I didn't "walk away" from anything.

As someone who doesn’t go to church or claim to be a member of any particular denomination or religion, I find the whole idea that I’ve “walked away” from anyone’s god to be more than a little precious. I didn’t walk away from anything. I recognized truth is larger than anyone’s dogma, and I don’t want to cut myself off from what I might learn today and in the future by pretending I already know everything I need to know.

Aunt Garnet

I used to have an Aunt Garnet. I started thinking about her earlier because something she once said popped into my mind. When I was about ten years old, she and her family--her husband, three of our four children, their spouses and her five-year-old granddaughter--came for a visit. To be honest, I always hated when they visited. The women in the family used excessive amounts of hairspray, and Aunt Garnet was the worst. She had tight, curly helmet hair that would not have moved if she had stood outside during a hurricane. And the men used that thick, greasy hair gel popular back in the ’50s. Our little house stank of their hair care products all while they were there, and for hours after they left. Hair care products and cigarette smoke because Garnet was a chain smoker. But if they were happier, nicer people, I guess I wouldn’t have minded the smell so much. Aunt Garnet was especially unpleasant. She was always angry every time she visited. She would sit in our living room and fuss, and complain and cuss. And she was always promising to swear out an arrest warrant on the latest person who had done her wrong.

During this particular visit, she decided she wanted something from her daughter Charlotte’s purse, but since Charlotte was out of the room, she simply retrieved the purse herself and started rummaging through it. Her granddaughter objected to this. Sandy said her mother didn’t like for people to go through her purse. Aunt Garnet stared at Sandy with her angry, hard eyes and said, “I’m not afraid of your mother.” She had obviously stumped Sandy with that one. You could tell that she realized that something wasn’t quite right about what her grandmother had said, but she was too young to put it together. Charlotte obviously deserved her privacy no matter if anyone feared her or not. But Aunt Garnet lived in a rough, dog eat dog kind of world, and such niceties where never even considered. She was going to make sure her family knew who was the boss of them, and if she wanted something from her daughter’s purse, she was going to get it.

Aunt Garnet became an unwed mother back in the ‘40s, and she refused to tell anyone the name of the father of her son Tommy. As far as I know, that was a secret she took to her grave. She did manage to find a man who was willing to marry her, but he never showed any affection for Tommy.

Uncle Kiefer was a coalminer, and he, Aunt Garnet and their kids lived in a decrepit little coal company house right beside the train tracks near Charleston, West Virginia. There was a chemical plant just a few miles up the road, and the horrible smell it emitted was so strange and unearthly it simply can’t be described. This smell was so pungent it actually left a sour taste in your mouth. And the coal trains left everything in Aunt Garnet’s yard covered in oily black coal dust.

Aunt Garnet would become highly upset and call up my mother, who wasn’t exactly the most stable person around, and cuss her out if she didn’t visit regularly, so every other Sunday, Garnet and company would come to our house, or we would go to hers. And if there was anything worse than having Aunt Garnet come for a visit, it was going to visit her. Dad had to park the car on the side of a busy highway, and we had to dart across traffic and hope that we wouldn’t be run over by a coal truck or a chemical tanker. Then we had to descend a very steep set of stairs with a rickety handrail. And once we were inside, Aunt Garnet would insist on proudly displaying her stash of groceries. She always had a freezer full of meat and her cabinets were filled with staples. She seemed to buy everything in bulk. And she cooked like it was Thanksgiving every day. As a result, half the people in her family were quite large. But Aunt Garnet was always skin and bones. I didn’t find out the reason for this until I was in my thirties. I was talking about Aunt Garnet with my mother one day, and I asked her if she had some kind of disease that kept her so thin, and mother explained that Aunt Garnet had been a rather large woman when she was young, so she started throwing up after her meals in order to keep her weight down. Aunt Garnet had bulimia.

As if visiting this hellish place and being around this unhappy, angry woman wasn’t bad enough, going to the bathroom at Aunt Garnet’s house was quite an ordeal in and of itself. She always had about five or six ill-behaved little dogs who barked constantly, probably because she kept them locked in her bathroom. I was always warned not to touch them when I went in there or they’d bite. So I stood terrified at the toilet and did my business as these dogs yapped at my feet. And the smell of that bathroom….dog shit and piss, hair care products, cigarettes, coal dust, and chemicals.

All of Aunt Garnet’s children are now dead. Not one lived to be sixty. Her youngest son was the first to go. He died when he was still a teenager. He was born developmentally disabled. When he was about two, Aunt Garnet followed a doctor’s advise and placed him in a long term treatment facility near the Ohio border. About twice a year, Aunt Garnet would insist that we all go with her to see Billy who never learned to talk or walk. Aunt Garnet used to rock him like he was a little baby even after he grew up. He died in her arms from a heart attack when he was about sixteen. Tommy died of testicular cancer, and Garnet’s other son Dale died of a stroke. Charlotte became addicted to tranquilizers and ended up killing herself. Then about a year later, Charlotte’s husband committed suicide by turning on the gas in his apartment. A spark caused the entire apartment building to explode. Thankfully no one else died.

Sandy became an unwed teenage mother like her grandmother. She had her son when she was about fifteen, and when he became a teenager, he started getting into trouble with the law. So the whole ugly cycle is repeating itself.

Aunt Garnet herself died of cancer about twenty years ago. I wish I could say that I miss her, but I don’t. I did love her in a way, and I felt her pain. I now know that she most likely had bipolar disorder. When she wasn’t cussing and fuming, she took to her bed and stayed there for weeks. Uncle Kiefer was still alive when I left West Virginia five years ago, but he had developed Alzheimer’s. Just the memory of these sad people is oppressive, and I’m thankful I’ll never have to be around them again.

I’m sure it was easy for many to judge them, to simply look at them and dismiss them as redneck, hillbilly trash. But I saw it all up close over a number of years, and I know that not even an entire crew of the best psychologists the world has ever produced could have unraveled the complex pathology spreading out through that family. It was the result of generations of crushing poverty, an absence of hope, little education, poor healthcare and poor nutrition and a deeply engrained belief that they were stuck at the bottom. They believed the world was a nasty and mean place and that they were born to lose.

Patriarchy Is Bad News For All Of Us

In my opinion, criticism of patriarchy at its best should not be an attack on men. As we all know, women can and sometimes do commit atrocities, and of course they can and often are cruel, selfish, underhanded… Even though it is usually the men who commit violent acts, women often foster and support war and bloodshed.

It is true that women have suffered the most under patriarchy. They have often been precluded from leadership, denied education, discouraged from making contributions in the arts and sciences, their opinions have often been undervalued, and in a world where men have been trained to think of themselves as entitled, women have been the targets of physical and sexual abuse.

But even though it’s true that men have generally benefited from the perks of patriarchy, they, too, have been harmed by it. An untold number of men who have not been able to measure up to expectations placed on them as men have experienced scorn, ridicule, ostracism, physical and sexual abuse and even murder. And most men in patriarchal societies where people are expected to conform to rigid gender roles based on sex have had to suppress aspects of their personalities in order to avoid being seen as weak, which would be an invitation for abuse. Intimacy and authenticity are difficult in such a situation.

Patriarchal societies are extremely unsuited for LGBT people, of course. By their very nature, it is especially difficult for them to conform to rigid patriarchal gender roles.  And in a modern technological, post-industrial society, patriarchy is impractical.

When we reevaluate the structure of our society and the expectations we place on our citizens, I don’t think it’s very helpful when we allow the discussion to degenerate into a debate about who is more noble, those who have penises or those who have vaginas. We are all human, and from what I can tell, that means we’re all, to some degree, crazy as hell.

