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politics Queer Whitstable

Rosie Duffield MP

Little Dog

Yesterday I met Rosie Duffield, the MP for Canterbury and Whitstable.  She was half an hour late for our appointment.  Her train was late.  The taxi wasn’t where they expected it to be.  She runs into the meeting berating the train and the tube.  Rosie is a slight, blond woman who, against all the odds beat long time conservative MP Julian Brazier with a slim 186 majority in a constituency that never had a Labour MP since voting began.

I congratulated her, “You must be very grateful to Jeremy Corbyn,” I said.

Rosie smiled, she seemed baffled when people told her on the stump they were voting for Jeremy and not her.  “I heard that all the time,”  she said.  I pressed her to admit it was Jeremy who had energised the Labour vote in a traditionally conservative area but she was reluctant to agree Jeremy Corbyn was the reason she had her seat in parliament.  I asked her if she was a ‘blairite’, she replied candidly, “I owe everything to Tony Blair.”

She whispered conspiratorially, “Jeremy’s nearly 70, you know.”  As if telling a 58-year-old it’s all over for someone who is 69,  all over for Jeremy Corbyn.  I was beginning to understand who Rosie Duffield is and where her allegiances lay.  I looked carefully into her eyes.  “We need someone younger.”  she says.

I wanted to meet Rosie Duffield to find out if she was adequately representing her LGBT constituents.  So, I started our meeting by asking Rosie if she had ever heard of Rudolf Brazda.  She hadn’t.  Rudolf, the last holocaust survivor to wear a pink triangle, held at Buchenwald.  I asked if she knew what a pink triangle signified.  She nodded her head cautiously as if she were searching for a memory.  I explained who Rudolf was and how his and other LGBT inmates were remembered in oral histories archived at the New York Holocaust museum.

Their stories are desperate,  they tell how badly they were treated by both inmates and guards.  Beaten, murdered by guards and inmates.  Treated like pedophiles are treated in prisons today.  I told her how, when the camps were liberated, the gay men were not set free but taken to prison by British and American liberators.  These gay men, I reminded her, are my family of origin.  Murdered in the concentration camps by both nazis and fellow inmates.

Rosie shifts in her seat uncomfortably.

I let her know my own history of dealing with homophobia in Whitstable, the daubing of homophobic slurs on my house, bricks through the windows and more recently being verbally assaulted by a homophobic public house land lady.   Rosie seemed genuinely pained by my description.  Rosie and her manager offered to speak to Jonathan Neame about the homophobia in his pubs.  I accepted their offer graciously.

I wondered what Rosie Duffield’s definition of homophobia was?  She mumbled she didn’t have one.  I wondered why?  Why hadn’t The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) defined homophobia like they defined anti-Semitism?  After all, we were there too.  We… the LGBT community stood behind those terrible chain link fences walking with the dead and dying.  Where was our definition of homophobia?  A definition the party could work with?

Religion is a choice, sexuality is not.

I asked her if she thought Jeremy Corbyn was anti semitic and a racist.

Rosie wanted me to know her fiancé is black, that she couldn’t possibly understand what it is like to be black, gay or jewish.  She had to accept as the truth from her jewish friends if they were convinced Jeremy was anti-Semitic… she had no option but to believe them.  I asked if she was ’empathetically challenged’?  She became angry and told me she would ask me to leave if I spoke to her like that.  She told me I was being rude.

“You mean… rude like Margaret Hodge was to Jeremy Corbyn?”  Rosie told me she was a ‘Very good friend of Margaret Hodge’.  I asked Rosie if I had called her a fucking homophobe would she ask me to leave the office.  She told me Margaret Hodge had every right to shout at Jeremy because she was a jewish woman who had lost family in the holocaust.

I reminded her again.  My family of origin also perished in the holocaust.  Gay men without children, abandoned by their family for being gay.  Who could possibly claim these men (sex perverts) as their relatives?  It is incumbent upon men like me, willing to claim men like Rudolf as my own family, wrought from the history of lgbt oppression.

I asked again, “Where is the IHRA definition of homophobia?”

The definition of Anti Semitism has become the stick by which people like Margaret Hodge and her friend Rosie Duffield beat Jeremy Corbyn.  Yet, as a gay man, when I want answers about her understanding of homophobia Rosie tells me her definition of homophobia is ‘common sense’.

Religion is a choice. Sexuality is not.

Rosie stumbled into admitting she was Roman Catholic.  “A church riven by homophobia,” I say.  “Religious people are not my friends Rosie, they have delivered a history of violent rebuke against LGBT people.  Refusing to recognise our most basic human rights.”  What are you going to do about the pockets of homophobia in the Anglican Church?   You are, after all, the MP who represents the Archbishop of Canterbury?

Religious people are not our friends.  Jews.  Christians.  Muslims.  There are still passages in the Torah, Bible and Koran demanding death for practicing gay men.  Why haven’t these passages been removed?  When will Jews, Christians and Muslims remove passages from the Torah Bible and Koran that incite violence toward LGBT people? Legitimizing LGBT intolerance? When would she call for homophobia to be erased in all religions.

Rosie looked aghast.

The problem with Rosie?  She’s a delightful, simple person.  Her politics are scarcely evolved.  Rosie isn’t ‘woke’.  She probably didn’t expect to win her seat.  Her understanding of her LGBT constituents is scant.  It’s not her fault, she doesn’t ‘get’ how important historically the Labour Party was to LGBT people during the hostile 1960’s – 1980’s because she can’t imagine walking a mile in our shoes.

The meeting ended.  A nervous looking latino man waiting in the lobby wanted to talk about Brexit.  He was sitting with his daughter.  I set off into the searing heat.

On the way home to Whitstable I felt shaken and slightly bullied.  I’d experienced only a fraction of what is currently tearing at the heart of the Parliamentary Labour Party.  Rosie is our existential threat.  She exemplifies how Tony Blair snatched control from working people and handed power to a few entitled white folk.

Rosie has an agenda shared by many of her Blairite colleagues: to unseat Jeremy Corbyn.  For those of us who believe passionately in Corbyn’s inclusive vision for our country it was inconsiderate of her to say she had no clue what the lives of gay, black or jewish people could be because she wasn’t black, jewish or gay.

I wondered how Rosie could possibly see past her white, christian heterosexuality to represent any minority?  Me?  The anxious latino man?  The truth is, Rosie is not motivated to represent her constituents.  Rosie is not interested in the lives of her constituents.  Rosie is obsessed with regime change.  She spends her time berating and bullying Jeremy Corbyn.  She has no interest in me or indeed real instances of homophobia she is instead obsessed with politicised examples of anti-Semitism.

In 40 years I had never bothered to meet my Member of Parliament, then Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of The Labour Party.  Even though I voted for Thatcher in ’78 and Blair in 1997 I never joined a political party.  I have since joined the Labour Party because of Jeremy Corbyn.  The Labour Party is the biggest political party in Europe because of Jeremy Corbyn.

The Labour Party needs MP’s who represent not only its 800,000 voting members but the millions of disaffected Britons who believe in radical change… sadly, for the constituents of Whitstable and Canterbury Rosie Duffield isn’t one of them.

Categories
Gay NYC Queer Travel

Provincetown Changes

Penny Arcade

Gay men in Los Angeles told researchers that they believed a culture that focuses on one-night stands and partying, that emphasizes perfect bodies and good looks, that prizes material possessions, that sees gay men tearing each other down as they compete for attention and that pressures gay men to fit in or conform is bound to create unhappiness, stress and unhealthy behaviors.

The word on the street in gay resort/haven Provincetown?  The straights are coming, they are coming thick and fast, young affluent heterosexuals buying property, renting holiday apartments and day tripping.  I was reassured by a cool, 31-year-old, straight person yesterday that this was the heterosexual ‘tipping point’.  Of course (if true) the reasons are obvious.  The older more affluent crowd of gay men and lesbians who bought affordable homes here twenty years ago are simply not that interesting to a less ghettoized younger gay crowd who go to Fire Island or Mykonos where a good gay thumping time is assured, where they can find an affordable share for the summer… anyway, the drag is so much better the closer you get to NYC.

Provincetown Garden

Young straight men and women who used to actively avoid hanging in gay ghettos… or felt uncomfortable no longer have any reservation.  This, my dears is one of the more unexpected changes that comes with ‘integration’.  Our gay communities, gay clubs and gay bars will dilute as we become more heteronormative.

How do the gays feel about straight people buying into the gay and lesbian ghetto dream?  I hear grumblings from some, but what can they say?  We can’t restrict straight people from joining the party?  Before the great shift, the Obama ‘evolution’, the Blair/Mandleson equality bill I would regularly challenge straight people who came to our clubs and bars, wondering why they were there… if they understood why gays and lesbians created safe spaces for themselves… now apparently we all live in a safe space… together.

If the war is won do we abandon the notion of a safe space, a gay bar, an LGBTQ community? Is that what we were fighting for?  As it turns out, gay men are still living shameful and secretive lives… safely hidden from prying eyes.  No longer behind the blacked out windows of the gay bar but on the internet where we can fully reinvent ourselves as muscle-bound avatars, 10 years younger than we really are.

The gay bar, meanwhile… becomes a themed experience for enlightened neo-liberal heterosexuals.  After all, gay men don’t need to meet one another in real life when we can meet on-line, reducing our interaction before a sexual encounter to the barest possible exchange of relevant facts.  Hung? Looking? Party?

The same heterosexual land grab is happening in the Fire Island Pines gay community.  Straight people are buying and renting homes at a faster rate than gay people. Of course… the truth is, we never really owned the lions share of Fire Island Pines… it was always owned by straight people.  Three heterosexual families who control The Pines real estate market.

In San Francisco‘s iconic gay area The Castro we are facing extinction in our natural habitat, bought out/selling out to silicone valley billions.  What are we left with?  Our sad LGBT ‘pride’ parade: a blinded corporate-sponsored dinosaur serving only the breweries and distilleries, no longer a political defiance… no longer worth a pilgrimage by those newly out yearning to see gays en masse… the gay parade and all it seeks to celebrate merely adds to our woes, confirming the worst about who we have become.

Little Dog

How long will it take for Provincetown to lose its unique identity and become just another Cape Cod town? The Pines,  just another beach community on Fire Island?  How long will it take for our history to be lost, forgotten or ignored by apathetic gay white men who have no interest in those who came before?  The heroes who fought decades of violent oppression, the ‘gay plague’, who demanded equality… how long will it be until their names are erased?

Do you know who they are?  Harvey Milk… and…

The politics of invisibility.

As the quality of our lives collectively ‘improves’, as we ‘integrate’ due to the passing of progressive equality laws why are we still facing a crisis?  Why do gay men continue to struggle with life-threatening health problems at alarmingly high rates compared to straight men — alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, suicide, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Gay and bisexual men are still most impacted by HIV/AIDS and syphilis, they suffer higher rates of substance abuse, they are more likely to drink heavily later into life, and they are more likely to commit suicide and suffer major depression and anxiety and bipolar disorders.

Gay men with mental health problems are more likely to use illegal drugs and commit suicide. Or regularly using drugs and alcohol can lead to risky sexual behavior, which increases the likelihood of getting infected by an STD.

Our health problems, in other words, are feeding into each other, we’re literally killing ourselves through suicide, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS at higher rates than straight men.  Let’s say that again: We are killing ourselves at higher rates than straight men through suicide, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS.

Some gays are quick to point to the stresses of living as a gay man in an overwhelmingly straight world — one that passes anti-gay laws and constantly spews homophobic rhetoric — as a reason for mental health and substance abuse problems. With that argument, they are coming very close to saying that we are powerless victims who have little control over our own lives and choices, that homophobes have more power over us.

That’s a ridiculous notion — lethal and self-defeating.

Since homophobia still exists and is not going away any time soon, the victim theory, if embraced, dooms us to a life of external, homophobic stressors that forces us to drink too much, commit suicide too frequently and get depressed too often.

The quote is from the LA Weekly.  You can read it HERE.

 

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art Brooklyn Film Gay Hollywood NYC

Ellen Page Brave or Self Serving?

Jacob Brown and Andrew Durbin

1.

Yesterday the HRC hijacked another celebrity coming out to further their own white, elite agenda.  Shame on you Chad Griffin.

So, Ellen Pagecomes out‘ with Chad at her side and (as scripted) is immediately hailed as ‘brave’ by the neo liberal media for telling her truth.  Big fucking deal.  Did Ellen Page come out in Uganda, risking her life?  Did Ellen Page use her power and prestige to help those less fortunate lesbians in other parts of the world who risk being imprisoned or worse for the luxury of telling their truth?  No, she talked about how hard it was for her to crash stereotypes.

Poor Ellen.  My heart bleeds for you.

As more and more celebrities come out it is no longer good enough to expect and prepare for fanfare without their truth becoming a political gesture.   It is not good enough for a celebrity in the free world to expect a ‘small gesture’ toward acceptance to be adequate.

Small gestures need to get bigger.  It is the responsibility of every lgbtq celebrity who comes out to address the disparity between their free lives and their oppressed brothers and sisters else where.  For Ellen Page not to mention Uganda, Russia etc. was willful and selfish.

After all, what did she expect… a fucking medal?  No, all she was doing was safeguarding her job and her position and her fame and fortune.

2.

Party last night at Jacob Brown‘s East Village duplex.  Celebrating his birthday were cute thin people, two old farts… me and the perfectly adorable producer Hunter Hill.   Crowd included (amongst others) the delectable poet Andrew Durbin and former MOCA head honcho Ari Wiseman.

I loved that my controversial green fur hat found favor with this cool, queer crowd.

3.

Valentine’s Day, enjoying my burgeoning relationship.

We decided to have dinner at Isa in Williamsburg.  We’d heard good things and it looked very lively when we passed by this summer.

We popped in at lunch time to make our reservation and the young lady maitre’d dutifully jotted it down, took names and numbers and the promise of a two top.

At 8pm we arrived at Isa.  The booking was lost, we were given the end of a community table under a loud speaker playing the most intrusive music, the waiters seemed to be very eager to process EVERYONE in and out very quickly.

We were asked by 4 separate people if we were sure we didn’t want alcohol.

Anyway, I ordered the rustic tomato soup and the skirt steak.  The soup was ok but served in very small dish.  The skirt steak entree was ghastly.  It was like chewing through a shoe.  A rubber shoe.  I sent it back and the duck special was whisked to our table in its place.  The duck was ok, not very well seasoned, the polenta was soupy and badly prepared and $30.  The tiny dish of $7 brussels sprouts were tepid and badly flash fried leaving most of them untouched by the pan… temperature issues at Isa became an irritating theme.

Our coffee was also cold so I left it.

The staff were the kind of people who try to shame you for making a complaint.  Condescending young people who are used to old people putting up and shutting up.  “Do you think you’ll like the duck better.”  He asked after I sent back the inedible steak… he asked as if I had some sort of learning disability.  No, I’m just past 45 years old.  I can hear and understand just fine.

We attempted to leisurely enjoy our dinner but the waiter was eager to snatch our unfinished dishes, “Still working on that?” they pestered.  YES!!  Leave us alone I wanted to scream but I didn’t.  This was obviously the worst choice for a Valentines dinner.   A total waste of time and money.

Here are some recent moments:

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Queer

The Fascist State of Gay USA

02 Nazi rally, 1937

1.

Homosexuals were separated into two distinct groups during the Third Reich.  

The first, an elite corp who acquiesced to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and found favor with Adolf Hitler.  Adolf conveniently turned a blind eye to our ‘degenerate’ ways (like Margaret Thatcher 50 years later) whilst simultaneously enacting anti homosexual legislation.  

The other group of homosexual men and women were less fortunate.  The thriving LGBTQ ‘out’ community were rounded up and sent to the concentration camps where thousands were murdered, raped and experimented upon in barbaric clinical trials. They were the butch dykes, the fairies, the trans.  They refused to keep quiet or give in to the newly established master race and paid dearly for their rebellion.

During the past year I asked 100 gay men if they had lived in Nazi Germany would they have joined the Nazi party?  Not one said yes.

We delude ourselves that we are more anti-establishment than we actually are.

I asked 100 jewish gay men under the age of 30 if they could imagine a white homosexual elite sending LGBTQ people to the gas chambers.  86% could not imagine a gay Nazi sending anyone to the gas chambers.  They could not imagine what a gay Nazi looked like.

Ernst Rohm, the head of the SA (the Brownshirts) – the forerunner of the SS – was gay, as were several other key figures in the SA such as his deputy Edmund Heines.  

Röhm’s chiefs, men of the rank of Gruppenfuehrer or Obergruppenfuehrer, commanding units of several hundred thousand Storm Troopers, were almost without exception homosexuals. Indeed, unless a Storm Troop officer were homosexual, he had no chance of advancement.

Hitler was aware of Röhm’s homosexuality.  Hitler and Rohm were so close they addressed each other as du (the German familiar form of “you”). No other Nazi enjoyed that privilege and their close association led to rumors Hitler himself was homosexual.

Röhm was the only Nazi leader who dared to address Hitler by his first name “Adolf” rather than “mein Führer.”

Rohm was instrumental in the rise of Nazism.   When Hitler decided to do away with his great friend it was with a heavy heart.  Nothing could or would get in the way of Hitler’s ambition to rule the world.  Roehm’s parochial mindset was his undoing.

After the night of the long knives Roehm was sent to prison where he was given the option to commit suicide or be executed.  When the time came he stood in his cell, his chest puffed out.  He was shot point blank.  He was 46 years old when he died.

Rohm and his homosexual gang of bullying Brown Shirts believed that they were invincible.  They allied themselves to Hitler and disgracefully purged their own. Rohm’s story might have some relevance today as the Fascist State of Gay takes shape in the USA.   Buoyed by Presidential support, organizations like GLAAD and the HRC use bullying rhetoric and bullying behaviors.  Our unelected gay officials go unchecked, unchallenged by the establishment who are wary of being described as ‘homophobic’ and dissenting LGBTQ accused of ‘self loathing’.

We have become quietly consumed by the Fascist State of Gay.   Look around you.

Capital_Gay_Pride_parade_in_Albany_New_York_2009

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.

Rainbow flags are everywhere: symbols on clothing and public displays.  The rainbow flag flies proudly over businesses, lights up the Empire State Building and thousands upon thousands line the streets during every ‘pride’ manifestation.  

I wondered if the Rainbow flag was my flag and what it represented.  

Truro cornwall gay pride parade 23.08.08

I reimagined these Gay Pride parades like the great communist militaristic rallys during the 1970’s and the parades of other fascist regimes.   Buff, bare-chested boys for all gays to aspire.  Overseen by the gay white elite, like the polit bureau… or Hitler surveying the perfect blond youth of Nazi Germany.

The gays have, within a very short time, achieved huge and enviable human rights gains.  Yet, within the broader gay community there is a disdain for the recognition of other human rights.  Gay white men seem fatigued when asked if they support the rights of women, people of color, undocumented workers, the freedom of expression for all.

Despite Glenn Greenwald (a gay white man) championing the causes of both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowdon these human rights heroes have found little favor within the larger gay white male community.  My friend and writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis dismisses Glenn Greenwald as ‘unattractive and unnecessarily combatative’.

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the fascist state of gay believe certain human rights can be ignored because of “need.”   They (like the general population) look the other way, approving of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Within a very short time the gays have forgotten that all the above were once used against… us.

The Fascist State of Gay, using organizations like GLAAD, identifies Enemies/Scapegoats as a unifying cause. The gays are rallied into a patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious.

Gay white men believe in racial purity.

I asked 100 white, gay men under the age of 30 years old if it was reasonable or unreasonable for others to state on their Gay Dating App or Gay Hookup Website a specific racial preference (no Asians/blacks/Latinos etc.)  85% of those interviewed stated that they thought it ‘reasonable’.

I asked 100 white, gay men under the age of 30 years old if it was reasonable or unreasonable for others to state on their Gay Dating App or Gay Hookup Website a preferred  ‘interest’ in men who had penis’ over 10 inches long.  92% of those interviewed thought it ‘unreasonable’.

To the Fascist State of Gay the end of DADT was a profound victory.  They believe in the supremacy of the military.  Soldiers and military service are glamorized/sexualized.

Within the Fascist State of Gay there is rampant sexism.  Women are degraded, trans derided.   Fascist cults tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid.

The Fascist State of gay seeks to control mass media. Sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.  Encouraging self censorship, the ownership of certain ‘gay’ words that only gays are privileged to use.

Within the Fascist State of Gay there is rampant cronyism.  Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to positions of power and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability.

Powerful anti establishment voices within the LGBTQ community are silenced, those with alternative views… alienated.

I asked 100 gay men if trans Chelsea Manning should be pardoned for leaking classified documents.  5% said yes.  42% said no.  53% didn’t know who she was.

I asked if those who knew who she was thought her a hero or a traitor.  Most gay white men who knew her name described Chelsea Manning as a traitor.

Denver Nicks, one of Chelsea’s biographers, writes that the leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, was widely seen as a catalyst for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010.

When we were young (foolishly imagining a gay Utopia) we fought for an inclusive gay community under the rainbow flag…  evolved from years of brutal struggle.  Sadly, our community is anything other than inclusive.  The dream some of us had has been highjacked by naturally right-wing, affluent, gay, white men who merely tolerate others in the unwilling LGBTQ coalition.

2.

A Long Time Coming.

On the morning of London Gay Pride, 1983 I was taken by friends to a small party near The Houses of Parliament.  The men I met were drinking champagne. They were closeted, openly right-wing and sneered at the ‘herd’ gathering across the Vauxhall Bride to celebrate their gayness.

I remember them laughing at the bull dykes, the fairies and the trans.

These men were powerful, public school/Oxbridge educated men holding important positions in government.  Civil Servants, Member’s of Parliament and to my surprise, lurking in a corner, an ex Prime Minister.

One of the men at that small party was Michael Trestrail, the Queen’s personal protection officer who had resigned the year before after being ‘outed’ by the press.  Apparently he had taken a liking to me.  The others boasted about him… as if his proximity to the Queen and his infamy would persuade me to have sex with him.

I asked him about his resignation.  He seemed less than eager to talk about it, lunging at me for a wet kiss.  I recoiled.

Many of the men in the room like MP Harvey Procter (even though he later resigned for having sex with underage boys) would stand mute beside Margaret Thatcher as she enacted laws based on her loathing of homosexuals… unless, of course they shared her right wing values and kept their gay lives to themselves.

Not one of those gay men would challenge Thatcher.  Like Ken Mehlman in the USA (who stood by the Bushes deferring to their homophobia) they ignored the plight of the many to line their own pockets.  

It is the first of the tenets of fascism: OBEDIENCE.  As Andy Tobias wrote in his best selling book The Best Little Boy in The World a self loathing gay man will do whatever it takes to go unnoticed by excelling where ever he can.

Rights, it turned out, were reserved for the few not for the people.  Realizing these men were scoundrels I drank their champagne, laughed at their views and kept my pants on.  Recognizing a dog in the manger I was quickly sent to join my own kind drinking beer and playing tug of war behind The Royal Vauxhall Tavern.   As it turned out, these men did not forget my appearance at their party and caused, wherever they could, as much trouble for me as they were able.

Right wing gays in the UK have nothing on the right wing gays in the USA.

Purity.  Military.  Obedience .

I have always been a thorn in the side of the establishment.  Last year, if I needed any further proof, messing with the right wing velvet mafia proved very dangerous.  Critical of their business practices and on the precipice of revealing fraud and sexual unmanageability they had me arrested and switches flipped deep in government that held me illegally in LA County Jail.

I was told by one powerful man within the Democratic Party the media mogul ex boyfriend of the man I accused of defrauding me had seriously considered ‘putting a bullet in my head’.

The white male gays, emboldened by the repeal of DOMA and DADT are not interested in creating an inclusive LGBTQ community.  They would prefer that bisexuals did not exist, that the trans put on men’s clothes/owned their penis, that the lesbians do their dirty work and the queers sent to prison.

Their Utopia, under their rainbow flag, does not include us.  It is a terrible sham, and sooner or later we will wake up to what is happening under the pride banner.  Acts of rebellion may become forcefully suppressed… like the flash mobbing of San Francisco Pride in support of Chelsea Manning.

The relationship between the gays, the establishment and the corporations is ideal for all involved.  Every gay man infected with HIV will, during his lifetime, generate a million dollars plus in added revenue to big pharma. The gays (white males) are avid consumers and have been embraced as ideal capitalists.  They are good at being good, they seldom break the law. They are clear about their message.  They have, in terms of human rights, leapt over those of the blacks and women.

Nothing will stop them.  Except maybe… their hubris.

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Fantasy Gay Los Angeles Love NYC politics Queer Rant

Gay Itay Hod Fucks Straight Aaron Schock (Pictures)

20140107-010935.jpg

First, if you’re going to out someone, then out them. Itay Hod did not out Schock in his piece, he outed a “hypothetical” congressman who just happens to fit Schock’s resume. He also presented thin evidence, which consisted of hearsay from an unnamed journalist friend and video footage that he claims TMZ has of Schock “trolling gay bars.” Hod knows a Facebook post is the only place this cuts it; that’s why it appeared there and not at any publication.
Secondly, a group of several gay journalists and activists on Twitter — including Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, John Aravosis and Josh Barro — have decided that mocking Schock for exhibiting stereotypically gay attributes, like caring about his clothes and body, or following Daley on Instagram is the way of dealing with him. This is the same sort of behavior that the same people have said is harmful when it happens to closeted LGBT kids in schools. And, when I look at this happening publicly, I know that those closeted kids could be seeing it too. If it’s harmful for those kids to see athletes say anti-LGBT things, how isn’t it harmful for them to see prominent out people teasing Schock for his pants?

Chris Geidner

Chris Geidner is the sole brave gay journalist who dared criticize the velvet mafia for their inchoate name calling and bullying… aimed at Republican Politician Aaron Schock… the reason for this gay vitriol?   Hunky journalist (we only agree with the good-looking ones) Itay Hod posted some ugly, muddled references on his Facebook page to a man who might hypothetically be Aaron Schock.

I’m not a fan of Aaron, he’s a typical… loathsome republican with typically unpalatable views with an unlikely sartorial edge, an atypical personal aesthetic and a body that most gay men seem to die for.

Most gay men seem to think Aaron has a ‘gay body’ so must be gay.

Rather than homosexual… Aaron Schock looks to me like a right-wing narcissus.  Remember the art of the Third Reich?  Remember Die ParteiArno Breker‘s statue representing the spirit of the Nazi Party, fetishizing male perfection?   Like most young contemporary gays, young nazis were encouraged to aspire to an idealized body as proof of their loyalty to the state (the state of gay) and their undying patriotism.  A common right-wing obsession.

Aaron has embraced the people’s fascination with his perfect abs and pecs whilst extolling the values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience.  Perhaps that’s exactly why the white, elite gays believe Aaron is a homosexual… because he is a full on, 100%, bone fide narcissist.

And, if you are wondering… defending him from the gay mafia does not make me a self loathing homosexual.  It makes my blood boil that hate speak usually reserved for gay people is being used by gay people against a man who may or may not be gay.

Aaron!  If you had only kept your abs to yourself, your (some might say) good looks under wraps… and your Instagram private… the gays wouldn’t have noticed you in the first place.  But all those pics of you with your bronzed pecs and tight white underwear have driven the gays wild.  And, like Tom Cruise before you… all the gays really want… is… to fuck you… convincing themselves and others that if they want you that badly… there’s no chance you’re straight.

You’ve confused the average gay, blindsided him with your million watt smile.

If you had been an ugly troll saying hateful things… the gays wouldn’t care less who you were fucking.  Anyway, they’d have already caught you with your mouth behind a glory hole or paying for boys on rentboy.com and dismissed you with a limp wave and a meh.

But Aaron, much to their consternation, you seem to be sexually abstinent.  Nobody has caught you with your pants down with anyone… male or female. Because you don’t take your pants down?  The gays NEVER understand celibacy or abstinence or how all men are not exactly like them.  It drives them crazy that they can’t catch you, shame you, kill the demon of homophobia within… then fuck you.

Itay Hod and his jacked up supporters are crude, repellent people. Old fashioned bullies… judgmental and prescriptive. If you dare disagree with their group think assessment you will be damned to hell… just like Chris Geidner…

For a bunch of guys who loathe judgement in others the gays sure got judgmental about the rest of the world.  Since the Supreme Court DOMA decision the gays have woken up… emboldened, embracing their power.  Like children, testing their parameters, the boundaries of what can and what can’t be said or done.  Sadly, after a life time of hibernation, they have taken on the attributes of their worst enemies.

Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, John Aravosis, Josh Barro.

They are, after all, just men.  White gay men, looking down their noses at the rest of us.

While the affluent, white gays sink into a sanctimonious swamp the rest of the LGBTQ alliance look on at them with barely concealed embarrassment.

Their treatment of Schlock, their asinine assumption that he is gay based on pics of his bare-chested, manicured body… his trousers, his shoes… says more about them and the type of gays they are… than the kind of straight man Schock is.

Dodgy circumstantial evidence convicts Aaron Schock of homosexuality in the court of the velvet mafia.  Using gossip and here say, bad shoe pics and plaid pants as indisputable proof of his gayness.

This is BULLSHIT!

I thought is was who we were fucking and loving rather than who we were aping that made us gay?

Perhaps Aaron Sch-jock is truly asexual?  Maybe he’s waiting for the right guy… maybe he’s a pedophile practicing abstinence… or suffers erectile dysfunction and hates the gays because they are so obsessed with hard cocks?

What of it?  It’s all conjecture until he tells us what he is if he feels so compelled.

The guy is a republican hater who dresses like a european and loves showing off his abs… have you seen Instagram or Tumblr recently? Based on this proof… this ‘criteria’… the whole world (hopefully) would be gay.  All of my young straight friends are posting pics of their abs and their shoes on Instagram and Tumblr every day.

Haven’t we got past this crap?  That only pansies and girls do that sort of thing?

God forbid, what happens if Aaron comes out? Like Ken Mehlman before… who caused untold harm to fellow gay people.   If indeed Schock is gay and comes out?  There will be a parade.  It will take the baying gays about ten seconds to shamelessly forget his homophobia, objectify his abs… go to his pool parties and drink his vodka whilst he condemns immigrants, destroys women’s rights and turns a blind eye to racist colleagues.

But don’t worry… he’ll be out and proud.

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Categories
Queer

Thrupple

Fire Island Pines

1.

The thrupple, along with the cult of Daddy, was a recurring theme throughout the summer.  Three men glued into a happy relationship, usually two older and a younger man working out the sort of relationship most people (straight and gay) may find not only convenient but very rewarding.

My friend W met and fell for a couple he met on Fire Island.  They have since become a thrupple.   I like the word… don’t you?  It’s easy on the lips… like wimple, one of my favorite words.   Robert arrived from London with his two boyfriends.  My friend Fernando lives with two men in one large bed in LA.  This, of course, is not new.  Derek Jarman introduced me to three beautiful boys who lived on Shaftesbury Avenue in the early 80’s.   I was entranced.

A relationship with one person I find nearly impossible.  The idea of loving two men… well, that’s just greedy isn’t it?  The cult of Daddy suits me just fine.  The older man mentoring and investing in a younger man seems to have a superb historical provenance.

“He’s a semi gay, he needs my help to open a gym on Long Island.  He’s very happy to see me and spend time with his girlfriend.”

The big winners in this recent gay perestroika have been bisexual and more sexually fluid folk.  Curiosities become realities.  The beginning of a seismic social shift across the west.  A shift the ‘other side’ is desperate to quash.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

This sexual revolution, because that’s what it truly is, is not allied to any left-wing or socialist principle like it is in Europe.  American male entitlement and arrogance is built into the process.  ‘I can have what I want when I want it.  If they are getting something good… I want it too.’  The gay white male lifestyle with its glamour, easy money, few rules of conduct, lax morality, social mobility etc. is very alluring to many young heterosexual men.  Especially the poor, the disenfranchised and the beautiful.

Gay men have learned to communicate with them, welcoming straight men into our lives without shame or fear of violence.  They come to us for advice and succour.  We appreciate the time they spend in the gym, the product they buy for their hair.  They luxuriate in the attention, yet baffled by compliments.

Straight women rarely compliment men.  They never tell them how good-looking they are nor praise what they are wearing.  Straight women seldom acknowledge the effort straight men have made… instead, expecting men to praise and compliment them.  A stray compliment from a bold gay man is so unexpected straight men blush like girls.  Only a moment, we hope, before a blush melts into something hot and heavy.  If only for a moment.

2.

The political conversation has shifted for thinking gays in the USA.  Conservative organizations like the HRC lead by the lamentable Chad Griffin are forced to become more radical.  They achieved their wish for some partial, piecemeal marriage equality, although the legislation is hardly a road map to equality for all Americans.  Women and black people are still undervalued and vilified second class citizens in the USA.

At dinner last night, three gay men and three lesbians.  Between us we could not identify one female leader of industry.  We could not identify one black leader of industry.  The CEO of Yahoo was the closest we got but we didn’t know her name.  The other woman mentioned was Martha Stuart but her name unleashed a torrent of misogynistic invective from an older gay man.

I got to thinking about the Third Reich.  We were discussing Yom Kippur, we were discussing the Germans.  We were discussing the gays in the concentration camps and it suddenly dawned on me.  The answer to a question that had bugged me for decades… how were there so many gay men in the SS yet the camps were full of gays and lesbians?  Of course, we are seeing the same thing now.  An elite corp of rich, white gay men with profoundly right-wing values who would gladly imprison people like me with radical, left-wing ideas.  The concentration camps were full of undesirable gays.  The trannies, the butch dykes, the trouble makers who didn’t see things Hitler’s way.

No wonder the trans community are fighting particularly hard to be recognized, respected and their freedom to be acknowledged.  Yet, unsurprisingly there is a push back from elite white gay men… as if the trans are spoiling the party.

Remember as you celebrate your so-called equality… it is still possible to be fired from your job  for being a gay or lesbian if you live in one of 35 states.  In 45 states you can be fired for being a transsexual or by redefining your gender or simply wearing clothes that are generally supposed to be worn by the opposite sex.

The elite white gays are not interested in trans people, black people (unless objectified and used as living sex toys), women, poor people or inclusively.  The moment they achieved some sort of parity they turned their backs on the coalition of outsiders who helped them achieve their equality aims.

My idea of hell:  A White Gay President.

Last night we cooked dinner, we ate pork.  We walked to the tea dance.   Later, I looked on-line to see what was going on.  As I lay in bed I wondered how long it would take for the right-wing gay elite to look upon left-wing noisy gays… the anti-establishment truth tellers as undesirables and start freezing them out.  Throwing them into jail, silencing them?   Like they did to Peter Tatchell in the UK.

My guess is, this is already happening… my guess is… this is happening to me.

Categories
Queer

Secrets: A Letter From Queer America

Painted Map

Written for Beige in the UK and published today.

My inaugural letter from America is sent at a time when American secrets and lies take center stage.

I’m staying in Petrolia, Northern California, eleven hours from my home in Los Angeles with Daisy Cockburn, the daughter of Emma Tennant and political journalist and contrarian Alexander Cockburn who sadly died last year.  I am writing at his desk overlooking his wild and beautiful garden.  Alexander Cockburn, like his friend Noam Chomsky, would have slammed the US government for the actions of the NSA recently revealed by Edward Snowden.

Whilst I am amused by the audacious lengths government will go to hold onto its own secrets while harvesting yours… he was not.  Like this present generation of internet babies… I have never valued secrets.  I am an open book. I have always believed that everything I am is yours.

Do you remember the biggest secret you had to keep?  You know, the queer secret?

When I realized I was different, that my sexual/social narrative did not correspond with those around me, I was baffled as to how I should make the difference known.  I was just a child.  I did not ‘come out of the closet’. I didn’t understand why I should make a big emotional announcement. I decided that I wouldn’t tell anyone. My actions would speak louder than words.  It was up to them, those around me, to frame the reveal. Not me.

It was obvious that being queer, telling people that I was queer during the 1970’s… was like letting off a bomb. It was an act of terrorism.  For some, it still is.  Holding my lover’s hand in the street… a rebellion.

So, instead of having a difficult conversation with my secular loved ones about my sexuality, I spoke openly about my same-sex desires, my plans and my heroes.  They looked askance but they got used to it… or else.  I was a teenage whistleblower.

There is nothing more honorable than being a whistleblower.

This month, two extraordinary whistleblowers are top of the news.  Queer hero Bradley Manning and straight hero Edward Snowden.  Manning is currently on trial in a semi-secret military kangaroo court and unlikely ever to be released. The other brave whistleblower, Edward Snowden, a fugitive in Hong Kong, unlikely to see his country of origin ever again.

My gay brothers and sisters in the USA have, on the most part, turned their back on Bradley Manning citing his law breaking as treasonous. Maligning his motives, distancing themselves from his gay story.  Manning’s narrative is bound up with the recently abandoned DADT, a messy ‘coming out’, Manning’s extreme family poverty and the witnessing of cruel and illegal horrors that no man should ever see.

Manning has unwittingly created a schism in the LGBTQ community, cleaving the queers from the gays.  The queers have on the most part embraced Manning, his activism and conscientious objection. The gays have not.  The Queers had Manning elected as a San Francisco gay pride parade grand marshal in late April, but the LGBTQ board quickly rescinded the ‘honor’ after a white male gay outcry.

Queer supporters of Manning held demonstrations, crowded a Pride board meeting and packed a community forum all with the hopes of seeing Manning reinstated as a grand marshal. The Pride board has not budged.

Why are the majority of USA gays so repulsed by Manning?

Perhaps if Manning had been a muscular, army guy of the gay-for-pay porn star variety so popular amongst the gays, they may have ‘evolved’ a different point of view.  Manning is not that guy. He is small and slight and wan.  He joined the army to get an education and ironically ended up educating the whole world.

He is lauded by Michael Moore, Vietnam Vets, heterosexual politicians/presidents and liberal intellectuals all over the world.  His actions are widely credited with hastening an American withdrawal from Iraq and the Arab Spring.

To many across the world Bradley Manning is a hero.

Yet, the gay establishment ignore Bradley. He is routinely ignored by the HRC and GLAAD. He is viciously bullied on anonymous gay, online discussion boards.  GLAAD would rather honor a homophobic, straight film director rather than one of our brave own.

Many of the USA gays who publicly hate Manning are upper middle-class, affluent white men.  They seem embarrassed and angry by his openness, his honesty, his despair.   They call him impertinent, arrogant and narcissistic.  Yet, had Bradley Manning been a bone fide journalist with a fancy ivy league degree he might have become a hero… or like Edward Snowden who currently enjoys the support of over 100, 000 people on the White House petition page demanding a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.

There is no such petition for Bradley Manning.  Bradley was not well-educated… he’s a white trash gay kid with ideas above his rank.

His detractors, formerly closeted gay men, have their own relationship with the truth.  By necessity, after years of experience, they have become slick liars, natural spies, covert experts. In their every day life they create the illusion of perfection: socially, physically and sexually. A tribe of American gay men who have an overwhelming urge to be over-achievers.  They are clean-cut and conservative in appearance, they throw themselves into their jobs with the same fervency they got through school.

They champion marriage and the military rather than the end of LGBTQ jobs discrimination.  They have no interest in helping others in the coalition of oppressed minorities cobbled together by President Obama because they do not consider themselves an oppressed minority.

Why should they?  They are white, affluent and male.  What’s not to be proud of?

Since I arrived in the USA I have (rather proudly) been subject to not one… but two gagging orders imposed on me by white gay men.

Both ex-intimates, both terrified of having their secret gay lives revealed.  Professional white men, a 32-year-old and a 45-year-old.   The younger man works for a famous publishing house and is perhaps the most interesting because he supposedly respects the first amendment.   The other, a rich businessman caught lying and cheating.

The former was well ensconced in his comfy closet when I first met him, about to be married to a women, living a double life. When I found out about his deception I told him,  “Either you tell the woman you are deceiving… or I will.”

When I tell white gay men this story they are outraged.  They blame the deceived woman for being dumb.  Their thinly veiled misogyny revealed.

“How stupid of her to not realize he was gay.”  they scold.

One Saturday morning two years ago he told her he was living a double life.  After he came out of the closet he had a great deal of sex with many men then settled down with the man he intends to marry.  Free from her sociopathic ex she is now in love with an honest heterosexual.  Of course… he demonizes me.  She probably does too.  No good deed goes unpunished.

Like a lot of over-achieving well-closeted gay men, the publisher operated under the “Best Little Boy in the World” syndrome, a term from Andrew Tobias’ seminal coming-out autobiography of the same name, published in 1973, describing a certain type of middle-to-upper-class gay man.

Gay men are still terrified of the truth: personal or public. Their worst fear when growing up was having their gay truth revealed.  We all want to control the message.  Nobody wants to be told that they are queer ahead of their own declaration.

Many gay men still behave like small boys grappling with who and what it means to be gay.  Scarred by shame, they loathe any queer person who draws negative attention to him/herself in case it tarnishes them or the gay corporation.

They loathe Bradley Manning for outing the nation.

When gay men are ready to tell the truth about being gay they demand recognition and plaudits for doing so.  A heroes welcome for coming out of the closet.  Yet, after this initial flush of candor, their honesty only extends so far.

Beyond the great revelation there is a darker side to being gay that the gay white elite doesn’t want you to know.

They have gone to extraordinary lengths to make you think we are JUST LIKE YOU.  They are still placating their heterosexual parents, school mates and the straight friends who don’t mind them being gay… as long as you don’t do anything gay around me.

The gays don’t want you to know about the meningitis epidemic, the continuing HIV epidemic, they don’t want you to know about their loneliness, their propensity for STDs, the unreasonably high gay adult male suicide rate, the sexual unmanageability, drug taking, racism, sexism, classism, narcissism and ageism that blights the gay ‘community’.  They don’t mention how they routinely commodify women’s bodies/reproductive labor so they can have children. They don’t want you to know just how hard it is to be straight acting, to be ‘masc’ or to find themselves remotely attractive when they look in the mirror.

They don’t want you to know that for many LGBTQ… it doesn’t get better.

Manning broke the first rule of the white gay American elite:  Don’t rock the boat.

The gay businessman’s gagging order expires early next year and he will, inevitably seek to extend it.  The publisher will do the same.  The problem is:  as they know all too well… the truth is eventually revealed.

I met a man.  A medical doctor.  He was well put together, handsome, the president of a large gay organization that supposedly represents the interests of the gay community.  Our trusted servant. He couldn’t stop crying.  Under his well cut trousers he had a permanent needle in his leg for jacking meth. He begged me not to write about him.

I couldn’t make that promise.  He is the perfect white gay American metaphor.

In modern America secrets both public and personal are simultaneously considered defending and deflowering at the expense of the constitution. At both micro and macro levels this secretive bipolarity has come to define my stay in the USA.

 

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Categories
Queer

The Problem With Pride

FDF 3

President Obama has third graders announce LGBTQ pride month at the White House.  Whose idea was that?  Even POTUS looked a little incredulous.  Obviously I don’t have any problem with 3rd graders manning the barricades but… perhaps we can have kittens next time… or puppies… or fluffy yellow chicks… or a new born foal?

The gays are in Pride party overdrive.  Circuit parties, sex parties, pride events, bear parties, underwear parties, mourning parties, party parties.

When Joe and I lived in The Pines on Fire Island we went, over the years, to various high-octane, drug fueled, over lubricated, semi-naked circuit parties.  Yet, however many drugs I took, however great my body was… I still felt alienated.  I still experienced a strange, out-of-body disconnect from those men around me.  You see, I remember thinking quite clearly that they… GOT IT… and I didn’t.  I thought back then… they understand something more about homosexuality than I did… than I do.

Don’t get me wrong… I wasn’t looking down my nose at them.  I wasn’t feeling superior.  I would love to have connected with those men.  Like I used to feel connected (high on E) in my mid twenties exploring London (straight) club land.  The same heaving mass that miraculously included me.  Joyfully, willingly abandoning self, self consciousness terminal uniqueness and dancing as one with a thousand others.

That is what I felt then.  This is what I feel now:  To have ones life defined by gay circuit parties is simply revolting.

Some people prepare for weeks for Pride, in the gym, tanning, organizing parties, getting the right tickets for the right events.  Making sure the drink and the drugs are pre-ordered.  Leaving nothing to chance.  The last ‘pride’ parade I attended I saw a drunken man defecating in the street. It was not the enduring image of LGBTQ solidarity after which I was hankering.

There is a hideous disconnect between the civil rights we demand and the public face of ‘pride’.  A parade of semi naked gyrating narcissists.  How can anyone take that seriously?  Pride simply reinforces the difference between me and them:  I do not drink or take drugs.  I am not driven (compelled) by my homosexuality.

The parade terrifies me.  Aesthetically.  The corporate floats lack ingenuity and wit.  The rent boy/sex worker float lacks class.  The thongs, the swagger, revealing the lie of Pride.  The near identical bodies in various hues.  Searching, begging for tiny differences between each naked, muscular physique that may determine the uniqueness, the individuality of just one of these men.  Of course, I am excited to see so many out men.  But they are all the same.  I look at them and, as much as I want to be, I am not attracted to them.  I am not attracted to their essence… to their remarkable lack of ego.

The Pride parade is a celebration of sexuality.  First and foremost.  And I, absurdly, want to fall in love.  You see, I proved it.  They wanted sex… and I didn’t.   I wanted to fall in love… and they didn’t.

“I want to tell you how much I love you.”  I whispered.

When I have sex.  I tell them to say… I love you.  It turns me on.  “Even if you don’t mean it.”  I was useless then and I am useless now to those gay men at those gay circuit parties because I didn’t want to have sex.  I wanted to fall in love.  I didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t and they knew it.  They could see by the look in my eye that their sexuality terrified me, baffled me.  I wanted to fall in love.

That man I loved.  After he came out… he told me about the sex he was having with many, many men.  He was really good at meeting strange men and having sex with them.  His priorities shifted.  When we were together and he was in the closet he told me he loved me, he was emotional… the moment he came out he threw his emotional interest in men away.  In favour of sex.  I wanted to fall in love.

It was my fault.  I had this sex genius at my disposal and couldn’t work out how to use what he was brilliant at.  When we made love I felt the same disconnect.  Out of body.  Away.

Pride is a tough word to have appended to any celebration because it means so many different things to so many different people.  That’s why I love the LGBTQ Mardi Gras in Sydney, it doesn’t have PRIDE  in the title.  Mardi Gras is everything you want it to be because Mardi Gras mean nothing to me.  Means everything to me.

Mardi Gras implies celebration.  It doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t.  Even though it eschews the word Pride, on the several occasions I attended… I felt really proud.  Proud to be just like them.  Just like you.  I looked for the similarities and not the differences at:  The silly Mardi Gras community events, the Mardi Gras parade, the film festival, the theatre festival, the LGBTQ city art tours… even the leather cruise… something I would never usually do seemed fun and interesting.

It was a gathering of the LGBTQ clan and made no mistake by calling itself something it isn’t.  The parade and the party.  Mardi Gras was so different from London Pride.  London Pride in the 1980’s, was a sombre affair.  Men and women.  Simply being seen.  It was originally held during the miserable months of the British year.  Overcast skies.  Rain.

London Pride has evolved from a bunch of angry gays and lesbians marching through Westminster (Margaret Thatcher’s back yard) denouncing the infamously homophobic Section 28 to right now and a profoundly different landscape for the LGBTQ community.  We have enthusiastically embraced the Blair (credit where credit’s due) government’s equality overhaul and the introduction of legal parity for all citizens of the UK regardless of gender.

London Pride is a deserved celebration… but it was earned.  It’s not my cup of tea.  But it was earned.  If it isn’t your cup of tea… what is?  What does this old queer want?

Well.

Somewhere between the seriousness of a civil rights march and the celebration of Mardi Gras there is a parade I want to attend.   There’s a parade I want to join where all men and women are respected and nurtured regardless of age, sexuality and religion.  Let me know if you find that Parade because I’ll be there… to hold your hand.

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Categories
politics Queer Rant

Clément Méric: We Cry For You

black-1.2

It is a black day for the international LGBTQ community.

Clément Méric is as good as dead.  His brilliant, 18-year-old queer brain mangled by right-wing thugs on the streets of Paris.

He is presently kept alive by a tangle of opalescent tubes.

In Russia activists are targeted by government sponsored bullies.

In London intellectuals are beaten to the ground by members of the EDL.

In NYC a black man is shot in the face and killed.

Trans people are murdered every day all over the world, often without investigation.

Have you heard?  There is, amongst the general population, a perceived inevitability about LGBTQ equality.

Some amongst us are becoming complacent.  Bloated on the success we think we have.

Basking in the support we think we get from the President.  In fact we are silenced by him.

His words over deeds have silenced us.

We must speak up.  Continue to challenge. Continue to be seen.

We must not shirk our responsibility to queer martyrs like Clément Méric.

Speak up. Heckle.

ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Actis only now being widely discussed after the petulant FLOTUS was confronted by GetEQUAL queer activist Ellen Sturtz.

I congratulate Ellen.  Finally, a voice for the queer poor heard over the screaming voices of the queer rich.

As the Great Recession continues in so much of the USA, ending workplace discrimination (especially for trans people) is essential.

Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.

FLOTUS

Remember.  As we strive for parity there will be those with equal and opposite views.

There will be violence.

There will be those who will kill an 18-year-old queer boy because they can.

African-Americans had to face nearly another century of lynchings before the Civil Rights Movement was powerful enough to push back strongly against violent racists.

The women’s movement of the 1920s, side-tracked for a generation until the 1960s, with so many needlessly broken lives and life expectations as a result.

Queer people are being attacked all over the world: Paris, Moscow, New York, London by increasingly emboldened haters.

As we demand equality in the workplace, the home and in the establishment these attacks will become more frequent.

We must, whether we like it or not, form a true LGBTQ alliance not only in name but in practice.

It is too late for fear to drive us into the shadows. We are out. We are visible.

We need to be more fearless and more visible.

LGBTQ.

This means YOU.

This means ME.

Reading about Clément Méric this morning, looking at his sweet, boyish profile… I began to question my own behavior.

I have, of late, let resentment toward the gays shape my own kind of homophobia.

For those of you who have read my blog these past couple of years the provenance of this loathing may seem understandable.

Today, I need to jettison those resentments.

If I truly believe in this fight… I have to accept those I detest as my queer brothers and sisters.

Categories
Queer

Hoarding

Bearded Straight Man

1.

Holding onto the past. Cluttering up the present.

2.

I saw athlete Jason Collins on the TV. He was being interviewed by Oprah.

As I listened to him tell his story I thought a great deal about other people I had known who lived as adults in the closet.

Collins was not involved with a woman when he came out.

He was single.

For those gay men who are married or engaged to women when they come out the trauma this causes the woman cannot be underestimated, yet somehow their trauma is ignored.

The woman from Connecticut hoards craft materials she intends to use. She never uses it. Her house is uninhabitable.

Her husband left her for another man.

A lie is revealed. The life of the lie is shared. Often those who have lived unwittingly with a liar also feel that they have lived a lie.

My important gay writer friend mocked Collins ex girlfriend Carolyn on Facebook.

He made fun of her for ‘not realizing’ Collins was gay. Not realizing that she was living with a lying sociopath?

My friend is a gay man who has had sex with women and dated women yet he can barely disguise his misogyny.

Like so many gay men he is, whether he likes it or not, a separatist.

Carolyn is an intelligent, kind and articulate woman who was duped by a liar.

I listened to Collins wondering how this man was cast as the hero?

He’s not the first athlete to come out of the closet, many women came before him and some men.

The Collins cocktail of gay, black and startlingly good-looking is somehow more intoxicating than remembering that Martina Navratilova had come out decades before.

Collins hopes that his coming out will ‘make it easier’ for others to do the same yet… it seems unlikely.

Is his coming out really a coming out at all?

He will only really know how it feels to ‘come out’ once he is back on the team.

At the moment he is cushioned by celebrity and an American media fascinated by his ‘bravery’.

Is he brave?

He is not a normal black kid from the ghetto.

He is not the normal black kid at the local church.

He is not a kid. He is not normal.

Celebrity assures him of that.

If you identify as LGBTQ then every coming out is circumstantial.

There will never be an easier time to come out because most everybody wants to fit it. To fade away. To avoid the glaring spotlight even if that spotlight is no longer hostile.

No one wants to say: I am different. Not today, not in America… where individuality is scorned.

Jason’s parents look suitably loving on the TV. They know they’re going to ‘love him no matter what’, they’re going to ‘get through it’.

I wonder sometimes what the expectation is for those new, enlightened parents who suddenly have a gay son or daughter to dote on.

Judging by those who now look sweetly at me and my partner whenever I am brave enough to hold onto my lover in the street… their reaction may have changed but the feeling I have remains the same.

They look at us… like I look at a particularly fluffy puppy. “Ah, how sweet.” They want to say. “How fucking adorable.”

I know they want to stop us and tell us how fucking adorable we are.

Those people who gawp and smile supportively are just as irritating as those who glare disapprovingly.

I don’t want you to have an opinion about us as we walk in the street.

I have no opinion about you.

Jason Collins coming out also poses questions about others who have not come out sooner.

I mean, If Jason Collins can do it… why can’t you? Why is it an issue? How could you not tell us the truth?

But Jason Collins has The President, ex President Clinton (the DOMA signer) the President’s wife Mo to congratulate him.

They are ‘proud’ to call Jason their friend.

Well, Jason Collins and those other gay people I allude to… they are adults. They came out as adults.

They can control the outcome.

They are ‘straight acting’ there was ‘no clue’, no tell-tale fabulousness, no lisp, no prepubescent flamboyance.

He was never harassed, he was never told ahead of time what he was before he knew himself.

Jason Collins comes from a ‘close and loving’ family.

Like other gay men who came out late in life… if their family was so close, so loving…why couldn’t they come out sooner?

What did they think they would lose?

The closer the family the harder the riddle.

The fantasy that one has for ones children, the perfect future… the wedding, the christening… cannot include a same-sex partner?

Well, no… not if you have invested in the lies your adult child told… again and again.

Lied to those very same people who now bathe you in their unconditional love.

Obviously, my ‘coming out’ as a teen… was very different.

Having no real option… was all at once a blessing and a curse.

I was brought up in a different age.

My coming out was an act of terrorism.

I threw it at them like boiling water and told them to get used to the burns.

3.

Meanwhile, there’s a teenager in Northern England struggling with his decision to reveal the truth.

He saw me on TV and sought me out.

He told his family he was gay… face to face.

He told his friends on Facebook

Tonight he told everyone how miserable he feels. How dark this place is.

Jason Collins has not helped him. He does not have the President of the United State to support him on Twitter.

Feeling different, facing a new world… not as an adult but as a child.

Things don’t get better… because he now has the prospect of British parochial gay life and all that entails.

He has predatory men to deal with at the local bar, he has rampant desires that remain unfulfilled.

I think he regrets not waiting.

It’s a big deal coming out when you’re a poor kid a long way from the big city.

It always will be… however many athletes steal the limelight from boys like him.