It is generally understood that today’s youth are more supportive of equality for gay and lesbian people. Faced with losing the next generation, fundamentalists are ferociously scrambling to capture the minds of youth through homeschooling and the subversion of public education. By sequestering students at home or creating public schools where the only drink served in the cafeteria is Kool-Aid, they hope to reprogram tomorrow’s leaders.
It appears America’s religious fanatics are modeling their efforts on the success of radical Islamists in the Middle East, who reversed the trend of secularization in the region by hijacking education. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote about this phenomenon:
Beginning in the 1970s, the trend in Yemen, Morocco, Egypt and the Persian Gulf “was to Islamicize education as a way to fight the left…”
…Then, in 1979, after the Saudi ruling family was shaken by an attack in Mecca from its own Wahabi fundamentalists, the Saudi regime, to fend off the anger of its Wahabis, gave them free rein to Islamicize education and social life in Saudi Arabia and neighboring states.
The rest is a very sad and tragic history.
In America, according to the Aug. 7, 2009 edition of The Economist magazine, the number of children who are home-schooled—1.5 million—has doubled in the past decade, and 83 percent of home-schooling families do so for religious or moral reasons.
It is important to realize that the goal of many in the homeschooling movement is to create an army of zealot zombies who are committed to transforming America into a fundamentalist “Christian Nation.”
“We are not home-schooling our kids just so they can read,” said Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense. “The most common thing I hear is parents telling me they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids in the farm system, some may get to the major leagues.”
Many of the cult-kiddies are coming of age and have already infiltrated Washington. Homeschoolers are well represented on Capitol Hill, and they played a disproportionate role in George W. Bush’s administration.
While many of these students are educated in terms of test scores, they may lack critical thinking skills. In a sense, they are like computers with large hard drives that have been programmed with faulty software. No matter how fast they compute they always arrive at same flawed conclusions based on the Biblical bugs planted early in their memory chips.
For example, Children’s Conferences International hosts events across the nation for homeschoolers. Their “2010 theme” is science fiction, except to keep the minds of the children pure there will be no extraterrestrials allowed.
“Parents won’t have to worry about their children learning about aliens or some mysterious force in this fun filled futuristic space age theme,” according to their website. “Children WILL learn important life lessons about trusting God, faith over atheism, and the dangers of being enamored by the world.”
Instead of E.T. and space, these poor children have to endure crazy, spaced out adults determined to strip-mine their minds and corrupt their imaginations. In my view, this is a form of child abuse and deprives these students of real childhood experiences, while making them closed-minded.
Of course, funneling children into homeschooling is not enough for these predators. In order to succeed, the extreme right must hijack the curriculum of public schools. They are already making serious inroads in Texas, with zealots on the state school board rewriting history textbooks. This is vitally important because Texas is such a large consumer of textbooks, that they essentially have the ability to set the standards for much of the nation. So, if history is rewritten in Austin, the revisions will likely appear in your state as well.
One leader of the public school putsch, according to a recent cover story in The New York Times Magazine, is Cynthia Dunbar, a member of the Texas Board of Education. In 2008, she published a book called, “One Nation Under God” where she wrote: “Hence, the only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the Founding Fathers is from a biblical worldview.” She also stated, “this battle for our nation’s children and who will control their education and training is crucial to our success for reclaiming our nation.”
For all of her passion, Dunbar is opposed to public education, writing of, “The inappropriateness of a state-created taxpayer-supported school system,” and says that sending children to public schools is akin to, “throwing them into the enemy’s flames, even as the children of Israel threw their children to Molech.”
Clearly, Dunbar’s real agenda is infiltrating the school system in order to destroy it.
When it comes to support, the next generation was supposed to be a wash. However, this successful trajectory is threatened if we allow today’s youth to be brainwashed. While paying attention to school boards is boring, it must become a priority for all Americans who want schools to be about education instead of indoctrination.
