In an alternate universe, I am about to graduate from high school, and this will be my prom date.

In an alternate universe, I am about to graduate from high school, and this will be my prom date. We’ll go in his older brother’s pickup, and we’ll stay out all night talking about our plans for the future. By the time the morning sun illuminates the rising fog, we will have made a great many important decisions. We’re going to hike the Appalachian Trail in the summer, we’ll go to college, we’ll travel, become school teachers, get married, buy a nice little house and when we’re about 25 or so, we’ll think about having kids of our own.

Every time I kiss him, I'll remember the way he looked in his white suit the night we decided to spend the rest of our lives together.

Waiting For The Inevitable

Under The Volcano (1984) is based on the highly acclaimed novel of the same name by Malcolm Lowry. Albert Finney played the lead character Geoffrey Firmin. Geoffrey was a man of some means who used to have a successful career as an English diplomat. He was once close to his half-brother Hugh, played by Anthony Andrews. And he used to be married to a beautiful woman named Yvonne, played by Jacqueline Bisset.

When the story opens, we find Geoffrey living in a small village in Mexico on the eve of WWII. He had been working there as a diplomat, but he quit. Geoffrey is aware that the world is about to be plunged into chaos despite all the best efforts of people such as himself, so he has given up. The turmoil that looms over Europe, much like the volcano that looms over the village, reflects the turmoil in Geoffrey’s personal life. At some point in the recent past, Geoffrey discovered that his wife Yvonne and his half-brother Hugh were having an affair, and although it seems to have only been short-lived and that Yvonne and Geoffrey were truly in love, Geoffrey couldn’t bring himself to forgive them, so he and Yvonne divorced, and Hugh went off to fight the Fascists in Spain. But Hugh returns, followed by Yvonne as the Mexican villagers celebrate the Day of the Dead. There seems to be a chance for the three to make peace with what happened and to become a family again, but even though Geoffrey wants this more than anything, he has lost his faith and he has become a hopeless alcoholic. Geoffrey no longer believes in happy endings. He no longer believes that hard work or the best intentions pay off. Geoffrey has come to believe that we all live under the volcano and it’s only a matter of time before we’ll be destroyed. So he drinks himself into a stupor, behaves erratically, and at the end of the film, he is killed by thuggish Nazi sympathizers.

While watching this film, I couldn’t help but think of Trayvon Marin, the young man who was gunned down in the streets while walking home after buying himself a treat at a local store. He was shot by a paranoid lunatic whom our society believes has a right to not only own a gun but to carry it around. And the state of Florida has seen fit to provide such paranoid lunatics with a law that protects them from prosecution when they kill with their guns if they merely feel threatened.

I also thought of the story I read recently about a man who grew up in Morocco. He was an effeminate boy, and because of this, the men who knew him felt it was their right to rape him once he reached puberty. Not even his family was willing to stand up for him. And I’m sure the men rationalized their actions by telling themselves that if the boy didn’t want it, he wouldn’t have been effeminate. Morocco is the country where Matthew Sheppard was gang rapped when he visited the country as a teenager. How can the idea that it’s okay to rape small, effeminate teenage boys get passed down in a society from one generation to the next without that idea being challenged? How can these men who brutalize these boys not realize that what they’re doing is wrong?

As much as I want to believe that people are basically good and that life is beautiful, I often find myself sympathizing with Geoffrey’s point of view. We can put forth our best diplomatic efforts, as Geoffrey did before he gave up, and maybe we’ll see some positive change here and there, but it’s like trying to hold back the flow of lava with a soup ladle. With every small victory comes the news chaos and destruction have popped up somewhere else.

I suppose that despite this, one can try to live as if all is not lost. And maybe this can give a person’s life meaning and purpose. Most of the time I manage to believe this on some level, but like Geoffrey, I often find myself in full retreat, too. I may not be a drunkard, and it’s not like me to go out in the world and pick fights with thugs, but I do hide in my little cave, and at least once a day I find myself waiting for the inevitable.

