Straight Dude. Gay News. Episode 3: The Prom

Wikipedia
Itawamba County School District Prom Controversy

Dallas Voice
UPDATE: No prom for McMillen / Cat Cora speaks out on prom controversy / Date set for hearing in lesbian’s suit over senior prom

3 News NZ
Ellen DeGeneres pays lesbian schoolgirl $30,000

She Wired
Constance McMillen's Classmates Exclude Her from 'Furniture Mart' Prom

Albany Times Union
To prom or not to prom

Clarion Ledger
Judge won't force Mississippi school to hold prom

Macon.com
Bleckley school officials allowing gay prom date

Straight Dude. Gay News. Episode 2: Mission Statement

Which it's me givin' you the bleedin' mission statement, innit? And here's me, doin' all the work of providin' the background links...

Box Turtle Bulletin: Lt. Daniel Choi Arrested In DADT Protest At White House

Newsweek: Gay-Rights Protesters Stage Sit-In at Nancy Pelosi's Office: Leaders Stand Ready to Bail Out Activists

Queerty: Here's What Lt. Dan Choi + Robin McGehee Did Completely Right. And What Went Horribly Wrong

Wikipedia: Article on homosexuality

STRAIGHT DUDE. GAY NEWS. Episode 1: Spectra

Of all the callow excuses for rhetoric I've heard in the marriage equality debate, the argument that allowing gay marriage is comparable to allowing people to marry dogs pisses me off the most. Here is my response. Please pass this along to anyone shameful enough to mention dogs in the same sentence as human beings.



Background links:

Connections between David Bahati and the family

David Bahati and “The Family” in Uganda Do not miss the incoherent rantings of Leroy Swailes in the comments!

Another article about Bahati at Box Turtle Bulletin

Wikipedia article about The Family

Rebuttals containing more nuanced views of the Ugandan connection

Followup NPR interviw: A Different Perspective On 'The Family' And Uganda

Jeff Sharlet speaks very positively about Bob Hunter.

Call Me Ishmael: Bob Hunter, Uganda, and Rachel Maddow

Pam's House Blend "Homobigots" page, which includes a bit about Leroy Swailes.

Mark Twain quote:

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Matthew 25:31-46, King James Bible

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

STRAIGHT DUDE. GAY NEWS. Episode 0: Introduction

This is my first attempt at a video blog entry. Please let me know what you think. And please check out the Proposition 8 Trial Tracker, the website whose URL made me stutter.

Does anyone know what's going on with the horizontal compression? It didn't look like that when I was recording it. I'm using a Panasonic SDR-S26.

I believe that what I am doing should not be remarked upon

A few years ago Joss Whedon was honored at an Equality Now event. The video is embedded below. You can find a transcript at the American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank. But please watch the video. If you can get through it without tearing up, you're harder than I.



I keep coming back to it because it's one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard, and because it explains better than I ever will why I do this blog. Just take the excerpt below and replace "Why do you write these strong women characters?" with "Why do you advocate for GLBT equality?"

How is it possible that this is even a question? Honestly, seriously, why are you -- why did you write that down? Why do you -- Why aren’t you asking a hundred other guys why they don’t write strong women characters? I believe that what I am doing should not be remarked upon, let alone honored and there are other people doing it. But, seriously, this question is ridiculous and you just gotta stop.

So, why do you write these strong women characters?

Because equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity, we need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and women who’s confronted with it. We need equality, kinda now.

So, why do you write these strong female characters?

Because you’re still asking me that question.

So why do I advocate for GLBT equality? Because equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity; we need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the hatred that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and women who’s confronted with it. We need equality--kinda now.

So why do you advocate for GLBT equality?

Because you’re still asking me that question.

Kiss-In Video from Battery Park, NYC

I'm glad that I had the opportunity to attend today's Kiss-In at Battery Park. I got the opportunity to meet some fine people and see some fine kissing. More later, but for now, enjoy the videos. Unfortunately the resolution from my old four megapixel camera is pretty lousy, but you get the idea.

Musings of a Novitiate Ally, Part 4: In Praise of Silliness

So there was this BBC show called "The Making of Me" about John Barrowman trying to determine why he's gay. I think it's fantastic; I liked it so much that I wanted to put all six of the YouTube segments right here for your viewing pleasure, but unfortunately the embedding for those particular videos is disabled. Here are the links, though.

The Making of Me, Part 1
The Making of Me, Part 2
The Making of Me, Part 3
The Making of Me, Part 4
The Making of Me, Part 5
The Making of Me, Part 6

If I remember correctly it was HomoPolitico who linked to the YouTube videos above. I went to the first one, and beneath the video I noticed this comment.