Holiday Confession

In May 2002, I finally managed to get a computer. It took me a while to get the hang of it because there wasn’t anyone around to explain how the thing worked. Those first couple of weeks were pretty stressful, and more than once I felt like giving up and throwing the damn thing out the window. But I eventually figured it out well enough to get me going. And by June, I had discovered chat rooms. Most of the ones I stumbled across were high volume places, and the quality of the discourse was extremely low. I mostly observed for a couple of minutes, read a few comments, and moved on. But one day, I found a link to an unusually quiet, low key place. It only had about 20 regular users, and generally no more than five were in there at any given time. And the primary purpose was chat, not sex. The men actually talked to each other about everyday events—work, dinner, movies… I started dropping in regularly, and after a few days, I began contributing to the conversations. The guys treated me with casual indifference at first. They were used to people popping in for a few minutes and then disappearing forever. But once they knew I was interested in joining their group, they gladly began treating me like one of the boys.

Back then, the internet was new to me, and I had heard some wild and crazy stories about deranged stalkers lurking in every corner patiently waiting to gather enough personal information about an unsuspecting individual in order to use it to track and then pounce. I was afraid, so I didn’t give these guys my real name, and I was vague about where I was from. I also lied about my age. I was thirty-six at the time, but I told them I was twenty-two. Of course, that lie was more about my vanity than fear, but I figured I’d never meet these guys, and I assumed that any relationship one formed on the internet would be purely superficial. I wasn’t aware that you could actually get to know someone, really get to know them, and form lasting bonds on the internet.

Well, I quickly realized my mistake when I started to became especially close to one of the men who frequented this chat room. We soon began exchanging emails and communicating via private chat and instant messages. Conner told me he was a twenty-two-year-old boy from Tennessee, a recent college graduate who had to put his dream of becoming an engineer on hold because he now had the responsibility of running a farm which had been in his family since before the Civil War. And this was, according to him, because his parents recently died. First his father from a heart attack, and then his mother from cancer. He said they died the same year, just a few months apart. And since then, he had been struggling to keep the farm afloat.

After a few weeks, I just couldn’t stand hiding behind my mask any longer, and I confessed everything. I told him my real name, exactly where I lived, and I told him I was 36, not 22. I expected a good telling off and a goodbye. I figured that’s what I deserved. But I was forgiven. I was so grateful to be forgiven.

The next several months were utterly magical. I had figured out I was gay when I was eleven, but I didn’t share this information with anyone until I went away to college years later. All through high school, I mooned over various boys I knew, and I had huge crushes on several actors, including C. Thomas Howell who played Ponyboy in the movie The Outsiders. But I kept it all inside, so high school was a lonely time for me. At first, I was ecstatic when I went to college and discovered the local gay community. I went to the gay bar nearly every weekend. But the boys I met were so afraid of being outed, and I was pretty shy and retiring myself, so the few encounters I had didn’t lead to much. I made a few friends, but I didn’t find a boyfriend. I worked at the Dean of Students Office, and there I met and fell in love with a young straight man. For a year, we were close and spent a lot of time together. It was the nearest thing to a real relationship I ever had, but we never so much as kissed, and I dared not reveal the depths of my true feelings for fear of ruining our special friendship. I believed I had the moon, so I didn’t think to ask for the stars. But he graduated, moved away, got married and became a father. My mental health deteriorated and I became withdrawn. I all but stopped meeting new people and making new friends. Then after my head surgeries when I was 31, I moved back in with my parents who were living in the little, conservative town of Fayetteville, West Virginia, at the time. So when I met Conner online, and we started to get close, I thought he was the boy I had been waiting for since I was fifteen. I thought finally, at long last, I had found my beautiful, sweet young prince.

Of course, I worried that I was too old and broken down for him. I told him about my mental health history and my surgeries. I told him I wasn’t a looker. But he told me he didn’t care. I worried that he still had some wild oats to sow. Conner came from a conservative family, and he said he never came out to his parents or anyone in town. He claimed he did have a boyfriend for a time in college, but that had been over for some time. I told him that if he wanted to, he should go to a gay bar in nearby Nashville. In fact, I encouraged him to do this. We weren’t exactly together, not yet, and I hated the idea of a twenty-two-year-old closet case orphan spending his Saturday nights alone in a big antebellum home that had seen better days. I wanted him to enjoy his youth. I figured if he met someone else, we weren’t meant to be together anyway. But Conner told me that he wasn’t interested in going to gay bars or having sex with strangers.

We talked for one or two hours every night for months, and sometimes we exchanged long emails filled with sweet attestations of love and admiration. But then the weekend before Thanksgiving, I got a rather disturbing email from Conner. He told me that there had been a death in the family, and he wouldn’t be online for a while. He also told me that there was some things about himself that I didn’t know, and that he would explain it all when he got back.

I couldn’t stand not knowing what he was talking about, and I missed him so much that I could hardly function. So I used my new internet skills to do a little snooping. Conner had told me that his farmhouse was on the Register of National Historic Places, and he told me the name of the farmhouse. I guess he was so proud of this farmhouse that he couldn’t bear to lie about it, so I was able to find it on the register, and according to it, the farm also went by the last name of its present owners. With that name in mind, I combed the obituaries of nearby communities, and I quickly found that an elderly man with that last name had recently died. He was survived by a wife and two sons, both in their fifties, one was unmarried. I was devastated. The person I thought existed, this person who seemed like a gift too good to be true, this boy I had hoped for since I was a teenager, this boy I allowed myself to believe in was in fact a phantom. I became horribly depressed, and when I was alone in my room, I cried like I had never cried before in my life. I wanted this twenty-two-year-old orphaned farm boy to be real. I allowed myself to need him. I thought he needed me. And I imagined that one day soon we’d be together.

When Conner showed up online ten days later, he confessed everything. His real name wasn’t Conner. He was named after his father, and he had went by the nickname Chip his whole life. He was fifty-three, thankfully, he was the son who was unmarried, he worked at an engineering firm—the work on the farm was handled by a hired man—and obviously he wasn’t an orphan. He had lost his father just the week before, and his mother was still very much alive. He, in fact, lived with her.

I tried to be as comforting as I could given his recent loss, but I made it clear that my feelings were all mixed up. However, I didn’t want to throw our friendship away. When I asked him why he lied, and for so long, he said he was afraid, and he told me he wanted to make believe that he hadn’t spent the last thirty years of his life alone. I could relate, and I forgave him. I went on mourning for Conner. In fact I still mourn for Conner. But I accepted Chip as a friend. I insisted that he give me his mailing address, which he did, and that Christmas, I sent him a batch of cookies that I baked myself.

It was as though we started fresh, and in time we were once again talking about one day living together. I was looking after my parents and he was looking after his mother, but there would come a time when we would be free, and we decided it would be nice to have a companion. I imagined that at some point in the future, we’d move someplace more accepting, maybe someplace in New England, get a little house and live openly as an old married couple.

This new dream lasted for two years. In the interim, my father had another heart attack, my grandfather died, and my mother died. Believing that I had something to look forward to gave me strength as I watched my family fall apart. I was no longer afraid of ending up homeless and alone.

In the fall of 2004, I went on vacation with my sister, and she took some photos of me. Since I had started dieting and walking back when I thought a twenty-two-year-old farm boy was interested in me, I had by that time lost a great deal of weight. I was proud of what I had accomplished, and I sent Chip some copies of the photos. His attitude toward me immediately changed. We continued our nightly chats, but all traces of his romantic interest in me evaporated. He stopped calling me sweetie, he no longer spoke of wanting to kiss me or hold me, and he no longer had an interest in virtual intimacy. I pressed him, but he gave excuses at first, and then around Christmas he confessed that he just wasn’t attracted to me. My heart was broken, again.

Of course, I was angry. I wanted to scream at him for hurting me so much. And I did let him know that he had let me down. But I knew you can’t make someone love you. You can’t demand that of a person. So it was what it was. And I still cared for him as a friend. I still needed him to be my friend.

We carried on for a long time. Our dream of living together as a romantic couple vanished, but it was soon replaced by the idea that maybe one day we’d be roommates. However, that idea eventually faded away, too. And then two years ago our chats became less frequent, and then he stopped communicating with me altogether. I sent him a card last Christmas, but he didn’t send one in reply. This year I didn’t bother.

