It’s been a while…a long while…since SNL has been anything even approaching funny much less satirical. But their recent take on the Senate testimony of General Petraeus comes pretty darn close…it’s almost Daily Show-worthy…
James Brougton’s This Is It
This lovely film from 1971 has been called James Broughton’s "creation myth." It’s an absolute delight. It runs at about 9 minutes and with the sitar background becomes a bit trancelike in parts. The title "This Is It" comes from a poem of James Broughton’s that I had the good fortune to come across years ago while in Port Angeles. It was printed on a little handcard and I remember thinking, Wow. Who is this guy James Broughton. A woman’s voice recites the poem at the 3 minute mark. Fits beautifully with this film.
Enjoy!
On the Occasion of the Pope Coming to Town
Many interesting things come over our transom…this from the esteemed John J. McNeill, on the arrival of Joseph "God’s Rottweiller" Ratzinger (wasn’t this guy on Cheers?) on our shores (traveling under his nom de power "Pope Benedict XVI"):
Toward a Theology of Fallibility
When Pope Benedict comes to Ground Zero in New York City he will be greeted by
a giant banner with a painting of Michael Judge, the Gay Franciscan priest, whose life is recorded in the documentary, Saint of 9/11. That banner signifies the ambiguous state of many Gay, Lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Catholics toward the Pope. We share the respect and love of the Catholic community for the Vicar of Christ and wish him well. At the same time we are profoundly aware of how wrong he is in his understanding and judgment on Gayness as “intrinsic disorder”. We are deeply conscious that we cannot accept and live out his teaching on homosexuality without destroying our mental and spiritual health. What is bad psychology has to be bad theology. We find ourselves in the same position as children of a homophobic parent, who, while still loving their parent, must separate off and take distance from that parent’s homophobia, if they are to live happy and healthy lives.
We Roman Catholic Gays have found it necessary to undergo the same maturing process in our spiritual lives that Jesus asked his disciples to undergo at the last supper. “I shall ask the Father and he will send you another Paraclete to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.” (John 14: 16-17) Jesus stressed the point that it was necessary that he should go away in order for the Spirit to come. “Yet you are sad at heart because I have told you this. Still, I am telling you the truth; it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go. I will send him to you….However, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth.” (John 16: 6-13)
Why could the Spirit of Truth only come after Jesus’ death? Because as long as Jesus remained alive and present, his disciples had their center of authority outside themselves and were not totally responsible for their actions. They were striving to meet the expectations of a provident leader. They had not yet become fully creative and responsible adults. But after Jesus’ death, his Spirit became what Paul saw as the source of the “Glorious Freedom of the Children of God”. “The proof that you are sons and daughters is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba’, Father; and it is this that makes you a son or daughter, you are not a slave anymore’. Pagans were not free but slaves in relation to their gods because they related to their gods in a spirit of fear. John tells us “Perfect love cast out all fear. It is equally true that perfect fear casts out all love.” Christians are free because their God is a God of love who had adopted them into his family. “All who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons or daughters of God, for what you have received was not the spirit of slavery, to bring you back into fear, you have received the Spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry out Abba, Father.” (Rom. 8:14-17)
With the death of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the apostles received a challenge as well as an opportunity to mature. As Paul expressed it, “…until we all reach unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and form the perfect human, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.” (Eph. 4:13). The apostles had to give up the security of a provident leader; they had to begin to find out what God wanted from them from within themselves and their own experience.
In like manner, in our spiritual life, we Roman Catholic Gay people must pass from a passive, dependent role to an active, creative one. For our survival we have a special need to become mature, self-motivated, autonomous people, no longer dependent on outside homophobic sources for a sense of our identity and well-being. We must not let our enemies outside ourselves define us; we must let the Spirit of love that dwells within our hearts define us. As the Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel expressed it: “Our God dwells within us and the only way we can become one with that God is to become one with our authentic self”.
It is this understanding of the role of the indwelling Holy Spirit that gives me great consolation during these times when the Catholic Church reacts to its Gay members in ignorance and even downright hostility. We Gays should be grateful to God for creating a humanly fallible Church. We are intensely aware that if our parents had been infallible we could never have matured and become autonomous and responsible adults. God blessed us with finite and fallible parents. It was precisely when and where our parents proved fallible that we were challenged to take distance from their authority, make our own choices and be fully responsible for them.
In a similar way, as Gay Roman Catholics we are dependent on the human fallibility of religious authorities in order to develop an adult freedom of conscience. I believe that we are witnessing the coming into being of what I call the Church of the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. After forty years of ministry with Lesbian and Gay persons, as both priest and psychotherapist, I am convinced that a unique spirituality, special and vibrant, is springing up in the Christian Gay community. It is spirituality totally compatible with a life of Gay sexual love and intimacy. As scripture says “the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. (Mark 12:18) Gays are leading the way to form a spiritual community based on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s special presence in the Gay Christian community and the unique graces which are enabling Lesbians and Gays to build a mature, autonomous spiritual life are not just gifts meant for the Gay Christian community alone. When God pours out special blessings on one segment of the community, those blessings are meant to flow out and be shared by the human community at large.
The Church of the Holy Spirit will be a Church in which all are equal, no hierarchy, no clergy as a separate caste, no domination of men over women. Leadership in the Church of the Holy Spirit will be based on careful listening to what the Holy Spirit is saying through the people of God. A recent event makes me believe that God is working overtime to bring about the transformation of the Catholic Church into the Church of the Holy Spirit. President Lech Kaczynski of Poland in a March 17 televised speech to the nation, echoing the Vatican position, warned that the adoption of the European Lisbon Treaty would compel Poland to recognize same-sex marriages, which he linked to the end of “moral order”. To make his point the president used footage of the 2003 wedding of Brendan Fay and Tom Moulton in Canada. As a result of that speech a media frenzy moved Brendan and Tom out of obscurity and they became world famous. Brendan and Tom are devout Gay Roman Catholics who see their marriage as a sacred bond blessed by God. The Holy Spirit is ultimately in charge of the Church and will transform it so that it becomes one with the realm of God. We who are Gay and Catholic pray daily that the hierarchy will hear what the Spirit is saying through the people of God and cooperate with the Spirit’s transformation of the Church.
John J. McNeill John J. McNeill, author of The Church and The Homosexual, Taking A Chance on God, Freedom, Glorious Freedom, and Both Feet Planted Firmly in Midair. The Reverend McNeill can be reached at jjmcneill@aol.com
Gay Muslim Life
A fascinating documentary from the BBC. This is part 1 of 6 and I found it an amazing glimpse into gay life in Muslim countries. The attention to the position of homosexuality in Islamic law is so helpful as is the expression of outsider status of Gay Muslims in the Gay community.
I would be interested to see if there exist counter-views to this documentary. It is a powerful statement.
Breaking boundaries of ritual, religion and sexuality.
South Asian culture has historically been replete with multiple representations of gender and sexuality. Desire is often worshiped in many Hindu and Sufi traditions, and from temple carvings of Khajuraho (in Central India) to the presence of Hijras ( often conceptualized as third sex, third gender in India) to the modern pop and Bollywood flirtations with androgyny, gender, sexuality and desire is an intrinsic part of South Asian cultures. Yet our history has been fraught with struggles for women’s emancipation, gay, lesbian and Hijra rights and long standing silence on issues of HIV/AIDS.
Engendered a three day multi-disciplinary art and cultural festival to be held at the Lincoln Center between April 18th-20th is precisely going to delve into these contradictions. Conceived and presented by Nayikas Dance Theater Co. (New York’s only resident feminist Oddissi dance company) along with the Indo-American Arts Council, the festival will showcase works of over forty South-Asian performers from across the world, including panels featuring long time LGBT rights activist Urvashi Vaid, queer filmmakers such as Sohini Ghosh and Harjant Gill. (www.nayikas.org/engenderd)
The festival director Myna Mukherjee says "Gender and sexuality continue to have a fraught relationship
with the intimate, the familial, the sacred, the ritualistic, the religious and the cinematic — all fragments of a cultural conversation that still needs to find its voice. At its heart, this festival is part of an attempt to find, listen to, and add to this voice, and take it to communities and audiences that have not heard it before".
The festival will feature the first all male Oddissi dance ensemble Rudrakshya, who use a dance form traditionally performed by women in temples of India, to bring to light the divine manifestations of the androgyne. Among the highlights of the events is a solo performance by one of India’s most
protean dance pioneers, Astad Deboo, and excerpts from New York’s Rajika Puri’s recent production, Devi Mallika: A Garland of Goddesses. Washington, DC-based Daniel Phoenix Singh’s Dakshina Dance Theatre Company will present a blend of Bharat Natyam and modern dance movements to explore themes about
gays and lesbians. Aparna Sindhoor will perform with her Navarasa Dance Company Bharat Natyam items and also the marshal art choreography called Kallaripayattu. Nayikas has created a show of its own. Called Veiled/Unveiled, the danced and spoken word piece explores ‘the ambiguities and contradictions of pardah
system’ across South Asia. 
Perhaps one of the most controversial panel will be the closing plenary entitled "Women Speak on Geo-Politics, Identity, Desire and Power-Structures" on Sunday April 20th featuring controversial feminist author Taslima Nasrin, whose novels drew virulent opposition from Islamic radicals in India and Bangladesh, and legendary actress and dancer Mallika Sarabhai (perhaps you remember her as Draupadi from Peter Brooke’s Mahabharata), who in recent times has faced severe opposition from Hindu nationalists. The panel will also feature prominent queer theorist Gayatri Gopinath from the American Studies department at NYU, along with Bharati Mukherjee and Shamita Das DasGupta (author and anti-violence activist). Facilitated by Debanuj Das Gupta himself,the panel will disrupt the patriarchal, hetronormative hegemony of global geo-politics. 
There is also a queer film festival component showcasing latest cutting edge queer cinema from South-Asia on Sunday. Noted gay film-maker Harjant Gill will screen his film with lots of male nudity involved for the viewers pleasure called "Milind Soman Made Me Gay"
The festival has already received tremendous amount of press coverage, including a four page cover feature in the largest circulating South-Asian newspaper India Abroad. BBC and MTV is also covering the festival.
If you are seeking to discover the colorful images, paintings and musical feats of South-Asia that celebrate, challenge and create newer non-western modes of expressing queerness, and creating a relationship with the Divine. This festival is a must see for you.
For schedule and tickets visit www.nayikas.org/engendered
We’ve got your American Idol RIGHT HERE!
FULL-TIME PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNITY WITH THE KINSEY SICKS!
What could be more thrilling? More life-changing? More fun? More nauseating?
THE JOB:
The Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, is seeking a serious and skilled performer for a long-term full-time commitment as an actively performing swing. We are looking for:
* Substantial stage experience
* Strong musicianship
* Great talent in comedy and comedic improvisation
* Comfort with drag performance
* Ability to portray a comic character in an ensemble context
* Ability to learn complicated 4-part vocal arrangements in limited time
* Willingness to travel, perform live, and potentially appear on screen
* Willingness to chip in on some of the less glamorous aspects of travel and performance (including stage/dressing room set-up, meeting/greeting audiences, selling merchandise after shows)
* Decent business skills, progressive politics, good communication and the ability to work in a team.
A cappella experience is a plus but not required. Being part of the Kinsey Sicks is incredibly fun. You should be too. We want you to be as excited about what we do as we are. This position is open until filled.
TO APPLY:
Send a resume to info@kinseysicks.
AUDITIONS:
The Kinsey Sicks will be touring throughout the spring and early summer, and we will audition qualified applicants as we tour. Let us know if you can make it to any of the following places:
April 10: Cleveland, OH
April 11-12: Providence, RI
April 13-14: Lincoln, NE
April 16-18: Hamilton, NY
April 23: Richmond, KY
May 11-15: Las Vegas, NE
May 17: New Hope, PA
June 6: Dallas, TX
June 7: Salt Lake City, UT
June 14: Spokane, WA
July 11: San Francisco
July 12: Seattle
Please circulate this email among your friends who perform, or who sing in choruses, or who otherwise are exceptional talents who might fit well with the Kinsey Sicks.
WHO WE ARE:
For over 14 years, the Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, has served up a feast of music and comedy to audiences across the US and abroad. Combining award-winning a cappella singing, sharp satire and over-the-top drag, the Kinsey Sicks tours full time, having performed in 37 states as well as Mexico, Canada and Europe. The Kinsey Sicks have had their own Off-Broadway run at New York’s legendary Studio 54 as well as an extended run in Las Vegas. They have released five CDs and are the subjects of two feature films: "I Wanna Be a Republican," released in 2006, and "Almost Infamous," slated for release in 2008. For more information, visit www.kinseysicks.
Repressed Thinking 102
So in the midst of a long and interesting interview about the state of the Catholic church, a little nugget of worldview pops up in the words of the former master general of the Dominicans:
"We have to see that behind much of the furor is fear and these fears are comprehensible. There is a fear among straight priests of becoming a member of a small minority in what is perceived as a "gay’ vocation." There is a fear among some homosexual priests of being found out, a feeling of guilt and so on. We have to reassure people so that the issue can be faced calmly. If there is a fevered anxiety about all this, then it does not help people mature and face their own complexity. It is not the case that there are just these two groups, homosexuals and heterosexuals. People are complex, and have contrary motions in their hearts. Straight people may be tempted to strangle the little bit of them that responds to people of the same sex and fear gay people. But that is a disguised form of fearing themselves. And gay seminarians may be tempted to deny who they are, adopt an anti-gay rhetoric, and all that is highly unhealthy and deforming.
It is important also that someone’s sexual orientation is not the most important thing about them, as if everyone was a sexual maniac, endlessly wanting to get other people into bed. The most important thing about anyone, regardless of whether they are gay or straight, is that they be able to love, and that they are helped to love well, deeply, honestly, transparently," – Timothy Radcliffe, OP, former master general of the Dominicans in an interview with Busted Halo.
How telling that Radcliffe’s very first association (actually the only as far as I can tell) with "sexual orientation" is of "sex mania." In the mind of the life-long repressed, sexual orientation itself equals mania. And if we’re to be serious here, read "homosexuality" when one says "sexual orientation" because that term only comes up in conversations about homosexuality. You never find heterosexuals speaking of their own loving as an orientation. Very rarely, unless the conversation is taking place in a group that is known to include people of multiple orientations.
So, orientation/homosexuality can only be understood in this mindset as the extreme and the pathological.
I hope that Mr. Radcliffe can continue in his journey and achieve a greater perspective that also speaks to the intrinsic nature of goodness involved in sexual orientation.
What kind of Gay man are you…?
Because we publish both this blog and the "hard copy" magazine, White Crane, we get on a lot of press lists for various publicists in the entertainment, publishing, recording and fashion business. The sheer stereotypical nature of the kinds of press releases we receive is stunning, really. The only metric that seems to make any difference whatsoever to whoever is sending out the press releases is that they see the word "gay" somewhere in the search, and their feeble little minds automatically assume "fashion" "sex" "consumers" "vacuous dance music" and the most superficial kind of idea of "beauty" imaginable. In fact, using any variation of the term "imagination" in the same sentence is a stretch. Actually having looked at a copy of the magazine, or exploring our website to determine something of what our interests might be seems to be too much to ask.
This morning was a perfect example of the stark dichotomy of choices with which we are presented virtually every day. In yesterday’s mail we received the first run of Mark Thompson’s newest book, a beautiful book of his own photography. More on this in a moment.
