Kill a Dog, Run a Country

When Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, bragged in her autobiography about shooting a pet dog for misbehavior — and because she wasn’t competent to train it well — her luster as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump dimmed somewhat. Whether Trump ever really thought of her that way, the felon does seem to have approved of Noem’s treatment of dogs, likely seeing it as a good model for the treatment of human beings. After the felon took back the White House he moved Noem over from South Dakota to the Department of Homeland Security. 

Well after the election I finally skipped through an October issue of The San Francisco Bay Times, a free paper for the GLBT community that I sometimes bring home. In her “Fortnight in Review” column Ann Rostow highlights another instance of Republican dog killing. 

“Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and what The Advocate calls ‘the architect of Project 2025’ … beat his neighbor’s noisy dog to death and told several people about it back in 2004. According to The Guardian, one of Roberts’ former colleagues at New Mexico State remembers the event:

‘[Roberts] was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty .. that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly, and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem.’

… The neighbor [told The Guardian that his dog], Loca, vanished during the same time period. … [Ann Rostow adds: T]here was a time when a strong rumor like this one would lead other news organizations to investigate and possibly cause a scandal … These days it’s just water under the bridge.”

I don’t remember having come across the Roberts dog-killing story before I saw it in Ann Rostow’s column, not at the time she wrote about it, nor in the months since.  

I have been driven mad by a neighbor’s barking dog (and a dog named “Loca” would be a crazy-making dog, you’d think). I sympathize with anyone who suffers the experience. Tempting as it is, however, killing is not the appropriate solution. It really isn’t. You have decisions to make in life. The person who chooses to beat a dog to death with a shovel is not a person one should trust. The person who brags about it? He does not have good judgment or a good heart. 

And here we are. Kevin Roberts wrote the blueprint for the destruction of the US government. I don’t know that Elon Musk with his Orwellian Department of Governmental Efficiency is following Roberts’ blueprint or just attacking at whim, but the two men are kindred. I haven’t heard about any dog killings by Musk. Is that just because I haven’t been paying attention? 

This is a link to the article at the Guardian (they even include a picture of Loca): 

“Project 2025 mastermind allegedly told colleagues he killed a dog with a shovel” 

John Waters, political actor

When you meet a celebrity while traveling what do you do? John Waters sat next to one, but was circumspect. He didn’t fanboy gush or, well, the opposite of that. But then, Waters didn’t know which celebrity he was seated next to. 

Seated in first class next to a gentleman who never made eye contact the entire coast-to-coast flight, I kept thinking, ‘I know this man, but who is he?!’ His signature suspenders and Brooks Brothers-type suit rang a bell, too, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out. When we landed and everybody started exiting the plane, other passengers who recognized me started laughing and one said, ‘I couldn’t believe you were sitting next to [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas that whole time!’ I thought, ‘You’re kidding me.’ But, of course, it was him. That lying bastard! ‘I believed Anita Hill!’ I wanted to yell. 

Once he knew what chances he’d missed, John Waters thought about what he should have done:

During the flight I should have nonchalantly ordered a Coke, and when it was served, started picking at something imaginary on the can before turning to him and saying, ‘Excuse me, is that a pubic hair on my Coke?’

source:

Mr. Know-It-All: the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder

by John Waters

2019. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

“a worldwide punishing squad”

After my last blog post offered up a rather meager serving of hope for LGBT progress in Africa, you might wonder if there’s something more you can do. Well, John Waters (you know, the Pink Flamingos writer/director) has given it some thought.

“It’s illegal to be gay in seventy-six countries around the world,” John Waters says. How can that be changed? The gays have gotta rise up! Waters makes a few suggestions on how we could do that. 

Let’s drop a massive stink bomb on Uganda and have our own [gay] navy ‘Seal and Squeal’ squads round up all the American Christian evangelical preachers who went there and provoked Uganda’s parliament to try* to pass a bill to impose the death penalty ‘for the offense of homosexuality.’ We’d spray their thinning hair with industrial strength hair spray and light a match. Voooom! Off with their hairdos. Then we’d track down the snitches who obeyed the other, more liberal Ugandan law that required heterosexuals ‘to report a gay person to authorities within twenty-four hours of hearing of their homosexuality of be jailed for up to three years in prison.’ Why this twenty-four-hour grace period? I wonder. So straights could get their hair done, flowers arranged, homes interior-decorated before the most obvious of their gay merchants were hauled away? Fag hags would be forced to go underground, where they would form their own railroad of resistance to smuggle out queers and lesbians of all degree of butchness, man of whom would later form the Lavender Avengers, who would lead a worldwide punishing squad of queer revenge.

_______

* "Try” no more; Uganda has the evil law on the books. 

source:

Mr. Know-It-All: the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder

by John Waters

2019. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

Cause for hope in Africa? Or just more lies ...

LGBT news out of Africa is often bad. In spring of 2023 Uganda enacted a new death-to-the-gays law. The first attempt several years ago got struck down by the Ugandan Supreme Court. Ghana’s legislature just passed — by unanimous voice vote — a whole new anti-gay law. The president of Ghana hasn’t yet signed it. Do the politicians who enact these laws really consider queer people a threat? Or are they pandering to an anti-gay populace? Are they merely trying to distract observers from the lousy jobs they’re doing? Whatever the motivation, laws like these have only one effect — pain. They certainly don’t help anyone.  

Chike Frankie Edozien quotes Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s former president, at a London conference saying about an anti-gay law he himself promulgated:

“When it comes to equality, we must all have the same rights, we must all have the same rights as Nigerian citizens. In the light of the deepening debates for all Nigerians and other citizens of the world to be treated equally and without discrimination, and with the clear knowledge that the issue of sexual orientation is still evolving, the nation may at the appropriate time revisit the law.”  

Were Jonathan’s words in London a good sign or just pandering? He probably got asked about the law. I imagine Jonathan knew that justifying himself by condemning the gays in a forum in London would not go over well. 

Just days after his pronouncement came the grisly massacre of forty-nine gay people by a deranged gunman at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. [The ex-president of Nigeria] sent out a message of condolence to the grieving families via Twitter. That small gesture … understandably confused [readers, Goodluck Jonathan having been responsible for] an extremely anti-gay law for which there had been small public clamor.

When the anti-gay law in Nigeria was originally enacted there was criticism by at least two African presidents. Former presidents, anyway. “[F]ormer Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano came out forcefully against it.” Fetus Mogae, former president of Botswana, also spoke up for LGBT equality. “A change in attitude is underway," Edozien says. “The fact that Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Guinea Bissau, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Mali, Lesotho, Mozambique, Sao Tome, the Seychelles, Rwanda, the two Congos, the Central African Republic, and South Africa don’t criminalize their gay citizens leaves me hopeful.”

Unlike Uganda in its embrace of American hate-evangelist Scott Lively, South Africa refused entry in 2016 to “Steven Anderson, a pastor at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona” who was plotting an anti-gay crusade. “South Africa ha[s] again led the way, becoming the first African nation to expressly ban someone from entry because of his homophobia.”

This isn’t my first post about a former African leader saying something hopeful once he was no longer in power. Check out this from Feb 2023: Human beings who can do what they like 

source:

Lives of Great Men

by Chike Frankie Edozien

2017. Team Angelica, London UK

a mine in Madagascar

Katherine Standefer has a rare genetic condition that makes her heart go into fibrillation with seemingly little provocation. When a heart is fibrillating, it’s basically just quivering, which means it’s not pumping blood, and one cannot live long without blood on the move. A defibrillator is a machine that shocks the heart back into its regular rhythm. Only in the last couple of decades have doctors figured out a way that a defibrillator can be inserted into the body so that the quivering heart can be shocked back into useful activity immediately, no EMT necessary; you can be hiking in the wilderness and your internal defibrillator will be ready to rescue you, no helicopters, no doctor on the trail. It sounds great. And Katherine Standefer thought it meant her life had been saved. 

It certainly meant her life had been changed.

Katherine Standefer’s medical memoir gets its title, Lightning Flowers, from the aftermath of a lightning strike. It seems that a person struck by lightning may end up with a sort of tattoo as the electricity surges through the body, the patterns of capillaries just under the skin visibly seared close enough to the surface that they look, well, not flowerlike so much as “arborescent,” as the Free Dictionary puts it. Something to show off if you survive, I guess.

Standefer never refers to any lightning flowers of her own, but she does undergo painful electric shocks, which may or may not save her life. 

She becomes curious about where the device came from. Who made it? Standefer even travels to mines in Madagascar to see firsthand where metals essential to the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) are dug up. There is no unalloyed good in what Standefer learns. Mining, for one thing, is hard on the land, and on the people who depend upon what grows upon the land, the water that flows over and through it, and, of course, mining is extraordinarily hard on the plants and animals whose habitat is ground up.

Nevertheless not all of the change is bad for the people of Madagascar. Some of the people experience the power of the government-like multinational corporation that comes in to run the mining operation and see what a competent government might do for its citizens. Madagascar doesn’t have the kinds of roads, bridges, schools, or power plants that, suddenly, people see can exist, as the mining company seemingly drops such things from the sky. 

Katherine Standefer describes contrasts between those who have been helped, those who have been harmed, and those whose lives have seemingly remained the same. They all have opinions. “Perhaps the source of the heartbreak was this: however much a Western presence in these towns created strife, it also came with a brief bright hope — that someone, at long last, would accountable for improving their lives.”

source:

Lightning Flowers: my journey to uncover the cost of saving a life

by Katherine E. Standefer

2020. Little, Brown Spark, New York

it’s us or the Muslims?

Earlier this month I posted about right wing politicians who are courting — and succeeding in garnering — gay votes. Considering how right wing parties have historically been adamantly opposed to the legalization of gay people, let alone believing being LGBT is something to celebrate, I wonder that gay people could be gulled into giving them their votes. 

Part of it seems to be that some of the right wing leaders are themselves out gay people. Surely gay politicians wouldn’t be working against their best interests! That never happens. 

Part of it seems to be describing a common enemy. 

In France, Marine le Pen [leader of the right wing National Rally Party] openly courted the gay vote in 2017 with the message that her policies were all that stood between them and Islam’s ‘hatred of homosexuals,’ as she put it in a televised debate with [future president Emmanuel] Macron.

Other right wing parties in Europe have also sought gay voters’ support to shut down the immigration of Muslims. 

Besides the tactical considerations, Gevisser says LGBT people have “bec[o]me embodiments of progress and worldliness to some,” even on the right of the political spectrum, it seems.

source: The Pink Line: journeys across the world’s queer frontiers

by Mark Gevisser

2020. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York

What to do after being dragged through town tied to a horse cart

In the last chapter of The Pink Line, Mark Gevisser’s survey of the state of the LGBT movement worldwide, Gevisser recounts this story:

In Egypt in 2013, I met a kid who called himself Juelz, a teenager from a provincial city, who was found by his family with his male lover. His head was shaved and he was dragged through town tied to a horse cart, and then locked in a room for a month, beaten daily. He wanted to kill himself but kept himself alive by posting ‘It Gets Better videos,’ he told me, on YouTube via his cell phone, advising others in similar situations. It did get better for Juelz: he qualified as a lawyer, stayed defiantly out of the closet, and was planning, when we last spoke, to join his boyfriend in the United States.

Egypt is currently a terrible place legally for gay people. Besides hostile families like this, the Egyptian state security forces regularly hunt and persecute gay people, even beating and jailing them. But, boy, what a story Juelz tells! He had access to a cell phone to record and post YouTube videos? Maybe that was after the month-long captivity; I’m sure he was still in shock. I hope he’s in the US now. Even with Trump it’s better than Egypt. 

source: The Pink Line: journeys across the world’s queer frontiers

by Mark Gevisser

2020. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York

are gay rights soon to be conventional wisdom?

In his book on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people holding elective office around the world Andrew Reynolds says that the assumption that out LGBT officeholders will be on the left of the political spectrum is not an assumption borne out by his analysis.

