The jot and tittle religious folk give me a headache. They love quoting from this verse and that, hemming it together and claiming that somehow the exercise proves they are right. “If you read verse 6 of chapter 9 of Matthew and verse 4 of chapter 14 of Ruth, you will see why you are doomed to burn in hell if you use your house key to pick your teeth on Thursday afternoons. Doing such a thing is offensive to the Father.”
A large percentage of the human race would have difficulty following the directions on the side of a box of Jell-O, so I find it particularly odd that if there is a god, that god would expect us to make sense of a huge hodgepodge collection of literature written centuries ago in a foreign language, and if we slip up that god will punish us forever.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Should everything be different?
I rejected the dogma I was raised with a very long time ago. And even though I never cut myself off from the concept of faith and reflecting on what exactly it means to have faith, I have been fairly skeptical for most of my adult life, and I would say even most of my teen years. But the idea that we live in a fallen world has been so ingrained in me that I believed it without ever really thinking about it until just a few years ago. I don’t mean I literally believed the story of the Fall from Genesis, but I did accept the basic idea that there was something fundamentally wrong with existence. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “Life is something that should not have been.” I think that statement is a crystallization of an idea that has permeated Western Civilization for centuries. I think it’s one of those things people accept without ever really reflecting on it, even people who aren’t particularly religious or spiritual. In the film Grand Canyon, the character Simon says, “Everything is supposed to be different from what it is.”
This idea can’t be blamed entirely on our Judeo-Christian heritage because you can find it in Plato, too. It may be a natural assumption considering what life is like for human beings. For most of human history, up to half of all children died before reaching the age of maturity. Many women died while giving birth. Life is filled with suffering and pain, and then we die. We live our lives knowing we’re going to die, too. That often casts a pall over our brightest days. We know the storm is coming. And if the natural process of disease and decline weren’t bad enough, human beings make it even worse for themselves by fighting and killing one another. It’s easy for us to imagine that things weren’t supposed to be like this.
But I reject the idea that life as we experience it is some kind of divine punishment. If there is some kind of reason or purpose for suffering and death, I don’t think it’s because we live in a fallen world. And I question the idea that everything should be different from what it is. I don’t mean to suggest the problems we experience in life aren’t problems for us, but either existence is what it is or if there’s some kind of purpose or meaning to existence, then maybe there’s some kind of essential quality of existence that gives rise to our problems. I think it’s arrogant for us to assume we have some way of knowing what a better world would be like.
This idea can’t be blamed entirely on our Judeo-Christian heritage because you can find it in Plato, too. It may be a natural assumption considering what life is like for human beings. For most of human history, up to half of all children died before reaching the age of maturity. Many women died while giving birth. Life is filled with suffering and pain, and then we die. We live our lives knowing we’re going to die, too. That often casts a pall over our brightest days. We know the storm is coming. And if the natural process of disease and decline weren’t bad enough, human beings make it even worse for themselves by fighting and killing one another. It’s easy for us to imagine that things weren’t supposed to be like this.
But I reject the idea that life as we experience it is some kind of divine punishment. If there is some kind of reason or purpose for suffering and death, I don’t think it’s because we live in a fallen world. And I question the idea that everything should be different from what it is. I don’t mean to suggest the problems we experience in life aren’t problems for us, but either existence is what it is or if there’s some kind of purpose or meaning to existence, then maybe there’s some kind of essential quality of existence that gives rise to our problems. I think it’s arrogant for us to assume we have some way of knowing what a better world would be like.
Micahel Brown and company are lost in their vicious delusions of hate
Because my mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, I became accustomed to delusional thought processes. Delusions have their own internal “logic”, and the “logic” is designed to sustain the delusion. My mother couldn’t help but get lost in the fog because she had a serious brain disorder, but Michael Brown’s insanity is voluntary. He chooses his bigotry, and he chooses to reinforce it at the expense of LGBT people.
A few months ago I saw a clip of a conversation he had with Cindy Jacobs and her husband. (Cindy Jacobs is the so-called prophet who claimed the mysterious bird deaths in Arkansas was the result of the repeal of DADT.) Brown told the Jacobs that LGBT people are very sensitive to any kind of criticism and the reason for this is because they are outside the grace of God. I recognized this for the clever mental trick that it was. He gives himself permission to say the meanest, nastiest things about LGBT people, and if they dare complain, then he sees this as proof that he’s right. Anyone with any sense can see this self-serving “logic” for what it is, but he’s chosen to lose himself in his bigotry delusion. And there are just enough fools out there to make that delusion profitable for him. He plays the hero fighting the evil gays, and his followers give him unconditional praise…and money. And if an LGBT person fights back, he plays the victim. If an LGBT person tries to talk with him calmly, he becomes arrogant and pretends anyone who disagrees with him rejects truth. The man is a piece of work.
There was no reasoning with my mother when she was psychotic. In fact her doctor warned us against it. He said you can not beat psychosis with reason. When people have mixed up ideas, it’s only natural for us to want to try to explain to them why they’re wrong, but when a person is psychotic, you’ll only end up frustrating yourself if you try. The doctor advised us to not engage Mother about her delusions whenever possible. An d when it was necessary to say something about them--because we needed her to stop doing something disruptive or dangerous--we weren’t supposed to argue, but state firmly, “I don’t believe that.” “I don’t believe that your nephew Tommy who died three years ago told you to put that tube of toothpaste you’ve not paid for in your purse. Now put it back. If you don’t, you could be arrested and I won’t be able to stop that from happening. Put it back, now.”
My mother couldn’t help it, and she really did hear voices. It’s just that the voices weren’t real. She was a very sweet and gentle person when she was stable and medicated. And most of the time the things she said and did when she was psychotic were simply annoying and silly. And sometimes the things she did were funny. There’s nothing like getting up in the morning and finding three loafs of toast on the table. It can be exhausting when you have to deal with that kind of thing day after day, but sometimes you just had to laugh.
The things Michael Brown and company say and do are often vicious and not funny or merely annoying and silly, but there’s a lot of craziness in what they say and do. And because of that, I think it’s generally useless to try to engage them. That’s because there’re not merely confused, or mistaken, or ill informed. They don’t merely have a different opinion. They’re lost in their hate delusion, and they’re going to sustain that delusion for as long as they decide to live in a world of make believe where they are the heroes and LGBT people are the dragons they must destroy for their god. Not all homophobic people are like this, but I think a lot of the extreme cases like Michael Brown are. I don’t think we can hope to change them because they would have to be willing to give up their delusions, and they like their delusions. We can only expose them for the liars and manipulators they are and try to minimize the damage they do.
A few months ago I saw a clip of a conversation he had with Cindy Jacobs and her husband. (Cindy Jacobs is the so-called prophet who claimed the mysterious bird deaths in Arkansas was the result of the repeal of DADT.) Brown told the Jacobs that LGBT people are very sensitive to any kind of criticism and the reason for this is because they are outside the grace of God. I recognized this for the clever mental trick that it was. He gives himself permission to say the meanest, nastiest things about LGBT people, and if they dare complain, then he sees this as proof that he’s right. Anyone with any sense can see this self-serving “logic” for what it is, but he’s chosen to lose himself in his bigotry delusion. And there are just enough fools out there to make that delusion profitable for him. He plays the hero fighting the evil gays, and his followers give him unconditional praise…and money. And if an LGBT person fights back, he plays the victim. If an LGBT person tries to talk with him calmly, he becomes arrogant and pretends anyone who disagrees with him rejects truth. The man is a piece of work.
There was no reasoning with my mother when she was psychotic. In fact her doctor warned us against it. He said you can not beat psychosis with reason. When people have mixed up ideas, it’s only natural for us to want to try to explain to them why they’re wrong, but when a person is psychotic, you’ll only end up frustrating yourself if you try. The doctor advised us to not engage Mother about her delusions whenever possible. An d when it was necessary to say something about them--because we needed her to stop doing something disruptive or dangerous--we weren’t supposed to argue, but state firmly, “I don’t believe that.” “I don’t believe that your nephew Tommy who died three years ago told you to put that tube of toothpaste you’ve not paid for in your purse. Now put it back. If you don’t, you could be arrested and I won’t be able to stop that from happening. Put it back, now.”
My mother couldn’t help it, and she really did hear voices. It’s just that the voices weren’t real. She was a very sweet and gentle person when she was stable and medicated. And most of the time the things she said and did when she was psychotic were simply annoying and silly. And sometimes the things she did were funny. There’s nothing like getting up in the morning and finding three loafs of toast on the table. It can be exhausting when you have to deal with that kind of thing day after day, but sometimes you just had to laugh.
The things Michael Brown and company say and do are often vicious and not funny or merely annoying and silly, but there’s a lot of craziness in what they say and do. And because of that, I think it’s generally useless to try to engage them. That’s because there’re not merely confused, or mistaken, or ill informed. They don’t merely have a different opinion. They’re lost in their hate delusion, and they’re going to sustain that delusion for as long as they decide to live in a world of make believe where they are the heroes and LGBT people are the dragons they must destroy for their god. Not all homophobic people are like this, but I think a lot of the extreme cases like Michael Brown are. I don’t think we can hope to change them because they would have to be willing to give up their delusions, and they like their delusions. We can only expose them for the liars and manipulators they are and try to minimize the damage they do.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Is Michael Brown A Pedophile, Drug Abusing, Counterfeiting Thief From Albania?
Michael Brown admits that very few LGBT people condone predatory sexual behavior, especially against children, so I’m wondering what exactly was his purpose in conflating homosexuality and pedophilia in his blog post JERRY SANDUSKY, GAY ACTIVISTS, AND “CONSENSUAL” PEDERASTY. And why would he subject LGBT heroes and role models of the past to a kind of scrutiny that celebrated and well known heterosexuals aren’t generally subjected to?
Brown talks about Harvey Milk exploring the secret gay life of NYC starting when he was 11, and how he became sexually active at the age of 14. But Brown refuses to even consider what life must have been like for a gay kid going through puberty and adolescence in the 1940s. Would Milk have been interested in the shadowy underworld of quick sex with men if he could have openly admitted to his homosexual attractions and talked about his feelings with family and friends? Would he have elected to have anonymous sex in the bushes of a city park if he had been permitted to date boys from school openly and without shame? Brown also slams Milk for having a 16-year-old boyfriend when he was in his early 30s. What Brown fails to mention is that the 16-year-old ran away and traveled to NYC because it was impossible for him to express and explore his sexuality in his hometown in the south. Milk did not molest the young man. For a time they were in love, and they lived together. And they remained friends even after they broke up. Having a committed relationship with a 16-year-old who took it upon himself to leave home in search of a relationship with a man is hardly the same thing as raping a 12-year-old.
And so what if Walt Whitman admired young men? So what if he wrote poems about their beauty. Did he rape any? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
I wouldn’t care if school kids learned that Oscar Wilde employed the services of teenage male prostitutes if they also learned about the huge number of heterosexual men who employed female prostitutes in England at the time. Educators could have a discussion about how the prostitution problem was the result of prudish Victorian England suppressing and compartmentalizing open expressions of sexuality and how the poor and the marginalized were exploited as a result. And who were these teenage boy prostitutes? Gay boys who were thrown away by their Christian families?
Very few people are saints, and if you start looking for reasons to dismiss and criticize someone, you’ll quickly hit pay dirt. It may be true that very few of our LGBT heroes of the past led chaste lives. But then again very few of our heterosexual heroes led chaste lives. We don’t celebrate them for their misdeeds, and taking isolated incidents out of context isn’t fair.
What if we looked at celebrated heterosexual men of the past in the same way Brown is looking at gay men? John Adams was 29 when he married his wife Abigail who was 17. Edger Allen Poe was 26 when he married his 13-year-old cousin. It is widely believed that Thomas Jefferson had a relationship with Sally Hemings who was his slave, and she may have been as young as 14 when he took her to his bed.
As for Jerry Sandusky, I have no way of getting inside the man’s head, so I have no idea of what his sexual orientation is, but Jerry Sandusky has never identified as a gay man. He has been married to a woman for a number of years, and he claims he’s straight. He’s also a churchgoing Christian. Psychologists tell us that we can’t determine the sexual orientation of a sexual predator who victimizes minors by the sex of his victims. They say that a man can be heterosexual and still have the urge to rape and molest young boys. I don’t pretend to understand how that works, but Sandusky may very well be an example of that pattern. In any event, one could argue that Michael Brown has far more in common with Jerry Sandusky than most gay men, even gay heroes like Walt Whitman, so if we’re going to use Sandusky as an excuse to foment paranoia and distrust of certain individuals and groups, then maybe Michael Brown and those like Michael Brown should be at the top of our watch list.
Brown talks about Harvey Milk exploring the secret gay life of NYC starting when he was 11, and how he became sexually active at the age of 14. But Brown refuses to even consider what life must have been like for a gay kid going through puberty and adolescence in the 1940s. Would Milk have been interested in the shadowy underworld of quick sex with men if he could have openly admitted to his homosexual attractions and talked about his feelings with family and friends? Would he have elected to have anonymous sex in the bushes of a city park if he had been permitted to date boys from school openly and without shame? Brown also slams Milk for having a 16-year-old boyfriend when he was in his early 30s. What Brown fails to mention is that the 16-year-old ran away and traveled to NYC because it was impossible for him to express and explore his sexuality in his hometown in the south. Milk did not molest the young man. For a time they were in love, and they lived together. And they remained friends even after they broke up. Having a committed relationship with a 16-year-old who took it upon himself to leave home in search of a relationship with a man is hardly the same thing as raping a 12-year-old.
And so what if Walt Whitman admired young men? So what if he wrote poems about their beauty. Did he rape any? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
I wouldn’t care if school kids learned that Oscar Wilde employed the services of teenage male prostitutes if they also learned about the huge number of heterosexual men who employed female prostitutes in England at the time. Educators could have a discussion about how the prostitution problem was the result of prudish Victorian England suppressing and compartmentalizing open expressions of sexuality and how the poor and the marginalized were exploited as a result. And who were these teenage boy prostitutes? Gay boys who were thrown away by their Christian families?
Very few people are saints, and if you start looking for reasons to dismiss and criticize someone, you’ll quickly hit pay dirt. It may be true that very few of our LGBT heroes of the past led chaste lives. But then again very few of our heterosexual heroes led chaste lives. We don’t celebrate them for their misdeeds, and taking isolated incidents out of context isn’t fair.
What if we looked at celebrated heterosexual men of the past in the same way Brown is looking at gay men? John Adams was 29 when he married his wife Abigail who was 17. Edger Allen Poe was 26 when he married his 13-year-old cousin. It is widely believed that Thomas Jefferson had a relationship with Sally Hemings who was his slave, and she may have been as young as 14 when he took her to his bed.
As for Jerry Sandusky, I have no way of getting inside the man’s head, so I have no idea of what his sexual orientation is, but Jerry Sandusky has never identified as a gay man. He has been married to a woman for a number of years, and he claims he’s straight. He’s also a churchgoing Christian. Psychologists tell us that we can’t determine the sexual orientation of a sexual predator who victimizes minors by the sex of his victims. They say that a man can be heterosexual and still have the urge to rape and molest young boys. I don’t pretend to understand how that works, but Sandusky may very well be an example of that pattern. In any event, one could argue that Michael Brown has far more in common with Jerry Sandusky than most gay men, even gay heroes like Walt Whitman, so if we’re going to use Sandusky as an excuse to foment paranoia and distrust of certain individuals and groups, then maybe Michael Brown and those like Michael Brown should be at the top of our watch list.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
My Summer With Jay
"Jay only touches me when his friends are around to see it happen, and when we’re alone he talks about his friends a lot, especially Blake. My father paid for this trip, and when I told him that I wanted to bring Jay, he said that I was old enough now to make those kinds of decisions for myself. I appreciated his confidence in me, but when I realized this wasn’t going to be the romantic adventure I thought it was, I wondered if I had actually earned my father’s trust.
After we arrived and settled in at the cottage, Jay casually mentioned that several of his fraternity brothers had rented a cottage not far from ours. He tried to make it sound as if turning the summer into a group trip wasn’t a significant departure from our plans. It broke my heart. We talked about this trip all last spring, and he never said anything about bringing friends. It was supposed to be just the two of us.
I’ve decided to make the best of it. This is a beautiful place, and I know I’m lucky to be here, so I’m not going to act like a spoiled brat and pout the whole time. …but some nights when we go to our separate bedrooms, I cry.
I’m going to break up with Jay when we go back to school in August. I’m also going to tell him that it’s not fair for him to play games with the people in his life. I’ll be nice about it. Of course I was mad when I figured out what was going on, but I still care about him. He needs to grow up is all. If the friends he has now won’t accept him for who he is, then he needs to find new ones who will. And if Blake doesn’t want him, there are plenty of other men who would jump at the chance to be with him.
Maybe some day we can both laugh at what happened here."
Photographer unknown
Models unknown
Little fictional story by Gary Cottle
Monday, June 25, 2012
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Religion Porn
I suppose when I was young I thought pornography was pictures of naked people, plain and simple. Then when I got older I realized that it was a bit more involved than that. I came to know that people disagreed about what porn is. Most said that nudity in paintings wasn’t porn. Many claimed that incidental nudity in feature films wasn’t porn. And some even said that magazines such as Playboy weren’t porn. Those pictures supposedly weren’t simply about sex but also the beauty of the female body.
Porn can be a little hard to figure out sometimes. But I think that even though we often disagree as to what should be considered porn, many of us have a basic understanding of the word. Porn has to be something made by human beings. For example, a tree, no matter how provocatively it grows, no matter how suggestive the limbs are intertwined, can’t be porn. Porn has to be a book, or a film, a poem…something that wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a human maker. And I think most would agree that porn has to be something specifically designed to excite the passions of those who look at it. That isn’t to say everything made by humans that happens to turn us on is porn. A lot of things may turn us on--the lyrics of a song, the way an actress glances back over her shoulder in a scene in a movie--but if something is there for a reason other than to sexually excite us then it’s not porn.
Porn is meant to tap into our basic instincts, bypass rational thought, grab some primitive part of our being and remind us that deep down we have our desires, and we want those desires fulfilled, and it doesn’t matter what the neighbors think, or our families, or our friends. We want what we want, and we want it now. Porn holds a mirror up to the beast within.
For the longest time I thought the only kind of porn was sex porn. As I said, at first I thought it was about nudity. Then I thought it was all about pure lust and animal passions. Then I heard a comedian refer to those clips on the news that show reporters standing out in hurricanes as “weather porn.” Suddenly my understanding of porn grew exponentially. The reporters who stand outside on dark and stormy nights aren’t really relaying any useful information to us…at least not any information that we couldn’t get from the same reporters speaking to us from behind a desk inside a television studio. We don’t need to see someone’s hairpiece blown away as they scream into a microphone to know the storm is bad. But the visual is exciting. There’s something horrifyingly entertaining about it. Those images remind us that we’re animals living in a real world and that we face real dangers every day. At any moment something could fall on our heads and kill us. Remembering that now and then gets our blood up.
I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this, but I think much of what passes for religion could also be called porn. Participants are asked to click off their normal thought processes and go with the flow of their emotions. Some people sway back and forth while in church, cry uncontrollably, speak in tongues, scream out the name of Jesus as they thrash about in fits of religious ecstasy.
If it stopped there, many might say it’s just good, harmless fun. If it was all about being alive in the moment and not trying to understand with our brains, turning away from that urge to conceptualize everything for a few minutes and just live… But sometimes ministers whip their followers up and then lead them toward dark impulses. Human beings tend to be fearful of those who are different. They’re suspicious of the tribe that lives on the other side of the mountain. Outsiders are potential enemies until they have proven themselves to be friends. And many shamelessly tap into that fear in the name of their god.
I have always thought of The Salvation Army as a very sober organization. I’ve known for a long time that it was a Christian organization, but I never pictured their members dancing insanely as they were filled with the Holy Spirit. I thought they went about collecting alms for the poor in a very serious and down to earth way. Even when I learned they threw out toys that were related to the Harry Potter and Twilight books, I still imagined that they went about their business in a very stoic, humorless fashion. I pictured a fleshy, matronly woman dressed in an ample dark skirt, a big lumpy sweater and sensible shoes sorting through the donations and throwing out anything she thought may be too pagan. It would have been my guess that this woman hadn’t shown much enthusiasm for anything since voting for Nixon in 1972. So it came as quite a shock when I learned that a Salvation Army representative from Australia said that LGBT people should die. Even when he was repeatedly given the opportunity to clarify or mollify his position, he refused. LGBT people are other. They are not like the rest of us. They should die. Period. When those who were interviewing him tried to appeal to his humanity, he dug in his heels and said that was his belief and he was sticking to it. Now there is some really nasty, hardcore religion porn.
A lot of people are disturbed by sex porn, and some of it is more than a little scary. Most sex porn is about flashing body parts that are usually covered up and everyday sex acts, but some of it is about force and pain and the degradation of others. But it seems that most of the people who like watching the scary stuff now and then know it’s all pretend. They know it would be horrific to act out the scenarios you see in violent porn, and they know that even the vanilla porn is generally wildly unrealistic fantasy. And most of those who are glued to their TV sets when a big storm comes ashore would never think about deliberately driving into a storm. Most know that it’s foolish of reporters to risk life and limb by standing out in those storms. They get it, even as they indulge themselves.
But do religious fanatics get it? The mythology of the Christian religion contains many fantastic elements--a virgin birth, resurrections, the great flood--but some view it all as absolute fact, and on top of that some have this extreme hostility toward certain groups. A lot of ordinary people indulge their most primitive fears and wrap it up in their religion, people who think of themselves as good people. Some actually consider themselves morally superior because they indulge their fear and hate in the name of their god.
Imagine if sex porn worked that way. Imagine if you weren’t simply allowing yourself to fantasize about having that forbidden or unlikely sexual experience but that you were told to go out and make it happen because your god commands it, and your god will punish you if you don’t make it happen. Imagine if you thought it was your sacred duty to have the babysitter no matter if the babysitter was willing or not. The world would not be a safe place for any of us if it was common for people to think like that. And yet it is common for people to think that it’s okay to hate certain minority groups such as LGBT people so long as they claim it’s part of their religion. And it is common for others who don’t indulge their hate in that way to give a pass to others if they claim their hate is part of their religion.
Hey, those people who give turkeys and hams to poor families on Christmas can’t be all bad, right? Even if they have a few quirky beliefs, they’re doing some good in the world, right? Well, if you’re an LGBT person and they tell you they think you should die, it’s kind of hard to go on seeing them as warm and fuzzy. If you’re being told that you should die by people who call themselves Christian, and it's not a fantasy to them, not a game of make believe, it might be hard to understand why others don’t take that more seriously.
__________________
By the way, there's even religion porn specifically designed for children.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Rob's Terrific Boner
This was an important day for Rob. He had been enjoying horseplay with his buddies since they were little boys, but on this day Rob noticed his body, or a certain part of his body at least, responded in an unexpected way. He hoped that Jimmy didn’t feel his thing pressing into his back, and he was thankful that Jimmy never said anything, but on the other hand, Rob was grateful that the incident, his response, the immense pleasure he felt in being so physically close to his friends, his terrific boner helped clear away all the confusion and guilt. This was the day Rob understood why the Playboy magazines Dave stole from his father bored him, and why he felt agitated by his friends’ excitement when they looked at the magazines. He wasn’t like them. He would never want to be with a woman because that weird, bug-eyed thrill his friends got out of seeing nudie pictures of pretty women he got from being near his friends. Rob finally understood this part of himself. This frightened him. He was terrified of what his friends would think of him if they found out, but it was good to know the truth. It was good to experience the attraction and to appreciate it, take delight in it for what it was. Rob had a big queer hardon for his friends, and he loved it, and he loved them.Photographer unknown
Subjects unknown
Little fictional story by Gary Cottle
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
My Response To Matt Barber’s An Open Letter To Homosexuals
Read Matt Barber's An Open Letter To Homosexuals here.
My Response To Matt Barber’s An Open Letter To Homosexuals
Mr. Barber,
The question as to whether or not there is a god has not been proven either way. Some people believe there is a god, while others do not. Some may point to various reasons as to why they believe what they do, but no one has presented the world with a conclusive argument that settles the issue. So it is ridiculous for you to claim that the theology on which you base your condemnation of homosexuality is objective when the very premise of your theology--there is a god--rests on tenuous ground. But even if it was proven there is a god, that would not necessarily validate your theology. You used the Christian Bible to back up your claim that your condemnation of homosexuality is objective and irrefutable, but whether or not the Christian Bible is the “Word of God” is actually a separate question, and like the god question itself, it is not a settled matter…even among those who identify as Christian. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say there is a god, and let’s say the Christian Bible is “the Word” of that god, there is still the matter of interpretation, and many people who identify as Christian would object to the way you interpret the Bible. Some would even find it abhorrent.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but let’s keep in mind that your opinion is merely your opinion. It is a bit much for you to present yourself as a spokesperson for all of Christendom when the objective fact is you are not. And it is a bit much for you to claim you have perfect and irrefutable understanding of the god you worship--which may or may not be real.
You say you want my tribe to know that Christians do not hate us. Since I would never be so foolish as to lump all Christians in with you, I would never assume that they all hate us. But I am pretty sure that you, and extremists like you, do hate us, despite your protestations of love, for I have listened closely to what you have to say about me and people like me. Even in this letter in which you profess your love, you present a grotesque and distorted picture of my tribe.
It may be true that one in five men in America who identify as gay are HIV positive, but one can be gay, and one can even have gay sex, and never contract HIV. (After all, if 20% of us are HIV positive, that would mean 80% of us--an overwhelming majority--do not.) I grew up among “Bible believing Christians” such as yourself, and I know that a large percentage of them are pretty hefty, much in the same way you yourself are pretty hefty, and we know medical science tells us that being overweight puts a person at greater risk for all sorts of medical conditions such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, but it would be absurd to suggest that being Christian cases obesity and illness. Correlation is not causation. One can be Christian and eat a healthy diet and get plenty of exercise. It’s just that some Christians, like you, do not. And by the same token, you can be gay and refrain from engaging in high risk behaviors that often lead to contracting HIV. Being gay doesn’t cause HIV, and, I believe, the fact that too many gay men are HIV positive suggests that LGBT youth are not given adequate instruction in regards to how to avoid HIV, and that young gay men often act recklessly because young men are generally full of hormones and gay young men have generally not received enough support from family, friends and society at large to instill in them a desire to take care of themselves.
You mentioned some psychological problems like depression and suicide, but just as in regard to HIV, being gay in and of itself doesn’t cause these things. LGBT people may very well be at greater risk of depression and suicide and the like, but I think that comes from the stigma associated with being LGBT, a stigma that people like you encourage and foster with abandon. And even though a number of LGBT people have or have had problems, the fact remains that many of us lead happy and productive lives. And I would point out that having grown up around so-called “Bible believing Christians” such as yourself, I know the smiling, Sunday morning church face doesn’t always accurately reflect the emotional health of conservative Christians. I know many of them are deeply troubled. But I would never be so silly as to claim being a Christian leads to depression and suicide.
Judging by your disclosures, it seems you were quite the hopped up whore in your youth. I’m sorry if your behavior and attitude led to feelings of despair, but it would be a mistake for you to assume that your vapid and misspent youth is comparable to being LGBT. I’m sure many LGBT people, just as many straight people, have made the mistake of dehumanizing their partners and turning an act that can create feelings of intimacy and comfort into something hollow and meaningless, just as I’m sure many LGBT people, along with their straight counterparts, abuse drugs and alcohol. But being LGBT doesn’t in an of itself cause one to use others as you admittedly used women in your youth, and being LGBT doesn’t mean you will necessarily become a lush. The fact that you believe being LGBT necessarily entails becoming the debauched slut that you were in your youth only indicates what a biased fool you’ve become. Rather than loving LGBT people, you can only see them through the eyes of your rigid dogma and your hate.
You insinuated that people of my tribe know deep down that we are unhappy, and you want us to conclude that being LGBT is the cause. Well, many people are unhappy at any given movement for a variety of reasons. That is the human condition. So it is rather slimy of you to use another human being’s vulnerability to try to convince them that your prejudices against them are correct. In my mind that’s an indication of just how vicious your bigotry really is.
As for your claim that homosexuality is unnatural, I beg to differ. Given that homosexuality is common among many other species and that our medical establishment has examined the issue over a period of many decades and concluded that homosexuality in human beings is a normal and expected variant in the spectrum of human sexuality and that it is not a disease or a disorder, I believe that it is quite natural. Just because your understanding of nature is limited, and this limitation confirms your prejudice in your mind, doesn’t mean that you actually understand nature in general or my nature or the nature of those like me. In any event, since when has human beings restricted themselves to what is natural? It could very well be argued that driving in cars, taking antibiotics, and using the computer are all unnatural acts, but not many would take the claim that these things are sinful very seriously.
You said that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled many of the organizations run by your friends as hate groups, and you suggested that this is because the SPLC has determined that mere religious condemnation of homosexuality is hateful. But the real reason SPLC classifies specific organizations as hate groups is because they lie, mislead and attempt to create an unfair negative perception of certain groups--such as LGBT people--in the minds of the public. The impression you give of homosexuals in your open letter to homosexuals and your comments about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s aims only strengthens SPLC’s case against you.
I don’t know if there’s a god or not, and I don’t claim to speak for any god. All I have to go on is my experience, reason and gut instincts, and they all lead me to believe, Mr. Barber, that you are not at all the sort of person I should look to for advice when it comes to ethical, philosophical or spiritual concerns. I find your utter lack of humility in regards to your claims that you know what your god wants and expects of me and people like me to be shameful, arrogant and prideful. And the lies you tell about us… And the way you have devoted so much of your life to denying us basic human rights and respect… It may surprise you to learn that I actually think Charles Manson is a more trustworthy person than you.
If I believed in hell, which I don’t, I might be tempted to conclude that you are really an apostle of hell. If I believed in the devil, which I do not, I might be tempted to conclude that you are really in league with the devil. If I believed in the Antichrist, which I do not, I might be tempted to conclude you were this entity or at least a devotee. If there is a god, I believe you actual do this god a disserve. And even though I’m not sure if Jesus was actually the son of a god, I believe--given that by all accounts he was a man of peace who wanted human beings to live in harmony--that you brutalize his memory on a daily basis.
Since I believe that you have acted out with great hostility and cruelty toward LGBT people, you might think that I want you to be punished or eliminated. Well, I won’t deny that I’m human and that you inspire negative feelings in me, but I suspect that you are not nearly as fulfilled and content as you let on, and I suspect that if you really were a happy person you wouldn’t devote so much of your life to causing trouble as you attempt to garner political power for nefarious reasons, so I’m going to hope that you, Mr. Barber, find happiness and joy. I hope you find so much of it that you forget your war against my tribe. And if there is a heaven, I hope you will be there regardless of how you conduct yourself in life or what you believe or claim to believe, and that’s because if there is a god, I would like to believe that god is not a vengeful, cruel god.
Sincerely,
Gary Cottle
My Response To Matt Barber’s An Open Letter To Homosexuals
Mr. Barber,
The question as to whether or not there is a god has not been proven either way. Some people believe there is a god, while others do not. Some may point to various reasons as to why they believe what they do, but no one has presented the world with a conclusive argument that settles the issue. So it is ridiculous for you to claim that the theology on which you base your condemnation of homosexuality is objective when the very premise of your theology--there is a god--rests on tenuous ground. But even if it was proven there is a god, that would not necessarily validate your theology. You used the Christian Bible to back up your claim that your condemnation of homosexuality is objective and irrefutable, but whether or not the Christian Bible is the “Word of God” is actually a separate question, and like the god question itself, it is not a settled matter…even among those who identify as Christian. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say there is a god, and let’s say the Christian Bible is “the Word” of that god, there is still the matter of interpretation, and many people who identify as Christian would object to the way you interpret the Bible. Some would even find it abhorrent.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but let’s keep in mind that your opinion is merely your opinion. It is a bit much for you to present yourself as a spokesperson for all of Christendom when the objective fact is you are not. And it is a bit much for you to claim you have perfect and irrefutable understanding of the god you worship--which may or may not be real.
You say you want my tribe to know that Christians do not hate us. Since I would never be so foolish as to lump all Christians in with you, I would never assume that they all hate us. But I am pretty sure that you, and extremists like you, do hate us, despite your protestations of love, for I have listened closely to what you have to say about me and people like me. Even in this letter in which you profess your love, you present a grotesque and distorted picture of my tribe.
It may be true that one in five men in America who identify as gay are HIV positive, but one can be gay, and one can even have gay sex, and never contract HIV. (After all, if 20% of us are HIV positive, that would mean 80% of us--an overwhelming majority--do not.) I grew up among “Bible believing Christians” such as yourself, and I know that a large percentage of them are pretty hefty, much in the same way you yourself are pretty hefty, and we know medical science tells us that being overweight puts a person at greater risk for all sorts of medical conditions such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, but it would be absurd to suggest that being Christian cases obesity and illness. Correlation is not causation. One can be Christian and eat a healthy diet and get plenty of exercise. It’s just that some Christians, like you, do not. And by the same token, you can be gay and refrain from engaging in high risk behaviors that often lead to contracting HIV. Being gay doesn’t cause HIV, and, I believe, the fact that too many gay men are HIV positive suggests that LGBT youth are not given adequate instruction in regards to how to avoid HIV, and that young gay men often act recklessly because young men are generally full of hormones and gay young men have generally not received enough support from family, friends and society at large to instill in them a desire to take care of themselves.
You mentioned some psychological problems like depression and suicide, but just as in regard to HIV, being gay in and of itself doesn’t cause these things. LGBT people may very well be at greater risk of depression and suicide and the like, but I think that comes from the stigma associated with being LGBT, a stigma that people like you encourage and foster with abandon. And even though a number of LGBT people have or have had problems, the fact remains that many of us lead happy and productive lives. And I would point out that having grown up around so-called “Bible believing Christians” such as yourself, I know the smiling, Sunday morning church face doesn’t always accurately reflect the emotional health of conservative Christians. I know many of them are deeply troubled. But I would never be so silly as to claim being a Christian leads to depression and suicide.
Judging by your disclosures, it seems you were quite the hopped up whore in your youth. I’m sorry if your behavior and attitude led to feelings of despair, but it would be a mistake for you to assume that your vapid and misspent youth is comparable to being LGBT. I’m sure many LGBT people, just as many straight people, have made the mistake of dehumanizing their partners and turning an act that can create feelings of intimacy and comfort into something hollow and meaningless, just as I’m sure many LGBT people, along with their straight counterparts, abuse drugs and alcohol. But being LGBT doesn’t in an of itself cause one to use others as you admittedly used women in your youth, and being LGBT doesn’t mean you will necessarily become a lush. The fact that you believe being LGBT necessarily entails becoming the debauched slut that you were in your youth only indicates what a biased fool you’ve become. Rather than loving LGBT people, you can only see them through the eyes of your rigid dogma and your hate.
You insinuated that people of my tribe know deep down that we are unhappy, and you want us to conclude that being LGBT is the cause. Well, many people are unhappy at any given movement for a variety of reasons. That is the human condition. So it is rather slimy of you to use another human being’s vulnerability to try to convince them that your prejudices against them are correct. In my mind that’s an indication of just how vicious your bigotry really is.
As for your claim that homosexuality is unnatural, I beg to differ. Given that homosexuality is common among many other species and that our medical establishment has examined the issue over a period of many decades and concluded that homosexuality in human beings is a normal and expected variant in the spectrum of human sexuality and that it is not a disease or a disorder, I believe that it is quite natural. Just because your understanding of nature is limited, and this limitation confirms your prejudice in your mind, doesn’t mean that you actually understand nature in general or my nature or the nature of those like me. In any event, since when has human beings restricted themselves to what is natural? It could very well be argued that driving in cars, taking antibiotics, and using the computer are all unnatural acts, but not many would take the claim that these things are sinful very seriously.
You said that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled many of the organizations run by your friends as hate groups, and you suggested that this is because the SPLC has determined that mere religious condemnation of homosexuality is hateful. But the real reason SPLC classifies specific organizations as hate groups is because they lie, mislead and attempt to create an unfair negative perception of certain groups--such as LGBT people--in the minds of the public. The impression you give of homosexuals in your open letter to homosexuals and your comments about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s aims only strengthens SPLC’s case against you.
I don’t know if there’s a god or not, and I don’t claim to speak for any god. All I have to go on is my experience, reason and gut instincts, and they all lead me to believe, Mr. Barber, that you are not at all the sort of person I should look to for advice when it comes to ethical, philosophical or spiritual concerns. I find your utter lack of humility in regards to your claims that you know what your god wants and expects of me and people like me to be shameful, arrogant and prideful. And the lies you tell about us… And the way you have devoted so much of your life to denying us basic human rights and respect… It may surprise you to learn that I actually think Charles Manson is a more trustworthy person than you.
If I believed in hell, which I don’t, I might be tempted to conclude that you are really an apostle of hell. If I believed in the devil, which I do not, I might be tempted to conclude that you are really in league with the devil. If I believed in the Antichrist, which I do not, I might be tempted to conclude you were this entity or at least a devotee. If there is a god, I believe you actual do this god a disserve. And even though I’m not sure if Jesus was actually the son of a god, I believe--given that by all accounts he was a man of peace who wanted human beings to live in harmony--that you brutalize his memory on a daily basis.
Since I believe that you have acted out with great hostility and cruelty toward LGBT people, you might think that I want you to be punished or eliminated. Well, I won’t deny that I’m human and that you inspire negative feelings in me, but I suspect that you are not nearly as fulfilled and content as you let on, and I suspect that if you really were a happy person you wouldn’t devote so much of your life to causing trouble as you attempt to garner political power for nefarious reasons, so I’m going to hope that you, Mr. Barber, find happiness and joy. I hope you find so much of it that you forget your war against my tribe. And if there is a heaven, I hope you will be there regardless of how you conduct yourself in life or what you believe or claim to believe, and that’s because if there is a god, I would like to believe that god is not a vengeful, cruel god.
Sincerely,
Gary Cottle
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Photographer and model unknown
Stroy by Gary Cottle
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
The idea that homosexuality is a sin is pernicious and vile and wholly without merit or excuse.
As we all know, the Christianists have been screaming that the advance of LGBT rights is a threat to their religious freedom. People like Maggie Gallagher claim that to call them bigots is to attack their religion. Well, I respect religious liberty, and I respect the right of individuals to live as they so choose. But the rights of others to live as they see fit and believe what they want doesn’t negate my right to speak my mind. And I make a distinction between someone who chooses for themselves to marry someone of the opposite sex when they’re primarily attracted to people of the same sex and those who promote the idea that homosexuality is a sin. Those who believe that are allowed to believe it, and they’re allowed to express their view, but I’m allowed to object, and I do. I think that is a very destructive and dangerous idea. That idea has hurt me and it’s hurt a lot of other people. And I’m not prepared to give the "gay is a sin" crowd a pat on the head and let it go even if some seem to be nice people. I don’t buy the idea that they’re just living their truth and following their path. They might be good people in many respects, but they’re out there selling the idea that loving someone of the same sex is wrong and that it can never be as good as loving someone of the opposite sex, and I believe that idea is pernicious and vile and wholly without merit or excuse. That’s my path, and that’s my truth. I don’t claim to know everything, and I certainly don’t claim to know what any god wants, but that’s the way I see it.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Newsflash from the 30th century: There is life and sex after death, scientists say
Thanks to a number of breakthroughs in the last ten centuries, scientists are now sure that our consciousness survives death and that we live on in a kind of perpetual lucid dream state. They say that since all conflict has been resolved, the dead create for themselves an ever changing world that they find blissful and exhilarating. They claim the dead visit one another in their dreams and that death is not lonely. They also claim that the dead experience vivid wet dreams that reflect their wildest fantasies.
After death, you might hike in the Alps in the morning, spend your afternoon sunbathing on a Caribbean beach with your best friend from grade school, dine with your favorite aunt in a Parisian restaurant, and share your evening with an adoring and attentive young man who looks remarkably like Taylor Lautner in a remote cabin in the Berkshires.
After death, you might hike in the Alps in the morning, spend your afternoon sunbathing on a Caribbean beach with your best friend from grade school, dine with your favorite aunt in a Parisian restaurant, and share your evening with an adoring and attentive young man who looks remarkably like Taylor Lautner in a remote cabin in the Berkshires.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Handyman
Photographer and model unknown
Little story by Gary Cottle
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Pride In A Small Town
"It's June and we're celebrating Pride."
"Why?"
"Because I'm gay. There won't be any parades for me in this little town for a very long time, but I wanted you to know, and I wanted you to celebrate with me because you're my best friend."
Photographer and models unknown
Little story by Gary Cottle
Friday, June 8, 2012
Second Stonewall
Back when I was in high school, I saw The World According To Garp on HBO. In fact I saw it a number of times. I kept watching it every time I’d come across it. I couldn’t get enough of it. It may have been that locker room scene early in the film that drew me in. Seeing the naked butts of all those athletic young men really fired up my teenage libido. (Still does, actually.) Then the coach came in and said, “Gay wrestlers, no beating the meat before the meet,” or something like that. His casual reference to both homosexuality and masturbation got my attention. And then there was that boy Garp talked to, that dreamy, dark-haired boy with the soft, sweet voice… We only caught a glimpse of him, and he spoke only a few words, but that was enough for me; I was in love.
The story seemed quite epic because we were introduced to Garp as an infant, we watched him grow up, we watched him fall in love, get married, start a family, and then we saw him die. I was fascinated by every minute of it, and so much of the story dealt with outsiders and people who didn’t quite fit in--I could relate--but it was the way Garp died that seemed especially poignant to me. Through a series of coincidences and random events, Garp became the enemy in the eyes of a woman he grew up with, Pooh. Garp had no idea that Pooh hated him so much. He, in fact, had done nothing to deliberately incur Pooh’s violent hostility, and he seemed utterly bewildered when she shot him.
The story made it clear to me that if you stand up in this world, you’re going to make enemies...no matter if you intend to or not, and no matter if you like it or not. And sometimes those enemies will do you in. Life is an adventure, a marvelous mystery, but it’s not always fair. You don’t always get what you deserve, or what you expect, or what you hoped for or planned for.
Garp has been on my mind a lot lately. I thought of him when North Carolinians passed an anti-gay amendment to their state constitution. I thought of him when I learned that a pastor advocated the physical abuse of toddlers who don’t conform to gender expectations. I thought of him when another pastor advocated that people like me should be put in death camps, and another said he thought the government should kill us, and another admitted he would like us all to be dead. I also thought of Garp when I learned politically well connected Tony Perkins--who, despite being president of a hate group, is regularly invited to share his bigoted opinions about us by major news outlets--gave an award to still yet another hateful pastor who compared us to murderers and called us maggots. Perkins gave the man an award…an award.
I’ve known for a very long time people hate us, so I wasn’t shocked when I found out Matthew Shepard had been murdered by homophobic thugs. Saddened, yes. Of course I was saddened, heartbroken even, but not shocked. I was, however, shocked when his funeral was picketed. I’d never heard of anyone picketing a funeral, least of all someone who claims to be a minister. And I found it especially troubling when so few Christians spoke out against it. In fact many began using Fred Phelps’ outrageous stunts to claim their own homophobic rhetoric is moderate. Now more Christian ministers are catching up with Phelps, and even though we have seen some protests, it’s hardly commensurate with the level of hate being directed at us. And one of the offending pastors actually got an award. How insane is that?
Yes, I know that we’ve gotten some good news lately: President Obama declared he supports marriage equality--but he stopped short of stating he believes we have a constitutional right to marry--the Ninth Circuit refused an en banc reconsideration of their Prop 8 ruling, and DOMA was declared to be unconstitutional. But all that good news is more of an unfulfilled promise than something we actually have in our hands. What if Mitt Romney is our next president? What if the Supreme Court decides against us? What if all we’re left with is one major political party that gives us lukewarm support, another that deliberately works against us, and the well organized, well funded homophobic Christianist hate machine?
The recent CNN/ORC poll that shows 34% of Americans still believe that homosexuals can change their orientation is very troubling because that number has been fairly steady for five years. I believe that most of the people in this intransigent camp are religious extremists, and they simply aren’t interested in the truth. We have made great strides in the last 40 years, but it seems the majority still aren’t prepared to stand up and fight for us. And the opposition… They’re led by people who claim we’re sex maniacs who want to turn kids gay, and that we’re incapable of love, that we lead lives of depravity and that we die before we reach middle age. They claim we’re out to destroy the family and the country and that God will punish America if LGBT people are treated with anything other than disdain. That was the message of Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, to North Carolina last month when they voted on their hate the gays constitutional amendment. She didn’t even offer an ounce of compassion or understanding for the LGBT citizens of her state. She talked about us as if we were totally other, not even human, and it seemed she hoped the amendment would get rid of us like a great big gay bug bomb. She warned that God may stop blessing North Carolina and America if the voters didn’t set off that bomb. And she is none other than the daughter of the most famous Christian pastor in America.
I know that young people are far less likely to go along with the homophobia of their elders, but somehow I doubt we can count on all of them. I suspect a large percentage--maybe not the majority, but a sizable number--will adopt the irrational fears and hatred that have been pushed on them all of their lives. I suspect that these young people will eventually take the helm of the homophobic Christianist hate machine and soldier on. So what if we’ve hit a stone wall? What if reason and compassion and our shared humanity have taken us just about as far as they’re going to take us?
We have seen a certain pattern in Western Civilization. From the beginning extremists have persecuted demonized minorities while most have stood by and done nothing: the killing of the so-called heretics, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the burning of women accused of being witches, the subjugation of women, slavery, the Holocaust, the oppression of sexual minorities… So I’m afraid the excessive irrational loathing of LGBT people is something that could, if we’re not very careful, progress toward wholesale slaughter. It’s happened before. It’s likely to happen again. And I don’t want to be among the next group who is slated for extermination.
Despite all the warning signs and the bloody history of our species, it seems many don’t want to take the extremists who are against us seriously. I hear a lot of comments about how it’s only a matter of time before we achieve equality, and how eventually all the haters will take a dirt nap and that’ll be the end of the culture wars. But bigotry has a way of sustaining itself, and since we’re always going to be in the minority, our rights and wellbeing probably will never be a priority in our society.
As most of my friends know, I have severe social phobia, and a great deal of it is rooted in the homophobia I’ve encountered. I’ve never been quite sure of who I could count on, and it has just been easier to retreat than to face possible abuse and rejection. But I’m older now, and I know I’m not going to be around forever. So in my own quiet way, I want to stand up for myself and people like me. I can’t wait for the world to grow up. And if some crazy person comes along and blows me away, then so be it. If I never speak out, then the crazies will have won anyway.
By and large, LGBT people are good and decent people. We do not deserve to be treated like second class citizens. We shouldn’t have to plead and beg fellow Americans for our rights, even if we’re never any more popular than we are right now, or even if we’re never better understood than we are right now. It is in America’s best interest to give us our due because the people who would deny us would deny just about anybody if the notion came to them. No one can count on their compassion and rationality. They’re prepared to hold onto their fears and misconceptions no matter what anyone says. They define themselves by those they hate, and they call it their religion. Standing up to them for ourselves is to stand for a principle that will drive humanity forward. We are worth it. LGBT people are worth it. The whole of humanity is worth it. We all deserve to live in a society founded on mutual respect as apposed to fear and ignorance.
The story seemed quite epic because we were introduced to Garp as an infant, we watched him grow up, we watched him fall in love, get married, start a family, and then we saw him die. I was fascinated by every minute of it, and so much of the story dealt with outsiders and people who didn’t quite fit in--I could relate--but it was the way Garp died that seemed especially poignant to me. Through a series of coincidences and random events, Garp became the enemy in the eyes of a woman he grew up with, Pooh. Garp had no idea that Pooh hated him so much. He, in fact, had done nothing to deliberately incur Pooh’s violent hostility, and he seemed utterly bewildered when she shot him.
