Practicing Angels
Our friend, Joel Singer, has his new website up and it’s wonderful. Joel is a photographer (and was poet and filmmaker James Broughton’s lover and partner for many years). Some of the images are based on Broughton titles ("Packing Up for Paradise"). There are pieces he calls "photages" and there are some fascinating cityscapes (you’ll never see a puddle in quite the same way again) and beautiful portraits. Singer has a poetic eye. Take a look.
Jesse’s Journal
Male homosexual activity, especially in public places, threatens a lot of people, which is why the media have a field day with sex stings like the recent one in Daytona Beach. The Daytona Beach News-Journal‘s excited coverage of the Nov. 1 arrests is a case in point. The day after the arrests were made the paper (and its Web site) published an article (“Ex Daytona commissioner, teacher charged in sex sting”) which not only published the names, ages and professions of the accused but also their mug shots. The next day the News-Journal ran a second article (“Mall bathroom sex sting spotlights subculture”) that tried to analyze “a subculture in which adult men meet for sex in restrooms designated online as hot spots, almost in plain view of unsuspecting patrons.” In fact, the only explanation of this “subculture” came from police Sgt. Jeff Hoffman, who talked about “coughing, grunting, sharp zipper noises, … tapping on shoes” and other “signals” used by men to attract sex partners. Though the accused limited their sexual activities to masturbation, they were nevertheless arrested “because a bathroom stall doesn’t completely conceal a person” and, thus, “he has no expectation of privacy, making any sexual behavior unlawful.”
bystanders, especially children. Leaving aside the question of whether or not witnessing sexual activity is more traumatic than watching a traffic pileup or a Fort Lauderdale City Commission hearing, the fact remains that an unsuspecting child is more likely to be hit by a bolt of lightning or win the lottery than run into sexual activity in a public john (unless he’s looking for it). As any vice cop could tell you, catching men having sex in restrooms is difficult, which is why they often have to resort to entrapment or other extralegal subterfuges. A sting operation like the one in Daytona Beach is newsworthy because it is so unusual.
I get a little tired of most modern media telegraphing what our response is supposed to be. It strikes me that they do their own polling, find out what the general popular response is going to be (or what they decide it should be) and then we all get fed the story with this incipient slant again and again until it is accepted as truth.
The one that really brought this to my own attention is how the Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr is never mentioned in any report…I mean never…as anything other than "radical Shiite cleric" Muqtada al Sadr. Now don’t get me wrong…I do not mean in any way to defend al Sadr, who I suspect is as radical as they come, and no friend of western culture. I’m sure he is probably not someone any of us would want to invite into our homes. But do we really need media (the "liberal" media….it is to laugh!) reminding us of this at every opportunity? At the very least it speaks to a lack of vocabulary or just sheer laziness on the part of the writers.
There also seems to be a vested interest in sowing the seeds of fear ("The Fear of the Week" as I call it) in our minds with respect to Islam. And again…I am no fan of Islam. Nor am I a fan of Christianity, for that matter. Or Judaism. Or any of the Patriarchal, hierarchal, anti-Nature, anti-woman, anti-sex religions. But you don’t hear media reports as often…and by this I mean the constant drum beat about the seemingly insane responses that Muslims seem to have to the merest perceived slight (see: Teddy bear story)…about Fundamentalist Christianity’s insane insistance on 2000 year old readings of scripture used to villify Gay people. Ditto with Judaism, for that matter. And we certainly haven’t seen any similar excoriating of Tom Brokaw’s insidious history of the 1960s that doesn’t merely neglect LGBT people, but presents only the views and comments of our enemies. This is not a free and fair media. This is not "fair and balanced" either. And the sanctimony that accompanies all this is particularly gauling.
I mean…just what kind of clothing is the corporate media Emperor wearing?
Just asking.
Author Jane Rule has died at the age of 76.
Jane Rule’s books, including "Desert of the Heart," and the film version ("Desert Hearts") were, in 1986, pretty much some of of the first truly Lesbian affirming literature and film. It may be hard to believe now, but twenty years was an Ice Age ago in terms of media, culture, and Gay people. If you grew up seeing stuff like The Children’s Hour (the message being that if you are a female and realize you are in love with another woman you need to hang yourself), Desert Hearts was way more than a breath of fresh air, it was revolutionary.
And how’s this for an exit? From The Globe and Mail: "Ms. Rule retreated to her bed in the middle of November with a bottle of Queen Anne whisky and a bar of good chocolate on her bedside table, hundreds of love letters from friends and admirers and a circle of friends and family who cared for her physical needs."
The Globe and Mail has a lovely tribute and obit.
I don’t think this needs any set-up at all…
Dr. Franklin Kameny
Kameny Papers Project
November 26, 2007
Mr. Tom Brokaw
c/o Random House Publishing Group
Ms. Gina Centrello
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Ms. Kate Medina
Executive Editorial Director
Random House Publishing Group
1745 Broadway
New York, New York, 10019
Dear Mr. Brokaw and Mmes. Centrello and Medina:
As a long-time gay activist, who initiated Gay activism and militancy at the very start of "your" Sixties, in 1961; coined the slogan "Gay is Good" in 1968; and is viewed by many as one of the "Founding Fathers" of the Gay Movement, I write with no little indignation at the total absence of any slightest allusion to the gay movement for civil equality in your book “Boom! Voices of the Sixties." Your book simply deletes the momentous events of that decade which led to the vastly altered and improved status of Gays in our culture today. This change would have been inconceivable at the start of the Sixties and would not have occurred at all without the events of that decade totally and utterly ignored by you. Mr. Brokaw, you have "de-Gayed" the entire decade. "Voices of the Sixties"??? One does not hear even one single Gay voice in your book. The silence is complete and deafening.
As a Gay combat veteran of World War II, and therefore a member of the "Greatest Generation", I find myself and my fellow Gays as absent from your narration as if we did not and do not exist. We find Boom! Boom!! Boom!!! in your book about all the multitudinous issues and the vast cultural changes of that era. But not a single "Boom," only dead silence, about Gays, homosexuality, and the Gay Movement.
The development of every other possible, conceivable issue and cause which came to the forefront in that period is at least mentioned, and is usually catalogued: race; sex and gender; enthnicity; the environment; and others, on and on and on — except only Gays.
In 1965, we commenced bringing Gays and our issues "out of the closet" with our then daring picketing demonstrations at the White House and other government sites, and our annual 4th of July demonstrations at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Smithsonian Institution displayed these original pickets last month, in the same exhibition as the desk where Thomas Jefferson drafted The Declaration of Independence. The name of the Smithsonian’s exhibition? “Treasures of American History”. In your book: No Boom; only silence.
About 1963, a decade-long effort commenced to reverse the psychiatric categorization of Gays as mentally or emotionally ill, concluding in 1973 with a mass "cure" of all of us by the American Psychiatric Association. No boom in your book; only your silence.
The most momentous single Gay Movement event occurred at the end of June, 1969, when the "Stonewall Rebellion" in New York, almost overnight (actually it took three days) converted what had been a tiny, struggling Gay movement into the vast grass-roots movement which it now is. We had five or six Gay organizations in the entire country in 1961; fifty to sixty in 1969; by the time of the first Gay Pride march, in New York one year later in 1970, we had 1500, and 2500 by 1971 when counting stopped. If ever there was Boom, this was it. In your book, no Boom, only your silence.
About 1972, Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts state House of Representatives as the first elected openly Gay public official. I had run here in Washington, DC, the previous year for election to Congress as the first openly Gay candidate for any federal office. Harvey Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. No boom in your book; only your silence.
Mr. Brokaw, you deal with the histories of countless individuals. Where are the Gays of that era: Barbara Gittings; Jack Nichols; Harry Hay; Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons; Randolfe Wicker; Harvey Milk; numerous others? No booms in your book; only silence and heterosexuals.
Starting in 1961 a long line of court cases attacked the long-standing U.S. Civil Service Gay Ban (fully as absolute and as virulent as the current Military Gay ban, which actually goes back some 70 years and was also fought in the 60s) with final success in 1975 when the ban on employment of Gays by the federal government was rescinded. In your book, no boom; only your silence.
The assault on the anti-sodomy laws, which made at least technical criminals of all Gays (and most non-gays for that matter, although never used against them) and which was the excuse for an on-going terror campaign against the Gay community through arrests the country over, began in 1961 and proceeded through the 60s and onward. In your book, no boom; only your silence.
In 1972, following up on Stonewall, the first anti-discrimination law protective of Gays was enacted in East Lansing, Michigan, followed by the much more comprehensive one in D.C. in 1973, starting a trend which now encompasses some twenty states, countless counties and cities, and has now reached Congress in ENDA. In your book, no boom; only your silence.
The Sixties were a period of unprecedented rapid social and cultural upheaval and change. We Gays were very much a part of all that. A reader of your book would never have the slightest notion of any of that. In your book, no boom; only your silence.
At the start of the Sixties Gays were completely invisible. By the end, and especially after Stonewall, we were seen everywhere: in entertainment, education, religion, politics, business, elsewhere and everywhere. In BOOM our invisibility remains total.
The only allusions to us, in your entire book are the most shallow, superficial, brief references in connection with sundry heterosexuals. Where are the Gay spokespeople? We are certainly there to speak for ourselves. But in your book, only silence.
Mr. Brokaw, I could go on, but this should be sufficient to make my point. The whole thing is deeply insulting. As I said, you have de-Gayed an entire generation. For shame, for shame, for shame. You owe an abject public apology to the entire Gay community. I demand it; we expect it.
Gay is Good. You are not.
Sincerely,
Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D.
Washington, D.C.
We spent the Thanksgiving weekend in the Berkshires at the dreamy Dream Away Lodge. Daniel Osman has kept the magic happening for ten years now, and if anyone is ever in the area (Becket, MASS) it is well worth a drop-by. Good food, good music and more kitsch than you can shake a martini shaker at.
From the 1946 film "Despotism"…
Found a really great web blog recently…well, I didn’t find it. Pete Montgomery sent the link to us. Band of Thebes, it’s called. Really smart, connected, and respectful. Something you don’t see much in Gay media these days.
And it has a great rant about Tom Brokaw’s breathtakingly bad …no, not bad…STUPID AND IGNORANT book, Boom! DO NOT BUY BOOM! I’m going to share the Band of Thebes rant here…but be sure to visit Band of Thebes.
Here’s the Brokaw rant…(not wanting to give Brokaw’s bullshit any more attention than it deserves (which would be zero) you’ll have to click on the pic to see what it’s all about.)…
Two days ago, Random House published Tom Brokaw’s Boom!: Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the ’60s and Today, which purports to explain that decade’s "profound social, political, and individual changes" and "the impact of the 1960s on our lives today" in exhaustive detail throughout nearly 700 pages.
Readers who eagerly anticipate how Brokaw will weave the story of the birth and explosive growth of the Gay rights movement into the larger narrative fabric of the times, as well as wondering how he will convey the Boomer generation’s catastrophic losses from aids, will be disappointed. He doesn’t.
His book about the social upheaval of the Sixties, and the Sixties as midwife to emerging and enduring political movements never mentions the Mattachine pickets of the White House (1965) or Stonewall (1969) or annual Gay pride parades that began on the first anniversary of Stonewall in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and now span the globe, or any Gay political group. No. Instead, 1969 is noted for Woodstock, and 1970 is highlighted as having the first Earth Day. In the context of shifting mores on sex and the changing dynamics of what makes a family, gay life is ignored. Gay death is ignored too, because the index has no entry for aids. The emergence of Gay visibility in entertainment, education, religion, and business is completely erased. The book virtually never even acknowledges gay people. No Harvey Milk, no Frank Kameny, no Barbara Gittings, no Larry Kramer. David Geffen is mentioned, once, simply as a friend of Berry Gordy’s. Oh, but there is a recap of Dick Cheney telling Wolf Blizter he was "out of line" to mention Mary.
Where there ought to be an index entry for "Gay" or "Gay rights" it says "see homosexuality" — a Victorian, not a Sixties, term — whose thirteen subcategories are shown above. Study the names: Buchanan, Cheney, Fallows, Greenhouse, Huerta, and Webb. They’re all straight. (Imagine, for a moment, a sweeping social and political history book in which all the names beneath the entry for black were Asian people, or if the entry for Jewish listed only half a dozen Catholics.)
Even these arbitrary six heterosexuals offer no true analysis of Gay issues; usually their references only include Gay rights in a list of political issues or cases before the court. The other subcategories refer to passages that are equally meaningless. "And the women’s movement" might be a springboard for a fascinating, complex comparison of the two movements but in fact page 195 only gives the subject half a sentence, saying, in addition to dealing with tensions over the race, the women’s movement was "also divided along ethnic lines and by sexual orientation." Every reference is that shallow. Even for Brokaw’s brand of History Lite, the omission is appalling. Gay Boomers, what happened to you? And what are you going to do about it?
person noted or admired for nobility, courage, outstanding achievements, etc.” In Greek antiquity, a hero was a “man of superhuman qualities, favored by the gods; a demigod” such as Herakles or Achilles. Modern culture is full of men and women who have unique powers that they use for the common goods, whether in comic books or movies or the television series “Heroes.” Not as powerful but equally as memorable are those real-life individuals who became heroes by leading a worthy cause, as did Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa or Aung San Suu Kyi [image at right].
Even before Stonewall, GLBT people have searched for a “gay Martin Luther King, Jr., one” who would unite and lead our often disparate communities. But as Nadine Smith of Equality Florida – herself a hero of our community – famously said, what our community needs is not one Martin Luther King, Jr. but a thousand Rosa Parks; women and men who do not flee injustice but use it as a catalyst in their lives. Two Gay men who did just that are Waymon Hudson and Anthony Niedwiecki. The two life partners were energized into heroic action when they heard an anti-Gay message coming over the P.A. system at the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport.