A fundamentalist Christian couple are accused of murdering their adopted daughter and severely injuring another through a Fundamentalist Christian “parenting method” in California:
OROVILLE — A fundamentalist religious philosophy that espouses corporal punishment to “train” children to be more obedient to their parents and God is now being investigated in connection with the death of a young Paradise girl and serious injuries to her sister.
(…)
Ramsey said he is also exploring a possible connection to a Web site that endorses “biblical discipline” using the same rubber or plastic tube alleged to have been used to whip the two young ridge girls by their adoptive parents.
In court Thursday, a judge granted a two-week postponement before the children’s parents, Kevin Schatz, 46, and Elizabeth Schatz, 42, enter a plea to murder and torture charges that could carry two life terms in prison.
Oy. Here’s the thing. If we were like the anti-gay public mouthpieces we deal with on a daily basis, we would immediately use this as an example of how the Fundamentalist Christian Agenda is dangerous for children. But we are not they. Should we be?
Prosecutors allege the two victims were subjected to “hours” of corporal punishment by their parents on successive days last Thursday and Friday with a quarter-inch-wide length of rubber or plastic tubing, which police reportedly recovered from the parents’ bedroom.
Police allege that the younger girl was being disciplined for mis-pronouncing a word during a home-school reading lesson the day before she died.
Wow. But no, we won’t take the dishonest angle Fundamentalist Christian mouthpieces use to smear gay parents, because we are better than they are. And of course, if we did, we’d be missing a larger discussion.
In my experience with Fundamentalists (and I have quite a lot), I find that most of them actually mean well. They may be highly misled as to the facts, on many issues, but most of them feel that they are acting out of love. But this, to me, is an example of how extremist rhetoric, and an extremist worldview, can permeate and percolate throughout a religious community, to the point that certain people take it to an entirely new, entirely violent level. Because though these parents may claim that they were merely adhering to their deeply held religious beliefs, they are sadists. Only sadists would “discipline” their children this way.
The article points out that there is disagreement over corporal punishment in the Fundamentalist Christian world, and I’ll grant that. I don’t personally believe in spanking, but at the same time, I don’t believe that all parents who spank their kids are necessarily scarring them for life either. Normal, well-meaning people of all stripes can have honest disagreements about this sort of thing. But here’s where it gets sketchy: You take two parents who believe in spanking, and then you combine that with an authoritarian worldview where “Father Knows Best” (whether the human father, the version of God the father that the religion sells, etc.) and children are meant to be obedient soldiers to their parents’ orders, and in some cases, you’ll have a recipe for a situation like this one. Among your garden variety Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, the ones who truly are well-meaning, the most extremist elements of the religion won’t manifest. (Yes, they can still hurt people, as the LGBT community well knows, but I’m getting to that.) But there will be certain mentally unstable people, sick people, who take the dogma in its most literal form and run with it.
Think of the difference between conservative Muslims and those who actually strap on bombs and blow themselves up; think of the difference between regular “pro-lifers” and those who pick up a gun and murder abortion providers. And, of course, think of the difference between regular old “pro-family” people who simply want to “protect marriage,” and the disturbed people who end up beating/maiming/killing LGBT people. Do you see what I’m getting at? The common thread is that these are ideologies which lend themselves to this kind of violence, for certain people.
In the aftermath of Prop 8, the Religious Right has been bitching and moaning about supposed “violence” that’s been done to them by the big bad gay community, but the worst thing they’ve come up with is an old lady who got knocked over in a mob of people. Oh, and there was that one time a lady who ran a restaurant lost some customers because they learned that she voted yes. (Boo…hoo?) But there’s a reason that most of their tales of woe and lamentation are sort of boring — because we all know that it’s highly unlikely that the LGBT community is going to start beating or killing Fundamentalists. It’s just not gonna happen!
And why? It’s quite simple. The entire point of coming out is living with integrity; the entire point of fighting for our equality is bringing us up to the same level as everyone else! We’re not seeking to take anything away from anyone. Our motivation isn’t a distaste for anyone else, but rather a love for ourselves and a belief in our inherent dignity. The endgame of the LGBT civil rights movement is displayed proudly on our sleeves, for god’s sake. We simply want to live our lives with the same rights, responsibilities and freedoms as everyone else.