The story made it clear to me that if you stand up in this world, you’re going to make enemies...no matter if you intend to or not, and no matter if you like it or not. And sometimes those enemies will do you in. Life is an adventure, a marvelous mystery, but it’s not always fair. You don’t always get what you deserve, or what you expect, or what you hoped for or planned for.
Garp has been on my mind a lot lately. I thought of him when North Carolinians passed an anti-gay amendment to their state constitution. I thought of him when I learned that a pastor advocated the physical abuse of toddlers who don’t conform to gender expectations. I thought of him when another pastor advocated that people like me should be put in death camps, and another said he thought the government should kill us, and another admitted he would like us all to be dead. I also thought of Garp when I learned politically well connected Tony Perkins--who, despite being president of a hate group, is regularly invited to share his bigoted opinions about us by major news outlets--gave an award to still yet another hateful pastor who compared us to murderers and called us maggots. Perkins gave the man an award…an award.
I’ve known for a very long time people hate us, so I wasn’t shocked when I found out Matthew Shepard had been murdered by homophobic thugs. Saddened, yes. Of course I was saddened, heartbroken even, but not shocked. I was, however, shocked when his funeral was picketed. I’d never heard of anyone picketing a funeral, least of all someone who claims to be a minister. And I found it especially troubling when so few Christians spoke out against it. In fact many began using Fred Phelps’ outrageous stunts to claim their own homophobic rhetoric is moderate. Now more Christian ministers are catching up with Phelps, and even though we have seen some protests, it’s hardly commensurate with the level of hate being directed at us. And one of the offending pastors actually got an award. How insane is that?
Yes, I know that we’ve gotten some good news lately: President Obama declared he supports marriage equality--but he stopped short of stating he believes we have a constitutional right to marry--the Ninth Circuit refused an en banc reconsideration of their Prop 8 ruling, and DOMA was declared to be unconstitutional. But all that good news is more of an unfulfilled promise than something we actually have in our hands. What if Mitt Romney is our next president? What if the Supreme Court decides against us? What if all we’re left with is one major political party that gives us lukewarm support, another that deliberately works against us, and the well organized, well funded homophobic Christianist hate machine?
The recent CNN/ORC poll that shows 34% of Americans still believe that homosexuals can change their orientation is very troubling because that number has been fairly steady for five years. I believe that most of the people in this intransigent camp are religious extremists, and they simply aren’t interested in the truth. We have made great strides in the last 40 years, but it seems the majority still aren’t prepared to stand up and fight for us. And the opposition… They’re led by people who claim we’re sex maniacs who want to turn kids gay, and that we’re incapable of love, that we lead lives of depravity and that we die before we reach middle age. They claim we’re out to destroy the family and the country and that God will punish America if LGBT people are treated with anything other than disdain. That was the message of Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, to North Carolina last month when they voted on their hate the gays constitutional amendment. She didn’t even offer an ounce of compassion or understanding for the LGBT citizens of her state. She talked about us as if we were totally other, not even human, and it seemed she hoped the amendment would get rid of us like a great big gay bug bomb. She warned that God may stop blessing North Carolina and America if the voters didn’t set off that bomb. And she is none other than the daughter of the most famous Christian pastor in America.
I know that young people are far less likely to go along with the homophobia of their elders, but somehow I doubt we can count on all of them. I suspect a large percentage--maybe not the majority, but a sizable number--will adopt the irrational fears and hatred that have been pushed on them all of their lives. I suspect that these young people will eventually take the helm of the homophobic Christianist hate machine and soldier on. So what if we’ve hit a stone wall? What if reason and compassion and our shared humanity have taken us just about as far as they’re going to take us?
We have seen a certain pattern in Western Civilization. From the beginning extremists have persecuted demonized minorities while most have stood by and done nothing: the killing of the so-called heretics, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the burning of women accused of being witches, the subjugation of women, slavery, the Holocaust, the oppression of sexual minorities… So I’m afraid the excessive irrational loathing of LGBT people is something that could, if we’re not very careful, progress toward wholesale slaughter. It’s happened before. It’s likely to happen again. And I don’t want to be among the next group who is slated for extermination.
Despite all the warning signs and the bloody history of our species, it seems many don’t want to take the extremists who are against us seriously. I hear a lot of comments about how it’s only a matter of time before we achieve equality, and how eventually all the haters will take a dirt nap and that’ll be the end of the culture wars. But bigotry has a way of sustaining itself, and since we’re always going to be in the minority, our rights and wellbeing probably will never be a priority in our society.
As most of my friends know, I have severe social phobia, and a great deal of it is rooted in the homophobia I’ve encountered. I’ve never been quite sure of who I could count on, and it has just been easier to retreat than to face possible abuse and rejection. But I’m older now, and I know I’m not going to be around forever. So in my own quiet way, I want to stand up for myself and people like me. I can’t wait for the world to grow up. And if some crazy person comes along and blows me away, then so be it. If I never speak out, then the crazies will have won anyway.
By and large, LGBT people are good and decent people. We do not deserve to be treated like second class citizens. We shouldn’t have to plead and beg fellow Americans for our rights, even if we’re never any more popular than we are right now, or even if we’re never better understood than we are right now. It is in America’s best interest to give us our due because the people who would deny us would deny just about anybody if the notion came to them. No one can count on their compassion and rationality. They’re prepared to hold onto their fears and misconceptions no matter what anyone says. They define themselves by those they hate, and they call it their religion. Standing up to them for ourselves is to stand for a principle that will drive humanity forward. We are worth it. LGBT people are worth it. The whole of humanity is worth it. We all deserve to live in a society founded on mutual respect as apposed to fear and ignorance.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Me objecting to the prudery, arrogance, and homophobia of someone who thinks Pride Parades are “indecent” and “lewd”.
C.D.: This is essentially why I so often don't get along with GLBT people: they have polarized from the religious right so far that they have wound up in a totally morally ambiguous territory.
Gary Cottle: I find this statement to be very troubling.
C.D.: "Gary, excuse me if the grammatically ambiguous phrasing there is what is throwing you off. If you read on, I state that I am gay and accepting of homosexual relations given the right ethical conditions. Given that, you should be able to see that I was [not?] intending to make a blanket statement about GLBT people. I was referring to a common subset among us."
Gary Cottle: There isn't anything throwing me off, [C.D.]. I found your comment to be offensive, and your comment here does nothing to restore my assessment of you. Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean that you can’t be an intolerant prig.
Like so many fundamentalist asshats, you don't seem to make a distinction between your opinion and fact. So let me set a few things straight. You don’t get to decide for the rest of us what is “the right ethical conditions” for anything. You don’t get to decide for the rest of us what is decent, and you don’t get to decide for the rest of us the definition of prudishness. You may offer your opinion, but that’s all. And if someone disagrees with you, that doesn’t mean they’re immoral, amoral, morally ambiguous, or lacking a “strong rational faculty.” They may see something you don’t. They may have experienced something you haven’t. They may have different values, deferent beliefs.
And before you launch into your speech about the “chasm of ethics and worldview” that separate us, let me say that I am merely offering you my opinions. I don’t pretend to have everything figured out. I don’t know if there’s a god or not. And I’m not interested in accepting anyone’s dogma, least of all yours. If you want to call this moral ambiguity, then so be it. But I see value in reminding myself that my opinions are only my opinions. I see value in not being very strict in judging others because I know I don’t have all the answers, and I know I don’t know what’s going on in the lives of others or exactly why others do what they do. I try to stand up and speak out when I think someone is being harmed, but I know I have my blind spots and limitations. I also know what it’s like to be judged by self-righteous people who don’t understand me.
Unlike some people, I don’t expect to walk out my front door and only see things that I understand and agree with. And I certainly don’t expect all gay people to be like me. I know that they’re all over the map in regards to beliefs, temperament, attitude…just like straight people.
I figured out I was gay when I was 11 years old, but I couldn’t tell anyone until I went away to college seven years later. And one of the first gay people I met at college was a boy named Nathan. He’s the first boy I had sex with in college. Nathan is also the one who took me to a gay bar for the first time in my life. He’s the first boy I ever danced with. And one Saturday afternoon, Nathan led me into a parking garage, took me to the top floor and we fooled around right there in that public place. Other people have judged me when I’ve told them this story, and I lived through it, so if you want to judge me, go ahead. I really don’t care. It’s not something I would repeat. It’s not something I would generally recommend. I realize that what we did was foolish and thoughtless. We could have been caught. We could have been arrested. Thugs could have used our indiscretion as an excuse to physically attack us. And I would have been mortified if some sweet little old lady had seen us. But we weren’t caught, and on that day, the experience was liberating. After hiding and living in fear all those years, I was finally, at long last doing it with a boy, and we were doing it in a public place.
Nathan and I didn’t become boyfriends, and the sex soon ended, but we were very close friends for years. Nathan was always much more adventurous than I was. And he had numerous sex partners. He was one of those people who could step out for a breath of fresh air and come back an hour later and tell you he just did it with the guy who mows the grass. Nathan went around the world and slept with different guys all along the way. Those stories you hear about gay men who have sex with hundreds of partners…Nathan was one of them. If Nathan had been in a Gay Pride Parade, he would have worn a Speedo and simulated sex acts with his fellow revelers. But anyone who thinks Nathan was all about sex would be mistaken. He was a kindhearted, witty, funny, intelligent young man who spoke French fluently, loved art, travel, and he was someone who had survived a great deal of abuse and rejection because he was one of those boys who was obviously different from a very early age. He taught me a lot about following your own light regardless of what others think. He taught me a lot about courage and self-acceptance.
When he was about 24, he met a man and fell in love. He’s been in a monogamous relationship with him ever since. He also became an Episcopal priest. We lost contact for a long time, but a couple of years ago, he called me up and we talked for several hours. We talked about how his life had changed so dramatically. He said that when he found his partner, he knew he was the person he wanted to be with and playing around with other men just didn’t interest him anymore. I asked him if he regretted his youthful escapades, and he said he didn’t. And when I asked him why he felt compelled to sleep with all those guys all over the world, he basically said that he was finding his way.
I understand this and accept it. I was finding my own way when I fooled around with Nathan in the parking garage when we were young. And all these years later, I’m still finding my way.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
I’m Not Impressed By Prudery
Back when I started middle school the boys I had grown up with went through a startling transformation. The innocent little guys I had known for years suddenly seemed to have an edge to them. They were more aggressive, they used words that used to be forbidden, and many of them talked about sex in the most graphic detail imaginable. During those years I was regularly exposed to comments about dicks, pussies, fucking, sucking, cum eating and pussy licking. I eventually got over my shock and the salty comments became ordinary. But I never joined in, and I suppose some of the boys thought I was something of a goody-goody. However, that was far from true. I had went through the change just like the other boys. I was having all kinds of “dirty” thoughts, too. Only I was having them about other boys, not girls. But I couldn’t admit to this. It just wasn’t allowed. I was sure that my existence would become a living hell if I divulged any of my sexual thoughts. However, I couldn’t bring myself to pretend to like girls, so I simply remained silent while the boys around me talked like proverbial sailors.
By the time I got to high school, I was almost ready to explode. The straight guys I knew felt free to talk about sex. Some of them were having sex. And a few had girlfriends. In one way or another, they were expressing an interest in the opposite sex openly, and this was accepted. By then I had been having sexual feelings and romantic longings for years, and, unlike my straight peers, I had kept it all bottled up. And when I was about 15 or 16, I began to have a recurring dream. In this dream I went to the restroom of the Montgomery Ward store in nearby Beckley, West Virginia. I went into one of the stalls as was my habit because I was too shy to expose myself at the urinals, and while I was relieving myself, a man broke through the stall door, pushed me to the floor and raped me. It was frightening at first, but eventually I relaxed and stopped fighting this man, and the experience became blissful.
It disturbed me that in my dream I enjoyed being violated, but nevertheless, I had that dream over and over again for years. The dream finally faded away when I started college. I started seeing a therapist during my freshman year, and eventually I told her about the dream. Even though I hadn’t had the dream in a while, it still worried me. We talked about it, and in a short while the pieces fell into place. Even though I knew I was gay from the age of 11 and enjoyed a rather rich sexual fantasy life, the circumstances in which I found myself demanded that I do everything in my power to prevent anyone from knowing about that fantasy life. And there was a part of me that simply didn’t want to hide my thoughts and fantasies about men. It took so much effort. It’s bad enough to be a horny teenager who isn’t getting any, but on top of that, I had to pretend I wasn’t interested. That was enough to almost drive me over the edge. So the rapist in my dreams wasn’t a real rapist at all; he was a liberator. He was someone who knew what I wanted despite my subterfuge, and he gave it to me even though I couldn’t admit I wanted it. He was there to break through my defenses so that I could experience the freedom of doing it on a dirty restroom floor, a public place, a place where one of those men I was so afraid of, one of those disapproving men who didn’t like boys like me could walk right in at any moment and see me being used by another man and liking it. The dream ripped apart my prim, sexless persona and reminded me that I wasn’t just a gay boy, I was, at least in part, a whore, an animal, a wolf.
When I got to college, I met gay guys who took delight in their inner wolves just like those smutty 12-year-old boys I used to know. It was great that I finally got laid in college, but simply being able to talk about all of those forbidden thoughts was just as great, and often even more fun than actually doing it. Ah, to be able to sit somewhere on campus with a friend, point out some cute boy, and admit that I wanted to bend him over a table, rip down his pants and shove my face into the crack of his behind. And then to laugh at how crazy that is, how wild…
There is a part of us that is wild. We are part of nature, and sex in nature is rarely as romantic and tender as it is so often depicted in the movies. And although most of us have our romantic, tender feelings, too, including gay men of course, there is that primitive part of us, and many of us are aware of it. Many of us know how to have fun with it.
There are a lot of gay men who are accepting of their inner wolves. Many allow themselves to talk about their wolfish desires with their gay friends, just like straight guys often do with their buddies. Some allow their wolves to come out from time to time and do their thing. And a few let the wolf run free.
But there are some gay men who pride themselves on how clipped and circumspect they are. It’s true that some may simply have a lower libido, or perhaps their desire for romance simply overwhelms their desire for raw sex. That’s fine. Some probably would just rather not talk about it freely and openly, and that’s fine, too. But, it annoys me when I hear gay men trying to place arbitrary limits on not just themselves but on other gay men. Just like the Christianists who demand that sex is only for heterosexual married couples and we should all strive to be modest in our day to day lives, there are gay men who insist that sex is only for those in committed relationships, and sexy talk, dress and horseplay should be avoided. Some of them give themselves all kinds of brownie points for not being like those gay man who don’t play by their rules. They’re so sure they’re better because they’re right and properly offended by “smut”.
Well, my sex life has never been too adventurous, I’ve never had a thing for leather, and I’m just as modest about my own body as I was back when I was a teenager and afraid to flash my willie in the men’s room, but I can remember all too well the horrific pain of having to pretend I didn’t have sexual desires. It was very much like being in prison, and I’ve never fully recovered from that. I spent 7 of my formative years denying who I really am, and the terror and the shame and the loneliness and isolation that I endured day after day after day ruined me. So now I feel hostility toward anyone who would try to shame me because I accept the fact that there’s a part of me that isn’t wholesome, safe and sanctified in the eyes of the self-appointed guardians of sexual morality. And I have very little desire to banish anyone to the hell that was my teenage years just because some think how they express themselves sexually is dirty or gross.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
I crushed on the cute, boyish, nerdy guys.
I had a crush on both of these guys back in the 80's. There were guys who I thought were sexy and hot, like Tom Cruise and Matt Dillon, but then there was this group of guys who never quite made it as sex symbols--Jonathan Silverman, Andrew McCarthy, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Dempsey... (I guess Patrick became something of a sex symbol when he got older.) They were all boyishly cute, not very imposing or traditionally masculine. There was something soft and gentle about them, and I adored them. The guys who were generally thought of as hunks never seemed quite real to me, but I could picture myself spending time with these cute, sweet boys, and I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I imagined finding a boy like this and spending my life with him. That didn't happen, and I think that's mainly because I was too screwed up to really know what I wanted, and I also didn't believe in myself. I didn't think anyone would want me, least of all someone I thought was cute and sweet.
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