My wounds are not fresh, and I am getting by. But I fear that all the setbacks, disappointments and deferred dreams of the past thirty years have robbed me of something very important: hope. I got through high school because I looked forward to college. Then in college, I hoped I’d one day have a home and someone special in my life. Then after I became disabled, I hoped I’d one day become a published writer. Then after my surgeries and I met Chip, I imagined that I’d one day live with him. I held onto the idea that no matter how bad things got today, there was always something to look forward to. But now I suspect that my best days are behind me.

I’m not bitter or angry. And I know that if I had just tried a little harder, if I just found a little more courage, things may have worked out differently for me. I can’t really blame anyone. And who knows, maybe a couple of my dreams will come true after all. I’m just no longer expecting them to come true, but maybe that’s a good thing. This is something I wanted to own up to because I’ve never really dealt with it, and it’s something that’s embarrassed me. It seems so foolish now looking back on it that I allowed myself to believe something so ephemeral, so tenuous. But I guess I’m not the only fool around, and there are worse things.

This is a picture of me taken in the fall of 2004.  I had just turned 39 a few weeks before.

Are LGBT Lives Worth Fighting For?

It's funny how it's okay for young people to join the military to defend their country, it's okay for home owners to defend against invasion, it's okay for parents to defend their children, but if you say you’re prepared to use deadly force if necessary to defend an LGBT person--or that you hope you’re prepared, or hope someone is prepared if necessary--you're some kind of crazy, dangerous radical.... Even many LGBT people think this way. Rather than indicating how peace loving LGBT are, I suspect this attitude indicates that many of us buy into the idea that our lives just aren’t worth defending and that those who attack us--even though we think they’re wrong and unjust--are somehow still more important than we are.

If it comes down to me or someone from my tribe and a homophobe, I'm going to go with me and my tribe. Or at least I hope I would. If I don't, then that probably means I got clipped before I had a chance to react or in that instance I proved to be a coward. Having been a coward in many ways a number of times over the years, I know that cowardice isn't noble.

Mental Health

Like a lot of people here in the U.S. and around the world, I have been reading about what happened in Newtown last week. I’ve read a few of the comments that accompany various articles, too, and it seems there’s a great deal of anger directed toward Adam Lanza’s mother. Like many, I wonder why she kept such deadly weapons in her house. But aside from the gun control issue, it seems some are under the impression that Nancy Lanza could have done more to help her son with whatever difficulties he was having. Since very little is known about what went on with the Lanza family in the last few weeks, it’s hard to say what more Mrs. Lanza could have done--aside from not keeping all those deadly weapons around.

I’ve had mental health issues most of my life, and my mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. So, for what it’s worth, I wanted to share a few thoughts about mental health and the mental health care system.

If you have a mildly autistic son who has serious trouble making friends and relating to others, it’s not like you can simply call up the Son Fixit Team on the phone, explain your problem and they’ll send a crew over to straighten things out.

You might hear a lot of propaganda about how mental illness is very treatable, and in many instances it is treatable. But most of the mental health care system is geared toward helping highly functional people deal with the vagaries of everyday life. Those people usually do get better. Many of them may even get better without treatment. But then there are others…

Back in my twenties, I was in the hospital for suicidal depression a few times, and I was in a number of group therapy sessions. I can remember one session in particular that will help illustrate my point. We were all gathered together in the ward’s day room. There was about twenty of us, aside from the therapist and a nurse. The therapist asked us all in turn to give a brief statement concerning who we were and why we were in the hospital. There were a few mothers there who were experiencing depression. A couple of them were survivors of childhood abuse. A middle aged man spoke of having anger issues. He recently divorced, and he revealed his father used to beat him. There was a teenage boy just out of high school who wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. His parents were pressuring him because he seemed directionless. There was a young woman who was being abused by her boyfriend. And then there was a man of about sixty who turned in his chair, got up on his knees, rocked back and forth, and stared at the wall while the rest of us shared our stories. When the therapist asked him why he was in the hospital, he simply said, “I don’t know.” There is no magic pill for people like this, no magic treatment or process.

There was a time when acutely ill people were often institutionalized for years at a time, but most long-term treatment facilities are closed. They started shutting down places like that over fifty years ago. They were scary places where patients were often abused, and when antipsychotic medications were available, most of the patients were sent home. The plan was to built community daycare centers for the seriously ill. But those centers never materialized. It’s now primarily up to loved ones to look after people with serious mental health issues. And the pills…they’re not a cure, they don’t alleviate all symptoms, and the side effects can be extremely harsh.

It should also be noted that you can’t force treatment on an adult in this country unless they have been committed. Even if the person who needs treatment is your son living in your house. If he’s over the age of 18, then he has the legal right to refuse treatment. And it is very difficult to get someone committed. Even if a patient has a long history of mental health issues, even if they’ve been diagnosed with an incurable psychiatric disorder, it’s still difficult. A judge has to declare that a person is a danger to him/herself or others before the judge will commit. The judge sees the patient for no more than a few minutes, and most can hold it together for at least that long. When a patient can’t remain calm and coherent while speaking to a judge, the patient is pretty far gone. So families with a seriously ill loved one often have to deal with the situation on their own.

Another important thing to remember is that most mentally ill people are not violent. Some have a history of violence, and when the thought process is impaired, there is always the potential of violence, but most have never been violence and never will be violent. That man in the hospital with me, the one who preferred to stare at the wall than look at us during our group therapy session, he was a very lovable man. He was crazy as hell, but lovable. My mother was committed a number of times while she was alive, and when she was in the hospital, she was placed in the locked ward for acutely ill patients. I would visit her while she was in the hospital, of course, and I was never hugged and kissed more than when I was among all those seriously ill mental patients.

So what should we do? This is a very complicated issue, and I don’t have all the answers, but for one thing, I think it should be easier for family members to put a loved one in the hospital if they need to be in the hospital, even if the loved one doesn’t want to go. Of course we need to be aware that sometimes family members can try to commit a loved one for questionable reasons. In the past when it was easier to commit someone it happened all the time. Governments have been known to abuse the commitment process to get rid of dissidents. We need to protect civil liberties. But we also have to accept the fact that some of our citizens are not capable of deciding for themselves if they need treatment, and we shouldn’t make them wait until they’re running down the street naked throwing rocks through neighbors’ windows before we decide it’s time to overrule their objection to treatment. We need better treatments. We need more research. We need community support. Maybe assisted living facilities specifically for people with mental illness. And we need greater awareness of mental illness so that there’s less stigma.

Scalia unqualified to be one of the deciding voices regarding marriage equality in this country

Laws are blunt instruments. They aren’t subtle, and where we draw the line, and the distinctions we make are often arbitrary. For instance, we allow people to vote at the age of 18 because we recognize that you should have a certain level of maturity and experience before being allowed to participate in the democratic process. But why specifically 18? Why not 17 or 19? Why not 17 and a half? Why not 18 and three months?

In a democratic society, those lines are under constant review. We fuss and ruminate and discuss and debate day after day and year after year. We push the lines this way and that, and we often rely on judges to make certain decisions for us. But we hope that they use wisdom, and we hope that they try to maintain some kind of objectivity. They are, in a sense, professional decision makers.

When Scalia repeatedly brings up things like murder and bestiality in relation to homosexuality, it is obvious to me that he isn’t even trying to be objective, and his comments suggest to me that he is attempting to justify his prejudices, not keep them at arm’s length for the sake of honest reflection.

The man is a homophobic bigot. He wears his hate on his sleeve. And he calls it his morality. He makes it pretty clear he doesn’t believe he has to even consider anyone else’s perspective, least of all LGBT Americans, or their friends, or loved ones or allies. In my view, he is singularly unqualified to be one of the deciding voices regarding marriage equality in this country.

I'm not interesting in fearing you or your nasty, cruel god, Mike Huckabee

Over the years I have heard a number of so-called Christians warn that their god will harm us if don’t accept their beliefs. After 9/11, Jerry Falwell claimed LGBT people, among others, were to blame for the attack because we dared to live according to our own lights rather than his which he arrogantly insisted were divinely inspired and beyond dispute. Anne Graham Lotz, Billy Graham’s daughter, warned the people of North Carolina that they had better vote for that state’s Hate On The Gays constitutional amendment or her god would hurt them. Yesterday Bryan Fischer claimed that his god allowed twenty young children to die because the school they attended didn’t teach his brand of Christianist theology. This reminds me of the film The Rapture (1991) which is about a woman who rejects God and eternity in Heaven because she has come to the realization that any god who would torture and harm people for not accepting a certain set of beliefs is not deserving of her worship. The film is a repudiation of Christianist dogma and demonstrates just how cruel and nasty the Christianist god really is. If your god would allow terrorists to fly planes into buildings and madmen to murder small children because a number of people haven’t sifted through the mystery and vagaries of life, found the Christian Bible, read it, interpreted it “correctly”, and come to believe all the supposed “right things”, then you and your god can hit the road. I don’t want to believe in a god like that. And as for Mike Huckabee’s argument that people do bad things because they have not been taught by public schools to believe his god will hold them accountable…just look at all the awful things Christians have done in the name of their religion. The idea that Christianists like Mike Huckabee are saintly and would never harm a fly because they fear their god will punish them is laughable. They merely find biblical excuses for their hate and carry out their carnage with the arrogance that their god approves of what they’re doing. Huckabee’s pursuit of a theocratic America where everyone who doesn’t agree with him will be marginalized is a case in point.

Aunt Jenny

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s fun playing dress up, but you mostly do it alone in your room because you know from experience that most don’t understand. You especially like to wear your mom’s old coat with the fur collar, and with it on, you invent a character that is based loosely on Aunt Jenny…your mother’s sister, the one who has become a boozy old flirt. You just adore Aunt Jenny. She’s gone through four husbands, but she made sure each one left her a little money. She’s alone now, so she’s free to spend most of her time traveling. She stays in nice hotels, sleeps in, and shops or goes sightseeing in the afternoons. Then in the evenings, she sips overpriced cocktails in upscale bars. She always manages to find someone to talk to. Since she is financially secure, she has lately turned her sights on younger men. She likes to impress them by buying them expensive little trinkets. She builds up their fragile egos by telling them that they are men of quality who will surely make their mark. They invariably reward her with an abundance of gratitude. You know that Aunt Jenny has her sorrows, but she’s one of your heroes anyway, and that’s because she has lived her life on her own terms. She ignores the criticism and condescending remarks and does exactly what she wants, and she always does it with style. You want to be just a little bit like her.



That Look

Ah, that look filled with desire and mixed with a significant dose of fear… The look that says, “I want it, I want it so bad, but please don’t hurt me.” Ah, that look! It makes me wish I was a superhero. If only I could be the one to swoop in and fulfill all of his animal lusts while at the same time looking after him and taking care of him with affection. I want it to be as wild and unrestrained as he needs it to be while holding him safely in my arms. I want to give him the impossible…the chance to dive into savagery without getting a scratch on him.

They Really Are Like That

I would like to make a documentary filled with revealing quotes from Christianists, one after the other, along with information about how the Republican Party is so closely tied with Christiansts that they have become the tail that wags the dog. And I would add information about how church affiliation is dropping off, and how young people have come to associate homophobia with Christianity. But mostly it would be awful, jaw-dropping quotes--some printed, some video clips--coming at you very quickly…an avalanche of hate. I think a lot of moderate and liberal Christians don’t pay much attention to Christianists, and when they do, many make excuses for them. “They mean well.” “They’re not really like that.” “They just don’t understand. Give them some time.” I would like for these moderate and liberal Christians to walk away knowing that they do not mean well, they really are like that, and they don’t want to understand.

Star Bellied Christians

Over the years I have grown to detest the exclusionary phrase “brothers and sisters *in Christ*”. It seems to me that if the religion you practice doesn’t lead you to feel a special bond with all of life, all of humanity, the universe entire, or at least the desire to feel a special bond with all those things, then it’s really more of a snobby social club, like one of those restricted country clubs with members who think they’re classy and privileged and deserving of privilege, while those who don’t belong because they don’t want to belong or because they’re not allowed to join might be inclined to think of the members as assholes. I’ve known many Christians, and most of them aren’t this way, but there are quite a few who divide people into two classes, those who are saved--according to their dogma--and those who are not. Of course they would claim that they love everyone and they are not being exclusionary. But it’s obvious from the way they talk that they see those who are “not saved” as outsiders and those who are saved as “special” and more worthy of their concern and friendship. And the only way to become “special” in their eyes is to accept their beliefs. These are the Star Bellied Christians.

Life is a mystery.

In the series Cosmos, which originally aired on PBS in 1980, Carl Sagan explained that the universe is expanding, and he said that one of two things might happen. Matter could become so dispersed that all the magical chemical processes that produce and sustain stars and life would cease and the cosmos could become cold and dark. Or at some point the expansion could reverse itself and all the matter in the universe could revert to that pre Big Bang singular point.

If the latter should happen, there could be another Big Bang, and a new universe could come into existence. This process could have happened an infinite number of times already.

There could be other dimensions to reality so that all possible outcomes are given their due course. And black holes might instantly take us to the other side of the galaxy or even the universe, or they might lead to other universes. Our entire universe might work as a single atom in another universe.

It’s amazing and more than a little scary. We’re so small, so vulnerable, and we blink in and out so quickly. Life is a mystery.

I am thankful for peanut butter and the genius who first combined peanut butter and chocolate. I am thankful for tall pretty boys with long legs. And when they wear boots and short shorts….I am especially grateful for that.

A few thoughts on the history of our species.

A number of years ago, I heard an anthropologist claim that people in primary cultures or hunter/gatherer societies probably worked only about twenty hours a week. Then the other night I watched an episode of the History Channel’s Mankind: The Story Of All Of Us and the claim was made that the transition to an agrarian way of life had a negative impact on our general health and standard of living. A less varied diet made us shorter, and living so close to domestic livestock exposed us to disease, and since we adopted permanent homes that needed to be defended, we became more prone to war and violence.

All of this made me wonder if civilization is actually a good thing. Maybe we took a wrong turn. It also made me think that perhaps the Garden of Eden myth comes from our collective memory of our hunter/gatherer past. Maybe we instinctively desire to live closer to nature as we once did for thousands of years.

I’ve read that primary cultures tend to emphasize the feminine. Rather than male angry, violent sky gods, they worship nurturing earth goddesses. Imagine the dramatic difference in mentality. Rather than existing in a world where you have to fight to survive, you live in a world of abundance, a world that embraces you and provides for you, and all you have to do is roll yourself out of bed in the morning and go find something to eat.

I suspect that Christianity was an attempt to reclaim some of that feminine energy. Jesus was a pacifist, not a warrior, and he urged his followers to stop worrying about their possessions and about survival and simply live.

In any event, I don’t think the message really sank in with most Christians. Most of Christian history is full of war, violence and lust for political power and material possessions. And the whole ugly mess has been hidden behind the facade of neighborly love.

Maternal Love

The love was sweet, soothing, quiet
And I always knew it was there
It was there under the strange cackles
The popping of her gum
The popping of her rocking chair

The maniacal popping
Obsessive, excessive, insane
The chatter, the crazy, crazy chatter
Even more incessant
But at the core was a quiet and gentle love

It wore you down, that popping and chatter
There was no end to it
There was always more and more and more
No matter how many times you begged for mercy
Still there was always that quiet and gentle love, too

When the popping and chatter exploded into drama
When the monotony of unfathomable absurdities parted
When the fear frothed into threats of violence
And her voice trembled with hatred for her “enemies”
I knew the core was still there, somewhere

She shattered like glass every day
She chattered and popped and laughed
Ah, those crazy, mean laughs, derisive and cruel
But then in a quiet moment she would settle
She would relax and smile, warmly and show that which was not broken.

A work in progress.

I’m in the process of outlining a novel I want to write next year set in a house like this, except I imagine the old place as more dilapidated. It’s about two boys in their last year in high school. They fall in love, and this house which belongs to the mother of one of the boys--she travels a lot, so they usually have the place to themselves--becomes their sanctuary. It takes place in mid 1980s West Virginia, and since the world around them won’t allow them to be open about their feelings for one another, they create their own world. They have their own prom on the porch. They are still together, and they have since inherited the house and turned it into a B&B. I first wanted to write this story back when I was in high school, but I just couldn’t make a go of it back then, and that’s because I didn’t have a boyfriend, didn’t know any gay couples, didn’t see any gay couples on TV. I couldn’t imagine the details or figure out how my characters would maintain a relationship in such a hostile environment. So I think it’s time for me to write that story. And even though things have changed, I don’t think there’s nearly enough simple, romantic boy meets boy stories out there, especially ones with a happily ever after ending.

 

Photographer and subjects unknown.

 

Huygens and His 17th Century Space Aliens

Christiaan Huygens 1629-1695 was a Dutch astronomer who made great strides in understanding the rings of Saturn.  His father Constantijn Huygens was a patron and friend of artists, poets, writers, philosophers and scientists.  And Holland at the time was a liberal center for the arts and scholarly pursuits.  It was in this nurturing environment that Huygens imagined life was possible on other planets in our solar system, and he imagined that it was possible that planets orbited far away stars.  He wrote and published a book about his speculations in the 1690s shortly before his death.  He did so without fear of persecution.  That’s astonishing when you consider women were being hanged as witches here in this country at about the same time Huygens’ book was published and that Galileo was found guilty of heresy for claiming the Sun was at the center of the universe when Huygens was a child.

Homophobic Expectations Influence Perception

When Percival Lowell (1855-1916) read that there appeared to be something like canals on the surface of Mars, he decided to investigate for himself. He spent a significant amount of his life looking at Mars through telescopes in the early morning hours and drawing maps of what he saw. Lowell was convinced he had observed evidence that there was once intelligent life on Mars. Lowell was sure the canals had been built by Martians. Lowell turned out to be wrong, and his beliefs serve to illustrate how our expectations can influence our perceptions. We often see what we expect and want to see.

Lowell was a visionary, someone who was following his dreams, and although his conclusions were often off base, his determination and enthusiasm is inspirational. However, our all too human tendency to see things as we expect and want them has a darker side. Bigotry is born of this trick of the mind.

I once had an argument with a homophobe who was convinced that all gay men behave like the participants of San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair, and he was sure that this proved our nature was savage. I informed him that he was mistaken and that his assumption indicated that he was biased, but he demanded that I prove him wrong. I stopped communicating with him at that point. It was obvious his mind was made up, and he was not interested in me as a person. To him, I was other, some strange creature that was to be feared and hated.

I don’t think that gay men would be any less human or any less deserving of respect even if all of us did behave like the participants of the Folsom Street Fair. But since I know myself, and since I’ve come to know a number of other gay men, I’m aware that we are not all alike. Some gay men, given the chance, would fully participate in the high jinks of the Folsom Street Fair or some similar event someplace else. Some may do so because they enjoy it and feel no need to restrain themselves. Others might do it as a kind of rebellion against sexual repression and shaming. Some gay men might go to an event like that and observe. Some might get some level of satisfaction out of looking at images and reading of detailed accounts of what goes on there. Some gay men may never think of going there but don’t think any less of those who do, and then there are some gay men who condemn such open displays of sexuality to one degree or another.

In regards to the Folsom Street Fair, our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors run the gamut…just like straight people. But try telling that to someone who wants to view us in a certain light. To them, we are not fellow human beings or individuals. We have been assigned to play a certain role in their imagination, and they’re not about to let us mess up their weird, highly sexed, grand inner pageant. They project onto us their own insatiable lust, and we become outward reflections of the sex monsters that they dare not admit live inside their own psyches, and that’s that. When we discover someone is like that, we may as well growl at them and have a good laugh at their foolishness.

The blue late afternoon light of December.

I now live in Merced, CA, and Merced really doesn’t do winter. It’s a little chilly here in December, January and February, and we get a little rain, but that’s it. This is in start contrast to what winters were like in West Virginia, which is where I lived most of my life. There are certain things about winter that I don’t miss at all--those long stretches of frigid temperatures in January and February, snow that doesn’t met for days and turns icy and crunchy, ice covered sidewalks and roads, that blinding morning and early afternoon light that fails to provide any warmth. It was sometimes hard to keep yourself warm in winter, and getting out of the house was sometimes dangerous. But there are some things I miss…like breathing in the crisp, clean air, letting it fill my lungs. That was invigorating. Watching the fog come out of my mouth was fun. Falling snow is beautiful. And the world covered in fresh snow is beautiful. And that blue late afternoon light in December… I miss that.

Photographer and subject unknown.


Jared Loughner and Mental Illness

Jared Loughner, the gunman who shot Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others, received seven life sentences today. I’m glad that Loughner will never have the chance to shoot anyone else, but in my opinion, demonizing Loughner--who is clearly mentally ill and who, by all accounts, was in the midst of a psychotic episode when he went on his killing spree--will not help.

Most who know me well are aware that my mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Thankfully, she never got hold of a gun and blew anyone away while she was psychotic, but if she had done something like that, it would NOT have been because she was evil or because she was a bad person. She was severely mentally ill, and there were periods in her life when she was unable to grasp what was going on in the real world around her. Most of the time, this meant she was more of a risk to herself than anyone else. We had to watch her like a parent would watch a toddler. It was exhausting, and frustrating, and you can bet I did my share of bitching at her for doing stupid and possibly dangerous things. But ultimately the bitching was completely and totally pointless, and that’s because she wasn’t trying my patience for the fun of it. She was mentally ill, and blaming someone for being mentally ill is as irrational as blaming someone for having a nightmare.

Some people have diseases that attack their lungs. Some have diseases that attack their kidneys. Some have heart disease. AND SOME HAVE BRAIN DISEASE. You can shake your moralizing finger all you want to, preach until the cows come home, pontificate until you’re blue in the face, throw every person like Jared Loughner under the prison, and it will not prevent one single person on this planet from experiencing a psychotic episode.

The human brain is a very fragile thing, and certain people are vulnerable. We need to figure out how to get these people the help they need BEFORE they do something awful, and we need to do that while also respecting and protecting civil liberties. We know that governments can and will use its power to commit citizens for political purposes. It’s happened before. Individuals have been known to “put away” family members for nefarious reasons. We have to guard against these things, but we also need to face the fact that a certain number of people among us are so mentally ill they are a threat to themselves and others. These people need our help, not our scorn and condemnation.

Cosmos

A few days ago I started watching Cosmos on Netfix. I had forgotten just how wonderful the series is. Carl Sagan had a special way of condensing and explaining scientific discoveries about the universe. He was a gifted storyteller as well as a brilliant scientist. His prose style may have been a bit over the top. I remember that it became fairly common back in the ’80s to make fun of his phraseology and his nerdy enthusiasm for astronomy. All you had to say was “billions and billions” and most knew immediately that you were referring to Carl Sagan. I have to admit that I sometimes wish he had used a little less syrup.

But then again, who am I to criticize. He got his point across very effectively. He made you contemplate certain things in a way that helped you get past the abstract. When he got into his pretend spaceship and talked about the vastness of space as he showed you the most exquisite images of far away galaxies, you got a sense of just how huge the universe really is. We know that it’s huge, but I don’t think most of us really think about it much. Our whole galaxy is really just a little hole in the wall, but most of the time we seem to think we’re the main attraction.

He helped us contemplate the vastness of time by compressing everything from the Big Bang to the present into a single cosmic year. The Big Bang occurred on January 1. The planet Earth appeared four billion years ago sometime in September. And human beings have been around for the last few seconds of December 31.

When you lay it all out there, let it all sink in, it’s hard for me to imagine that our opinions and beliefs matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. And the idea that this giant show was staged just for our benefit… It seems absurd to me.

Recently I discovered that a friend of mine died. I had known this person for several years. It was the film Brokeback Mountain that brought us together. When I showed up at the discussion board at IMDb in the fall of 2006, Shasta was already there. I never met her in person, but we were in regular contact for a very long time. We exchanged messages online, sometimes long, personal messages. We sent cards to each other, exchanged Christmas gifts. And I’m not the only fan of Brokeback Mountain that she befriended. She reached out to dozens of us. So after the shock of discovering she was gone, another shock hit me. None of her Brokeback Mountain friends knew she had died until I thought to look for her obituary online. By the time I found the obit, Shasta had been gone for more than a month.