But this is not so in the Fundamentalist world. They want to take away women’s rights to make their own reproductive decisions. They want to take away children’s rights to be educated in actual science, in order to prop up their creation myth. They want to keep LGBT people in the closet (or worse), in order to not disrupt the tenuous grasp the patriarchy still holds in Western society, where the man of the house is elevated above all others. Children free to learn and grow as individuals, women with minds of their own, and all consenting adults living freely and passionately with those that they love? That’s just a bridge too far for them.
I’ve said it a million times, but the elevated place in society held by Fundamentalist Christians is not merited. They have done nothing to earn it. They are not paragons of moral virtue. In fact, they’re no better than the rest of the population. They’re not producing our great thinkers, our great artists, our great writers, or anything else “great.” And they know it. They know the jig is up. They’re watching their young adult children leave their shackles in droves, and they’re looking everywhere but inward for someone to blame. As their influence wanes (slowly — they’re so politically entrenched that it will be a long time before their political influence matches their dwindling numbers), they’re going to turn up the volume on their rhetoric and on their actions.
We’re already seeing this in the LGBT community, as certain Religious Right figures don’t seem all that bothered by the anti-gay legislation in Uganda, while others, like Bryan Fischer and Peter Sprigg of AFA and PFOX are openly calling for the criminalization of homosexuality. We’re seeing this in the aftermath of George Tiller’s assassination, as Randall Terry of Operation Rescue is loath to actually denounce Scott Roeder’s actions, and in fact, lends them rhetorical support every time he opens his mouth in public. We’re seeing this in Texas, as a band of Fundamentalists seek to destroy children’s educational opportunities by intentionally altering their textbooks to reflect a worldview that reflects a fantasy world of their own creation.
And as the rhetoric grows, there will, unfortunately, be more and more people who are pushed to the breaking point of insanity, and they’ll do more and more to hold on to the thread that is their completely debunked worldview. The tough thing is that it’s hard to tell who’s going to snap. It’s hard to tell which Fundamentalist parents will become so overwhelmed by fear and dogma that they literally control their children to death. It’s hard to tell which rejected men will translate their rage against women into a pulled trigger and the death of another abortion provider. It’s hard to tell which frightened, closeted person will try to kill off that which they hate in themselves by killing a gay person. It’s just hard to tell.
But it does represent a teachable moment, because again, I may take some flak for this (and you might be surprised to hear it from me, the resident atheist), but I do believe that the majority of Fundamentalists are well meaning people. And really? The ball’s in their court. They’re not going to listen to us anyway. But to any who might be reading this from that side of the fence, I say only this: You need to weed your backyard. You need to fumigate your rhetoric. And you need to control your own. Because again, over on this side of the fence, we don’t pose any threat to you. Oh, occasionally, little radicals pop up here and there, but the difference between this side and that side is that we marginalize the hell out of our extremists. (Bash Back, I’m looking at you.) But it seems that these days, Fundamentalists marginalize their freaks less and less. And that’s scary, not just for the LGBT community, but for civil society. Religiously-motivated murderers, abusers, rapists, etc. — they don’t exist in a vacuum. They have to be propped up by someone, whether it’s whatever crazy Fundamentalist website that motivated the couple in California, or MassResistance or the American Family Association or Liberty University or whoever. Someone motivates the people who commit these acts of religious violence.
Laws proscribing homosexual conduct can be found in the Middle Assyrian Law Codes dating back to 1075 BC. To my knowledge, the Middle Assyrians have never been part of the vast, right-wing conspiracy, which gives the lie to the myth that only blue-nosed prudes who believe in the Judeo-Christian tradition have ever found fault with sodomy.
Hello straw man argument! Hello completely manufactured myth!
Every state in the Union at the time of the Founding had laws which made homosexual behavior illegal. In fact, that noted icon of the left, Thomas Jefferson, wrote a law for the state of Virginia that mandated castration as punishment for two men apprehended for male-to-male friskiness.
Thomas Jefferson, that paragon of sexual virtue…but please, let’s keep appealing to history, long before the evil science started refuting centuries of ill-informed bias. The good old days, as far as fundamentalists are concerned.
Sodomy was a felony offense in all 50 states as recently as 1962, and was still a felony in the other 49 states ten years later. Still today, 12 states have sodomy statutes on the books, although our meek acquiescence to judicially activist rulings from the Supreme Court have rendered those unenforceable.
That judicially activist court that somehow wasn’t judicially activist when they issued the Citizens United v. FEC ruling, or any other ruling that wingnuts like.
By the way, it’s silly to criticize a law just because it’s old and antiquated. The First Amendment has been around for 219 years, and I don’t hear anybody saying we’ve got to get rid of it because it’s so out of date. The issue is not how old a law is but how right it is.
Correct! And that’s why the judicial system is catching up with the idea of LGBT equality. The First Amendment stands on its merits, based on all the facts available, and bigoted anti-gay laws do not!
This raises the question, then, as to whether sodomy laws should be, or legitimately have been, repealed just because they are rarely enforced.
The answer to this is a clear and unequivocal “No.”
Based on Bryan’s tenuous grasp of reality, I’m having a hard time figuring out how the words “clear” and “unequivocal” could be appropriate, considering the utter lack of evidence for his arguments.
Think for a moment of the current social controversies that could potentially be avoided if homosexual conduct was still against the law.
Imagine there’s no gayness…it’s easy if you try…no Ellen on my teevee…and no guys kissing guys…
Gays in the military: problem solved. We shouldn’t make a place for habitual felons in the armed forces. End of discussion, end of controversy. If someone objects, ask them which other felonies the military ought to overlook in screening recruits.
Then Bryan wouldn’t have to worry about the fact that men like Lt. Dan Choi are stronger, more valiant, and more manly than he ever will be.
Gay marriage: problem solved. We should never legalize unions between any two people when the union is forged specifically to engage in felony behavior. Would we sanction, for instance, the formation of a corporation whose stated purpose was to import illegal drugs?
Yeah, and then fundamentalist Christians could continue to have their gay sex the natural way: off AOL chat, on business trips, behind their wives’ backs…
Gay indoctrination in the schools: problem solved. We don’t want to raise a generation of schoolchildren to believe that felony behavior is perfectly appropriate. That’s why we spend so much money warning students about the danger of drugs.
Bryan’s reliance on this drug parallel is frankly silly. People who use drugs aren’t born that way. All reputable professional mental health and medical associations acknowledge that homosexuality is not a disorder, and that it’s a perfectly natural characteristic of some people. A more appropriate parallel for Bryan’s argument is to change the word “gay” to “black” in each of his arguments.
Hate crimes laws: problem solved. We wouldn’t throw a pastor in jail for saying that illegal behavior is not only illegal but also immoral. For instance, he’s free to say that murder is not only contrary to man’s law but also to God’s law. End of the threat to freedom of religion and speech.
Lyin’ Bryan. Sheesh, these people will continue to lie about anything and everything, as long as it serves their purpose. It’s really funny, because the Biblical command against lying gets a lot more prominent spot than any limited condemnation of same-sex behavior. But fundamentalists really only pretend to acknowledge nine commandments. I’m surprised they haven’t had that part scrubbed, to be honest. Pastors are only liable if they incite violence. They can preach whatever knuckle-dragging disproven crap they want, as long as they’re not actively encouraging their demon sheep* to go assault or kill gay people. Good lord. It’s sad that we have to keep saying it, because the texts of these laws are easily accessible to anyone with a 7th grade reading level.
Special rights for homosexuals in the workplace: problem solved. No employer should be forced to hire admitted felons to work for him. End of the threat to freedom of religion and freedom of association in the marketplace.
The right to be hired for a job based on our qualifications is, to Bryan Fischer, a special right. What jobs should we be allowed to have, pray tell? God knows.
This list could actually be extended, but you get the point.
There was a point? Beyond the fact that Bryan Fischer is a deeply disturbed little man who is so frightened of gay people that he wants us out of every aspect of American life? That his faith is so weak that he can’t handle the sight or sound of people who think differently from him? That he’s a Christo-fascist of the highest order, and that, if we’re to believe the Gospel accounts, the Jesus depicted therein would spit him out like like the little Pharisee he is?
If you want more Bryan (you masochist), Alan Colmes interviewed him last night. I haven’t listened to it yet, but Kyle at Right Wing Watch reports that it was pretty meandering, as Alan kept trying to get him to justify his “logic,” and Fischer evaded his every question. Also, Alan apparently used the word “weasel” a lot, which seems appropriate.
For whatever reason, northern Ireland is being targeted by the “ex-gay” industry.
I guess it was not enough that they had created havoc and potential bloodshed in Uganda. Exodus International continues to obliviously globe-trot, leaving a trail of ruined lives and destruction in its wake.
Ex-gay activist Rev. Mario Bergner takes his phony road show to Belfast, Feb. 19-21. While there, Bergner, the author of “Setting Love in Order: Hope and Healing for the Homosexual,” will have a seminar named after the book. He is quite the salesman, hawking even more ex-gay gear than International Healing Foundation quack Richard Cohen. According to Exodus’ website:
Rev. Mario Bergner will visit Northern Ireland to participate in the Setting Love in Order Conference hosted by Core-issues, a ministry based in Northern Ireland seeking to empower local church congregations in their task of supporting men and women with unwanted same sex attraction. The conference is being widely promoted as part of the organization’s efforts to provide practical training for church leaders in the area of unwanted same sex attraction.
Want to bet Bergner doesn’t discuss the episode where I photographed Exodus’ former poster boy John Paulk in a gay bar? Or that two of the key founders of this fraudulent group left their wives to marry each other?
If Bergner’s propaganda does not get through, residents of Belfast will have a second chance to get the malignant message. Exodus President Alan Chambers will be in town, April 22-23, to host the “Leaving Homosexuality Celebration.” Interestingly, Chambers goes on TV in America and says Exodus does not “change” people. Yet, across the pond, he is holding a big party to celebrate his magical “pray away the gay” cure. According to the website:
Core is a ministry supporting local churches in their efforts to provide appropriate pastoral support for those with unwanted same sex attraction. The service recognizes God’s grace for many individuals making the journey out of homosexuality.
Maybe I’m just a “reality-based” kind of guy, but it sure seems, based on the promotional language, that Exodus is selling the concept of “change”.
Unfortunately, LGBT people in Ireland will find Chambers’ dishonest presentation neither lucky, nor charming. One can only imagine the mischief Exodus will cook up in Ireland, given its abysmal and violent track record overseas. Chambers and Bergner should do the world a favor and stay home before they have even more blood on their hands.
If you live in Ireland and are interested in Truth Wins Out coming over to counter Chambers’ lies with a multi-media presentation, please contact us.
The words of Carl Sagan, who, as PZ Myers points out, was a poet.
“Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.”
It kind of puts things in perspective, and, to my mind, validates the struggles of all oppressed peoples, including the LGBT community around the world, against forces as ultimately insignificant as those who wish to dictate the terms of life on this tiny speck of dust we call home. Those who would appoint themselves moral emperors have no clothes, indeed. Our lives are not theirs to live.
In the past week, Truth Wins Out has been dealing with twin tragedies caused, in part, by Exodus International, the nation’s largest “pray away the gay” ministry.
The first train wreck is Uganda’s proposed “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009″. This legislation would lead to the imprisonment and murder of LGBT Ugandans. It would jail anyone accused of “promoting” homosexuality and imprison friends and relatives of LGBT people who did not turn them into authorities.
This fascist bill came about after Exodus Board member, Don Schmierer, had gone to Uganda last spring to attend a conference on homosexuality. Schmierer was joined by Caleb Lee Brundidge of quack Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation and Scott Lively, the twisted author of The Pink Swastika, who believes gays are responsible for the holocaust. There were calls at the conference to “wipe out” homosexuality in Uganda. The current bill before the legislature would do just that.
The second disaster is Corduroy Stone, which was an Exodus ministry in Lansing, MI until this week. After six months of dithering and dawdling, Exodus finally parted ways with Corduroy Stone after a client accused Exodus counselor Mike Jones of engaging in bizarre and dangerous therapy. His sessions with Patrick McAlvey, who was 19 at the time, included “cuddle therapy” and odd questions.
“He asked how large my penis was,” McAlvey explained of Jones’ therapy. “He asked if I shave my pubic hair. He asked what type of underwear that I wore. He wanted me to describe my sexual fantasies to him and the type of men I’m attracted to. On one occasion, he asked me to take my shirt off and show him how many push-ups I could do, which I did not do.”
In August, Truth Wins Out released this information in a video. Yet, it took Exodus six months to act and cut its ties to Jones. Clearly, they were more interested in protecting their image than the young adults who may have been put in harms way.
Yet, despite such negligence and a trail of destruction, Exodus Vice President Randy Thomas is trying to play martyr. On Exodus’ blog, the solipsistic “ex-gay” political activist posted a letter by someone named Frank:
Randy, how do you wake up every morning, and go to work knowing that as much as you fight for truth, you are hated beyond understanding? that every word you speak will be twisted and you will be made a laughing stock? This Rachel Maddow thing (among others) has me down… truth is not acceptable anymore. no one cares. … I feel like I’ve talked and talked till im blue in the face yet no one listens… how do you do it?
You have fought longer and harder than I and have been villified more… how do you get up every morning and do it again? … I know I will never cease to proclaim the riches there are in Christ (not just talking bout ex-gay stuff) but I just get so tired of trying to make my little corner of the world a better place when it seems like “the establishment” (read: Rachel Maddow, Keith oberman, Wayne Besen…) is screaming louder telling me to shut up and sit down…
Randy Replied:
“I resisted posting this blog post because what I go through is nothing compared to some of my peers and especially other Christians around the world who are dying for their faith. I went ahead and posted this because I got this type of message from several people and thought the topic would be worth exploring in general (not just about me.)”
Mr. Thomas, you are the victimizer, not the victim. It is Exodus – not Rachel Maddow, Keith Olberman or myself – that is tied to state sponsored persecution in Uganda. It is you who has repeatedly lied and deceived, not us.
It is Thomas, and his truth-challenged boss Alan Chambers, who have kept Schmierer on the Exodus board, despite the very good possibly of genocidal results because of Schmierer’s foray into Africa.
It is Exodus that allowed bizarre and dangerous therapy to continue for half of 2009 at Corduroy Stone before action was belatedly taken.
It is Exodus who in the past had allowed youths like Zach Stark and Lance Carroll to be forced into Exodus’ ex-gay boot camps against their will.
Thomas’ cynical defense for his role in such appalling actions is that he has a nice smile, doesn’t have fangs and is surprisingly friendly. The term “banality of evil” comes to mind when Thomas tries to make the case that his public demeanor does not match his dirty deeds.
Sorry, Mr. Thomas, but it is time to take personal responsibility for the egregious harm perpetrated by you and the staff at Exodus International. If the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 comes to pass and LGBT people are hunted down, everyone associated with Exodus will be viewed as an accomplice to war crimes.
Please, Mr. Thomas, stop playing the victim card. If you want to be a real victim, enroll in Corduroy Stone for “therapy”. For any semblance of respectability, you need to go to Uganda and publicly rebuke this death bill.
But, let’s be clear: right now you are more mercenary than martyr.
Glenn Shadix (on left) is an actor made famous by roles in movies such as Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas and the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes. His television work includes the HBO drama Carnivàle, and the NBC television comedy Seinfeld, in which he played Jerry’s landlord.
What many people do not know, however, is that Shadix had undergone shock therapy as a teenager in Alabama, in an attempt to turn from gay-to-straight. The “cure” did not work and today Shadix lives as a proud openly gay man. Having lived in New York City and Hollywood, he recently returned to Alabama. Truth Wins Out applauds Shadix for his willingness to share his experience and help other people avoid the pain and suffering of the ex-gay industry.
On October 10, 2009, President Barack Obama spoke to the Human Rights Campaign about GLBT issues. On Oct. 11, 2009, Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director, Wayne Besen, commented on the speech and the National Equality March that took place later that day.
In the not too distant past, most Americans couldn’t tell a Pashtun from a cartoon, a Sunni from a Moonie or a Kurd from bean curd. Then came 9-11 and we learned our very survival depended on securing freedom for people we barely knew existed. Exorcising the region’s demons through democracy was so important, we were told, that America would pay for the effort in blood and bankruptcy.
Despite the bumbling and fumbling of the war effort, the bitter divisions in our country and the wheelbarrows of dough dumped in the desert, there was always the faint hope that a better Middle East might just emerge from the mess. And, whatever one thinks of the two wars, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban were real villains who were vanquished.
The idea, of course, was that once these monsters were slain, they’d be replaced with the sane. But, the monsters have multiplied and Sasquatch has morphed into a bevy of Big Foots (or is it Big Feet?). It appears that for all of our sacrifice – and that of the secular Iraqi and Afghanistani people – the crazies are back in control. Or, at least fanatics have instilled enough fear that “mainstream” Iraqi and Afghanistani politicians are tripping over themselves to please and appease. (Read More)
When I first came out, around age 19 in the mid-1970s, several older gay gentlemen that I knew took it upon themselves to teach me what they called “the ropes.”
“Which woman do you want to be?” they asked me.
My choices were Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. Looking back, all these years later, I now see that I was being taught to emulate women–great Hollywood stars to be sure–who had severe substance abuse issues. None of them had ever enjoyed a successful, lasting relationship. Two of them, Marilyn and Judy, are now known to have been mentally ill. Yet my elders insisted that, as gay men, they were what we were “supposed” to be.
If anyone ever asked me to name the most mean spirited “bitchy queen” I ever knew, it would no doubt be Jeffrey, someone I was acquainted with during those early years. Jeffrey’s “hobby,” for lack of a better term, was to break up other people’s relationships, which he did through manipulative lies and vicious gossip mongering–watch any episode of Dynasty and you’ll see Jeffrey’s techniques.
I recall one night, around 1977, when Jeffrey had literally torn a once loving gay couple apart. He sat in his easy chair, smirking joyously over what he had just done. He wasn’t smoking his cigarette, he was posing with it, while his many gay male enablers congratulated him on a job well done. (”Oh, Miss Thing. Aren’t you fabulous!! You sure know how to work it, girl.”)
For the next twenty years, I met one Jeffrey after another. For awhile, I too, was a Jeffrey. It was all I knew. It was what I had been taught.
Around 1999 I began to realize what some of us were turning into. That year I traveled to Crystal City, Virginia, to attend Fanex, an annual convention that celebrated classic horror films, my guilty pleasure. Fanex had nothing to do with gay rights or gay culture, yet many of the gay men I encountered there behaved as though they were at a circuit party. Like Jeffrey, they spread as many vicious, false rumors as they could. They made it clear that it was beneath them to speak to one another, doing everything they could to make a public performance out of their behavior. These actions were unprovoked, yet no less than two gay attendees cited “gay pride” as the reasoning behind the actions. Heterosexual attendees at Fanex, who were there to talk about their favorite horror movies and weren’t even thinking about who was gay and who wasn’t, were appalled.
For the first time in my life, I became acutely aware of how the choices of some of us were making us look to other communities. (Read More)
Weekly Column
For whatever reason, northern Ireland is being targeted by the “ex-gay” industry.
