She, being a modern, young career woman, is completely supportive, but also confused. Like, he's 20 years older than Beetle, is a whole lot heavier, is losing his hair, and isn't particularly nice to Beetle. Like a devoted and delusional lover, Beetle defends his affection pretty poorly.

Then again, he's probably not completely out and doesn't think that there's anyone else out there for him. The only way to make a joke out of that kind of sadness is some good old punctuation-mark-and-squiggly-line swearing.

From Thursday:

Well, he's singing a song in which he calls himself "divine". Notice that Beetle pulled right up next to him in the circle around the campfire. I don't think that the army goes camping like this anymore, but it's better to think of the army like that than to think about all those dead Iraqis. And to show that this is a little more than one man's conjecture and is more like two men's conjecture, The Comics Curmudgeon also picked up on it.

And then Friday:

I mean, why not just have a bareback orgy right in the middle of the showers for the whole world to watch? Let's see here, we know from Killer's comment that Sarge spends a long time in the shower. Like a really long time in the shower. I can't think of any other explanation than that Sarge is waiting in the showers to check out other guys. Sure, Beetle's a good little sport and covers for him, but he knows that the only reason Sarge would hang out in a nudey zone for what would have had to have been over half an hour would be to get his jollies.

Beetle, not to be outdone, is sporting the towel around the neck. Fun for the local bathhouse, but he's letting it all hang out in the army. I watched Philadelphia, Beetle! I know what they do to your type in the military!

OK, I haven't posted in a while...

2007-01-21T05:11:00.000-05:00

Probably because I was annoying myself with the whole "we" thing, I haven't posted in a while. So I'm going to pretend like it was all part of an upgrade to Q-Bomb 2.0 for the New Year. New features include:

No more "we" to refer to just me
Not everything will be ironic, there will be a few sincere posts here and there
Weekly features "The Homosexual Agenda", "Wednesday with a Humorless Liberal", "Qomics for Queers", and "This Week in Pink"
Back-dating on posts to make it seem like I've actually been updating content on a regular basis
A renewed promise to learn Photoshop so I can do something about the way this webpage looks

CABINET MEMBER LOVES LICKING CARPET

2007-01-12T17:35:00.000-05:00

Well, not quite. A pretty uninteresting exchange between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and California Senator Barbara Boxer got blown out of proportion. Really no big deal considering they were discussing something important and the GOP wants to distract people from what's really going on. Feministing has the play-by-play.

John Aravosis has some even better analysis: Condi is a lesbian. Here's the heart of the argument:

I think they freaked out because for years there have been rumors - unsubstantiated from what I know - about Condi's true sexual orientation. She doesn't appear to date men. She's around 52 years old and has never been married. Her life's dream is to become the commissioner of the National Football League. And she had a very strange exchange on FOX News a few years back in which one of the FOX hosts seemed to be trying to set Condi up on a date with a female anchor at FOX (true story).

The best part of politics is speculating on the sexual orientation of public officials.

Would he please just come out already?

2007-01-11T05:23:00.000-05:00

Sarge just keeps on getting closer and closer to the day he announces to the whole world that he's a big mary.

Yes, Killer, Sarge's love life depends on "meat" and "potatoes". Since that would be too subtle even for me, I'll rephrase: he needs "penis" and "testicles". It's a little immature to refer to male genetalia in that way, but Beetle Bailey is not known for maturity.

While you may be thinking that that's a bit of a stretch to interpret the comic that way, at least we find out that Sarge requires food as a bribe to spend any time at all with his "girlfriend".

Of course, this wasn't enough to justify a post until I saw today's Beetle Bailey.

'Nuf said.

Oh, John, how did something so right turn so wrong?

2007-01-01T21:33:00.000-05:00

From the Huffington Post:

It's very easy for me to say, 'Civil unions? Yes. Partnership benefits? Yes. Obviously all the other anti-discrimination stuff? Yes.' It's a jump for me to get to gay marriage, and I haven't yet gotten across that bridge. But it is something I struggle with, and that's just the truth.

If Edwards becomes president in '08, then America will have truly elected the opposite of GWB, an Indecider-in-Chief. Yes, because a relatively simple social issue that has been in the spotlight for over ten years is so very hard to come to any sort of conclusion about.

Seriously, if the Democratic nominee in 2008 doesn't support equality in marriage, we're voting Republican to send a message.

That message will of course be "Fuck you, cruel world!"

AFA fun

2006-12-30T21:53:00.000-05:00

They know politics!

Sarge is coming out

2006-12-30T01:51:00.000-05:00

We always knew that the day would come when the mainstream comics would have to recognize the fact that gays exist (outside of that one lame gay guy who was Elizabeth's old boss on For Better or For Worse), but we really didn't think that it would happen with Beetle Bailey calling out Don't Ask/Don't Tell. Here's yesterday's installment:

Sarge has a dream about a topless "buff" Beetle, and then is nice to him all day, looking at him nervously from afar, as the solitary sweat drop tells us, but also confused by how strong his feelings are, as upwards pointing eyebrows tell us.

Mm-hmm, we know the feeling.

We would have let it go, if the very next day, this didn't happen:

Yes, Sarge, nervously stack those papers while avoiding the marriage question from your beard.

Oh, we hope that tomorrow Sarge starts to come out. That, of course, would make his constant violence towards Beetle far less funny.

Pure Life Ministries Repertory Theater

2006-12-30T01:28:00.000-05:00

Oh hell yes.

Since there is absolutely no way to get enough stilted dialogue in our lives, we were so very pleased to find this little bit on our craziest-friends-ever's site. The let-down is that they're talking about watching a porno together.

Husband: Honey, not only will it enhance our lovemaking, but I won’t need to have a sex life separate from you. It will end all the sneaking around.

Wife: We are Christians, Jim, and this is wrong!

Husband: Wrong? I know of Christian therapists who suggest couples use it to improve their sex lives. How can that be wrong?

Considering that real people don't talk like this to each other while having sex, ever, we can only assume that the playwright has never had sex.

Or that she's never actually talked to anyone before.

Awaiting year's best penis joke

2006-12-30T00:21:00.000-05:00

We're waiting here over the next few days for a copy editor at one of the major news outlets to mess up on a piece about Saddam's execution and use the word "hung" instead of "hanged". But so far all we can do is wait. Fortunately, this penis joke will be so good that someone we don't know at all has decided to start selling T-shirts based on it.

Get one for all your friends today!

Bush's privacy panel really fucking serious about privacy

2006-12-14T23:24:00.000-05:00

From wired:

The first public meeting of a Bush administration "civil liberties protection panel" had a surreal quality to it, as the five-member board refused to answer any questions from the press, and stonewalled privacy advocates and academics on key questions about domestic spying.

Whew! We feel better already!

Right Wing News: Andrew Sullivan swings for both teams, decidedly annoying

2006-12-14T23:07:00.000-05:00

The 2006 Warblogger Awards just came out (I'm sure you were waiting at the edges of your seats!). It's not really remarkable, they think that Michelle Malkin provides some of the best original content, when her blog seems to us to just be a bunch of blockquotes, except for the fact that Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish was rated the most annoying right-wing blogger and the second-most annoying left-wing blogger.

What? His obsessiveness on petty issues and then giving them immature names (like, most recently, "Mormon undies" and "gay peepees") is not endearing?

What's non-ironically surprising is that they can't decide if he's a conservative or a liberal. The man is a self-described libertarian who wrote a book with the word conservative in the title (and not in the conquer-and-destroy way, the I'm-proud-that-I'm-one way) and loves big pharma and hates non-discrimination laws, and that's all just from today.

Best AFA ActionAlert ever

2006-12-14T17:21:00.000-05:00

Just in time for the ~~holiday~~ Christmas season, the AFA is bringing you an awesome ActionAlert. The target this time: Hollywood (read: Jews and gays).

It's about Charlie Sheen's character singing Joy to the World with these hilarious lyrics instead:

“Joy to the world, I’m getting laid; I’m getting laid tonight. We’ll light the yule log, deck the halls, and then we’ll play some jingle balls. It’s been a real long wait – this is our second date! It’s Christmas Eve and I’m getting laid.”

This joke is so lame that the AFA calls it "bigotry", in much the same way that a long road trip can feel like "genocide" or future Brownback filibusters will be a "war crime".

Drunk as a duck, a very, very sad duck

2006-12-12T20:03:00.000-05:00

We're sure that at this point everyone's heard that Mallard Fillmore cartoonist Ed Tinsley has been arrested for a DUI. More importantly we learned that he's a Hoosier.