281. DING DONG

From the Archives (15 May 2007) Well what a SHAME and boo hoo hoo.

Jerry Falwell—legendary homophobe and enemy of Tinky Winky and opportunist who actually blamed LGBT people and liberals for the 9/11 terrorist attacks—has finally kicked the proverbial bucket.

How can one adequately mourn a man who warns evangelicals that the mythological antichrist is a male Jew living among them?

Hmm. I wonder if Ralph Reed will be at the funeral in all his shame...

...and how quickly Pat Robertson will go on air to blame Jerry's death on the lesbians....

At any rate, the sun has come out today and one less bigot dwells on this earth, brothers and sisters, so let me hear an amen!

270. THE JEEZUS DIARIES

From the Archives (2 January 2007) For some reason, my little sister "forgets" that I am a dyke and, whenever I return to my mom's house—let's say for Christmas, with my new lover—brings some dufus guy over on the sly for what she believes will be a blind date.

This past Christmas, she mentioned that she had invited Bart, an eccentric guy who drives an old teal-and-white Bel Air around town at 25 m.p.h., to come over and "hang out with" me.

I told her "Fine. And now you can just cancel the date," to which she replied "but he's had a crush on you ever since you worked together in the hospital cafeteria [in 1981], Medea."

Well yeehaw man! That's good enough for me. Let me just dump my lovely grrlfriend in the basement so I can hook up with the Bartman to ensure that my sister is comfortable with who I am.

Did I mention that this is the same little sister who speaks in tongues under duress (the latest piece of evidence that she has inherited my mother's paranoid schizophrenic diorder)? Or that she believes that women should not carry out the trash or use birth control or do whatever else her misogynistic "women should submit graciously to men" church tells her to believe?

Hard to parse this with her being a soldier, but she has managed to work that inconvenience out somehow.

This is the person who always asks to borrow money to pay off her credit card after using her paycheck to get pedicures and manicures, the same person who says that demons and angels talk to her and tell her what to do. And yes, she has access to AK-47s and could be in a war zone one day soon.

This certainly helps ME sleep at night ... and let's don't even TALK about how much her imminent deployment or the fact that she peppers her conversations with "well, if I die, Mama and Carmen will be set for life" is doing to keep my mother's paranoid tendencies in check or to keep my young niece from worrying instead of sleeping.

Oh yeah. And did I mention that she gave me a 2-CD gospel music set for Christmas? Yep. Gave it to a woman whose favorite holiday pastime is decapitating nativity scenes and leaving the plastic baby Jezus heads in the sheep's mouths.

But maybe I just have one too many bad associations with the Southern twitch Baptist church of my childhood to handle this very well.

Meanwhile, Keep The Faith delivered to my bulk mail folder today an email with the subject line Free Guardian Angel Bear—Because God Loves You.

I considered writing Mr. Keep The Faith to explain that creativity is my religion—it has saved me more than once—but, hey, we're talking about someone whose religion is on the level of stuffed bears.

Too bad the spam angel didn't tell him about dictionaries or the proper use of semicolons before he sent this little poem. My guess is the little thumb-sized thang has bent wings and ain't getting enough air down in this guy's stinky pocket.

Anyway, here's the precious poem:

ANGEL IN YOUR POCKET
I am a tiny angel
I'm smaller than your thumb;
I live in people's pockets
Thats where I have my fun.

I dont suppose you've seen me,
I'm too tiny to detect;
Though I'm with you all the time,
I doubt we've ever met.

Before I was an Angel
I was a fairy in a flower;
God, Himself, hand-picked me,
And gave me angel power.

Now God has many Angels
We become His special tools.
And because God is so busy,
With way too much to do;
He said my assinment
Is to keep close watch on you.

When He tucked me in your pocket
He bessed you with Angel care;
Then told me never to leave you,
And I vowed always th be there.

Huh. How quaint.

LISTENING TO: Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" (they're trying to wash us away...)

READING: A New York Times article about the Simply Droog: 10 + 3 Years of Creating innovation and Discussion exhibit. Hope I can go.

SANG IN SHOWER: Lucinda Williams's "Blue" (perhaps because I had to return to work today)

269. FOIL-WRAPPED PROPAGANDA

From the Archives (20 December 2006) I suppose I could think of this as preparation for Danishgrrl's and my looming trip to the truly frightening Jehovan-dripping borough of South Carolina, but I am nevertheless annoyed at this holiday card that someone placed in my mailbox:

The holly-bordered exterior reads

BELIEVE IN MIRACLES

The Virgin Birth...
"Behold, a virgin shall be with child ... and they shall call His name Emmanuel ... God with us." Matthew 1:23

The Resurrection...
"...Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen..." Mark 16:6

The Soon Return...
"...I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:3

and the interior reads

Wishing you the joy of believing ... the celebration of life ... and the peace of eternal hope in Jesus Christ.

May Your Christmas Be Blessed.

" ... He who believes has eternal life." John 6:47 NASB

To me, seeking real-life solutions to the particular difficulties of our earthly existence (random disease and limited lifespans and human frailty and violence and ignorance and loss and perplexingly annoying religious commands to cut my hair or never cut my hair or wear a dress or or wear a burqa or whatever) instead of bowing prostrate before some made-up yahoo that religious leaders use to extort money from their congregation is humanity's best shot at curing disease and finding real redemption, so how 'bout you keep your superstitions out of my mailbox Yo.

Meanwhile, Danishgrrl's kids are guilt-tripping her about "ruining" their holidays by introducing change and refusing to invite her ex-husband to spend the day with us and we don't like this one bit. The jerk is encouraging this too while e-lecturing her about honoring the fact that the kids don't want change—and this from the man who couldn't be bothered to purchase a real tree for them.

Grr!

So here's my pre-New Year's resolution: I will not be silent if my bigoted Aunt Becky has anything to say about my so-called sinful life style this year. I have lost my patience and have armed myself with the HRC's "Answers to Questions about Marriage Equality" that I can hand to her if she starts. (I'll also threaten her with donating them to her church's library in her name—maybe THAT will get a reaction!)

I’m also thinking of making a bumpersticker that says "Can I Vote on Your Marriage?" and affixing it to my car before the trip.

So yeah. Here I sit, dreading Christmas down south, dreading Danishgrrl discovering the sad situation that was my childhood, but very glad that the bullethole my mom put in the kitchen ceiling way back in 1979 when she tried to violently off herself was at least patched a few years back, so we don't have to stare at it or the blood spots on the ceiling anymore.

265. LIVING LA VIDA JIHAD

From the Archives (15 November 2006) Stop42’s ad against raising the minimum wage in jihadist Colorado features Moses and the Judeo-Christian god:

MOSES: We need divine intervention. They want to chisel Amendment 42 into Colorado's constitution where it doesn't belong.
GOD: What on earth are you talking about?
MOSES: An annual minimum wage increase in stone for eternity!
GOD: When inflation and recession come, it will be a catastrophe!
MOSES: It's a plague we'll face every year.
GOD: We can't let the people make this mistake. Go. Spread the word. Vote no on 42!

In response to this ad, Barbara Ehrenreich notes that

perhaps God, for all his omniscience, hadn’t noticed that the states that already had higher minimum wages haven’t yet plunged into “inflation and recession.” Or that the 1997 hike in the federal minimum wage wasn’t followed by nationwide economic calamity. It’s stranger still that the deity would choose to weigh in on the side of the Colorado Restaurant Association and against the poor and downtrodden.

Or maybe no one noticed that, while Bush&Co may have convinced the so-called godly to support their imperialist policies for the past 6 years, even American jihadists seem to have wised up to the fake cowboys.

Word to Bush&Co: screw the people long enough and they will realize that they are being used.

They will also vote—at least in 24 states—to increase the minimum wage you reject in order to take care of their own.


(You know what they say: If the leaders won’t lead...)

But wait. There’s more post-election good news!

Bill Maher outed hypocritical RNC chair Ken Mehlman this past weekend Larry King Live. CNN managed to edit the segment out of later rebroadcasts but, hey, it was too late then.

So there you have it: another imperialist homophobic hypocrite unveiled (and how do they keep managing to convince people to promote legislature that adversely affects them?).

Lindsay Beyerstein notes on Alternet

The outing of Mehlman, after all these years, is proof of the institutional implosion of the Republican Party. Nobody wants to cover for a closeted gaybasher, and Mehlman is no longer powerful enough to command complicity.

Meanwhile, last week ultra-conservatives in Jerusalem forced organizers to cancel their Pride parade by clashing with the police, burning bins of trash, and throwing stones. The jihadists also announced that holding the parade would be “surrendering to mental illness” and, no big surprise, declared queerness a crime.

(Ah, they do like to pretend that they get to define the law of the land for everyone, don’t they?)

The irony of their throwing stones is definitely not lost on Medea, but don’t you wonder why an army as well-trained as Israel’s couldn’t quell a few fundie trash-burners? Obviously, the will to defend queers just wasn’t there.

So there we have it: another example of jihadists using selective Bible verses to further their cause.

Meanwhile, Pam’s Spaulding notes that the Houston landscaping bidness Garden Guy Inc. (“Treating you with respect and honesty are the cornerstones of our reputation”) picked up $40K in new bidness but lost a mere $1K in bidness (that’s 2 customers) after e-mailing a queer client to inform him that Garden Guy Inc. chooses not to work for homosexuals.

“Why can’t people handle it when you say the truth?” co-owner Sabrina Farber asked after receiving angry e-mails and phone calls in response to her actions.

Indeed Sabrina. Why can’t you handle the fact that, when you exhibit hate, then outrage gets flung right back atcha? It’s called a vicious cycle, Hon, and, guess what, you're on the side of hate and intolerance and you got called on it. Publicly.

So take note: You and your homophobic husband have just provided the world with yet another example of why US courts are still required to enforce protection of minority groups in this land of the (purported) free where jihadists such as yourself target others based on irrational and religion-stoked hate.

Meanwhile, a chorus pal who is selling her condo recently discovered that some asshole broke in, shit on her floors, and left a Watchtower with scribbled homophobic messages on it for her reading enjoyment.

(FYI Sabrina. That’s a hate crime. And it invokes public outrage, even down here in the Southland.)

•

So. My obvious segue here is to thank all those prognosticators who wrote off liberal southerners as dispendable irrational irrelvant hicks. But thanks really are not enough. So I’ll invite them to read Bob Moser’s “New Southern Strategy” in the Nation instead. (You know, the article that begins “The South—aka “Jesusland”—has a message for those national Democratic wizards who advised writing off the South: ... Fuck you.”)

Check it out at http://www.alternet.org/stories/44085/

•

Meanwhile, Jamie had her first chemo treatment yesterday and I was relieved to see her out and about and cracking jokes afterwards—particularly because Tree's first treatment went so badly. A relief too to hear her laughing too. “You pulled the C card, didn’t you?” she said to her ex (who, indeed, sis pull the C card to get what she wanted, as she said, laughing back).

Guess you gotta remember to laugh when the world throws you the stinkin' C ball.

264. THROWING STONES

From the Archives

(12 November 2006)

One of the basic guidelines I use when meeting new people is to never ever trust someone who identifies themselves as a “Christian” within the early throes of casual conversation. They believe they are communicating their higher moral standing, but what I hear them clearly saying is “I have a serious mental disorder.” – DBSHOLES

The National Archives recently either uncovered or strategically published (in the hopes that someone would recognize a corresponding zeitgeist when it stared them in the eyes) some 800 photographs that Dorothea Lange took of the more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent whom our government imprisoned in filthy horse stalls and drafty tar-paper shacks back in the so-called glory days of patriotic yore. Like Lange’s Depression-era photographs, these images capture a shameful moment in US history at a very personal level.

The War Relocation Authority hired Lange to document the internments, then restricted her lens before finally confiscating her internment photography altogether. Their instructions were clear: No objects that might identify a concentration camp as a concentration camp—no wire fences or watchtowers or searchlights or whips or starving people or armed guards herding detainees—allowed. Instead, she was allowed to capture the sale of interned people’s belongings while giving a human face to the enforced poverty and misery that our government imposed on these people’s lives.

Imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to be captured and imprisoned by your country merely because your racial heritage has suddenly become suspect and to watch as your very personal belongings—that funky clock you purchased from an artist in grad school, the painting your ex gave you on your first anniversary, your laptop, your photographs, your grandmother’s rings, your prized first editions of all your favorite books—are sold.

I try to ask myself who benefits from specific exertions of power, especially when they involve fear-mongering—and fear was definitely behind the frenzy of post-Pearl Harbor Jap-hate editorials and speeches that spurred this round-up of Japanese American citizens, just as fear and the flimsy promise of protection are behind our current willingness to neuter habeas corpus in a post-9/11 world.

Bush&Co would of course argue that Americans benefit when this administration imprisons and tortures Others because their coerced confessions could stop a terrorist attack on our consumer-driven way o’ life. Of course, most thinking people would argue that Bush&Co have done more to threaten our way of life than anything bin Laden or Saddam could ever do.

Question: Who benefits when a president claims that Americans do not torture prisoners, then pushes through legislation that forgives the torture he has already authorized?

Answer: A lot fewer people today than did on Monday, thanks to the American people, who have spoken and spoken loudly ... despite the GOP’s attempts to silence us with robo-calls; despite the officials (in mostly Democratic precincts) who had no clue whatsoever how to operate those pesky voting machines; despite the conservatives who threatened Latino Democrats in Colorado with arrest if they attempted to vote; despite the Maryland GOPers’ false ballots; despite hate radio encouraging callers to tie up the Democratic fair-vote phone lines; despite Bush&Co’s ridiculous assertion that a vote for Democrats is a vote against your country or any of those other jaw-dropping GOP fascist declarations.

... which reminds me: I saw a bumpersticker this morning that said Bush won’t stop lying until you stop believing.

Here’s what I believe: Ted Haggard’s outing (as a hypocrite) hot on the tail of Mark Foley’s outing (as a hypocrite) hot on the tail of myriad other GOP hypocrisies hot on the tail of all this GOP truthiness may have convinced the Oxford English Dictionary to finally designate truthiness a word (and they SHOULD have convinced Republicans that their leaders are hypocritical shucksters who are sending democracy down the tubes a a very fast rate).

So now, a partial list of other conservative hypocrites:

• William Bennett, who attempted to remold our free-thinking founders as Bible-thumping conservative moralists and espoused the importance of moral conduct while on an out-of-control gambling binge;

• J. Edgar Hoover, who publicly persecuted queers while maintaining a forty-four-year homo relationship (and, probably more than any recent American, branded the idea that gay men are lurking pedophiles into the American psyche)

• those conservative Catholic priests who place restrictions on women’s bodies (despite having now clue what it is like to have to choose) and blame queers when they get caught covering up for pedophiles

• those GOP leaders who turned a blind eye to Foley’s trolling while running ads that accuse Democrats of being “soft on child molesters”

• hypocritical fundie religious leaders who accept illegal trips to Scottish golf courses from lobbyists

• Bill Frist, who feigned the ability to diagnose brain function from a video even as Terry Schiavo’s doctors insisted that she was in a persistent vegetative state. (As Molly Ivins says, “that whole Terry Schiavo debacle was like waking up one morning finding Fidel Castro in the refrigerator.”)

• Republinazi Rush Limbaugh, who describes himself as a moralist while popping pills uncontrollably

• Ralph Reed, the baby-faced fundie hypocrite who manipulated people of faith for his own financial and political gain for so years (and probably while jerking off to pictures of those Northern Mariana sex slaves he secretly supported)

• Sen. Sperm Thurmond (from Medea’s very scary state of origin), who promoted racism while secretly supporting a black daughter he shared with the then-underage African American woman who worked in his home

• those holier-than-thou GOP assholes who demanded Clinton’s head on a silver platter for his extramarital relations but who have since been revealed to be adulterers themselves

• those holier-than-thou religious freaks who succeeded in passing the so-called marriage protection amendments in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin on Tuesday by citing the sanctity of their so-called holy unions EVEN THOUGH evangelicals have the highest divorce rate of any group in this country and EVEN THOUGH our Constitution plainly states that ALL citizens are entitled to the same rights.

And now, let us celebrate

• the South Dakota voters who defeated attempts to ban abortion and
• the Arizona voters who defeated their state’s so-called marriage protection amendment and
• the Missouri voters who, like Californians, voted to pay for stem cell research themselves since their so-called national leaders are too beholden to the fundies to back this vital research themselves.

And let's close with a song: Ding dong. Santorum is gone. The evil Rick is gone. (And Rumsfeld too. Ha Ha.)

Goodbye and good riddance to a few representatives from the current crop of fascists.

(Oh and by the way maybe your marriage bans stand today, but New Jersey put the writing on the wall and openly queer candidates won in Alabama (!), Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, (over sixty-six elected) and HRC reports that the people also elected over 200 officials who publicly support equality.

So, as Susie Bright says, “Let the Corporate and DLC Ass-Kicking Resume!”
READING: The New York Times, which reported the Lange story. Alternet, which does a good job of outing the GOP hypocrites; HRC’s election coverage.

260. WALKING AROUND WITH OUR SOULS IN OUR HANDS

When we are working, we are working nervously. We are carrying our souls in our hands. (Sabah Al-Atia, a trash collector in Baghdad, as quoted in the New York Times, 13 October 2006)

From the Archives. (October 2006). Stacy Shiff had some interesting perspectives in today’s “Desperately Seeking Susan (NYT, 10.13.2006):

Now we are Photoshopping rather than airbrushing; with enough slicing and dicing, an argument can be made for anything.

Examples:

Impeaching a president for a blowjob is definitely not a miscarriage of justice if that president is the so-called liberal Bill Clinton.

or

Passing legislation that makes it impossible to convict a president of war crimes that he and his administration committed is not a miscarriage of justice if a powerful Christian jihad lobby supports that president and the corporate-owned news outlets fail to publish negative opinions about it.

or

Telling the president in an early-August daily briefing entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US” doesn’t mean that the president and his staff had any idea that Bin Ladin might attack in the US.

or

Being briefed in July about said looming attack after meeting in reserved airspace does not mean that Condi committed perjury when she said No one could have guessed that terrorists would use planes as weapons against buildings.

or

Publishing sensational story after sensational story about children being executed or horny legislators flirting with nubile young men is, apparently, much more responsible journalism, however, than calling for Condi’s resignation after she covers up her lies.

And, hey, now the president can declare journalists who express outrage are enemy combatants and haul them off to Gitmo.

Our democracy has turned into a bad joke.

Meanwhile, some folks in the blogosphere are suggesting that the Republinazis outed Foley themselves, knowing that the reaction would distract folks from the fact that Condi got caught covering up her prior knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist threat.

So let me make sure I have the formula right: Out a queer = Bush gets pardoned for authorizing war crimes that result in torture and death + legislators suspend the Constitution right in front of our faces + the Iraqi debacle gets worse every day (and let’s don’t even mention all those billions of dollars that vanished without a trace under Bremer’s watch)

...

but, hey, sex sells.

259. LUCIFER’S FOLLIES, OR, I KNOW, LET’S BLAME THE HOMOSEXUALS!

From the Archives (October 2006) Huh. Jerry Falwell says that Hillary’s nomination as Democratic presidential candidate would arouse even more evangelical opposition than Lucifer’s.

Wonder what Jerry’s nomination would arouse among thinking people?

And does anyone believe that Fox and O’Reilly accidentally—oopsie! real sorry folks—ran a banner identifying Foley as a Democrat at least twice before someone called them on their self-serving little blunder?

Yep, I’ve been catching up on my reading.

Checked out Mollie Ivins’s dildo diaries today and can confirm that Texas is even more backwards than my repressive home state.

Have also been following the Times series on the ever-expanding benefits that our leaders are extending to christianist groups. Hope the series garners a strong response.

This made me wonder what the christianists have been up to—besides being strangely silent about Foley—and that’s how I discovered the Christian Coalition trainer who encourages people to make up press credentials in order to find out if voters are planning to vote for republicans (and then harass them if they’re not).

The Christian Right’s lack of morals are really coming to light in the wake of this scandal.

Yep, another closeted Republican suffering from internalized homophobia has followed the path blazed by Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Ralph Reed and gotten himself revealed as a moral hypocrite.

Is anyone surprised?

So how are the christianists responding? Well, they’re playing the specious blame game in an effort to avoid taking responsibility for putting their careers before their so-called morals. Or they're keeping quiet in an effort to keep the Republican failures in connection to this scandal under wraps.

Examples:

The Foley revelations, according to Gary Bauer, chair of the Campaign for [Homophobic, Evidenced-Based-Reality-Rejecting] Working Families, are merely "an attempt to discourage Christian conservative voters and to get some percentage of them to stay home so that the Left can retake the United States Senate and the United States House."

Yep. We Lefties brainwashed the man into seducing nearly grown boys using the same brainwashing methods that you christianists have used with the children you send to your brainwashing camps.

(I know. I’ve been there.)

Other politicos are trying to distance the scandal from political parties altogether and blame, yes, the homosexuals:

Neither party seems likely to address the real issue, which is the link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse. (Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, in reference to the Foley scandal)

What? Don’t you wonder how this idiot can even write that with an um straight face on the heels of one heterosexual man raping and executing public school girls whom he took hostage in Colorado and another heterosexual man executing a roomful of Amish youngsters whom he planned to rape and torture?

At least Foley was flirting with people who have hair around their genitals.

Perkins also said, and fairly ungrammatically, that "it shouldn't be totally surprising when we hold up tolerance and diversity as the guidepost for public life this is what you end up getting."

Think about that.

Human Life International went a step further and attempted to blame the Foley scandal on Planned Parenthood. (The fuck?)

There is never an acceptable excuse or rationale for the type of deviant behavior former Congressman Mark Foley has admitted to. Homosexuality is every bit a part of the culture of death as is abortion and contraception. Not surprisingly, Foley was an ardent supporter of both, representing the interests of Planned Parenthood 64 percent of the time thus far in 2006.

Yes, put those children in christianist schools so they never have the opportunity to learn about evidence-based reasoning, then feed them crap like this and some of them just might buy your bullshit.

•

Meanwhile, a woman on Craig’slist discovered that her academic husband is cheating on her and wrote this wonderful rave, which I’m posting here because it will vanish soon, although it’s currently posted at http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/141149695.html:

RAVE: My cheating husband!!!
Ok, so I just found out that you've been writing about 25 emails a day to one of your female colleagues, all signed with the words "with bated breath". GREAT! You seem to have decided that bisexual vegetarians with questionable hair choices are more up your alley. WONDERFUL! Oh, did you say that she cares about your academic career, unlike me, who is always at work? Great! I'm such a bitch, aren't I, me with all of my work and bill paying. I'm glad that someone has the time to listen to you talk about postmodernism. That really takes a lot off my back. Actually, upon close inspection, it seems like this whole thing is taking a lot off my back. For example...

Things I Don't Have to Do Anymore since You Have Found a Deeply Intellectual Fuck Buddy:
1. Pay your rent.
2. Get you through graduate school.
3. Hear the word "deconstruction" while I'm trying to eat a goddamn hamburger.
4. Fry bacon for you.
5. Pretend to enjoy CNN.
6. Pretend to care about all things academic.

Things I Will Be Able to Do:
1. Buy shoes.
2. Eat chicken, which you find disgusting.
3. Shop at a store other than Target.
4. Unapologetically watch America 's Next Top Model.

So go ahead. Fuck her. I know you want to. I mean, you pretty much said so in that last email, now didn't you? If you'd just get on with it, I could possibly have you out by the end of the month, and be able to enjoy all of next month's pay check without having to buy any of your books or any of your pencils or any of your goddamn subscription-only foreign news channels. You've been to the movies, you've had study dates. The next logical step is fucking. So put down the goddamn books and get your mouth on hers. Let's step it up! I want to go buy myself some shoes!

And yeah, I'll be sad, and I'll cry and I'll eat some Ben and Jerry's. But you know what? I won't be homeless. You, my friend, you're going to have to get a job that doesn't involve reading Nabokov. So enjoy that. God knows I will. In fact, I'll give you five bucks if you'll just hurry the fuck up and get it over with. Take the money, dude. You're going to need it.

Oh, and yeah, I did break into your email. So go ahead...tell me what you read in some obscure book about privacy. Tell me loud and long. Because I'm never going to have to hear that shit again.
141149695

Yee haw, babe.

258. WORSHIPPING AT THE HOUSE OF LABIA LOVE, OR, FAREWELL HABEAS CORPUS, WE HARDLY KNEW THEE

From the Archives. (October 2006) Huh. Someone just sent this to me:

Love that goes UPWARD is WORSHIP.
Love that goes OUTWARD is AFFECTION.
Love that STOOPS is GRACE. (DG Barnhouse)

Apt, really, since my singing group performed at a queer event held at a local progressive church last night and, when we went out to our cars, found this on our windshields:

NEVER DOUBT GOD’S LOVE FOR YOU
The Bible makes it clear that “God is Love” (1st John 4:8). This is a true character trait of God that is widely spoken of within the gay community. But did you know that there are other character traits of God which are equally true, yet hardly spoken of at all within gay circles? Namely, that God is a holy, righteous, and just God who, by his very nature, must administer punishment for sin?

You may have wondered, “If God is a loving God, how could He punish people in such a way?” Because God is perfect and His standard is perfection (the 10 commandments). Have you ever lied, stolen something (even if it was something trivial and small), used God’s name in vain, or lusted after another person (Jesus calls this “adultery” in Matthew 5:28)? Then you have broken God’s law, and the Bible make it clear that “He who stumbles at one point of the Law is guilty of breaking it all” (James 2:10), and “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 28:10). Be honest with yourself; you’re in big trouble on judgment day, DESPITE YOUR HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE.

But God’s mercy can triumph over judgment in your life. God loves you, and has made a way for you to escape His wrath. Do you know what God did for you so that you wouldn’t have to go to hell? He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on a cross to receive your punishment. Jesus satisfied God’s justice and wrath against sin, so that when you stand before God on the day of judgment, you won’t have to receive His justice and wrath. This, my friend, is the greatest expression of love, Jesus died a substitute death so you could live (Romans 5:8). Then He rose from the dead, defeating death and proving Himself to be who He says He is; the Son of God and Savior of the world.

So, God has made a way for all men to be forgiven, and to receive the gift of everlasting life, Now the only question that remains is if you are willing to receive this gift. The Bible makes it perfectly clear that God commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30-31, Mark 6:12, Luke 13;3, Acts 3;19, Acts 26:20), and to trust in Jesus as Savior, since there is no way you could save yourself (John 3:16-21, John 8:24, John 14:6, Acts 4;12).

So please don’t be guilty of creating a God after your own imagination to suit yourself that you are more comfortable with; a God who is comfortable with your sins, including your homosexual lifestyle. The Bible warns, “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, no idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God,” and, “the cowardly, unbelieving, adominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death: (Revelation 21:8). It’s been appointed for man once to die, and after this, the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). By this time, it will be too late to repent and make things right. Humble yourself before God, turn from your sin, and put your trust in Jesus as your Savior...today! Whether you walk down an aisle of a Church to make your peace with God of just kneel beside your bed at night does not matter...God is more concerned with the attitude of your heart than the place where you accept His gift of salvation. Tell Him you are sorry for your sins and turn from them. Ask Him to fill your heart with His presence so you can live above the power of sin, Tell Him you’re putting your trust in Jesus as your Savior from this day forward. God promised to forgive all that repent and put their trust in Jesus! Then read your Bible daily and obey what you read. And find a church to plug into that has not compromised the Word of God. God will never let you down. For more information, check out http://www.wayofthe master.com/goodperson.shtml

Well, my friend, you clearly failed your grammar courses, but at least you know to leave the second e out of judgment. You have also misunderstood a crucial aspect of adultery if you believe that lusting after another person alone qualifies.

My hunch, however, is that you are in such desperate need of some earth-shattering guilt-free lust that this was probably a Freudian slip. In fact, given your homophobic tendencies and desire to be around the fabulous when we congregate, I am guessing that you are, at this very moment, struggling mightily with your attraction to people of the same gender.

Let me remind you that the group with the highest incidence of divorce in our country is evangelical Christians.

Now some would say that it follows that your god hates evangelical Christians more than he hates, say, homosexuals. But, hey, you're the one who insists that your god is a loving god, so maybe he just wants to free your women from their oppression.

I guess I better be careful about sharing my honest opinions now though, since the rule of law that we’ve lived by for so many years is now officially dead—or will be once Bush signs the terrorist bill into law.

Goodbye Bill of Rights. Hello rightless people who can be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process based purely on our president's suspicions about you.

Susie Bright points out that "everyone who watches TV knows all about Foley's boxer shorts, but the loss of one's right to privacy, or a jury trial, doesn't seem to make anyone's dick hard.”

Yeah.

What frightens me most though is that this bill not only gives Bush the right to determine the application of the Geneva Conventions but actually denies the courts the jurisdiction to hear any challenges to his interpretations.

In other words, we now have a dictator in what was a democracy, and a coke-snortin' one whose GPA was a low C, at that.

256. REALITY WARS, OR, THE WHITE BOYS' GUIDE TO STOKING THE SINS OF OMISSION

From the Archives. (September 2006) In an article I wrote for our local indy rag some years ago, I talked about the fact that, even though my ex and I were together for ten years and declared our commitment to each other in a public ceremony, my family of origin continued to list me as single on their family trees.

They were cordial if a bit uncomfortable when I brought Mud to our family gatherings and usually included those awkward how’s your er um how's Mud doing? questions in conversations when she wasn’t there, but consistently refused to acknowledge the significance of our relationship in any formal way.

In other words, their actions attempted to make real people around them invisible in order to ensure their own comfort.

It is no coincidence that the Judeo-Christian god granted Adam the right to name things.

And yes. You are right. Ding ding ding! I AM writing about the power wielded by people who are allowed to name things and define reality. Again.

Because inquiring minds want to elucidate the fact that our dominant society insists that a huge facet of the lives of one in ten of us be rendered invisible.

(And let's don't forget that their insistence is not limited to queers. They also want poor people and black people and AIDS babies and leather afficionados and the homeless to vanish for their continued comfort.)

How threatening would it be to their carefully manufactured worlds if our official documents reflected the actual data??

Did you know that 4 corporations publish nearly every textbook used in our public schools system and that these publishers hold hearings in which groups of, say, so-called Intelligent Design advocates are allowed to fill the entire hearing room and then insist on their opinions being printed as facts? Yes, all too often, this group’s turnout and volume dictate what schoolchildren are taught as reality.

It's no surprise that organized Christofascist groups are the primary ones showing up either. No big surprise that fundies pays speechwriters big bucks to change the names of things in order to make the wrong seem right and idiocy seem intelligent and pesky principles seem obsolete.

I guess, given these dysfunctions, it should be no surprise that the Governator is intent on redefining reality for his state too.

Yep, I read today that California has been legally bound to offer an inclusive curriculum in their public schools since the seventies. The result is that men and women excel in equal numbers in textbooks (i.e., if Barbie says Math is hard, then Ken does too).

Then, this year, the legislature took this law a step further and approved a bill requiring state textbooks to "accurately portray in an age-appropriate manner the cultural, racial, gender and sexual orientation diversity of our society."

Finally! Lesbians will be depicted as something other than pathetic man-hating spinsters who drown in the wells of loneliness that are the fairy-tale fate of unmarried women (when, near as I can tell, the actual fate of far too many women is to hide in women's shelters from the violent men in their lives who wish to control their every move).

The governator viewed this bill as too threatening and vowed to veto it, so as a compromise, the legislature amended it to say only that textbooks will not reflect adversely on people based on their sexual orientation.

That’s STILL too much reality for the governator though, so he vetoed this version too.

Good thing this man is in a position of authority and gets to name things, eh?

255. ARE YOU BEING SERVED?

From the Archives. (September 2006) I loaned Dorothy Allison’s Trash to Danishgrrrl a few weeks ago and found myself flipping through this book about class, geography, and gender issues last night.

Allison articulates things about my childhood and shame and adult anxieties that I never even acknowledged out loud to myself before reading this book.

She also goes a long way toward explaining my anxiety about taking Danishgrrrl to SC to meet my family of origin.

Meanwhile, I have been shaking my head at the fact that Andrew Fastow is going to the slammer for a mere six years. I mean, think about what this guy did and its repercussions (not to mention the fact that he already received a great plea bargain agreement that reduced his sentence to just 10 years behind bars).

My question is, why not punish this man the way his crimes punished others and take away his retirement accounts and benefits and compensation and job, then force him to spend the rest of his days living on a fixed minimum-wage income?

The judge defended Fastow’s light sentence by saying that he had been persecuted and portrayed as a symbol of corporate greed after Enron’s collapse.

Aw.

(Excuse me but wasn’t his choice to perform criminal activities that led to Enron’s collapse the very thing that earned him this reputation in the first place?)

Maybe I am naive, but my impression is that most law-abiding citizens frown upon criminal activity, especially when the criminals rake in millions while leaving tax payers to bail out the people he bilked.

My understanding is also that justice is theoretically blind, but this articulate white sociopath with a is getting off way too fricking easy.

Question: does anyone believe for a moment that this judge would extend a comparable rationale to, say, a child molester?

Oh you poor man, your neighbors shunned and persecuted you and crossed the street when you approached and made you suffer so. Oh you poor, poor man. You have paid such a steep price already, So I tell ya what I’m gonna do. I'll sentence you to four years less than your plea bargain agreement because of your awful, awful suffering.

And inquiring minds want to know what exactly this guy’s “extraordinary steps toward rehabilitation” were.

Did he donate one of his MacMansions to the thousands of Enron employees whose savings he bilked?

Nope. Near as I can tell, the judge was referring to the fact that the poor man had to raise his two kids alone for one year while his criminal wife served her similarly minimal sentence.

Guess the judge doesn’t recognize that members of the law-abiding population struggle to raise their kids with limited resources and in single-parent homes too—and will have an even harder time of it now that we have to bail out these corporate crooks.

Unbelieveable.

Meanwhile, the Georgia branch of the Christian Coalition voted to leave this organization because it is just not conservative enough for them anymore.

Their stance is that the organization ought to be focusing solely on the core issues: criminalizing abortion and legalizing homophobia

(coz the Bible tells them so).

I suggest that they realign themselves with Fred Phelps so that everyone knows exactly what kinds of bigots we are dealing with.

No time right now, but I also made a mental note to research Republinazi pollster Frank Luntz’s materials. He’s the guy who provides speaking tips to the GOP and, apparently, his 160-page memo “The New American Lexicon” is the source of GOP members’ current insistence on using Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party.

LISTENING TO: George Winston’s “Summer”

READING: A fascinating article on fused participles (yawn). Last night, I also flipped through Great Lies for Adults to Tell Kids. (My personal favorite is “Wine makes mommy clever.”) Also Dorothy Allison’s Trash, which I will excerpt later.

SANG IN SHOWER: do your chain hang low? Do it rattle to the flo? (I curse Danishgrrrl’s teenagers for getting this stuck in my head!)

BEST-OF SPAM: Did you know that statistics say that sex makes you look 12 years younger?

237. WHAT STATE INTERESTS?

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution)

From the Archives (21 July 2006) Last month Georgia courts ruled that the peach state can continue to discriminate against a small portion of our citizenry by extending over one thousand special rights to the majority while denying these same rights to minority homosexuals who wish to declare their love publicly and enjoy the same responsibilities and benefits of wedded um bliss that hetero citizens purport to enjoy.

New York courts basically ruled the same, only their reasoning goes that het marriages are so fragile that the state must use special rights to protect the hets from the spooky homos who so threaten their conjugal bliss.

This is akin to the tactic bishops use to downplay the fact that the priests are raping children. You know, just shift the blame to the homosexuals (even though pedophilia is not the same thing).

Which leads me to ask, if breeders’ marriages are so freaking fragile, then why doesn’t the state require them to attend remedial marriage classes instead of legalizing discrimination? Aren’t their children worth this expenditure of public funds or are children only valuable to the state before they’re born?

And lookie! Tennessee and Nebraska courts have legalized discriminatory and punitive bans on gay marriage now too, and even the snow-loving Easterners are declining to block a vote to ban queer marriage in the only state where gay marriage is currently legal.

So let’s examine the facts.

A full 70 percent of Nebraskans saw fit to deny their homosexual neighbors the equal rights guaranteed them by the laws of this land. AND they voted to deny state employees domestic-partner benefits and visitation rights too.

Is this equal protection?

Federal District Court Judge Joseph Bataillon states the obvious when he says that Nebraska’s amendment goes

far beyond merely defining marriage as between a man and a woman…. It imposes significant burdens on both the expressive and intimate associational rights [of gay men and lesbians] and creates a significant barrier to the plaintiffs’ right to petition or to participate in the political process.

He also states the obvious when he suggests that the amendment “was motivated, to some extent, by either irrational fear of or animus toward gays and lesbians.”

Seems this Court of Appeals is comprised not of public officials who uphold the law but instead by bigots willing to rule unanimously that “laws limiting the state-recognized institution of marriage to heterosexual couples are rationally related to legitimate state interests and therefore do not violate the Constitution of the United States.”

Uh would that be the state’s interest in upholding bigotry and propping up failed marriages to maintain the illusion of the happy suburban family that most American families don’t match in the first place?

Define these interests, you gentle um men in judicial dresses.

The New York Times says that Nebraska’s drastic ban is most likely headed to the Supreme Court. Does this inspire anyone to believe that nondiscrimination will be upheld in the land of the free and the home of the cappuccinoed?

*

Meanwhile, I have a question: Do the good folks at Alternet really believe that they come off as anything other than a bunch of privileged self-congratulatory East Coast smartasses when they post two headlines in one week as profound as "Is Israel Dumb?" and "Is Bush an Imbecile?"

Howzabout "Does Name-Calling Create Democracy?" or "Name-Calling: The Lazy Journalist’s Friend,” guys?

You might consider the impression you’re creating in between snickering at your frat-boy cleverness.

*

Meanwhile I packed Danishgrrrl and her 3 kids into a Seattle-bound plane bright and early this morning and won’t see them for 2 long weeks. The kids will visit with various relatives while Danishgrrl and her sister on Mercer Island move their father into an assistant living facility.

It sucks to get old and feeble.

223. ADVOCATING A GAY “LIFESTYLE”

From the Archives

(May 2006) I’ve been catching up on my reading and so will be blogosampling again.

The Washington Blade reports that Brigham Young University is considering expelling 5 students who participated in last month’s Equality Ride demo whether or not they’re gay, despite the fact that one of them demonstrated off campus.

Why? Because their honor code forbids students from “advocating a gay lifestyle.” (sic)

And, on our side of the country, a judge has thrown out a case filed against UNC Chapel Hill by a Christian fraternity that wants funding even though it refuses to sign an inclusive pledge.

And speaking of hot-button social issues, has anyone else noticed that the governor of Illinois has taken a lesson from Bush&Co and is using his executive powers to make hot-button changes despite the homophobic Christianist legislators in his state?

He instructed the state’s health department to direct 10 million dollars in grants to embryonic stem cell research, for example, after Bush’s idiotic pronouncement of what is and is not appropriate scientific research, and used executive privilege to bypass the legislative process and grant domestic-partner health-care benefits to state employees.

(Go team)

No big surprise, but the Christianists (who make up the 32 percent of Americans who still support the boy emperor and appear to be just fine with his secret torture camps and wiretapping) don’t like it one bit when a Democrat uses such powers to set progressive policy.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old created a set of videos about a group that Susie Bright refers to as our “Onward-Christian-Bullshitters Administration.” WWJD is the strongest of the bunch and will leave a lump in your throat and fill you with more than a little outrage (especially if you saw My Name Is Rachel Corrie last night).

Check out http://peacetakescourage.cf.huffingtonpost.com/ and please forward it to your friends.

216. UNITED STATES OF STUPID’S DAY WITHOUT IMMIGRANTS

From the Archives

(May 2006) Irregular girl has a Flickr photo of a graffitied wall that reads “pay your own way.” I’m trying to parse this sentiment with our country’s resistance to illegal immigrants, who point out regularly that businesses survive on the sweat of their minimum-wage labor.

I’m in Brooklyn right now but we’re headed to PS1 to see Jessica Stockholder’s gallery show soon. We’ll head over to Dietch Project’s Garden Party next, where we hope to see a mound of earth with beautiful nude women draped on it. Then we’ll head over to Union Square for the big immigration rally.

The East Village is weird to Lars because the Second Avenue Deli, an institution, closed since she left and there’s just a big sad empty building where it used to be.

Meanwhile, yesterday was too beautiful to be indoors so we spent the day walking all over the city.

Met up with pals for lunch, then went to check on Shulie’s cat (because Shulie quit taking her meds again and was consequently committed). It took thirty minutes, but we finally coaxed the kitty out from behind some paintings.

Actually, Lars and I may stay at Shuli’s after we see Guardian, since I’ll need to hop the bus from Grand Central Station to LaGuardia early the next day and, well, the cat needs some attention.


I got up early this morning and went up on the roof to stare at the water. The statue of liberty was there with her white arm raised and, beyond that, New Jersey sat in a smoggy gray haze.

Instead of enjoying the view though, I was thinking about how wonderful it would be to wake up in Seattle and have coffee on my deck while staring across the water at snow-capped mountains.

If Lars stays on the west coast, then there’s a good chance that I will wind up there eventually.

•

Met Tuscaloosa for an impromptu dinner before leaving town. She was awarded a two-week stay at a writing retreat and wants me to apply for the same time period, since we get tons of work done when we retreat together (and eat very well to boot).

Meanwhile, anyone keeping up with the King and King controversy—not to be confused with the Rodney King controversy, in which actual people were harmed—knows all about the uproar in Massachusetts over a teacher reading this tale of a crown prince who rejected one beautiful princess after another before falling in love with a handsome prince.

He and the prince marry, seal their commitment with a kiss, then live happily ever after just as het fairy-tale lovers do, and all was right in the world until a meddlesome “parents’ rights” group threatened to sue the school for portraying queers in a positive light!

Meanwhile California fundie doctors are claiming that their religious beliefs give them the right to treat lesbians differently than other patients and are refusing to provide fertility treatments to us.

It shocks me that this case was thrown out of lower court three years ago.

They’re job is to treat patients, not make moral or religious judgments about us.

Meanwhile, University of Cumberland in Kentucky expelled a twenty-year-old boy for identifying himself as gay on his personal webpage.

It’s happening right here folks.

204. BACKSLIDING AWAY

From the Archives

(March 2006) I’m sitting in a grease-scented dive listening to Johnny Cash as dyksters smoke clove cigarettes around me.

(Johnny would like to remind you that he never got over those blue eyes and I would like to remind you that the illuminated keyboards on Mac Powerbooks are truly wonderful things.)

Did y’all note that the New Hampshire House defeated a proposed amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman but, interestingly enough, the good folks of this same state do not recognize gay marriages or civil unions performed in other states?

Or that Kris Kristofferson has a new CD?

I am brain-dead and sick of work and in need of some serious escape, and so have been Googling random words from Alternet stories in a sort of Charles Bernstein approach to information gathering. This has resulted in my discovery of some interesting conspiracy theories that, among other things, detail the size of Dick Cheney’s large schlong.

Seems that in 1995, way back when I was a poor post-grad student dedicating most of my income to paying off student loans, Claudia Mullen gave the following testimony to a US presidential advisory committee investigating post-WWII government radiation experiments:

Between the years 1957 and 1984 I became a pawn in the government's game. Its ultimate goal was mind control and to create the perfect spy, all through the use of chemicals, radiation, drugs, hypnosis, electric shock, isolation in tubs of water, sleep deprivation, brainwashing, verbal, physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

I was exploited unwittingly for nearly three decades of my life and the only explanations given to me were that the end justifies the means and I was serving my country in their bold effort to fight communism. I can only summarize my circumstances by saying they took an already abused seven-year-old child and compounded my suffering beyond belief.

The saddest part is, I know for a fact I was not alone. There were countless other children in my same situation and there was no one to help us until now. I have already submitted as much information as possible including conversations overheard at the agencies responsible. I am able to report all of this to you in such detail because of my photographic memory and the arrogance of the people involved. They were certain they would always control my mind.

Although the process of recalling these atrocities is not an easy one, nor is it without some danger to myself and my family, I feel the risk is worth taking.

Dr. L. Wilson Greene, [who] received $50 million dollars from the Edgewood Chemical and Radiology Laboratory as part of the TSD, or Technical Science Division of the CIA, once described to Dr. Charles Brown that “children were used as subjects because they were more fun to work with and cheaper too.” They needed lower profile subjects than soldiers and government people so only young willing females would do. Besides, he said, “I like scaring them.”

In 1958 they told me I was to be tested by some important doctors from the ... Human Ecology Society, and I was instructed to cooperate. I was told not to look at anyone's faces, and to try hard to ignore any names because this was a very secret project. I was told all these things to help me forget. Naturally, as most children do, I did the opposite and remembered as much as I could. A Dr. John Gittinger tested me, Dr. Cameron gave me the shock, and Dr. Greene the X-rays. Then I was told by Sid Gottlieb that “I was ripe for the big A,” meaning ARTICHOKE.

By the time I left to go home, just like every time from then on, I would remember only whatever explanations Dr. Robert G. Heath, of Tulane Medical University, gave me for the odd bruises, needle marks, burns on my head, fingers, and even the genital soreness. I had no reason to think otherwise. They had already begun to control my mind.

The next year I was sent to a lodge in Maryland called Deep Creek Cabins to learn how to sexually please men. I was taught how to coerce them into talking about themselves. It was Richard Helms, who was Deputy Director of the CIA, Dr. Gottlieb, Capt. George White, and Morris Allan who all planned on filling as many high government agency officials and heads of academic institutions and foundations as possible so that later when the funding for mind control and radiation started to dwindle, projects would continue. I was used to entrap many unwitting men, including themselves, all with the use of a hidden camera. I was only nine years old when the sexual humiliation began.

I overheard conversations about part of the Agency called ORD, which I found out was Office of Research and Development. It was run by Dr. Greene, Dr. Steven Aldrich, Martin Orne, and Morris Allan. Once a crude remark was made by Dr. Gottlieb about a certain possible leak in New Orleans involving a large group of retarded children who had been given massive doses of radiation. He asked why was Wilson so worried about a few retarded kids, after all they would be the least likely to spill the beans.

We’ve got the Artichoke, the grassy knoll, the Franklin Cover-Up, Project Paper Clip, MK Ultra, Bohemian Groove, the conspiracy of silence (a sex scandal involving children at Boystown), the Finders, The Church of Set, Cathy O'Brien’s ritualized sexual abuse involving Dick Cheney’s abnormally large penis and Mark Philips, the neurolinguistic programmer who toured the conspiracy circuit with this woman.

Then there’s Dave McGowan’s Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder. McGowan sees rampant Satanic pedophilia/ritual murder connections in this so-called pedophocracy that we mistakenly call a nation.

Lots to read and I'm a skeptic.

Nevertheless, I’m looking around this dive now wondering which of these folks drops phrases such as “Project Paper Clip” and “Bohemian Groove” as they sip their beers, which dyksters believe the UFO stories are real?

203. COMING SOON TO A THEATRE NEAR YOU: HETS-ONLY WATER FOUNTAINS

From the Archives

(March 2006) I'm catching up on the news and, as usual, sampling it.

Seems that Idaho activists recently fanned out across downtown Boise to attach small white Heterosexuals Only signs to every bench and fountain and doorway and statehouse bathroom they could find.

This action coincided with the forty-first anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma.

Amazing how time advances yet bigotry stands still, isn’t it (and how some folks use religion to justify it in both cases)?

Elsewhere in these united states, the good folks of Burlington VT—oh to ride my Bike around Lake Champlain again!—elected to name a nearby peak Brokeback Mountain.

And elsewhere Jerry Falwell had the Soulforce Equality Riders arrested when they stepped onto Liberty University property. But, in a move that makes perfect sense to my Alabama-bred pal Tuscaloosa and this escaped-from-the-Baptists grrrl, Liberty U students greeted the queer riders with cookies.

And farther south, five Savannah soldiers taunted and severely beat a gay man.

These soldiers are members of the Third Infantry Division at Fort Stewart—the same place where an artist pal’s cross-dressing young stepson is now stationed.

Gawd do I hope the boy’s discreet!

LISTENING TO: The rain

READING: Transgender Warriors and a new cookbook manuscript

BEST OF SPAM: Safe way to drown your girlfriend in cum. (Yuck! Howzabout I drown her in throbbing contractions and water-based lube instead?)

196. PRESIDENT FOR LIFE

From the Archives

(February 2006) DC's City Paper used to call Marion Berry “Mayor for Life” before he got busted for crack cocaine.

If Bush & Co had moved forward with their plan to cancel the recent presidential election (citing the threat of a terrorist attack), as Newsweek reported, then the City Paper would have perhaps revived this phrase while kicking it up a few notches.

Yep, the White House and DOJ seriously considered cancelling the elections (no doubt before those computer programmers devised a way to change Kerry votes to Bush ones).

So, who knows, we could have had a president for life who raises the terror alert to high whenever someone protests his position on the throne.

•

Meanwhile, an Austrian court has sentenced a historian to three years in prison for espousing his belief that the Holocaust never existed.

That’s in Austria.

In the US, people like Dr. Paul Cameron—who was kicked out of the APA long ago for announcing manufactured and bigoted results—continues to spread their homophobic crap far and wide.

And politicians like Rick Santorum continue to pronounce Cameron’s fictions as fact.

Cameron is the one who broadcast the lie that gay men routinely insert hamsters into their rectums.

Research groups failed to find even a single queer who practices this sex act and Cameron was uable to back up his claim with evidence, yet Santorum et al. repeat this data as if it’s accurate.

They also repeat the rumor that queers die in their forties, which is a lie even when you factor in the AIDS epidemic.

And no. I don’t believe one should be jailed for espousing opinions, even when they’re misguided and hateful and ignorant.

The Klan had the right to their ignorant opinions and so does Dr. Cameron. I’m glad that thinking people challenge their lies and logic though and kick them out of societies that require e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e. . .

(and don’t you wish the press still had to offer fair and balanced news? Thanks a whole lot, Ronnie.)

Telling historians that they cannot explore controversial theories—even about horrific events such as the Holocaust—limits knowledge. And I believe that scholars should be free to pursue their theories.

That’s how we learn new things and expand our knowledge.

•

And now a quote.

The now busted Ralph Reed said the following to Christian teens:

We will never know how many marriages and lives were saved, or how many children were spared the consequences of compulsive gambling, because of our work to shut down casinos.

To quote Ecclesiastes, all things shall come to pass, Asshole.

•

Okay. I’ll close with this factoid. It’s 27 February 2006. On this date in 1991, President Bush the Older declared “Kuwait is liberated. Iraq’s army is defeated.”

Prescient, wasn’t he?

172. THE CHURCH OF THE BIG DILDO

From the Archives (December 2005)

You have navigated with raging soul far from the paternal home, passing beyond the seas’ double rocks and now you inhabit a foreign land.—Medea

Yes that would be me living here in this foreign land where my orchids are sprouting brand new stalks and the clementines I purchased just a few days ago are already beginning to mold.

(What is UP with that? I mean jezzzzuslawd I’m eating three a day!!)

Whole Foods’ produce department has gone way downhill recently (and I still don’t understand why they can’t be bothered to buy locally grown produce when it’s so readily available). I mean, throw some (finely sifted sea) salt over your shoulder in these parts and you’re bound to hit some hippie who went back to the land and has been selling organic rosemary or pig-sniffed truffles or free-range something at the local farmers’ market.

Anyway, so here I am with my short attention span changing topics again when what I wanted to say is that yes, indeedy, this here dykestergrrrl has navigated myself relatively far away from my paternal homeland and you better believe that I only looked back long enough to find those barbecue and cornbread and coconut cream pie recipes.

I was fortunate enough to not desire the tiny strictured life that my family designed for me but, wow, do they keep trying to cram me back into their mold.

In fact, it’s beginning to feel as if they’re stalking me—which, no doubt, means that the church had another save-the-queers-from-themselves drive.

My mother asked what church I attend. (The church of the big dildo, Mom.)

My homophobic Aunt Becky informed me in highlighted all caps that I am going to spend eternity in Hell because I don’t believe every rabidly hateful thing that her minister insists is Jezus’s word and because I “live in unnatural sin.”

Oh. Wait. No. The Baptists don’t concern themselves with Jezus anymore. (He was just too liberal.) It’s all about their so-called literal interpretation of the worduvgawwd now.

(Don’t you wonder in what dank cellar they’ve locked Jezus away? It’s apparently the same cellar where they’ve locked the Christians who took “feed the poor and care for the sick” to heart, since the new Falwell/Dobson/Robertson Jezus impersonator promotes giving huge tax cuts to the rich at the expense of the poor and fails to provide healthcare for the indigent.)

(And yes I know that there are plenty of good liberal Christians out there who are mighty embarrassed that Pat Robertson and his cronies are managing to speak for them all, but I am talking about the organized Christianists with an obvious GOP agenda here.)

And don’t get me started on my little sister, who converted to Catholicism and believes their spiel about separate and unequal gender roles being part of God’s master plan and who knows just knows that I can be cured of my lust for gorgeous women—one of whom, by the way li’l sister, brings me to ecstatic screaming climaxes on a very regular basis.

(Think about THAT the next time you’re mumbling some prescribed phrase out of your lectionary.)

Meanwhile our local dyke chorus has, for the first time in its 22-year history, elected to perform a traditional holiday concert that includes Jezus songs.

See, many of us are classically trained musicians who really enjoy challenging carols such as Rutter’s “Mary’s Lullaby” and “Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming” or the lovely “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,” and it is exceedingly difficult to find any classical carols that don't reference the J-Man.

So we bit the bullet and introduced Jezus into our estrogen mix for just this one concert—only we unknowingly did this the same semester that HRC invited us to perform at their Gospel and Unity event (which they, incidentally, presented to us as inclusive of all organized religions).

Turns out their event was actually an attempt to bring African-Americans into their fold ... and I guess they could only envision African-Americans, even queer ones, as gospel-belting churchgoers.

(Hey, ever heard of Audre Lorde or Essex Hemphill or Pomo Afro Homo?)

The HRC event overflowed with evangelical Jezus-farting, but there was neither hide nor hare of Buddha or Pan or Muhammed or Spiderwoman weaving the world or the magnificent golden carp.

So, understandably, my dyke sister-singers are up in arms now about our apparent conversion.

What was I thinking when I voted to perform this Jezus music in the first place? And is it enough that I opted not to participate in the HRC event (because my Jezus allergy can detect allergens from miles away and I was sneezing the second HRC said the word "gospel"). I also declined to design their publicity material for the same reason, but did perform in our holiday concert because, well, I love Rutter and have not yet convinced the chorus to purchase an SSAA arrangement of “Ave Pudendum.”

But anyway, to make matters worse, the local (queer) MCC church asked our chorus and the local gay men’s chorus to perform at their holiday fund-raiser too and, well, we assumed we'd sing “Deck The Halls” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” etc, but, well, they just delivered a song list to us and it couldn’t be more Christian!

(Whee our next board meeting is sure going to be fun!)

Meanwhile, I miss the days when the Christians that our chorus sang about were the blood-thirsty extremists who murdered 9 million European women during the witch hunts, and so plan to propose that we sing Holly Near’s “I Ain’t Afraid” (of your Yahweh. I ain’t afraid of your Jesus. I ain’t afraid of your Allah. I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god) and “Did Jezus Have a Baby Sister?” and “Ave Pudendum” at our next holiday concert, as penance.

LISTENING TO: Maggie Sansone’s Ancient Noels

BEST OF SPAM: last longer John (oh baby I do)

168. JUST MY DOG AND ME ON THE EDGE OF THIS HERE BRANE

From the Archives

(November 2005) Fifty-three years ago today, our country exploded the first hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands. What process of elimination led us to drop a bomb on these (apparently) expendable islands? And how many species evaporated because of this decision?

I spent today on much less serious stuff, but my day nevertheless exhausted me. I completed myriad administrative tasks (yawn) while trying to catch up while asking myself if this is what I received my MFA in poetry to do. (No.) And lawsie lawsie me, do I need to find some time for myself before I forget what my novel is even about!

Meanwhile, the news about Bush Inc’s newest conservative Supreme Court nominee is sobering, even if I don't have to worry about ever needing an abortion.

And let’s not forget to mention the taking-a-hard-stand-for-justice Methodist Church (motto: we only like people who are just like us), which recently kicked out an openly lesbian minister who is in a long-term, committed relationship but reinstated a straight southern minister who cast out a gay parishioner.

Gives new meaning to Jesus’s admonition to love those that persecute you, doesn’t it?

Um, you might be interested to know that Kinsey’s data siggests that we are nothing more than a natural variation. We also know that many of you so-called normal people fantasize about someone with the same anatomy or wear diapers to sex parties or enjoy being whipped or asphyxiate yourselves in erotic play and have any number of other never-to-be-spoken-aloud fantasies.

Of course, casting queers out into the sexual wilderness does allow bigoted people to pat themselves on their milquetoast backs and say what good Christians they are while they (sometimes manage to successfully) suppress these longings.

As for me, I think it’s high time that we define some new rings in Dante’s hell based on one’s level of homophobia. Hell itself would, of course, be a blow job from Fred Phelps—which would no doubt be the WORST form of torture, but would nevertheless finally satisfy this guy’s internalized homophobia.

On a similar note, I saw this sign at a protest recently: Would someone give the man a blowjob already so we can impeach him? So you see, Fred is just the man for the job!

All of which brings us to the topic of Dr. Randall of the Harvard University physics department.

Now if you happened to read the Science section of today’s New York Times, then you already read this intriguing sentence: Dr. Randall and string theory had their own kismet and you already saw a photo that confirms that the fine doctor is not only brilliant but also drop-dead gorgeous.

(And BTW my entry title is a very obscure reference to Dr. Randall and string theory, which posits that our uni(multi-, actually)verse is a brane—or, as Dr. Randall puts it, is an “island of three dimensions floating in a sea of higher dimension, like a bubble in the sea.” Add an obscure Bee Gees tune about “my dog and me on the edge of the universe” and, bingo, you’ve got today’s title.)

Anywho, Dr. Randall climbs mountains and absorbs the world around her deeply enough to ask questions that never even occur to other physicists, or most people. And she wants me. Bad.

Yes, I am certain of it!

So. Ahem. (Must be politically correct.) I need to re-read this intriguing article after I’ve absorbed some of these new theories for a few days, but can share this confusing typo-infused sentence from the once venerable Times in the interim:

Dr. Randall is intrigued by that fact that her results, as well as other results from string theory seem to paint a picture of the universe in which theories with different numbers of dimensions in them all give the same physics?

(Oh for the LOVE of GOD hire a goddamn copy editor already!!!!!)

166. CAUSE AND EFFECT

From the Archive

(October 2005) A writer in The Nation points out that, while we focus our attention on whether or not Supreme Court nominees will overturn Roe v. Wade, Bush is stacking the courts with pro-business judges.

I worry that, as a culture, we have such a short attention span that we have already forgotten the Hurricane Katrina debacle because, hey, Brittany Spears had a baby!

Yet this debacle made clear the folly of giving precedence to private financial gain over actual human lives.

And speaking of giving less than a shit about people who live in poverty (or are sliding into it as the middle class vanishes), Bush Inc. has allowed Florida to limit Medicaid benefits. Their approved plan says that “the state will set aside a specific amount of money for each person enrolled in Medicaid,” based on the citizen’s medical condition and historical use of health care.

And the state is now allowed to limit the “amount, duration and scope” of services.

Did you pick up on that historic use of health care? That’s cause and effect from a White House that makes value judgments on human lives.

You’re a poor black New Orleanian? Well, you probably live a sinful life in that den of iniquity and voted Democrat and ate southern/soul food that ain’t real healthy, so you are expendable now, baby.

And, since you inconvenienced us by not drowining at the get-go, we’ll make sure you know how valuable your life is to us now.

Hmm. Says right here that you have been treated for bronchitis twice now, yet you choose to continue to smoke.

No treatment for you.

And you eat the starchy food that poor people can afford instead of grilling out a nice healthy salmon filets?

We choose to not pay for sins.

GOP cause-and-effect never extends to exacting payment from the corporations that pollute our environment and make us all sick with their pollutants, however.

So my question is this: Now that Florida can legally set a ceiling on insurance spending per person per year and per lifetime, what will JEB and W do with the next Terry Schiavo when she meets her insurance cap?

Inquiring minds want to know.

(Actually, Bush Inc. is making it harder to declare bankruptcy too, so I suppose Schiavo’s spouse will be stuck with the bills and a vegetable he can’t put out of her misery.)

•

One of my former roommates—a public-health advocate—decided to go to medical school because she saw the writing on the wall about Roe v. Wade and wanted to be in a position to set up illegal abortion clinics à la the Redstockings when the time comes.

And sometimes I believe I’m going to wind up pursuing Constitutional law in an effort to battle these Christianists who want to rewrite our rights.

(Note to self: send more $ to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.)

Meanwhile, Steve Satterwhite of The Texas Observer interviewed some of fundies who want a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages and civil unions (i.e., who are working to codify discrimination against a portion of the citizenry) and what they said is just astounding. These people really do want to destroy our Constitution! And what they pass off as fact with such confidence just baffles the mind.

Satterwhite points out the echo-chamber phenomenon that I have discovered with my fundie students—a tendency to use the same phrases and inaccurate statistics to argue the same points (which some liberals do too, of course). Many (in the classroom and in this article) quote “widely discredited reports by Paul Cameron,” the man who started the urban legend about queers inserting hamsters into their rectums.

This doctor was dropped from membership in the American Psychological Association in 1983 because he did not meet professional codes of ethics and conduct, yet his lies continue to make the circuit as facts.

Example. Mary Ann Markarain from Sugar Land said

Sin is sin. We're not animals. [oh?] We're people, and I do not believe that you're born homosexual. They only have two signs over at the hospital: blue ones for the boys and pink ones for the girls. God knows when we're born what we're supposed to be.

The proof is in the pudding. Ninety-two percent of all gay males engage in rimming, the process of licking the rim of the anus and ingesting various amounts of fecal matter. Forty-seven percent of all males engage in fisting, the act of placing their fist in their partner's rectum for sexual pleasure. Twenty-nine percent of all homosexual males engage in golden showers—the practice of lying on the floor, typically nude, and allowing their partner to urinate on them. This is abnormal. These are things I've never read in the newspaper. This isn't something you hear about on CNN. But this is something that is taking place.

Now I know this is not real pleasant, but the truth needs to come out. When we say the word “gay,” we're really just hiding because we're really not understanding what that word really entails—what it means, what people are doing, and why this can hurt society as a whole. It's never been an accepted lifestyle. If we allow this to become accepted, then the numbers will grow astronomically. Now they want to take it into the classroom, to teach our children that this is okay. Our society is two to three percent gay, but if you teach children that homosexuality is okay, then we're going to have a lot of problems.

The median age of homosexual men dying with AIDS is 39 years old; that's wrong, not natural. The median age of all other homosexual men dying from other causes is 42. Do you consider 42 young? I consider it extremely young since I'm one year away from it. The median age of death for lesbians is 45 years old—of lesbians. That compares to 75 years old for heterosexual men and 79 for heterosexual women. Only one percent of homosexuals die of old age; only three percent ever live to age 55. Think about it, and then tell me that God doesn't have some problem with this whole thing—that God isn't speaking. It's unnecessary to put my name in the paper—you can just say that "God said," and here's the statistics.

Where did Mary Ann from Sugar Land learn these woefully inaccurate statistics and how many more people wrote them down and believe them after Cameron shared them on hate radio?

Monte Watkins from Houston said A few years ago, my husband and I were at one of the [Gay Pride Week parades]. After the parade broke up, some of them walked by us, talking to each other, but I heard them look around and say, “Mess with us, and we'll rape your kids."

Yeah. Sure you did.

Alan Ward of Stephenville said

There is a natural way that human beings are crafted to operate, and that is on a heterosexual basis.
We had a homosexual in my family, a young man. During high school, he learned to be gay; he wasn't before that. Was that different for my family? You bet it was, because we are a family of heterosexuals who really believe in being heterosexual.

About two years ago, that young man learned not to be homosexual, and he has a girlfriend now. Right in the midst of all this social controversy, he learned to be gay, and then he learned not to be. I've seen him changed, and I've seen two or three or four changed.

Logically, [policing sexual behavior] is out of the reach of the government, but I'm not saying that I believe it should be.

There is not enough manpower—not enough people working for the government—to go into every home of every professing homosexual to put eyes on them and watch to see that they do not commit homosexual acts. That's not possible. There is not enough manpower.

I’ll say there’s not (and ever heard of the Right to Privacy?).

Of course, many Christianists deny scientific evidence anyway, so reminding them that homosexuality exists in many species, that's it's a naturally occurring deviation from the norm, is ineffective. And it doesn’t seem to occur to them that their god could have made some people homosexual on purpose just as he made some of us, say, left-handed—that maybe this is a gift, as my friend Louisville and some Native-American tribes call it.

Nope it’s a choice, pure and simple.

But so is believing in myths, dude. And you don’t get to rewrite our nation’s constitution based on your myths and unsupportable lies and smear campaigns.

BEST-OF SPAM: Just a reminder; Our University Enrollment department has been trying to contact you. The date for enrolling in our 2-week degree program is ending on Friday, October 28, 2005. As of now we can only offer you a BA, BSc, or a MA. If you enroll by the due date then your degree of choice and transcripts can be sent to you within 2 weeks.

158. NO PLACE FOR A POET

From the Archives (September 2005)

Laura Bush
First Lady
The White House

Dear Mrs. Bush,
I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents—all of us who need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it delivers.

And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students—long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.

When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking and almost nonmoving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing. When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely nonspeaking and nonmoving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self expression, accuracy, honesty and wit—and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and song.

So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country—with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain—did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism—the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness—as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing—against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

Sincerely,
SHARON OLDS

•

Here's a quote from Friday's New York Times: "I find that I am becoming more and more angry," said a 40-year-old priest on the West Coast who said he had not decided whether to reveal his homosexuality publicly. "This is the church I've given my life to and I believe in. I look at every person I come in contact with as someone who's created in the image and likeless of God, and I expect that from the church that I'm a part of. But I always feel like I'm 'less than.' "