Under The Volcano trailer

A Boy to Be Sacrificed

Sniffing The Glue Of Bigotry

Human beings have a great capacity for love and compassion, and they also have a great capacity for egotism. Most of us are guilty of wanting to believe that we’re better than others in some way from time to time--smarter, more attractive, richer, more charming, funnier, more influential, cooler, better educated, more moral… There seems to be only a hair’s breadth between having a healthy self-esteem and being arrogant. When it comes to maligned minorities--the poor, those who aren’t white, women, those considered less attractive, LGBTs, etc.--there are a host of hostile clichés ready to be pulled off the shelf and hurled at a convenient victim if a person is in the mood to feel superior. Bigotry is a bad habit. It gives you a momentary high, but you have to cut yourself off from your natural love and compassion for the person or people you’re attacking.

For many, simply getting to know a few LGBT people is enough. The love and compassion for the real people they know overtakes those hostile clichés for a nameless, faceless mass of homos. For others, just a little bit of common sense and logic will do. But there are some who are going to fight like hell to hold onto their bigotry because they have grown addicted to sniffing that glue. They feel superior, and they want to go on feeling superior. NOM is so driven by bigotry that they have actually made this one of their talking points. They actually think this is a valid and persuasive argument. “We can’t let LGBT people win, because if they won, we would lose, and, as a result, some might think of us as bigots.”

US man arrested on gay Caribbean cruise says he and partner taunted, humiliated in Dominica

US man arrested on gay Caribbean cruise says he and partner taunted, humiliated in Dominica

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When I first heard about this story I was concerned that the men might have been arrested on trumped-up charges. But I’ll admit that when I read the account from the cruise line, I assumed that the men were guilty of having sex on their balcony. I didn’t have any hostility toward them. I thought that maybe it had just been a thrill for them to have sex on the balcony. And since they were apparently safe after spending only one night in jail and paying a moderate fine, I thought the whole thing was much ado about nothing.

But after reading the statement from these men, I realized that I wasn’t there, I don’t know what happened, and their story is at least plausible. Maybe it was simply a matter of one or both of them exposing too much flesh on the balcony, and maybe that got the accusations of sex on the balcony started.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that the balcony in question was attached to their room. No, it is not private in the sense that no one can see onto the balcony while the ship is docked. But the men were invited to think of it as their own while they were onboard the ship. It was just a few feet away from their bed and bathroom, places were they undoubtedly felt free to be undressed. And a cruise ship is like a floating hotel, and part of the time the balcony would face open sea. It would be easy enough to step through that door onto the balcony in some state of undress to get a breath of fresh air or to check the weather and temperature without giving much thought you might offend someone if they saw your penis or butt. It would be easy enough to forget that merely seeing two gay men in some state of undress would be enough to start rumors of public sex.



My Dog Had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

We had a little dog named Bozo when I was a kid. He was a small mutt with short, light brown fur and a fan tail. He wasn’t tiny. I don’t remember picking him up and carrying him around as I did our cat, but he wasn’t very big. Bozo was a friendly, happy dog for the most part, and I loved him. But sudden, loud noises terrified Bozo--a rifle blast, a clap of thunder. One 4^th of July when I was 9 or 10, I was out in the backyard with Bozo. I was sitting on the ground Indian style, and I was petting and loving on him while he graciously accepted my attention. Out of the blue, I heard a loud pop. It turned out my father and sister decided to let off a few firecrackers in the front yard. The sound, of course, startled Bozo, and his reaction was typically extreme. He didn’t just jump, he leapt into the air. It seems he meant to fly over top of me in his intense desire to get away, but he didn’t quite make it. He ended up headbutting me. That little dog nearly knocked me out cold. Almost 40 years have passed, and I can still feel the impact of his forehead bashing against mine. It was intensely painful, and I fell backwards. Bozo was long gone by the time I stopped writhing in pain and figured out what had happened. He was such a gentle little dog, but he had to get away from that sound even if it meant killing me. The following New Year’s Eve, Bozo ran away when everyone started letting off their fireworks at the stroke of midnight, and we never saw him again. We looked for him, and we told everyone that he was missing, but it was as if he had vanished. Maybe in his terror, he ran so far away from home that he got lost. Maybe he lived as a stray for a few years after that. Maybe another family adopted him. Maybe he ran out in front of a car and got run over. I suppose I’ll never know what exactly happened to him, but I greatly missed him for a long time. Now and then I used to dream of him returning home. I continued to have that dream occasionally until I was in my twenties.

Dogs like Bozo are said to be gun-shy. I don’t know what caused Bozo to be this way. Was it just in his nature? Or was he exposed to a loud blast when he was a pup? I can’t say, but even as a kid, I realized that Bozo couldn’t help it. I readily forgave him when he almost murdered me and when he ran away and broke my heart. He was easily scared and this made him act out in irrational ways. Human beings can be like that, too, of course, except we don’t usually use the term “gun-shy” when talking about humans. There was a time when the term “shell shocked” was common. And that was followed by “battle fatigue.” I like “shell shocked” because it’s descriptive like “gun-shy” but more visceral. You can feel something of the torment of the person who suffers from shell shock just by using the term. But I suppose it was inevitable that we would settle on something much more clinical like "post traumatic stress disorder" because human beings aren’t just traumatized by loud sounds, and it’s not only the stress of war that can cause the condition.

Maybe I understood Bozo so well because on some level I related to him. I, too, was shell shocked. Loud noises didn’t unduly frighten me, but I was generally nervous and lived in a state of near panic a good deal of the time. When I was young, people said I was shy. I was scared, confused, quiet and withdrawn. Most of the time, people ignored me, but once in a while someone would became curious and ask me what I liked. I couldn’t answer. Not only did I avoid talking to people, but my inner dialogue was also stunted in a way. Looking back on it, I realize that I liked a great many things, my dog for instance, and animals in general. I loved movies. I had a love for houses, especially old, grand houses. I loved paintings and photographs. And I loved camping and being in the woods. But I couldn’t talk about these things. Not only was I reluctant to reveal myself, I didn’t even know how to put my feelings and thoughts into words. Sometimes I felt like I might be missing something crucial. I worried that I was boring, dull, that I had nothing to share. But now I realize I just hadn’t found my voice, and that’s probably because I was terrified of using it.

My parents were good people, but they lacked the skills to nurture someone like me, and they were so caught up in their own problems that they didn’t have it in them to focus on mine. My mother was seriously mentally ill, and my father lived in denial. This undoubtedly exacerbated my condition. One of the reasons I felt unsafe was because I didn’t know what to expect from my parents, and they didn’t spend a lot of time comforting or encouraging me. But there is another reason that shouldn’t be downplayed. From a very early age, I recognized I was different from most boys. And I realized that this difference wasn’t appreciated or understood by other kids or adults. So I retreated into myself. Maybe I overreacted. But like Bozo, I just can’t help it. I have spent my life trying to find someplace safe, even at the expense of forming lasting relationships and finding a home.

I’m not sure I’ll ever find that sense of safety and security that I desperately want. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a family or a place that is truly mine. Maybe at this point, I should resign myself to being a stray because as much as I want to be loved and petted, my instincts tell me not to let anyone get too close, and my instincts always win.

I hope that it will one day get better for kids who are different. I don’t want them growing up so afraid of their own voice they’re middle aged before they find it. I don’t want them so frightened of rejection that they try to be invisible. I want it generally acknowledged that some boys don’t like baseball and some girls don’t like Barbie dolls, and I want that to be okay. I want it to be okay that some girls have crushes on other girls and some boys have crushes on other boys. I get so sick and tired of hearing how trying to bring about this change is an attack on the religious liberty of Christians. We live in a world of diversity. If some think gender nonconformity and homosexuality are wrong, so what? LGBT kids are real. They exist. And they deserve to grow up feeling wanted and safe.

I also want those kids to grow up knowing that they can get married and start a family with someone they love. I want them to have that option, that dream. I want them to be able to sit in their bedrooms some rainy Saturday afternoon when they’re twelve or thirteen and think about one day having someone to come home to and kids who will ask them for the latest gadget or toy.

But of course some don’t want them to have that dream. Some want kids like the kind of kid I was to continue growing up believing that the best they can hope for is to survive in the shadows, out of sight of “real” people. They don’t want them imagining bringing their husbands and wives home for Thanksgiving dinner. They don’t want them to imagine telling the kids at school about their boyfriends or girlfriends. They don’t want them to imagine telling their friends and parents what’s in their hearts. They want them to continue to be shell shocked, afraid, ashamed.