Lastly the truth is that sexuality is an infinitely more complex & varied phenomenon that this glib 'tabloid' type nonsense provides us with.Sexuality exists on a continuum ; often shifts back & forth in quantity & ratio ; some people are 80/20% some 65/35% etc.etc.etc. & even THAT can change ; some folk feel theyre gay since they can remember & some say they felt it first in their 20s, 30s, even later.Granted many people feel COMLETELY straight or COMPLETELY gay & NEVER change so bla bla bla

I'm just enough of a wannabe intellectual snob that this derisive and dismissive statement swayed me a bit; it sounded like the type of thing I wouldn't want to watch. But I gave it a try, and ended up watching all six parts and loving them all.

The funny thing is that I don't disagree with most of what the reviewer says. Sure, it's ham-fisted. Sure, it's overly simplified. But you know what? Sometimes we need things to be oversimplified, because let's face it, at one point or another each one of us is a dumbass.

Sometime around 1999 I sat in the Barnes & Noble in Syracuse and read Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization. I loved it. I was proud of myself for having read it, because I'd never had a head for history; it was a real effort to broaden my horizons.

A few years ago I took a hard look at my own ignorance and decided to change it. I committed to reading only history. At first it was like slogging uphill through molasses. Then I read Garrett Mattingly's The Armada and the scales fell from my eyes; it was the first time I'd realized that history could be exciting. Since then I've developed a passion for history as I've read books and listened to various history podcasts and Teaching Company lectures.

One day I was hiking along listening to one of Professor Kenneth Harl's lectures, and my ears perked up as he mentioned How the Irish Saved Civilization. He dismissed it as a silly book, and I felt a wave of embarrassment at having enjoyed it. But the more I thought about it, the more I came back around to my old opinion. I no longer think of it as a great piece of historical research, but I do think it's a great book - because it got me interested. It was what I was ready for at the time.

I've come to see history as a fractal; formulating a historical truth is like trying to measure the length of a coastline. If you take a satellite photo, trace the coast with a piece of string, and measure the string, you'll get one number. Paddle along every bay and estuary measuring with rods, though, and you'll get another, much larger number. Walk the coastline with a ruler and the number increases again. Walk the coastline with a caliper, sticking it into every crevice in every rock, and the number increases still more. Eventually you're down to measuring the average (and very much theoretical) distance between quarks and your number is expressed in terms of astronomical distances. It's not that the zoomed-out view is incorrect, but rather that, no matter at what level you look at a fractal, you end up making approximations. As you zoom in, the scale of the approximations change, but it seems like there's always more zooming to be done.

There are a whole lot of people out there with a whole lot of misconceptions about LGBT folks. They need an entry-level vehicle to the subject: they're not ready for Simon Schama; they need a story on the level of How the Irish Saved Civilization. I don't think "The Making of Me" is inaccurate, so much as it shows a satellite view of the gay coastline. People need that view.

This beautiful thing won't change.

Over the last few years I've created a bunch of stations on Pandora by leapfrogging from one artist to the other: create a station based on someone I like, listen to that for a while, create a new station based on someone I like in that, lather, rinse, repeat. This process led me to another of last week's moments of synchronicity.

I'd been listening to a station that was pretty much all singer-songwriter chicks. One of the songs I'd thumbed up was Vienna Teng's "City Hall". I suspected that it was about gay marriage, but I hadn't listened closely enough to be sure. Naturally, when it came up last week I was more inclined to pay attention to the lyrics. When I did, it made me cry.

Between Thursday and today, I must sound like I cry at the drop of a Hallmark card. I don't. I doubt I cry once a year. But the thought of those people waiting ten years and then finally getting the opportunity they never expected - that did it.

Please listen to this, especially if you feel that two men, or two women, can't feel the same things for each other that a man and a woman can. In case you're wondering, as I did, Vienna Teng is not gay. She wrote this from the point of view of a friend of hers who got married in San Francisco in 2004.

If you're sure that the people in this song couldn't be all the things to each other that a husband and wife are, ask yourself why you're so sure. Have you ever talked to anyone like the women in this song?


City Hall
by Vienna Teng
me and my baby on a february holiday
'cause we got the news
yeah, we got the news
five hundred miles and we're gonna make it all the way
we've got nothing to lose
we've got nothing to lose

it's been 10 years waiting
but it's better late than the never
we've been told before
we can't wait one minute more

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

me and my baby've been through
a lot of good and bad
learned to kiss the sky
made our mommas cry
I've seen a lot of friends
after giving it all they had
lay down and die
lay down and die

10 years into it
here's our window
at the vegas drive-thru chapel
it ain't too much
for 'em all to handle

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

outside, they're handing out
donuts and pizza pies
for the folks in pairs in the folding chairs
my baby's lookin' so damned pretty
with those anxious eyes
rain-speckled hair
and my ring to wear

ten years waiting for this moment of fate
when we say the words and sign our names
if they take it away again someday
this beautiful thing won't change

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall