they (maybe) should

It's one of those things people tend to say, people who aren't especially supportive of LGBT people, when they are discussing gay pride events.  They might suggest that there should also be a straight pride event, and it probably draws chuckles of approval, though of course it doesn't happen.

It is even arguable that pretty much every day is straight pride.  The few images we see of gay people in a positive light are the couple of sitcoms that have openly gay characters, but then those aren't people I admire or look to for affirmation.  I don't watch Glee, though I have.  It's not really that good a show, and it's not really that accurate for most gay kids.  Also, if I want to hear actors singing Foreigner songs I'll . . . um,  yeah, never want for that ever.

So what would happen if someone did in fact host/sponsor a straight pride event?  We've never known because it's always been mentioned in an off the cuff joking sort of way.

Until now.  According to Towleroad, religious leaders in Sao Paolo Brazil have decided to petition the government for just such an event, and the legislation has made it as far as the mayor.  Will he sign it, or won't he?

Of more concern might be what would this event actually look like?  I can't help but feel that part of the idea behind this would be to exclude gay people and to make a show of this exclusion.  Gay pride, while possibly seeming to exclude people does just the opposite.  An idea behind gay pride is simply increasing visibility of LGBT people, but another idea is to provide an outlet for all people to show their support for the equal rights of their gay friends and family members.

The few pride events I've attended have mostly been here in Knoxville, and they don't seem to feature a huge amount of straight people, but everyone who is open and fair minded is welcome.  It's an inclusive gathering of people wanting to stand proudly and proclaim that everyone deserves fairness and equality.  It's also a  party and the only time outside of a gay bar that we can feel like we are in the majority.  It does wonders to think of yourself surrounded by your community, and for so many it's a first.

So what could possibly be the point of hetero pride?  It can't be welcoming and openness.  It can't be support for a minority that is often mistreated and maligned.

But still I say go for it.  What can it hurt?  What do they hope to accomplish?  Whatever their goals it's better that they are aired in the sunshine rather that to continue to grow in the malicious darkness.

like a something doing something

I've always edited for content those things I've sent out into the world before.  I may have not always edited or chosen as well as I could, but I've also set myself up as being better than I really am in real life.

I'm not nearly as soft spoken or as well thought out.  There isn't much of a filter out with friends or even at work.  Work is easy because we're all a bunch of losers on our way to hell anyway.  Actually we're a fairly random sampling sort of place with too many people who are in bands.  It'll be hell night at work if they all played a show together.

I also talk a lot at work, and probably you can't really imagine what a lot means in this little story, but it's a near constant aural barrage on my coworkers running the gamut from t.v. theme songs from my childhood to a constant dissing of any music playing that I don't like which is tempered by my witty way of sometimes singing with rather bawdy false lyrics replacing the actual ones.  I also might sometimes be a little forward with some of the male servers.

In all these instances my desire is to amuse, to give a worthy laughing dialogue to a sometimes monotonous yet often horrific duty in our kitchen and dining areas.  And as for being sometimes too friendly to the boys, I must say I think it's part of my job to let them actually know a homo and to be forced to deal with me on my terms so that they are nudged toward the realization that gay people are just as obnoxious and normal as they are and to get over any lingering nonsense.

I include nearly anyone in my joking and say things that are often over the line of decency, but my intent is never to hurt anyone, and when people realize that I'm really a decent guy they tend to cut me more slack than I deserve probably.  On some level I like to make sure that as many people take the fall as I can possibly squeeze in.  We all have some stereotype we can fit, and it's my job to remind everyone that it's only funny if anyone can fit into it.  Or I'm just making that up to pump myself up.

So we finally get to the point of my meandering.  Bob Vander Plaats runs a "family" group in Iowa that thinks that gay people are really not good at all.  He's a far right social conservative that led a campaign to have judges removed from office because they voted to allow marriage equality in Iowa.  He's on a mission from god to be as big a douche as he's capable of to gay people.  

He was caught on video reacting to a joke that suggested that in Iowa one is unable to enjoy a cigarette but that loving gay couples are allowed to marry.  I'm lifting the story from Box Turtle Bulletin, so click on their name for their take on the matter and more of the story plus links to why this guy Bob is an ass and why they hate the joke and his laughter.  They also have video.

I don't get the joke at all.  I'm not from Iowa, though I do have an aunt and uncle and possibly some cousins there.  I met them once many years ago, and they seemed like decent people.

To be honest the actual joke goes as such, in Iowa you can't smoke a fag, but you can marry one.  And perhaps my not being of Iowan heritage I'm unaware of some nuance that renders this joke unfunny to me.  And that's why I hate it.

Oh, I also hate that the guy laughing at the joke isn't getting it either.  I'm sure you can still smoke cigarettes in Iowa . . .

. . . unless the meaning of the joke is that it's unlawful to use a firearm to shoot a homosexual.  That might be another nuance of the joke as "to smoke" is popular parlance for shooting someone or something with a firearm.  That totally moves the joke along, because then you're suggesting that actually shooting someone for being gay is cleverly juxtaposed against basic human dignity and equality.

Wow, now I get why it's funny.  Man do I feel silly.

kilt the sumbitch

I have a few thoughts on the apparent killing of Osama bin Laden.  And I'm going to share.

I got off work yesterday (Sunday May 1, fwiw) about four, got a beer at the bar, and sat on the patio in front of work.  I drank a couple of beers and hung out with various other work and/or downtown people waiting for the evening and a surprise going away party for a coworker.

The party was held in the upstairs of a bar a few feet away, so I didn't really get too far from the same place all day.  I may have ridden from one parking garage to another and back to reorient my senses, but that really has nothing to do with Osama or his recent death.

Later on in the night, the party had gone from SUPRISE! to the band playing and people milling about, many of us having moved to the patio as the upstairs is non smoking.

At some point, after having walked down an alley for no good reason I returned and heard chatter about our having killed Osama bin Laden.

My first thoughts in the random number generator that is my head involved, who care? are you sure? and then I went off on some other tangents that have solidified more today as I thought about it all less drunk.

Some of the fun last night was just messing with people, and some of these people, generally sane seeming in normal life, were growing a little upset that I was willing to attempt to detract from the gravity of the situation.  Other, possibly drunker people, cheered on when I shouted, "Hell yeah!  We killed Obama bin Muslim."

I tried it today and everyone got it immediately, so it could have been late night at a bar, but it still makes me laugh.

I also don't attach a lot of importance to some brown guy with a beard and a long white shirt from the other side of the world.  I just can't accept that he has that much power over us.  Sure, if the new stories are correctly presenting the situation, Osama got a few good licks in.  The the US got serious about hunting him down, and since then he hasn't able to do too damn much, though his organization has apparently kept several country's military arms fairly busy.

And finally, the things that solidified in my head over the course of this morning.  I truly believe that people like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee pose a far greater threat to our liberty than any Islamic terrorist.

solidified thing no. 2-There are people who look to Osama as a hero and likely now a martyr.  Perhaps they do hate us freedom loving Americans.  I don't hate them.  I don't know them, and I think if I were to meet them they might rethink their own feelings.  Or maybe they don't really hate us.  Maybe they look at things our country has done, or perhaps they feel as if they've been mistreated by our country.  I can't know what's in their hearts, but I have to assume they are generally sincere in their beliefs.  Perhaps if we talked we could find a middle ground.  I don't know.  But certainly they hurt when we kill them just as we hurt when they kill us, and neither side seems to have fixed anything even now.  There may well be better news tomorrow.

wouldn't it be nice

The following was posted on Facebook as a friend's status.  I started to make my own points about each of these fond memories, but I don't have it in me to be that guy to this particular person.  So I'm calling blog fodder and bitching it out here.  Also, it's not about bikes for the most part.

If you grew up on home cooked meals, you rode a bike with no helmet, your parents house was not "child-proof" , you got a whippin' when you misbehaved, had 3 TV channels you got up to change or went outside to turn the antenna, school started with the Pledge of Allegiance, stores were closed on Sunday, you drank water out of a water hose and still turned out okay, re-post this and show that you survived.

I grew up on home cooked meals for the most part.  My mother's repertoire was varied somewhat, and for the most part I'd say it was basically  basic American (USA edition) with a strong southern bent.  I may well know how to cook a lot more things than she ever needed, but what she cooked was always good.  Her own mother apparently was never much of a cook, so my own mother was essentially self taught.  Other than liver night I have no complaints about her cooking.


Yes, I rode a bike with no helmet, and though I've begun to wear one there was some small amount of wanting to fight it on my part.  I hate bike helmets that look like some sort of alien's skull on top of your own.  I feel like I look like a douche in them, and I put off buying a helmet for some time.  Big Brother had a helmet in time to start riding his bike to school, and I'm glad he wears it.  I'm not sure how I feel about the law, but where we live the helmets-on-bicycles law applies to those sixteen and under.


But I do wear a helmet.  I finally visited the skateboard shop and bought a helmet I don't loathe.  I even put one of the stickers the shop guy gave me on the side to attempt to get back some coolness points.  I can heal from a broken arm or leg, but impact induced loss of what little mental accuity I still have because I chose not to wear a helmet is likely a slightly worse blow, no pun intended.


As well as I remember the house I grew up in was not especially child proof, but sensible precautions were taken to care for any children and to guard against the likelihood of dangerous items reaching their hands.  And my own house has been the same way.  I don't have any intention to leave harm lying around in the path of my children, but I also understand that some lessons will be learned the hard way, so I make sure those lessons aren't the truly threatening ones.


You got a whippin?  How do people still glorify this sort of behavior?  I certainly got plenty of them myself, but I've worked really hard not to bring that into my present.  That I've turned out as well as I have in spite of being struck as a child as punishment for misdeeds does not make it okay to continue the tradition of striking kids.


We had more than three channels, and for a few years we did have to get up to change channels.  It involved turning a knob, and sometimes you had to adjust the rabbit ear antenna while barely turning the UHF knob to try to find the kung fu movies.  I appreciate technology and am more than happy to change channels by pushing a button while staying comfortably on the sofa.


Most people I know don't have a problem with the pledge of allegiance, but I do know people who have a problem with the phrase "under god" being a part of it.  I have a problem with that phrase.  It's a way of excluding people, and I think that it's unAmerican.  I don't like it, and I don't think it should be there.  


Stores can close on Sunday or any other day.  The place I work at closes early on Sunday, and a restaurant down the square closes early on Monday.  No one should have to not open on Sunday, and I'll go so far as to say that blue laws should not exist that require certain businesses to not open on Sundays.  The only reason this exists is as a vague nod to religious traditions that many people don't necessarily follow, and it feeds into the system that allows exclusion of people based on religion.


I would probably still drink out of the water hose unless it tasted like water hose, and if I were thirsty enough even that wouldn't matter.


Other things that I like about progress is that there aren't colored water fountains and white water fountains, and you sit on the bus wherever you damn well please.  I like multiple television channels as well as the internet and smart phones and off buttons.  I like that I don't pretend I'm not gay any more.  I also like bobbers, decidedly low tech, as well as vintage bicycles, even older tech.  I like Sriracha a whole lot, which I haven't talked about lately, but I could easily do a blog post on that lovely little bottle of chili sauce.


There's nothing new there really for anyone that actually knows me or has read here for a while.  It's all standard stuff, and I do get why that misty eyed view of the past is so powerful.  I also get that progress for the sake of progress isn't always worth shit.  Maybe it's just me, because this little paragraph shows up periodically, and I hate every time, probably a little more each time than the last.  Hell, why don't we just go back to when we were banging rocks together, when our only real fear was getting gored by the wooly mammoth we planned to hunt as soon as we found one.  That's the life, no traffic, no screaming kids in restaurants, no tail winds from the Mexican we had for lunch, nothing but banging these here rocks and wondering whether I'd ever see the sun again every time a cloud covered it for a moment.

struggle this

Anti gay activists in Iowa want to take away the marriage equality that the state's supreme court gave us and aren't stopping there.  They want to make sure that there is no chance that relationships between gay couples are recognized on a civic level.  This means that they aren't happy just to take back marriage equality, but they want also to make sure we can't even look forward to civil unions.

They know that there will be gay people rallying in support of our cause, our cause being the desire to maintain equal rights, and to show that they are driven by love the anti gay activists are planning on giving away bags of cookies.  That's right.  They're going to show us love by trading their cookies for our equality.

I've actually seen this story a couple of times, and I've been outraged by the sizable balls on display when christianist tell us how much they love us but don't want us to be equal in the eyes of the law.  The Friendly Atheist posted about this today, and I was finally compelled to say something myself.

What's especially galling is the wording so often used by the anti gay activists.  They can't just admit that we are people, people who also happen to be gay.  So, like usual, they play with words to put us in a light that they feel makes them look better, makes them look like their cause is not a despicable and nasty jab.  What they want, in their words is to show love "to people who are struggling with homosexuality."

Here's the thing.  I once struggled with homosexuality.  I call it being in the closet.  I knew I was gay, but I pretended I was just bi and that being in a heterosexual marriage and having a family was going to make me hetero enough so that being my true gay self didn't need to happen.

I was unhappy and miserable for the most part.  I struggled to be okay with my decision.  I tried to be strong and maintain my family, though what I never realized is that tearing myself up inside was as unhealthy for me as for those around me.

I struggled with homosexuality until I finally accepted that I am gay.  Now I've embraced that I'm gay.  I'm happy and proud to let myself be who I always should have been.  I no longer struggle with homosexuality.

Of course there are still struggles.  Sometimes it feels that life is a series of struggling from one struggle to another.  But when it comes to my sexual orientation I don't struggle with it anymore.  I admitted the truth to myself.

is they or aint they

Chic-fil-A, home of one of my favorite chicken sandwiches, is owned by people who happen to be Christian.  They are also closed on Sunday.  The restaurant I work at is owned by an older couple who have their own belief system that they've not shared with me.  I have no system of religious belief, and I don't believe in a host of other things.  I'll freely admit to wishing that I had a unicorn for a best friend, but that's neither here nor there.  Also, we used to be closed on Sunday until the owner decided we could do some bidness adding brunch to our schedule.

fwiw, I hate working brunch.  It's the very bane of restaurant life.  Most people hate it.  May you always go to good brunch places and never suffer the indignity of a pre-broken yolk on  you benedict.

Anyway, somewhere there's a conference involving a couple of churches and Christian couples learning how to be married in the proper Christian way.  Of course that proper Christian way involves someone's interpretation of someone's interpretation of bronze age myths, and it filters through other filters on the way to the conference which lasts a day and a half or something. 

I imagine Christian couple sleeping in cots in the gymnasium, holding hands across the empty space.  Being gay I'd probably have found some nook in which to trap my partner and commit sinful acts, but that's just me.  We wouldn't be welcome anyway, so that's really beside the point.

Chic-fil-A, in addition to being a slight pain in the ass to type, may or may not donate money to random organizations.  I don't know.  I haven't looked.  Some intrepid blogger may well do it for me.  I am sure that they sometimes possibly donate food to groups for events that might also involve some amount of people who don't like gay people.

The Chic-fil-A sandwich is not something I'm willing to boycott.  Their waffle fries may not be as good as McDonalds regular ass fries, but they are the perfect side dish to the sandwich.

Chic-fil-A is sort of a reward for not killing anyone at the mall.  I sorta tend to live and work on the square.  It's a nice public space in the heart of downtown.  There are a variety of buskers through out the day.  There's the homeless guy selling our town's new street paper.  Right now there are the last remnants of the ice rink, and in a couple of days there will nothing left of that but the increasingly smaller piles of ice.  Sometimes you'll find someone passing a football with a friend American style, though only the employees of the Mexican restaurant across from where I work ever seem to pass a football international style.  At almost any time of the day or night you're likely to see someone walking their dog, and sometimes it's a dog you know and can say hi to.

The mall is made up.  It's a "public" space entirely devoted to commerce.  It's full of mall people, and while I don't necessarily not like them, I don't necessarily like them at the mall.  Maybe it's a turf issue.  Maybe it's that they're all so seemingly alike.  Maybe it's me and not them.  Either way the mall can sometimes stress me out a little bit, and sometimes there's only one antidote for that stress.

Chic-fil-A's sweet tea isn't too bad at all, for what it's worth, but it really is their namesake chicken sandwich.  It's a decent sized breast half, deep fried, served on what was once a toasted bun with a couple of pickle slices in the middle.  I eat around the last pickle bite personally.

It's served in a small bag, white paper with a foil inside, and if you rip that little bag down the seam on the underside and then rip it open along the crease at the bottom you have room to lay down your waffle fries and create your little piles of ketchup and mayonnaise.  I put them next to each other so I can mix them in the middle and still have either one by itself as well.  On the sandwich I put mayonnaise and hot sauce.

And while I enjoy that fast food paradise, the mall melts away, disappears around me and ceases to exist.  All my worries are gone, and I can see heaven in the distance.

Okay, not really.  I'm still being catty in my head about all the mall dorks, but at least for a while my mouth is full and mostly free of words.  I can sink into the goodness.

p.s. the whole point of this post is thanks to the fine people at towleroad.com.  I really do love the blog.  The link HERE is just the latest in a story that is ongoing.  My own comment that is this blog post is in answer to comments that I've read here as well as other blogs.  It's easy to sit back and laugh, so I do.

what christmas means to me

First I stole the title from a Stevie Wonder song of the same name.  Listen HERE.

This being the first Christmas season that I've celebrated with some distance between me and Momma it's been a much easier time for me.

I'm sure that sounds mean, but really it's not.  She celebrates much differently than I do, and it's difficult for me to just be throughout as she sees what seems to be me not getting into the whole thing.  That's truly a shit rendering of the portrait, but it's close enough.

I'm happy to roll through Christmas.  I'm happy to peruse the wish lists the boys craft so perfectly and sometimes leave leaned just so against the computer screen where they're still not sure I saw it.

I'm happy to not get them the things on their list, but I'm quite happy to get them things they will love nonetheless.  Both boys will absolutely love The Simpsons Hit and Run I got them for the PS2 their uncle gave me a few weeks ago.  And it's not the exact Lego thing they might have asked for, but they'll be happy. 

And that's where Momma steps in.  She's already got them the lesser huge Lego thing they wanted and plans to get them the other huge Lego thing that turned into THE toy this year and would be available for a buck and a half at the store if it weren't gone to ebay and up to an even five hundred.  She's not planning to pay that much for it.  Her idea is to give them a picture of what they'll soon be getting.  I kinda want to talk her out of it.  I think she does too much, but I love that she loves it so much.  It's how she does Christmas.

Tomorrow it's off to the local super awesome used book store where I'll satisfy that family tradition of the pile of books under the tree.  That's my favorite of our traditions, and I'm looking forward to what I'll find.  The best part?  Momma gave me her store credit she earned by taking in a pile of stuff we'd collected over the years.  Really it's our store credit.  She just did the work of actually boxing it up and offering it to them.

Christmas for me is an entirely secular celebration.  I get what it means and signifies to others.  Momma and I shopped together today and left the boys at Great Grandmother's house.  At some point between then and picking them up she told them that Christmas is Jesus' birthday.

The Boy told me about the Jesus birthday thing, and that led to a short conversation about the number of celebrations that happen to occur at this time of year because of the variety of belief systems that exist which then led to my pointing out that  many people celebrate similar holidays, different holidays or even the same holiday for a different reason.  Later we watched part of a show about Buddha, he told me he believes in the god that's called god and that he thinks Christmas Eve is Santa's birthday.

I celebrate the fact that people really might one day be capable of the things they claim when they are thinking Christmas.  I love the ideals we echo and hear echoed back by Charlie Brown and some woebegone sitcom dad-as-Santa right after he fails his family yet again, but gosh they love him anyway.

I've let so much of my anti Christmas cynicism go over the years.  I built up this anti Christmas-as-religious-holiday hatred for the whole of the holiday seasonbecause that's all I'd ever known it as and wasn't then able to separate the Christian beliefs from the holiday as a thing unto itself.  My faithlessness prevailed to the point that I went to the other extreme and wanted to reject this whole end of the year thing.  The kids have been a big part of me pulling back from the edge.

And now this year has been nice.  I don't have Momma's endearing if incessant barrage of cheeriness.  I also don't have a tree.  I do miss the lights and the smell.  I miss those keepsake ornaments that are special because of their forced rarity.  Momma wants me to spend Christmas eve at her house so I'll be there for the usual Christmas morning thing.  I can do this, and it will be good, though I'll bitch about sleeping arrangements.  The boys will want to tear into Christmas while I'll want to slink into a cup of coffee, but that's just another tradition.

Next year may well be different, and we'll look back from there and then look forward.  Another truth?  I've been using this holiday as the end of year celebration it's becoming to me.  I've been taking an honest look at some aspects of areas, and I'm finding some things I don't like, some paths I need to work my way off of, some edges I need to be done peering over, some cliches I've worn to nubs and need to dispose of. 

I want to build up a nice supply of desire-to-do-better that I can use to help power me over the course of what I'm going to call Twinnyleven.  I'm sure I'm not the only one.  And this time next year, as it's all been sucked out of me, I'll be somewhere not unlike this (in a good way) refilling my tanks.

btw, if you're in my neck of the woods Christmas day let me know.  Momma and I are working yet another tradition where we do our family thing and then start cooking for friends and other family that want to come by and make a time of it.  You're welcome to bring kids and booze. 

p.s. just read a bad review of the other PS2 game I got them, but for five bucks I aint about to complain.

garbled message

The third comment to a blog post I just read suggests that the people in my state are illiterate.  The post discusses a town being told that their school has to stop broadcasting Christian prayers and the fact that the townspeople are not happy or at least one woman.

It's a trainwreck already, and then the dude in the comments suggests that whole thing about us Tennesseeans, and I don't know whether to comment and then post or ignore the comment section and just post.  There was a time I would have commented, would, in fact, have barged in with all my guns blazing.

But anymore I just can't bring myself to do it, so I backspace a bunch and clicked back over here so I could just talk shit at my own place.

But even before dude-bro posted his jab I'd nearly thought about posting because of a single line at the very end of the post.

Okay, the post is at Friendly Atheist and also discusses something about a monument and a Christian flag.  I don't really remember, because it's that last line that I think needs to be addressed to be able to understand this whole thing that many Christians do.

Those of us who are nonbelievers see just how pervasive religion is even in so "enlightened" an age as our twenty first century.  Those of us who both nonbelieve and live in a smallish and possibly southern place see it all too well.  Don't get me started on the gay thing cuz omg ya'll.

And the last line of the post, that juicy tidbit that keeps on giving:

This is a kind of Christian extremism — assuming that government neutrality on religion is somehow anti-Christian.

There is of course the whole for-us-or-against-us thing, which is mentioned in the comments, but this whole mentality actually comes from the biblicaly based idea that Christians are supposed to suffer, and one of the best ways to suffer, as mentioned in the book of John, is to be despised and hated as people of faith.  Often they tell themselves that this is because none of us want to hear what we must know is the truth, ants and grasshoppers and long lost sons returning home.

It's part of a playing the victim meme that seems to have grown stronger lately, or perhaps it's just being used more often.  Christians who insist their religious views keep the rest of us from progressing as humans will always hate it when they lose because they put so very much into the fight for their moral superiority. And because they are morally right according to their own faith they must necessarily be right for everyone because theirs is the one true faith.


And really, you just can't force people to step outside of their belief system and look at it from a different p.o.v.  Atheists have already done that for the most part, or many, if not most, of us would still be locked in a similar faith based way of life.   Too many questions can make you waver in your steadfastness.

So we have to keep reminding people that forcing others to even passively participate in your faith rituals is not okay.  It's wrong to force your religion and the trappings of your faith system onto others.  

You do still have freedom of speech and religion, but I also deserve freedom from your religion.

dang YT's gettin in my bidness

He did that head thing and gave me such a look when I accidentally used the word boyfriend at the table in front of his mom.

I kept the Marilyn Monroe tshirt he gave me for years, and while it slowly deteriorated from use and time that hole in the front was always there.  We were smoking his sisters pot, good pot, and he'd rolled a good size joint.  We were both done before the joint was too far gone but kept insisting on passing it till I couldn't hold it.  I tried not to take it, but he was insistent as only a pothead can be.  I dropped it, and before I realized it had started to burn my stomach through the hole it had already burned in the shirt.

I've been listening to random mashups over at the YouTube, and I came across this song, and it's put me in a sort of retrospective mood.

Both these songs meant something to me then, the Nirvana song because of the time and my place in it and the Dead or Alive song because he loved it and played it and found a seven inch copy of it one day when we were hanging out.  The song always reminds me of him.

He shared the same name as another guy I'd kind of been hanging out with.  We'll call them C1 and C2, C1 being the one mentioned above.

C1 was younger but had obviously figured out he was gay much earlier in his life than I or C2.  We were fumbling along trying to figure stuff out while C1 rolled his eyes that we still didn't know.  I never really was able to deal with either of them in an intelligent way because I just didn't know how at the time, and before I was ever able to make sense of it I was gone.

I got a chance to leave Atlanta and took it.  Charlotte was far enough away so that I could be myself, or so I thought.  And it was a number of quite random happenings that even opened the door for me to take the sudden flight to NC in that maroon Volkswagen that day.

Thinking back now it's almost as though I had competing sides, the long term punk rock me that was into something not unlike the personal punk rock nihilism I'd grown to think was cool versus the wanting so to emerge me that was gay and just wanted to be.  He didn't see much sunlight for a long fucking time.

But what if I'd stayed? 

See? it just don't bear worrying about.

in which I say poll several times

My main email account has been at Yahoo for years.  My very first one ever was either Prodigy or Juno.  There was the MSN one for a while, and I may still have an active email account with AOL that I never used other than for the AIM.  I do have a gmail account, but I really only use it because I like it better for sending pictures from my phone.

None of that's really the point other than the Yahoo part which is the email address I use for my daily electronic correspondence, and because I have then to visit Yahoo I sometimes catch myself having to read one of the stories featured on the front page.

Today's story was about a poll Yahoo was taking that showed Americans are equally split in their opinions as to whether or not I should be allowed to marry a man, though thankfully they didn't have a poll on how long it would take me to meet one worth marrying.  That would have been depressing.

Though the story itself isn't depressing, and the poll numbers do basically tell us what we likely know, it's not disheartening to read that we get closer to equality over time.  Toward the end of the article it even mentions the age gap in difference of opinion in older versus younger generations, and that's a testament to how far we have come in that so many people are coming out younger, and their straight friends remain friends and eventually become allies.

But the article does leave me a little underwhelmed.

I may have mentioned that I don't really like the term "gay marriage."  So it should be no surprise that the use of that term throughout the article was irritating.  Then the third paragraph begins with the line, The battle for what pro gay-marriage activists call "marriage equality" . . .  And yes, they do use scare quotes around what the writer must assume is not a real thing, and they're letting us know that it's the activists, the loud ones that get in your face that want to use this term.

They mention DADT and almost mention Margaret Witt, a flight nurse in the Air Force who was discharged/fired because of DADT.  While the article is correct in suggesting that the discharge was unconstitutional, and they mention that a judge has ruled that she should be reinstated because of that, but I think it bears repeating that the judge ruled that Margaret Witt should be given her job back because of constitution issues as well as because her discharge hurt unit morale as well as their ability to function properly.

Further into the article about their poll they mention reader comments showing the divide between how people view marriage equality.  In an effort, one assume, to be balanced they include a comment from an anti who points out that the world will be destroyed because all the families will stop being families.  I really feel that, at this point in the conversation, when all you can offer is a soundbite then maybe your voice is no longer valid, so I can't believe this sort of shit is still included in the story.  It's an argument that's easily disproven as several countries around the world allow openly gay people to serve in the military and don't tell you who you can marry, and the world seems to be spinning and orbiting as much as ever.

They end somewhere around "marriage is a religious ceremony" which is the antis trying to make us believe that churches will have to marry gays, another thing that they say that just isn't true, but the article doesn't seem to point out that churches already have the ability to pick and choose who they will or won't marry.

It just seems lazy to me I guess.  Maybe I expect more than just a telling of the story, but I have to remember most of my gay news comes from actual gay people writing about them in blogs devoted to gay news and opinion.  Not only do I get my gay news quicker, but I get it picked apart by gay people.  For this same reason maybe I expect a little activism when I read a story like this, and perhaps I shouldn't or should consider the source before reading to save myself the stress.

The thing is that I would like for people to write stories that involve calling people out when they say things that are untrue or to at least do some research and find out if what they are saying is either a misunderstanding or a parroting of that guy on the radio or just a blatant lie.  And maybe if the news would start to treat gay people as people instead of always having to be gay as well as nearly people we could move this damn bus even quicker.

this is why

boy meets girl, they fall in love, ... There are other kinds of love, of course, but romantic love is none other than this - and if portrayed to be otherwise, its aesthetic value ... mysteriously vanishes

Boy meets girl.

I'm so tired of that story line.  Boys meeting girls happens all the time, and some of them know what to do with it, and some of them are idiots and fuck it up from day one.

And that's the story we all hear, that is hammered home daily, that boy meets girl and happily ever after flows forthwith.

But I don't want to meet a girl.  I'm not made to do it that way.  I want to meet a boy and fall in love and be happily-ish ever after.

But the romantic quality of that relationship according to some douchebag that writes for a right wing blog site would find his penis slightly less erect when it came time to bone down with his god fearing love slave if I got to be a little bit happy just once.

And I'm tired of religion fucking everything up for everyone.  If you want to worship and believe then fine.  I really, really don't care.  I might make fun of you when you're not around, but is that any reason to insist on forcing your bronze age myths onto everyone?  Really?

h/t Prop 8 Trial Tracker

red scare ya'll

While I do know that it's likely a mistake, I've started some shit on the ol' Facebook.  One of my brothers posted a picture of a bumper sticker suggesting that President Obama is a socialist with a picture of his face as the last in line of several faces, only a couple of which I recognize.  Apparently they are the faces of socialists past with Obama being compared to them.

I'm curious as to who the different people are in the picture, and I included that question along with a request as to what exactly makes Obama a socialist.  Hopefully, as part of what I expect to be a fun if extremely trying and eventually unrewarding argument with the right wing, I'll at least make one or two valid points while simultaneously changing absolutely no minds whatsoever.

In response to my question as to what makes Obama a socialist an old family friend brought up the health care mandate and pointed out that health care is in fact not in the Constitution.  My answer to that was to compare the health care mandate to the idea that we are required to purchase car insurance in order to legally operate our motor vehicles.  I'm still waiting for a response to that, and I've had to once more add my request for names of the other socialists in the picture.

Below is the picture in question.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

Again, I fully expect to argue with people who don't really know what they are talking about and have no actual idea of what socialism is, but that's what happens when you argue/discuss with the right.

in the closet? or just inside the shadow?

My Google reader has over two hundred unread items in it again. That isn't that many, but it does represent a couple of days of lessened computer time. Between Friday evening and Saturday late night lately I'm fairly busy.

Friday evening is soccer practice with the boys followed by attempts at feeding them healthy food, getting them into bed then obsessing over what I might have missed at their practices, what I can do to make the games go well and hoping none of that keeps me from getting to sleep.

And when I start cutting back computer time or just having less time for it, often my email is the first thing to get overlooked unless I'm expecting something. And I missed a comment recently to my most recent post as it came in just before the weekend mania.

The comment is from a blogger I enjoy who also happens to author one of two blogs hailing from Canada that I enjoy reading, Tossing Pebbles in the Stream and A Small Corner of Nowhere.

The comment was to my most recent post about the idea of deliberately outing closeted politicians who work against the interest of gay people. Sadly, when I saw that I had a comment, I had to go to the blog post to remember what I'd posted. I suppose it's been a while.

It's always interesting to have comparisons from people used to life in Canada but who are also well aware, through experience, of life in the US. I have to assume it's the subtle differences. And that's sorta what the comment made me think.

But then the idea of the closet crept back up.

There's some idea of levels of outness that I've considered before, quite possibly even thought about on occasion. There are so many variables that work into this equation when I really stop to think about it. One basic question to ask is Who Knows? The followup question is Are They Cool? Two distinct examples come to mind, work and soccer.

I'm pretty much completely out at work. There are a few new employees that I haven't told directly, but I can only imagine they'll figure it out soon enough. I work in a part of town that has a lot of cool places and hosts a lot of my friends, people I've met over the years of working and hanging out in the vacinity, some living in the area and some scattered throughout the city. Of the people living closest the demographic is young, hip, probably with more than a little money while the visitors are pretty much everybody in town for various events over the course of a year.

It's a safe place to be out, and it wouldn't matter anyway since enough people know that I have to assume that everyone knows. It's freeing to not give a shit. It's not nearly as gay as I'd like to see it, but even before I was out it was where I loved to be, where my two most regular bars are still. I'm accepted now just as I was before.

In this place, these several city blocks of this town, I feel like I'm just me. I can dream that I could meet someone and poetic nonsense will happen, and then a happy ending that involves growing old together with no wind chimes indoors.

And then there's soccer. Obviously, this is the place where it matters least. This is also one place I'd currently sorta most like it to not come up.

From the direction of our downtown you can follow the four directions to find somewhat different perspectives and opinions on life and politics. While downtown is a more liberal sort of place, driving north takes you into more conservative territory. We're currently in an in between but less lib sort of direction, and our soccer region is mostly the points farther out than us.

I don't want to judge the people who let me coach their children, and I can't know what they think because it doesn't come up. I do my thing, they cheer, maybe we'll win next week, and then the season is over.

I have a whole other complaint here that I feel needs to be somewhat addressed and actually will be in the fall. I'm not sure what happened, but someone noticed something I noticed. One of the ideals I learned from my earliest coaching days with this organization is the idea that complete and total fairness was the ideal. There would be now stacked teams, no all stars beating up the "others."

I've coached some great kids, though not all of them should have been playing soccer. I've seen so many that just didn't really want to be there, but they made the effort, and sometimes I got some really good playing out of them. Some kids just DID NOT need to be there. They hated it, they didn't like or appreciate being pushed to do things they had no interest in, and you never know what to do.

Is there a good way to tell someone to ask their child if they really want to play soccer? This is the first season that Big Brother's team has been full of kids who all seemed interested to be here. Okay, now that I think, I can name a couple that would rather do other, but I also see these kids as being willing to pull together and do something great if I can just . . . They do actually enjoy playing soccer, and I'm refusing now to get sidetracked into the discussion about how kids are different and there are the kids who like playing soccer as well as the kids who hate losing anything. That's a great idea for a blog post, but it's not where we are right now.

I never mean to, but thinking about soccer gets me into a certain groove, and this is a great year for that. I stopped coaching for a short time, part of the whole coming out thing. Soccer just seemed too much at the time. Coming back to it is weird because so many of the faces in the organization haven't changed. And it should be mentioned that our preseason coach's meeting is held in a Methodist church. And that's a crap segue to get us back to my point.

I'm making assumptions like Hank Aaron hitting home runs when it comes to the idea that these people might learn their kid's soccer coach is gay, but I don't think that I'm entirely off base when I assume that it could be, at best, uncomfortable to have to deal with it. And there's the point that it kind of doesn't matter at all in this lone place and time. And while I don't see it ever coming up, I can imagine it ending poorly for all interested parties.

I would prefer people know. If they are accepting then it makes my life easier, and it shouldn't change or effect anything for them, but that's the main variable here. You just can't know who's cool and who's not.

When I'm downtown, if someone learns that I'm gay and has an issue, I have back up. I have places I can go if I need to, and I have friends that will stand up with me. Among the soccer crowd I have a huge unknown. They don't realize it, but there's a gay amongst them. And he's doing his best to coach your kids, to make them better soccer players and better teammates.

And if we get back to some of those stereotypes of gay people, I have worn my sunglasses in front of them, and on me they're kinda gay, which I'm generally okay with, but I'm sure my "secret" was telegraphed somehow to someone. Also, I love those sunglasses. I saw them on someone else and actually went to WalMart to buy them because I loved them so much. That also might be kinda gay.

drat

for-like-ever

Via advocate.com I learned of this article/interview at latimes.com about Ian McKellen. He's seventy years old and has been out since forever. I'm only familiar with him due to his roles as Magneto in the X-Men movies and as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies and hopefully soon as Gandalf again in The Hobbit.

I need to do something about that familiarity, because the man has been in movies since forever as well. He has of course done actual theater. I will likely never see him actually doing thus, so he's a movie actor to me.

I've had the two links from above in tabs for what seems like days, which it has been, fully intending to write something, but I haven't really known how to approach it. I think I'll just leave it here, and if anyone does read they can comment and tell me what they think.

Also, I wouldn't post it if it weren't interesting, but I'm not going to review it more than to tell you it's got great gay power of story as JJ would say, assuming I'm using the phrase properly, and he throws in a couple of stabs at religion while making some valid points.

reject letter

If you know where I live then it would likely come as no surprise that there are around these hills people who believe that gay people are all evil, predatory perverts. It's part of the agenda you sometimes hear about that apparently makes us go out and recruit people.

This intractably held position is firmly rooted in scripture, ancient texts meant to exist for all time as the code to absolute right and wrong, assuming it's KJV.

I'm just really having trouble even finding a way to approach this. What I really want to tell people and make them understand is that they can disagree. They can have an abiding faith that gay people are going to totally ruin it for everyone when the plague of a week long endless rain of flaming frogs and hurricanes that only rip up chain link fence and ruin automobile paint jobs. Believe the shit out of it, but there's a line at which you can't make me do stuff because you believe something I don't.

All of this stems from a letter to the editor I read in the local alternative newsweekly, print edition. My first response when I read the letter earlier today was to wonder why they bothered printing it. I began a post about the letter before finding the online version. It kind of sucked the day out of my day a little. I was freshly home, finally off work, had the French press working its magic on a cup of coffee, and I was smoking, standing on the back porch ready to read a brand new edition of the local alternative newsweekly.

I began, as I sometimes do, with the letters to the editor. It's right there in front. My next response was just a general dismay that I'd bothered reading this particular letter. From the first paragraph you know what you're getting.

If you don't want to bother reading the letter it starts with a fervent call to pray away the gay, a longstanding and oft tried technique that still seems to have zero-ish percent actually working to make someone not gay. We're led then into the horrors of the gay agenda and the eventual comeuppance exacted by slapped in the face once too often god of justice.

People really are free to feel however they want. You can hate me and think I'm an awful person, but religion is for churches and for personal codes of conduct, not for setting civil equality standards. If you can't give me a reason for laws that do not in anyway rely on your ancient texts then it probably doesn't have much place in a document meant to govern a free people.

For blog purposes I then went and found the online version of the letter, linked to above. Of course having found it I then had to read the online comments. One comment, as of now, is a long series of quote from people one might consider to have been founding fathers, one is to question the newsweekly's decision to publish the letter, and one is from the editor not entirely justifying the publishing with a request for a more reasoned response worth publishing and suggesting it isn't right to reject letters based on disagreements with wingnuttery contained therein.

As gay people we shouldn't need to keep explaining why we should be treated as people. It really is just that simple. We are normal and a part of the human gender/sexual orientation continuum that so many people can only see as man plus woman equals the only thing that is okay, KJV version. They trivialize everything down to sex as being the ultimate query, can you and your partner perform sexing that can result in pregnancy? And then they won't accept our claim that what we are discussing is so much more than sex but is also on so many levels an issue about sex.

So my own question comes back to why the newsweekly felt any need or obligation to run this particular letter. I get not rejecting letters because of point of view issues. Certainly it makes sense, but when the other side is using such horrid arguments to justify discrimination I can't really see any reason to present them. We all know people like that. We get that we live where we do and that this is a fairly common sentiment regarding gay equals damnation. As important is that we see it so damn often that it's inescapable. Perhaps christians will find that acceptable, that their message is so pervasive that people are really less likely to listen or to take them seriously.

already? seriously?

Moments ago I refreshed my Facebook homepage and was met with a head smackingly obnoxious status update of a "friend," a person I may just have to unfriend over this shit.

When I joined Facebook I intended it to be the family safe place because my brothers and then parents were all members. I thought I was happy with Myspace being the place I was going to be out and myself, but over time things changed. I grew to like Fb more and became friends there with more and more of my actual friends.

I then found myself being friends with a number of people I'd gone to church and school with as a child, though the overly conservative right wing type stuff soon caused me to remove all those people from my friends. I realized I wasn't actually friends with these people and didn't want to be.

One of my two closest friends as a child/teen is now the only of those people with whom I'm still friends, though I haven't spoken to him in nearly twenty years and likely have absolutely nothing in common beyond some shared childhood.

As of today I might just have to remove him. His status update is one of those typical Fb polls, though this one is just stupid. Apparently we are asked to vote yes or no as to whether we agree with President Obama referring to the White House's celebratory tree and whether it's okay for it to be referred to as a holiday tree or whether he must refer to it as a Christmas tree.

First, I don't give a fuck what he calls it, and I can't imagine why it matters. Of course I get why the wingnuts are going to shit themselves over it since they can't stand the fact that there does truly exist a separation of church and state or that people might ever try to be sensitive to the beliefs of others. Second, it isn't even Thanksgiving yet. Nearly seven weeks till Christmas and the douchebags are already fussing.

I'm so not looking forward to any of this shit. I care little enough for the holiday season anyway, and I don't celebrate the christian version of the holiday, nor do I celebrate the solstice aspect of the event. I'll accept an excuse to get together with what friends and family I'm able, and I always love a huge meal with those friends and family.

Just give us this one year that we don't have to deal with the wingnuttery. Though the people who most need to hear this aren't here at my blog, I'd still like to beg them to please just let it go. So many people are going to approach this holiday to celebrate their own variant of the day, and it really is okay. Christians do not own the day or the celebration, and their whole version of it is basically stolen in part or in whole from other belief systems. So please, please just let it go.

Also, I didn't forget the Jews, but I'm not going to sit here and be sensitive enough to figure out the one true spelling of whatever they hell they call it. And black people can have there one too, but again, I don't celebrate it and am not at all concerned. Shit, Jews and black people are likely those people most reasonable about the fact that we all have our own approach and are most willing, it seems, to live and let live. So for that I thank you.

p.s. maybe the sensible ones among us should use this particular year to be the assholes and get uptight and offended, clutching our pearls and being aghast when people wish us Merry Christmas.

p.p.s. I suppose that, given my choice to blog about this, I'm fueling the fire and doing the thing I'm bitching about. If you're surprised by this then you don't know me.

not surprised but still

Some of tonight was spent watching the film Jesus Camp, a film many people are aware of. I remember when it came out, when it seemed to blow up the little corner of the blogosphere that I'm marginally a part of.