Shasta started complaining of serious pain in the summer of 2011. She said she had started putting her “affairs in order” then. She made a list of things she wanted to her cousin to know if something happened to her. So why didn’t the cousin or someone know that her Brokeback mountain friends would like to have been informed when she was put into hospice care in early September and when she died later that month?

Shasta knew I had become very active on Facebook. I often invited her to become a Facebook friend, but she seemed to show little interest Facebook. So we continued to communicate through a small message board. And then after I found the obituary, I discovered that she did in deed have a Facebook account. She was on Facebook before me.

Shasta was from Arkansas, and she was very active in her church, and she taught English at a private Christian school. And it dawned on me that like so many LGBT people, especially from rural, conservative areas, Shasta, a straight ally, was, in a sense, in the closet. She spent hours online, almost every day for more than five years, communicating with her Brokeback Mountain friends, but apparently she couldn’t tell anyone who knew her in person that we existed or that we were important to her. Maybe she was afraid she would be shunned. She may have even been afraid she would be fired. I just don’t know.

It’s ironic because the story Brokeback Mountain was about the tragedy of leading an inauthentic life. Maybe that’s one of the reasons she related to the film. Maybe she didn’t feel like she could be completely herself with her loved ones. Maybe life in the small Arkansas town where she lived was too confining to her. Maybe her Brokeback Mountain friends were her fishing buddies.

I grew up in southern West Virginia, so I’m familiar with the kind of environment that Shasta lived in. I know that you can only stray so far before your thought of as an outcast, especially if you make church people your closest friends. I spent half of my life terrified that someone would discover who I really am, and it seems I’m destined to spend the rest of my life recovering from the shellshock.

I’m so tired of trying to manage personal information, of trying to decide who should know what and how much. In the larger scheme of thing, does it really matter what anyone thinks of me? As fat as I am, I’m just a fly speck. And I’m going to be dead soon. Even if I live to be a hundred, I will have been alive for less than a second of the last day of the cosmic year.

So if you really can’t stand that I’m a short, overweight, out of shape, middle aged gay man from a hick state who wouldn’t feel all that comfortable in a restaurant much more fancy than Applebee’s, then just let me go. If you think there’s something wrong with me because I prefer wispy, thin “twinks” to beefy, hairy mature men, then just let me go. If you just can’t stomach the fact that I think Jesus stories are, more or less, mythology and not literally true, then just let me go. If you can’t tolerate my fashion sense, or lack there of, then just let me go. If you just hate the fact that I don’t have a job and that I’m on disability social security, then just let me go. If you think it’s weird that I don’t drive, don’t have a boyfriend, never had a boyfriend, haven’t had sex since the ‘90s and that I’m painfully shy, then just let me go. If all of my typos and grammar mistakes drive you up the wall, just let me go. Rather than trying to shame me and try to force me to hide certain facts about who I am, let me be. I’ve only got a short while to be here, and then I’ll be gone.

P.S. If there is some kind of heaven like afterlife, I hope Shasta will be reunited with her dogs there, just as she wanted.      



　

　

　

　

A few thoughts on sex...for what they're worth...which probably ain't much. LOL

For many, monogamy is a goal. They hope to find the right person some day. For others it is a fulfilling way of life. But monogamy isn’t for everybody. And that’s true of LGBT people and straight people.

So long as you’re not out there seducing guys in order to get into their pants and then dumping them and breaking their hearts when you’re finished with them, and so long as you’re not lying to your significant other about what you’re doing, I can’t see how it’s anybody’s business.

I think the goal should be finding your path, your way. Live in the way that works best for you and don’t worry so much about living up to some imagined propriety.

People are different. I’ve known all kinds of gay men. Some were hardly interested in sex at all. Some liked to play around a little while they were looking for the right guy. Some had a lot of partners. Some went through stages…they’d have lots of partners for a while, then hardly any, then back to having lots of partners. Some were monogamous. Some were in open relationships.

Their happiness and self-fulfillment seemed to depend more on being honest and treating themselves and others with respect than leading a particular kind of life.

There is the reality of sexual orientation that we've all experienced, and then there's the fantasy version that people like Linda Harvey cling to. Their fantasy is much more important to them than real people, and they're willing to hurt real people, including children, in order to keep their fantasy.

They can call it Christianity if they want to. They can claim we're attacking their religion if we criticize them. But, in my opinion, they are truly hateful and destructive people.

I don't think they're merely confused or misinformed. Not people like Linda Harvey. In my opinion, people like Linda Harvey are gutless psychopaths who don't have the nerve to go out and do the dirty work themselves, so instead, they send out shock waves of hostility hoping that they'll inspire their society to move toward genocide.

I’ve decided to establish a new religion. There will be some lip service to peace, love and harmony, but at the core of the religion will be the idea that there is no such thing as a heterosexual orientation despite what those who have chosen the straight lifestyle say. We will proclaim that those in the straight lifestyle are out to recruit children and impose their perversion on all of society. We will insist that schools teach our beliefs as if they’re proven facts. We will ignore the needs of so-called straight children to be affirmed and included and insist that they have either been molested by a straight person or they have not been nurtured enough by a loving gay parent, and that the best remedy for these things is exclusion and ridicule. If anyone dares disagree with us, we will say they are attacking our religious freedom.

How Many Dead Homos Will It Take?

Back in the summer, a gunman went into the Washington offices of the Family Research Council with the intention of taking out a few homophobes. Or at least that seems to have been his intention. We still don’t know much about Floyd Corkins, the man who stands accused of attempting to murder FRC employees, other than he only managed to injure a security guard before he was stopped. As to be expected, most of the prominent LGBT advocacy groups were quick to denounce the violence. Violence is abhorrent, and it’s usually senseless, and this particular act of violence seemed to serve no purpose. I heard very few people express any sympathy for Corkins, and perhaps this, too, was to be expected. It’s hard to have sympathy for someone when you don’t understand their motives, and, as I’ve said, we don’t know much about Corkins even now. But what I found puzzling was that so many were quick to claim that violence was never justified. Never.

Of course there are people who are simply not inclined to fight even when they’re under attack. I also know that human beings are inclined to posture and strut, present themselves as morally superior. It makes them feel good about themselves, and it possibly could further their social status. Nothing like having people think you’re the reincarnation of Gandhi, but when push comes to shove, just how peaceful would these peaceniks be?

In any event, I’m wondering if it’s really a smart move to go out of our way to claim that LGBT people are so peace loving that there is virtually nothing that would cause us to lash out at our attackers.

Friday, October 19^th was Spirit Day, the day when we’re asked to think about bullying, the victims of bullying, and how we might help alleviate the problem. Given the huge percentage of LGBT youth who experience bullying, given that LGBT youth are four times more likely to commit suicide than their straight counterparts due to relentless bullying, given the large numbers of LGBT youth who are homeless due to family rejection, should we really show them by our example that we will endure anything and never fight back? Are we really so desperate to have others believe that we’re among “the good guys”? Don’t bullied people, young and old, have a right to defend themselves?

I realize that many of the young people who are bullied have a passive nature, and in many instances, this is why they’re targeted. I was one of those passive kids, and I was a victim of bullying. It got me in two ways: I never felt safe, and I felt unworthy because I was taught that “real” boys could take care of themselves. So I would never add insult to injury by reinforcing that stereotype about boys always being tough and never needing anyone to defend them. But shouldn’t we encourage bullied victims to fight back if they can? Shouldn’t we commend the stronger ones when they stand up for the victims of bullying?

I wonder if some of our passivity steams from a belief that we’re not really worth fighting for. Have we been so demoralized that we’re slow to raise our fists even when our physical safety is at stake?