[Full disclosure: White Crane Institute helped with the production of this book, and we have been sponsoring a touring exhibit of some of the photography in the book, providing it to LGBT communities around the country.]
We were also in receipt of a press release…the second one, now…about some pretty boy cranking out monotonous "dance music" (I love to dance, but what passes for ‘dance music’ these days is, quite simply pathetic.) Shirt open to his six pack, sexuality ambiguously alluded (I’m not big on "sexual allusion" myself…Rosie O’Donnell "alluded" to Tom Cruise for years…and that’s just too weird for words).
Anyway, silly me, I decided to give it a listen, since the publicist (a little more full disclosure here…yours truly was a publicist in the music industry, and a band manager at one point, no less…so I have a soft spot in my heart — not my head, though — for music publicists, and artist trying to break into the biz) had gone to the trouble to send a MP3 file.
The lyrics say it all: Hey…you remember when / I read your mind? / Thoughts of you run through my 
head / and make me want to touch myself / The odds are so right / I know you know I’m the special one…Let’s make love like / we’re strangers…
Like strangers. Wow. Great. With HIV/AIDS making a comeback like it’s a viral Taliban, I hope they use a condom. What a great musical message to put out to young Gay men…a population that is seeing a significant uptick in sero-conversion, we should note. What really burns my admittedly senior citizen ass is the marketing of this cookie-cutter pretty boy, all pumped and smooth like every other cookie-cutter pretty boy, draped in female flesh (used like skin props) and expecting that just because this fellow is (debatably) a) young and b) attractive, that every red-blooded Gay man is going to run right out and buy his drivel music because he has digital abs. Let’s be clear here: his voice is unremarkable. The music is indistinguishable from any other cut on just about any other current "dance music" disc. There is nothing about this–and I use the term very loosely here–"singer" that recommends him other than his shaved body. If you like that sort of thing.
Look at the photos accompanying this post…one is the cover of Mark’s book, Fellow Travelers: Guides & Tribes [Fluxion Editions, 2008] and "the Stranger" with the models who are so weak from hunger they have to lean on him for support. Tell me…which huddle would you want to be in? You want to "make love like we’re strangers," like this bimbo (I really think "bimbo" ought to be the male version and "bimba" the female) suggests? So OK…maybe you don’t want to get all muddy…but those are definitely not "strangers" in that picture. You might actually connect with someone…your own self, for instance… your own history as a queer, like Mark Thompson is documenting in his beautiful book Fellow Travelers?
I hesitated to even talk about the singer, who shall remain anonymous here. Why give shallow exploitative product placement any kind of publicity at all? But the contrast between this dreck, and Mark Thompson’s new book was so dramatic to me, I thought they ought to be thrown into contrast. Mark’s Fellow Travelers book is available in limited edition at http://www.markthompsongayspirit.com/
The empty nutrition of the mess of potage with the six-pack is available…anywhere. In a word: feh.
The Goddess Dance
Let love die at the altar of pain
Let pain reign supreme in every cell
Cell division germinating into newer and newer pain
Pain so deeply seated, that I have successfully gone numb
My heart lies scattered at every check post and borders
Patriot Act and National Security has sealed my fate
Chemicals and silicon are safe and sanitized
For it is on the ashes of past does the goddess dance
And for the first time fear,pain and joys of the past lay burnt, ashes flying away to mild summer breeze
I my dear friends am a liberated soul
I cram T tests and globalization theory
The thumping of my lungs to the mid afternoon jog flushes dirt out
and may love, strength and joy enter my very soul again
Fresh salty Nebraska precum will quench my thirst
Goofy smiles, freshly cooked chicken curry with Carl
Off beat movies with Eddie
Long conversations over crackling cell phones
Sisters far away and yet so close
Together we wash pain
and dry ourselves in the mild spring sun
It has been a long winter
Let summer cum!
Our Long National Nightmare…explained.
From Crackle:
