Watching the Defectives

A post over at Joe.My.God has to be one of the best gay Pride posts I have read in a long time. I am going to copy and paste it below. Please read it. I am sure you'll be glad you did.

Watching The Defectives

Last Sunday, at 12:30pm, I was in position on Christopher Street with Terrence, his glamour boys, and touring UK bloggers Dave and Darren. The Pride parade was due to round the corner any minute, but I tore off in search of a bodega, crossing my fingers that my desperate need for a soda wouldn't cause me to miss Dykes On Bikes. Half a block away, I found a little place and ducked in, weaving thru the customers clogging the aisles on rushed missions like mine. I was third in line, two bottles of Sprite under my arm, when the man in front of me spotted a friend entering the store.

"David! Sweetie! Where are you watching from? Come hang out with us on Allen's balcony!"

David, a bookish looking middle-aged man, destroyed the festive mood in the little store in an instant. "Absolutely not. Those defectives and freaks?" he spat, indicating the colorful crowd outside the store, "They have nothing to do with MY life, thank you very much. This parade has as much dignity as a carnival freak show. It's no wonder the whole country hates us."

Luckily for David, the Asshole Killer mind ray I've been working on is not yet operational. I settled for pushing him a little, just a tiny bit, just to get by him in that narrow aisle, of course. I returned to my sweaty little group and tried to put what I'd heard out of my mind for the remainder of the day, because I knew that by the next morning, the thousands of Davids of the world, the ones who have media access anyway, would all issue their now familiar day-after-Pride rant. The one where they decry the drag queens on all those newspaper front pages. The one where they beat their chests and lament, "Why don't the papers ever show the NORMAL gay people? Where are the bankers and lawyers? Why must all the coverage be drag queens and leather freaks in assless chaps?"

And every year, the logical answer is that bankers and lawyers are boring to look at and that pictures of marching Gap employees don't sell newspapers. There's no sinister media agenda intent on making gay people look ridiculous, no fag-hating cabal behind the annual front page explosion of sequins and feathers. It's just good copy. Drag queens are interesting. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

Yet right on cue, the day after Pride, the Davids of the blogosphere dished out their heavy-handed dissections of parades around the country. Only this year, there was a palpably nastier tone to an already traditionally nasty annual debate. Blame the election, blame the recent avalanche of anti-gay legislation, but this year, the usual assimilationist arguments went beyond the hypothetical speculations that maybe our Pride parades were too outlandish, that maybe we weren't doing the movement any favors by showing the country a face that happened to be wearing 6-inch long false eyelashes. This year there was some actual discussion about HOW we were going to "fix" Pride parades. Of how we might go about "discouraging" certain "elements" from taking part in the parades.

This is the part of the story where I have my annual post-Pride apoplectic attack. This is the part of the story where the swelling volume of Nazi analogies overwhelm my ability to speak and all I can do is twitch and bark out little nonsensical bits. This is where I always forget the name given to the Jews who went to work for the Nazis, helping load the trains. "Because that's what you are asking us to do, you assholes!" Then I always ask, "Who are we going to sacrifice to 'save' ourselves? Which child will it be, Sophie?" And this is the part of the story where my friends accuse me of being a hyperbole-laden drama queen, wasting spiritual energy on a non-crisis, and of co-opting the Holocaust as well. More on that later.

These people that want to "fix" Pride don't understand the role that Pride parades have come to play. Initially, the gay parade was about visibility. It was about safety in numbers, and more importantly, "normalcy" in numbers. It was about the idea that if only straight America could see us, could just SEE US, that they'd love us. And accept us. That if we'd mass and march by the righteous millions, the sheer unstoppable force of our collective image would topple bigotry. Would right wrongs. Would stop hate.

Of course, that didn't happen then and it doesn't happen now.

What DOES happen, is that Pride parades, at least in the big cities, have become nothing more significant to straight America than an annual traffic nightmare. As a tool of the gay movement, the Pride parade is now merely a walking photo op for politicians and perhaps not much more. A couple of years ago, the ultimate arbiter of America's cultural zeitgeist, The Simpsons, made note of this:

(The gay pride parade is going past the Simpson house.)

Chanting marchers: "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!"

Lisa Simpson: "You're here every year. We ARE used to it."

What does all of this mean to the Davids of the world, the gay assimilationists that want to, wish they could, somebody do something, there's gotta be a way we can, Dignify This Parade? The ones begging: "Can't we get our people to at least DRESS respectfully for one lousy day? Is that too much to ask of our people? "

Yes, yes it is.

Because you are kidding yourself if you think Pride parades, in any form, will EVER change the minds of homophobes. The straight people who show up to see Pride parades are already largely convinced. We're parading to the choir, Jesse. Those straight people love our freaks, bless them.

Oh, you could test run a "defective" free parade. You could form urban anti-tranny squads and go around to all the gayborhoods on the morning of the parade and give all the drag queens 50% off coupons for Loehmann's, offer good during the parade only. And they'd GO, of course, cuz hey, those girls love a bargain. But the resultant bland, humorless, "normal" gay parade wouldn't change the course of the gay movement one bit. The part of straight America that is repulsed by drag queens is quite possibly even more terrified by the so-called "normal" gays, because "those clever calculating creatures look JUST LIKE US, and can infiltrate and get access to our precious children. And that's been their disgusting plan all along, of course."

So where does that leave us? Are we post-Pride? Is the parade just a colossally long waste of a miserably hot summer day? Is the Pride parade just an event that does a better job of moving chicken-on-a-stick than it does of moving hearts? I'd say that, yes, as an effective tool of the gay movement, Pride's usefulness has largely waned in many U.S. cities. So do we even need to keep having these parades, since they no longer seem to have much of an impact on the state of the movement? No, we don't.

But...YES, WE DO.

Because even if Pride doesn't change many minds in the outside world, it's our PARTY, darlings. It's our Christmas, our New Year's, our Carnival. It's the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other "Happy Pride!" Saying "Happy Pride!" is really just a shorter, easier way of saying "Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!"

I'm not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It's OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our "debauched" celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.

All you suburban, lawn mowing, corpo-droid homos out there, hiding behind your picket fences, the ones wringing your hands and worrying that Pride ruins YOUR personal rep, listen up. Do you think that straight Americans worry that Mardi Gras damages international perception of American culture? America, land of the free, home of "Show Us Your Tits!"? They don't and neither should we. Our Pride celebrations are just our own unique version of Mardi Gras, only instead of throwing beads, we throw shade. No one has to ask US to show our tits. We've already got 'em out there, baby. And some of them are real.

A co-worker of mine heard me discussing my Pride plans last weekend and said, "I really don't understand what it is you are proud about. I mean, you all say that you are born that way, so it's not like you accomplished anything." She wasn't being mean, just genuinely curious, and I think that a lot of gay people probably feel the same way. On this subject, I can only speak for myself.

I'm proud because I'm a middle-aged gay man who has more dead friends than living ones and yet I'm not completely insane. I've lived through a personal Holocaust (here we go again) in which my friends and lovers have been mowed down as thoroughly and randomly as the S.S guards moved down the line of Jews. You, dead. You, to the factory. And you, you, you, and you, dead. I am inexplicably alive and I am proud that I keep the memories of my friends alive. I am proud of my people, the ACT-UPers, the Quilt makers, the Larry Kramers, the Harvey Fiersteins. I'm proud that I'm not constantly curled up into a ball on my bed, clutching photo albums and sobbing. And that happens sometimes, believe it.

And outside of my personal experiences, I am proud of my tribe as a group. Sometimes I think that gay people are more creative, more empathic, more intuitive, more generous, and more selfless than anybody else on the planet. Sometimes I think that if an alien culture were surveying our planet from light years away, they might classify gay people as an entirely separate species of humans. It's easy to spot us because of our better haircuts.

But sometimes I think we are the worst people in the entire world when it comes to standing up for each other. The gay people who'd like to soothe their personal image problems by selectively culling some of our children from Pride events? They disgust me. They appall me. They embarrass me. To them I say: the very road that YOU now have the privilege of swaggering upon was paved by those very queens and leather freaks that you complain about,as you practice your "masculine" and give us butch face. If you want to live in the house that THEY BUILT, you better act like you fucking know it. United we stand, you snide bitches. America's kulturkampf ain't gonna be solved by making flamboyant people go away.

I'll end this by making one final Jewish reference. Possibly you've heard the Jewish in-joke that sums up the meaning of all Jewish holidays? "They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat." My Pride version?

They wish we were invisible.

We're not.

Let's dance.

Simply Fascinating

Did you know that your cell phone can help you unlock your car (in the event you lock your keys in you car?

"Locked your keys in the car and the spare is at home or with a friend? Call that person on their cell phone with your cell phone, then hold your phone about a foot from your car door. Have your buddy press the unlock button holding it near the cell phone on their end. Your car will unlock, no matter how far away your buddy is. Beats waiting for AAA."

Go here to see the other 4 things you probably didn't know your cell phone could do.

Confusing Christianity

Here is a great video about how confusing our Christianity sounds to many others.



h/t Creatio Ex Nihilo

Don't you just love satire?

The Politics of Diversion

h/t Joe.My.God

Understanding Crystal Meth

I found a post written over on Joe.My.God about NYC's Crystal Meth problem. It's been a problem for such a long time that discussing it has become a non-issue. When that happens, unfortunately, some people assume that since everyone's not talking about it anymore, it's not a problem anymore. And the thing is, it's still a HUGE problem.

Several years ago, I ran into a colleague of mine that told me about his Crystal Meth addiction and how it had destroyed his ministry and career. While I thought that was shocking, his next statement blew me over: "The weird thing about it is, even though its destroyed my career and my health, and even though I have been clean for about two weeks, I want to do it and will do it by week's end. I just miss it so much."

I am not a drug user, so there is something about drug use that I have a hard time getting my mind around. Why do something so dangerous? One of my past problems in not understanding Crystal Meth was that there was a significant detail that I was missing: the correlation between being HIV positive and Crystal Meth use. It seems that most Crystal Meth addicts in NYC who are gay men, are also HIV positive.

That colleague I told you about is HIV positive and I hadn't made the connection between that and Crytal meth until now, today. That colleague had told me that the dangers of using the drug severely affects one's HIV. He had said that while he only had HIV for about a year, once he started using the drug, within 6 months of using, he had developed full-blown AIDS. Usually that takes 20 years--but not on Crystal Meth.

Check out this video below. Hopefully if you know someone who is both HIV+ and uses Crystal Meth, you'll find a growing sense of compassion for your friend, even if you believe it's insane to actually use Crystal Meth. I believe one goal of my faith is to be filled with compassion as I go about doing good. For only a compassionate heart can bring the right balm to those who suffer--and upon doing so, bring less judgment and condemnation on those we are called to serve.

Olbermann on Clinton's "Assassination' Remark

There has been a lot of discussion around me concerning Hillary's 'Assassination remark' that hit the blogs this past week. I've heard many folks say it was a mistake or a comment taken out of context. And for all I've heard, I just can't believe it--although I want to. I want to believe that no one, especially a Clinton, would mindfully imply she is staying in the race in case Obama is assassinated, which is what happened to Robert Kennedy in June 1968. And yet, for all of Hillary's mis-spoken comments, just throwing something like that 'out there' makes me wonder to what extent she'll willing to go in order to win this campaign.

We all know that Obama has had to tighten his security amid constant death threats. Is she playing on that fear? Is she counting on folks thinking, "If I vote for him, I'm wasting my vote because he'll surely get assassinated."

You know, her use of fear and tragic 'what-ifs' is something Karl Rove did for George Bush. Bush frightened an entire country with threats of terrorism and "activist judges". And Rove led him all the way. Say, wait-a-minute, she's actually consulting Rove now, right?

Then her comments really shouldn't surprise me...they simply anger me!

Watch Olbermann's rant. He has the newsprint, commentary, and the outrage I feel towards her and her remarks.

Petra: A Tribute to 33 Years of Christian Rock

I grew up listening to this group and even now, years later, hearing their songs brings back wonderful memories.

Canon Balls*

It was necessary to keep a good supply of cannon balls near the cannon on our Frigates - our war ships. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck was the problem. The best storage method devised was to stack them as a square based pyramid, with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on nine, which rested on sixteen.

Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon.There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate with 16 round indentations, called a Monkey. But if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make Brass Monkeys. Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled.

Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. And all this time, you thought that was a vulgar expression, didn't you?

*Note: I have no idea if any of this is true, it was an email sent to me and I just thought it was funny.

Funny Married Names

Here's a fun post about the last names of people just married, taken from newspapers across the country. It's Hardy-Harr funny. ;)

The AIDS Blamegame

Here's a brilliant post from Wayne Besen:

The AIDS Blame Game
by Wayne Besen

"What is it about gay sex that makes U.S. health officials want to play Chicken Little with AIDS prevention and public safety?" Tony Valenzuela writes in the latest Poz magazine, where he criticizes, "The clueless tabloid and public health hysteria over man-on-man sex."

Valenzuela points to "an imaginary 'super strain of HIV to the sci-fi MRSA superbug." And, he is correct that it seems the media and society seem to always take on the absurd posture that gay sex is a mysterious ticking time bomb.

It is important to remember that gay bashing is a multi-million dollar industry. There is a vested interest by fundamentalist groups to convince the public that gay people are morally inferior and diseased, thus a threat to children, society and themselves.

The notion that AIDS is a punishment from God is a staple of right wing literature. Instead of focusing on the condemnation of unsafe sexual practices, extremist groups say that the very nature of being gay makes one a candidate for an early death. For example, the so-called "ex-gay" group Exodus International uses the Bible to justify their belief in God's wrath and fury against homosexuals.

"Those who practice these sins 'receive in their own persons the due penalty of their error,'" writes former Exodus Executive Director Bob Davies in 'A Biblical Response to the Pro-Gay Movement.' "In today's society, homosexuality is reaping a bitter harvest...homosexual involvement reaps deep devastation in the lives of many who practice it."

The Traditional Values Coalition has published what they call a "fact-based report on the dangers of homosexuals and homosexual behavior to children and to our society." One "fact sheet" is called, "Homosexual Sex = Death From HIV Infection."

Focus on the Family offers that, "solid, irrefutable evidence proves that there are lethal consequences to engaging in the defining features of male homosexuality..."

Of course, blaming victims for deadly diseases is nothing new and has ushered in some of the most shameful and horrific acts in world history. In a recent New York Times magazine article, epidemiologist and physician Gary Slutkin (the article was about gang violence, not HIV) spoke of how Chinese Americans were once thought to be inherently prone to disease.

"Chinatown, San Francisco in the 1880's," Slutkin said. "Three ghosts: malaria, smallpox and leprosy. No one wanted to go there. Everybody blamed the people. Dirty. Bad habits. Something about their race...And people come up with all kinds of other ideas that are not scientifically grounded -- like putting people away, closing the place down, pushing people out of town. Sound familiar?"

John Kelly's book, "The Great Mortality" explains how Jews were blamed for the "Black Death" that wiped out an estimated one-third of fourteenth century Europeans.

"In January 1349, Basel burned its Jews on an island in the Rhine, while hygiene-conscious Speyer, fearing pollution, put its dead Jews in wine barrels and rolled them into the river," wrote Kelly. "Strasbourg marched its Jews to a local cemetery and burned them...In Worms the local Jewish community, faced with death at the hands of Christian neighbors, locked themselves in their homes and set themselves ablaze."

What I find bizarre is how the right continues to portray HIV as a gay disease when more than 80 percent of people infected worldwide are heterosexual. If God really wanted to punish the so-called "gay lifestyle" and send a message, wouldn't He use a smart bomb -- like blowing up gay bars on Saturday nights -- instead of an indiscriminate shotgun blast that claims the lives of hemophiliacs and babies? The last time God was this inefficient, He placed George W. Bush in the Oval Office to carry out his will.

For reasons of political convenience and conservative correctness, anti-gay groups pick and choose who gets blame. In Washington, DC, black residents account for 81% of new reports of HIV infection and 86% of people with AIDS, though the city's population is only 57% African-American. Based on anti-gay "logic," this would mean that the "black lifestyle" is dangerous and should be condemned. Interestingly, they only focus on homosexuality and ignore other demographics and the largely hetero International AIDS epidemic because the inconvenient facts don't mesh well with the right's anti-gay storyline.

Gay people were around for thousands of years before AIDS and will still inhabit this planet long after the disease subsides or is eradicated. In the grand scheme of the universe, HIV does not define homosexuality any more than past syphilis or gonorrhea outbreaks in Europe defined heterosexuality.

Illnesses, like natural disasters, are not God's wrath, but ordinary phenomena that affect different populations at any given time. History, however, teaches us that the most enduring disease is divisiveness in the name of the Divine, that predictably rears its ugly head at the very moments when healing is needed instead of hatred.

Another sign that you're getting older...

...is if you'd rather be regular than lose that extra ten pounds.

This is soooooo true, right? Within the last month, I've changed my breakfast selection considerably. Rather than eating cereal every morning with a piece of fruit, I now change it up to include real oatmeal (as opposed to those packets loaded with sugar). I had read that doing so will keep me from being hungry later in the day. And you know what? It's true!

Another added benefit, and this is something I didn't expect, is that I can now say, after 42 years of living... that I am now 'regular'. I have no idea why this is happening but if I don't eat my oats, then I am not regular and I decided just now, that if I had to choose between losing the extra weight I gained from my illness and being regular, I'd take being regular in a heart beat.

Fortunately I can have and do both.

No Shame on the Walk of Shame

This energy drink commercial was filmed at one of the most charming and photogenic intersections of New York City's West Village, where so much movie, tv and ad production takes place: where right-angled Commerce Street intersects with Barrow Street, between Bedford and Hudson Streets. The hot-dog stand is right at the corner, and the walk of shame is moving eastward on Barrow toward Beford -- within a short walking distance of the Perry Street block which provide the exterior shots of Carrie's street and townhouse stoop. Even closer is the Bedford Street intersection that provided the exterior shot of the apartment building on Friends.

h/t towleroad

Appropriate Cartoon Image, right?

h/t The Daily Dish

We've Come A Long Way, Baby

Here is an inspiring story about a young man voted Home Coming King at his high school.

Ghostly Car Ad

A friend of mine actually emailed me the movie, rather than a link to YouTube, that I am posting here. Here is what the email said,

Really cool, but make sure that you read the article before watching the video. This is a car advertisement from Great Britain. When they finished filming the ad, the film editor noticed something moving along the side of the car, like a ghostly white mist. They found out that a person had been killed a year earlier in that exact same spot. The ad was never put on TV because of the unexplained ghostly phenomenon. Watch the front end of the car as it clears the trees in the middle of the screen and you'll see the white mist crossing in front of the car then following it along the road......Spooky! Is it a ghost, or is it simply mist? You decide. If you listen to the ad, you'll even hear the cameraman whispering in the background about it near the end of the commercial. A little creepy but pretty cool!

My friend, in the email added his own note to say that I needed to get real close to the screen to see what they were talking about (perhaps you should to, I dunno, I am sure it'll help).



Pretty scary, right?

20 Things You Can Use Twice before Tossing

Here is a great post about using stuff twice. Most of us use those plastic grocery sacks as liners for our trash cans, but here are other uses of items from collected business cards to cardboard paper towel rolls.

You know that you're over 40 if . . .

. . . you know who this woman is.
By the way, I love her. ;)

Upgrade your Life

If you're a productivity geek always looking for a better way to do an old thing, then do I have recommend a book for you. Gina Trapani has written a gem, Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, and Better.

In the book, you'll learn better ways to do email, organize your desktop, and get more done sooner leaving you more time for life's important stuff like going home earlier and spending quality time with your loved ones.

I am on Chapter 2 and have already implemented a new way to organize my emails and have installed Microsoft's new desktop search engine (Google has one, and is recommended in the book, but it scares me).

Anyways, check out the book. While you're at it, also check out LifeHacker.com. This is the website from which the book is based and sign up for its daily threads. They're as good as the book.

This Is Interesting

I CAN READ IT! CAN YOU ????

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too.
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.