I'm certainly not afraid of a film, but I am somewhat worried about the mentality of the sort of people portrayed in the film. I'm not surprised that people are like that, and I come from a not too dissimilar background, so I'm well aware of the indoctrination that happens to kids born into such religiously zealous backgrounds.

I'm nearly ready to call what I saw in the film brainwashing. I'll admit to raising my own kids in a way that mirrors my beliefs, and to some extent that's what is portrayed in the movie, but then it must be admitted that these people take it to a whole other level.

Big Brother didn't watch the whole movie with me. He and The Boy were too busy playing with some new toys they bought today with their own money. But they were both in the room playing, and he did see some amount of the movie. He was aware of some of it and watched some of it with me.

I want my kids to know they can ask questions when they have questions. They don't as much as I'd like, but when they do I want to be honest. This movie and the few question Big Brother did have because of it opened up some interesting conversation, but more than that it made me think.

I was able, because of this movie, to discuss with him the dangers of taking too seriously everything you hear. I was able to discuss the need to approach things objectively, to at least try to view all sides of a discussion. I was able to discuss the fact that repitition, music, chanting, etc. can put people in a state of mind that is almost trancelike, that it opens people up to suggestion. I even got to discuss abortion and my views.

I want to think that my most important point throughout the discussion was the point of having an objective approach. I want him to understand that my views are my own, that other people are welcome and within their rights to hold differing views. Most important is getting information that will allow him to make an intelligent decision about what he believes.

More than anything what I personally took away from all this is my own need to interact more with my children. It's so easy to just let them go about their business, to give them quick answers to their questions, to allow myself to become so absorbed in my own things that we don't live together and communicate together so much as exist within the same realm.

And as for the kids in the movie, I really felt sorry for them. They are taught a certain dogma, they are taught the "right" answers. They weren't taught to look at things from any sort of distance, to judge things on merits that aren't completely tied up in their faith based world view. I worry for the ones that are fed this singular view, the ones who know better, who look into themselves and see that it isn't right or isn't right for them.

And finally I'll share one bit that stood out to me. The kids at the end passing out religious pamphlets approached the black family to ask that age old question, "If you were to die where would you spend eternity." They got the answer of heaven, but as the kids turned away one of them mentioned to the others her belief that they were probably muslims. It's much more likely that the people were christian somewhere within the typically accepted protestantism of the U.S., but I assume based on their skin color, the kids made the leap to muslim. Just wow!

it's called a joke

I hope that a thousand years from now mankind is still so stupid and deluded that when they stumble across my blog they suddenly have a new reason to kill each other over vague attempts to decipher just what the fuck I was saying in that archaic twenty first century brogue that I spoke way back then.

It would fucking well serve us right with our damn thumbs and chairs and art.

grrr!

In the last two weeks, two young boys, boys very near the age of Big Brother (my oldest son for any new readers) have committed suicide. These two children killed themselves because they were tired of being bullied and harassed.

They were tired of other kids being mean to them, and they had dealt with it so much that, at eleven years old, the only solution they could come up with was suicide.

What was the majority of the slander they dealt with? They were being called gay and were referred to as faggots. Were they faggots? Were they gay? Does it fucking matter when you are eleven years old?

How is this okay?

To anyone who thinks that homosexuality is a sin or is wrong, how can you possibly explain away the sort of bias that would drive an eleven year old child to kill himself? I don't care what you think at this point. I don't care what you think about me. I'm gay. I'm a faggot. Condemn me all you want. If your god really loved I think there's a good chance that he would take it a little easier on children who don't even know what sex is but are being damned anyway.

Read your fucking gospels already. Read your blessed are the meek. Read your blessed are the peacemakers, and then show me where the verse is that reads blessed are those that drive children to kill themselves.

Enough already.

P.S. if you don't know about the stories to which I refer at the beginning of this post then try using Google. Seriously, google the words "gay suicide" and see what you come up with. Hell, you don't even have to google it yourself. I made you a handy link. It's as easy as clicking.

arguing with arguing

One of my brothers, on his blog, is discussing freedom of speech being used in arguments. His suggestion is that we too often do not allow the same freedom that we demand. Go HERE at Chris is Searching to read his point, then come back for mine. I almost commented last night when I saw this, but I was a little woozy and maybe somewhat goofy from the combined efforts of antihistamine and a couple of beers. I hate Tennessee allergies!

So, we've decided there are any number of arguments one could have, and we know that there must be at least two opinions in contradiction to each other. We've also pointed out that communication can only happen when both sides listen and attempt to understand. That may not have been verbatim from the post, but it's there.

So what do we do when we feel that there is no argument other than the one an opposing opinion tries to force? I'll continue using Chris's example of gay versus straight, because, in my opinion, there is no actual argument here. What there is of an argument involves not mere straight people but a religiously motivated point of view that refuses to accept the vast majority of points I and other gay people might make.

If we argue about sports teams then we can actually have some sort of argument. Perhaps my team has better attacking and a solid defense but tends to lose it in the midfield. Perhaps your team has a great midfield and a great front line, and perhaps they can serve balls into the box all day, but your attackers just aren't getting shots on goal.

Arguments as to which team is better or more likely to win are valid to a point. There are points on each side that one should consider. But getting back to Chris's example, what if I just can't accept that the arguments from the other side are valid? I can say that I don't believe biblical restrictions should apply when discussing civil law which isn't the same as reminding you that your team has drawn or lost as many games as they've won.

My argument as a gay person is that before and more importantly than my orientation is that I'm a human and a US citizen which should be all I need to demand equality. I should have the same rights and responsibilities under civil law as any other person. The only possible counter to this is going to be derived from a religious point of view that somehow wants to demand that everyone follow their pov/code/laws regardless of personal beliefs.

So, giving you your freedom of speech is one thing, but we also have to take into account the argument itself. I'm willing to allow you freedom of speech as well as freedom of thought, but if you are going to argue any point of view then we have to start from similar places.

I'd like to ask anyone willing to indulge in freedom of speech with me. I'd like to hear an argument that could be seen as gay versus straight that doesn't involve religious views or the Bible or any other text that any group considers as their sacred code. I want to hear from a civil point of view that involves us living here and now in 2009. I don't want "that's how we've always done it" or "god said it so it must be true." I don't want Leviticus, though if Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Payne mentioned gays I'd be interested.