I can only imagine what life would be like for me now if I had grown up in a nurturing environment, if I had felt wanted and protected, if I hadn’t felt the need to hide. What if my mother hadn’t held up the old purse I adopted at Sunday school when I was four or five and told everyone to look at my purse just so all the kids would laugh, and I would realize that boys aren’t supposed to carry purses? What if teachers had told me that it was okay for me to play with the girls when they saw I was intimidated by the boys? What if someone had told me that it’s okay if I didn’t like baseball, basketball or football? What if my father had shown compassion and understanding rather than scorn and disgust when he caught me naked with another boy when I was twelve? What if I had felt confident enough to tell the young man I fell for in college that I loved him?

It’s such a simple thing, accepting someone as they are.  It’s hard for me to believe that, knowing there are LGBT kids out there, some want them to continue to feel like outcasts. But there are people like that. And they offer the dumbest excuses for their unkindness. One of the dumbest is the idea that same-sex relationships can’t be held up as equal to opposite-sex relationships because straight people would no longer take commitment and marriage seriously. I just don’t believe that straight people are generally so shallow that they would stop loving their spouses and children just because they know some gay couple out there might be happily married. If someone like Brian Brown really has this problem, then he should deal with it the best way he knows how. I don’t think we should sacrifice the millions of LGBT kids in this country just because the Brian Browns of the world are insecure about their own ability and/or the ability of other straight people to remain faithful.

Another dumb reason to continue to deny LGBT kids, perhaps the dumbest of them all, is the idea that we can’t let LGBTs have equal rights because if we did, those who hold them in contempt for supposedly religious reasons would be thought of as bigots. Well, if you want to believe you’re better than someone else, and if you want to deny them basic human rights, then you are a bigot. It doesn’t matter if you’re thought of as one or not. That’s what you are.

I hope that by the time I close my eyes on this world things will be different.

Squeal Like Pigs

Focus On The Family’s Day of Dialogue is not just about conservative Christian students merely holding their heads up high and proudly expressing their views. It’s about evangelism. It’s specifically about evangelizing to LGBT students and their friends. Focus On The Family has admitted as much. I’m wondering how Christianists would react if a Muslim group started encouraging and training teenagers to evangelize the Muslim faith at school and to specifically target Christian students. My guess is that many would squeal like pigs.

Day of Dialogue=My Religion Gives Me The Right To Bully You

The Day Of Silence is all about promoting the idea that we should respect those who are different and refrain from bullying. It has nothing to do with demanding anyone go against their faith, engage in activities that they don’t want to engage in, or to keep quiet about their beliefs or opinions. We all know that teens, just like the rest of us, live in the real world, and every day they are confronted with people who do things or hold opinions that they don’t agree with or understand. Some teens drink. Some don’t. Some do drugs. Some don’t. Some have sex. Some don’t. Some are Mormon. Some are Muslim. Some think we should bomb Iran. Some don’t. Of course they’re going to talk about their differences and express their opinions. But we all know that a few can be overbearing. A few simply can’t accept that others disagree with them. The Day of Dialogue is about encouraging teens from conservative Christian homes to be overbearing, to not only speak their minds, but to be pushy about it. As the adult women in this video clearly state, this is not merely about teaching their children to express their honest opinion when doing so is appropriate. It’s about EVANGELISM. It’s about trying to snuff out the beliefs of others and replacing them with your own, and in this case it’s specifically about snuffing out the belief that being LGBT is okay. Funny how Focus On The Family singles out this issue. Presumably they think it’s wrong to be Mormon, Muslim or Jewish, but they’re not out there openly training their kids to aggressively confront peers of other faiths. No, it’s the LGBT kids and their supportive friends who are the targets of their “evangelism”. This “evangelism” is not the same as promoting respect for LGBT people, even though Candi Cushman and her Focus on the Family cohorts would have you believe that. No one is asking conservative Christian students to never express their beliefs, or to abandon their beliefs or to become LGBT. It’s about recognizing that not everyone has the same beliefs. It’s about recognizing that LGBT kids are often bullied. It’s about how it’s wrong to make someone so uncomfortable and afraid that they don’t want to be in school, or even continue living.