I suspect that most have seen the film Thelma & Louise. Soon after its release more than twenty years ago it became a cultural touchstone. The story moved many, including me. Thelma was about to be raped in the parking lot of a nightclub, and Louise managed to prevent this from happening by pulling a gun on the would-be rapist. Louise had the upper hand at that point, but when the would-be rapist expressed his contempt for the two of them, Louise instinctively killed him. Many, if not most, who watched the film sympathized with Louise. We all know there are men out there like Thelma’s would-be rapist. They think they can take what they want from women, and our society often allows them to get away with it. And you can’t reason with them. They just don’t care. They might change their attitude at some point in the future, but how many women will they harm in the interim?

Human history is replete with unimaginable violence, war and bloodshed. Most of it is deplorable. But there are a number of people who we celebrate as heroes because they lashed out with violence. George Washington, the father of our nation, was a killer. We celebrate the men who fought to preserve the union during our Civil War. We celebrate those who fought against the Nazis, the Fascists and the Japanese during World War II. We celebrate veterans on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. We cheered when Osama bin Laden was killed. President Obama even proudly claims the killing of bin Laden is one of his administration’s most important achievements.

A lot of violence has been directed toward LGBT people. Most of us have been intimidated and threatened. A lot of us have been physically and sexually assaulted. Some have been killed. But a lot of the violence is indirect. In the past it was common to “sanitize” an LGBT person’s biography--burn letters and journals, deny relationships with significant others of the same sex, create fictional straight relationships. There has been a long and sustained effort to erase evidence of our presence for hundreds of years, and the result has been that most members of our tribe in the past lived in isolation, fearing someone would find out their secret.

But the truth is now out in the open. We know that a significant portion of the population is LGBT. We know that homosexuality is not a disorder. We know that prejudice and discrimination harms LGBT people. We know, and yet there are those who simply don’t care. They persist in warning others that LGBT people are to be feared and treated with hostility, and they often do these things in the name of their god.

There are those who insist that everyone is born heterosexual and that everything else is the result of some kind of trauma, manipulation or willful abandonment of supposed natural desires. They ignore the science, and they ignore the testimony of LGBT people regarding our own experience. They claim that the science has been corrupted by “activists” as part of their evil “agenda.” And they present their fantasy version of homosexuality to the world as if it was real, and if it was approved by their god. They are attempting to convince as many people as they can that LGBT isn’t real, that it’s a hoax, and that all of those who identify as LGBT are either deluded or lying. Why? Because you don’t have to be concerned with those who don’t exist. You can’t be accused of harming those who don’t exist. It’s a subtle attempt at annihilation. And when they foist their “ex-gay” therapy on vulnerable members of our tribe, they are basically attempting to convince them to annihilate themselves.

We know that homophobic bullying is real and pervasive in our schools. Most of us remember seeing it when we were young. Many of us were subjected to it. And we know that even straight kids are often subjected to homophobic bullying. We know that many kids live in fear every time they go to school. And yet there are those who would deny this reality, and they claim any attempt to address the problem is an attack on their beliefs. They claim that if kids are taught that it’s okay to be LGBT, more will “try” it and fall into the “lifestyle.” This idea has no basis in reality. It is a complete fantasy that harms real kids, but these people are allowed to influence school policy anyway.

Part of their fantasy is that LGBT people pose a special threat to children. It doesn’t matter that the statistics and science indicate that LGBT people are no more likely to assault children than anyone else. They go right ahead and make their claims anyway. They often say that we target children in order to increase our numbers. Those who aren’t willing to go that far often link homosexuality with pedophilia in the minds of as many people as possible by bringing the topic of pedophilia up in relation to homosexuality at every turn no matter if it’s relevant or not. They warn that if our society accepts homosexuality, it would also, by some strange logic that only makes sense to them, would have to accept pedophilia. And they say that marriage equality will lead to adults marrying children.

Even though AIDS is a disease that is transmitted in specific ways and most in the world who have it are straight, many suggest that AIDS is a byproduct of “accepting the gay identity.” They claim that every kind of psychological disorder an LGBT person suffers from is caused by “accepting the gay identity.” They blame the early deaths of LGBT people on their “acceptance of the gay identity” and “participation in the gay lifestyle.”

There are those who do everything they can to convince as many as possible that LGBT people are scary, evil, disease carrying parasites who want to harm children, and they claim we can stop being LGBT if we wanted to. They do everything in their power to thwart our efforts to gain acceptance and our civil rights.

These people are not merely confused. The know the truth. It’s been explained to them. But their fantasies are more important to them than the truth, even if those fantasies harm others. And the idea that these people simply represent a fringe element of society, a mere vestigial hiccup that will fade away in time is Pollyannaish in my view. They influence society at all levels. They influence politics at all levels. They do real harm to real people, including LGBT youth. And their destruction is often overlooked and ignored. Christians rarely condemn them. The media can’t be counted on to bother to look up the facts and correct the misinformation they spew. And our straight allies often have bigger fish to fry.

So how much are we willing to take? When is it okay to fight back? When is it our duty to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves?

Almost Kissed

Back in the summer and fall of 1988, I lived with my aunt and uncle in Alexandria, Virginia. Their house was near the Huntington Metro stop, and every day I took the train into the city. I worked at a gourmet food store in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, which was a gay neighborhood at the time. There were gay bars around, and the gay bookstore Lambda Rising, and my friend Nathan lived in the neighborhood.

I worked in the bakery, and there was a cute boy who worked in the deli on the other side of the store. He was always pleasant and polite. I got the impression that he was straight, though, and in any event, I never imagined he would be interested in me, but that didn’t stop me from looking. He was just my type--sweet natured and thin with a boyish face and blond hair. Every chance I got, I stole a glimpse.

The kitchen and the supplies were down in the basement, so I made regular trips down there throughout my shifts. And one day when I came out of the kitchen and headed up the narrow stairs, I found the boy from the deli that I liked was in front of me. I didn’t say anything because it would have been awkward for him to turn around. I figured I’d say hello to him once we reached the top.

Apparently he didn’t realize I was behind him, and he started moving up the stairs at a glacial pace. It was ridiculous how slow he was moving, and I quickly realized that he was deliberately wasting time. He was taking a little unauthorized break from his work. I certainly didn’t blame him for that, but I was right behind him, and after a while, it felt a little strange.

Normally I’m very shy, but every now and then, I manage to be a little playful even with people I don’t know very well, even with cute presumably straight guys. And on a whim, I lowered my voice and said with menacing authority, hoping that I sounded like our boss, “Alright, let’s try to get up these stairs a bit faster.”

I must have really startled the boy because he suddenly sprang to life and spun around before I finished my sentence. When he saw that it was just me, his expression turned to relief, and he let out a sigh. But then he pretended to be angry with me and did something unexpected. He grabbed me by my collar and pushed me against the wall. And then his face was very close to mine.

Knowing that I scared him, if just for a moment, made me laugh, and I continued to laugh when he grabbed me. But after a couple of seconds, it registered that his face very, very close to mine. His lips were very, very close to mine. And he held us in this position for a while.

When my giggles trailed off, and the situation was in danger of becoming awkward, he let go, dropped the pretence of anger, smiled and said, “You scared the shit out of me.” We then went on up the stairs. A couple of weeks later, I quit and I never saw him again. But not long after that I began to wonder if I had almost been kissed on those stairs by that cute blond boy. I now wish I had been daring enough to kiss him. All it would have taken would have been for me to pucker and our lips would have touched. That’s how close he was to me.

My little secret homo thing for the boys is what saved me.

I was a shy and withdrawn boy from the start, and my home life only exacerbated my reticence. Luckily, I went to a little grade school not far from my house. Most of the teachers there were mature, disciplined, dedicated women who seemed to like children. The school provided me with the structure and stability that home didn’t. I wasn’t a very social kid, but that was okay. The teachers declared that I was “independent”, and they didn’t seem to think this was anything to be alarmed about.

Then I went to a much, much larger middle school on the other side of town. Middle school was a very scary place to me. Fights broke out all the time, and there were a lot of very rough kids at this school, many of whom were older than the rest of us because they had been held back. They used drugs and alcohol, and I sometimes saw drugs being sold in the locker room and rest room. There was lots of explicit talk about sex, a lot of four letter words. I was called names and threatened regularly even though I was careful not to bother anyone. I hardly ever said a word, and still I was the target of abuse. But some got it a lot worse than I did. A lot worse. Some were tormented every day all day long.

I hated going to middle school. It was an awful experience for me, and I never felt like I belonged there, and I never felt safe. I realized that I was gay while attending middle school, and I started noticing the boys at this time. But I dared not tell anyone about that. The thugs would have surely used that information to destroy me. Harsh homophobic language was used almost constantly. Every day I heard words like “faggot”, “queer” and “cocksucker”. They weren’t always directed at me, but I heard them all the time. I was terrified that someone might find out that I actually liked boys.

When I saw the films Close Encounters and Star Wars, I developed a fascination with UFOs and aliens. It was my escapism. I began to imagine that the loving and accepting aliens from Close Encounters would some day rescue me. Eventually, I came very close to actually believing it would happen. It became a kind of religion to me. It gave me hope and comfort. I sat around and thought about how all the hell would one day come to an end when I would be whisked off to a faraway paradise were I would be loved and appreciated.

My personal development was stunted at this time. Rather than learning how to play the piano, or acting in school plays, I withdrew into a shell. Sometimes people would ask me about my interests and opinions, and I couldn’t answer. And I started to think that I was empty and worthless. I lived in terror, I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone, so I was in full survivor mode. About the only thing I could think about most of the time was the threat of torment and abuse. I was stunned with paralyzing fear.

There was a point in middle school when my body began to rebel against the torture that I was experiencing daily. I became listless and exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep. I stayed home for a couple of days, and then my father took me to see a doctor. At first he thought I was developing diabetes, but the blood tests came back normal. When everything else was ruled out, he used the word “depression” to describe what I was going through. He was the first medical professional to use that term to describe my symptoms. But he didn’t take it very seriously. He just told me to go back to school and tough it out and I’d get over it in time.

I did recover from the extreme exhaustion, but I began to suffer from migraine headaches. Several times a month, I would get these crippling, painful headaches. Light and sound made it hurt worse, as did moving around. I eventually told the doctor about the headaches, and he said they were most likely caused by stress, but again, he didn’t take it very seriously.

I actually think that my attraction to boys helped save me. Looking at and thinking about their bodies and their beautiful faces, and imagining having sex with them gave me intense pleasure. I enjoyed the attraction even though I knew I could get hurt if anyone found out about it. I started to dream about one day moving away and finding other people like myself. It was my attraction to boys that led me to give up the desire to be taken to another planet. It seemed unlikely that there would be cute gay boys on this other planet, so in time it just didn’t seem very appealing anymore.

Ever since I was a small kid, I loved stories and movies. But I watched old movies and read children’s stories mostly until I hit puberty. Then I discovered that gay characters sometimes showed up in the adult programs on PBS--Masterpiece Theater, American Playhouse. This got me interested in more serious literature, and I started watching the history and nature programs, too. My personality which had been submerged by fear was starting to develop, and I began doing well in school, and I began to think about going to college. College became my escape, and it seemed much more practical and likely than alien abduction.

It all started with boys. It was what I felt for them that proved to me that I was a real person, and that I wanted certain things in life regardless of what the people in my life thought. Boys opened up the world for me. Suddenly life was more than about survival. There was also pleasure and joy and hope.

"Ex-gay" ministries and the testimony of those who claim they're no longer part of the "gay lifestyle" serve as Potemkin villages. It's a false front for those who want to believe in the lies and don't care go past the superficial validation of their prejudices.

Living With Uncertainty

When you concretize a mythology, you ruin it in my opinion. If there is a spiritual dimension to life, I don’t think it can be contained or defined by any religion. I think the stories we tell about the spirit reflect our encounter with the mystery. I don’t think the stories explain the mystery or make it apparent.

I don’t know what the ultimate truth is. I’m just flying by the seat of my pants and trying to figure it out as I go along.

I studied religion and philosophy in college, and I came away believing that no one has all the right answers. And 15 years ago, I came close to dying. I’m 47 now, not in the best of health, and a lot of people in my family have died young. I know that I can go at any time. I can feel it in my bones. I dread it, and I’m afraid, but I try not to let the awareness ruin what time I have left.

I’m starting to wonder just how many of my dreams will come true. Things could have worked out differently, I know. I have my regrets. But you can’t change the past.

I just hope that it’s a little easier for the young ones and the ones who haven’t arrived yet. I wish the ones who are so terrified by the mystery would stop choking the young with their ideology. I wish someone would stop the con artists who have discovered they can use religion to better their social standing at the expense of others. When religious dogma takes precedence over our experience, when we bulldoze people with our religion rather than dare question our beliefs, when we rip ourselves apart in an attempt to mirror an idealized image that was born from our dogma, that’s when religion and ridged beliefs become destructive.

The Summer of '85

The summer of 1985 I was 19 years old. I had just finished my freshman year at college. I had done well despite my intense anxiety and social phobia. Maybe because I had looked forward to it for so long. Maybe because I was determined to make it work. I made good grades, and I discovered that I loved my classes. My teachers back in high school were not generally very knowledgeable or scholarly, but my professors at WVU… They knew their stuff. I took a class on the ancient history of Western Civilization, and it turned out that it was taught by an Egyptologist who could read hieroglyphics, and Latin and Greek. He had traveled extensively all over the Mediterranean region. So when he talked about ancient Greece, for instance, he’d include his personal impressions and experiences of the various cities and scenes of important battles. I was seriously impressed.

I also discovered Morgantown’s clandestine gay community which centered around a dive bar on High Street, not far from the downtown campus and within walking distance to my dorm, called The Double Decker. I spent many Friday and Saturday nights there. I made a few gay friends. And I danced with a few boys, and fooled around with some, too.

I started therapy, and I was lucky enough to get a kind and gentle psychologist who happened to specialize in the effects of homophobia on young gay, lesbian and bi people. She became an important person in my life for a number of years.

Because I didn’t care for dorm food all that much, and because I had been walking all over campus and Morgantown, I had slimed down considerably. I was getting noticed at the bar, and I was getting attention despite being very shy and not the easiest person to approach.

The year didn’t end on a high note, though. I went home with a boy who had been drinking a bit too much and he was kind of direct and surly with me. But I overlooked this because I thought he was cute, and I thought of myself as lucky for the chance to go home with him. It turned into a date rape type of situation.

Looking back now, I guess it probably wasn’t a good idea to go home and live with my parents for the summer. But I didn’t have any money, and I lacked the social skills to arrange to an adventure with a friend and share expenses. However, that is exactly what I should have done.

Oak Hill was a major culture shock after a year at college. I had changed, my attitude and expectations had changed, but my old hometown was the same confining place it had always been. I went back to work at McDonalds, and I went back in the closet. While my young straight coworkers parties and dated, I kept my distance for fear that someone would discover my secret.

I used the money I earned to buy some pretty gay clothes though. I remember a pink oversized t-shirt, and a pair of Madras short shorts with strips of pastel colors like yellow, pink and turquoise. (I still have those shorts, but it’s been quite a while since they’ve fit.) I also got a spiky haircut. I was a teenage gay boy dressed up to have a good time, but I was stuck back in my hometown.

And then soon after I got home, I realized that my mother was sick again. My mother had schizophrenia, and it went untreated all while I was growing up, but she was finally diagnosed and began receiving treatment in the spring of my senior year of high school. I was so thankful and relieved to learn that her illness could be treated, and like the young, hopeful thing that I was back then, I assumed that all the drama was finally over. It was such a huge disappointed to learn that we had only been given a reprieve.

I think that summer was the pinnacle of my youth. I had one year of college behind me, and I knew I liked it and that I could hack it. I was as fit as I would ever be. My confidence in myself was the highest that it has ever been. I felt reasonably attractive. I could have had more fun that summer than I had ever had. I should have been with boys like myself. I should have been able to party, hang out with friends, get lucky a few times, and maybe even have a romance. But instead I went backwards.