The association between being openly gay and being on the Left … is an example of American exceptionalism. It is true that the first adopters of gay rights in most of the world were on the Left, but even then somewhat grudgingly. But today the momentum is with the Right. For the most part conservative parties in democracies, including quite extreme right-wing parties, have remained steadfast in their conservative economic principles while evolving into socially liberal and libertarian movements. In the summer of 2016 the number of out LGBT MPs [members of parliament] in office globally from right-of-center parties actually outstripped the number from left-wing parties for the first time. At the start of 2017 there were seventy incumbent right-of-center LGBT parliamentarians from twenty-three countries, only sixty-three left-wing MPs in twenty-two nations. [G]ay rights … have become a nonpartisan issue in the developed world.

Gay rights aren’t the lightning rod they used to be, even in the United States. Donald Trump, who hates lots of people, nevertheless has not campaigned on the revocation of LGBT family rights. Trump has plenty of followers counting on him to transform the federal courts, lodging there for life judges that would happily strip gay people of their families, and Trump has certainly committed to that program. But it’s not been a talking point, not the way, when you look back, the Denial of Marriage Act was considered impossible to oppose in 1995. President Bill Clinton, the most pro-gay president up to that point even signed DOMA into law, with the stroke of a pen demonstrating how expendable the gays are when your political career looks like it might take a hit. At the time I thought Clinton could have allowed DOMA to become law without his signature, if he truly thought it political suicide to veto it. That, at least, would have shown a teensy bit of empathy, considering how cruel the law was. So, yeah, it’s easy to get a sense of the support from the left-of-center as “somewhat grudging.” 

Contrast the leftishts’ weak tea reform to the rightists’ triple cap latte of hate. The right wing wants to crush the gays. We are their enemies, according to their declaration, and given opportunity they would righteously reinstitute a sentence of prison time for a moment of same sex tingle. According to author Reynolds, right wing animosity has waned so dramatically in the rest of the “developed” world that LGBT voters feel comfortable voting for right wing parties, and the parties themselves feel comfortable including LGB (if not yet T) people among their leadership, not stopping at putting us up for electoral office. 

I find this hard to believe. But I can’t argue with his stats. 

Right-of-center politicians who identify as LGB are members of parliaments in Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

In a few of those places (Sweden, for one?) I’m guessing some other policies of the right-of-center parties would seem relatively left wing to Americans. You know government supplied health care isn’t considered anathema to rightist politicians everywhere the way it is in the US (besides that weird Republican love for Medicare?). Yet aren’t right wing parties everywhere more likely to hate on the gay? 

The Conservative Party in England shepherded in marriage equality in 2013 (the law went into effect in 2014) — but this was only after decades of fighting to keep LGBT people from being accepted into society. When I went to London in 1988 the Margaret Thatcher government was pushing through a law that prevented schools from “promoting” homosexuality by preventing any educator from saying anything nice about it. So it’s nice that the Tories turned around. But I, for one, would find it hard to ever vote for them after their history. Nevertheless, Reynolds says, “Since 2015 the British Conservative Party has won as great a proportion of the LGBTQ vote as any other party.”

Should the Republican Party in the US ever do a switcheroo from gay-hate to gay-respect, it still wouldn’t earn my vote. Reward the people who’ve helped you all along, I say. That plus there isn’t much else in the Republican agenda that appeals to me. Racism? No. Free the wealthy from paying taxes? Not a good idea. Shut out all immigrants? How hypocritical.

Sadly, it is not possible to say that lefties (and moderate leftishts) really have helped us all along. They’ve been much better than righties! Usually! 

On a slightly different but related topic: 

Can you name the country that has the largest proportion of LGB members in its parliament? It’s not quite an independent country, so maybe there should be an asterisk next to the name. But … it’s … Scotland!

Ten of 129 Members of the Holyrood Parliament identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, and nine of the fifty-nine Scottish MPs in Westminster [the UK parliament, in other words] were lesbian or gay. [The] Scottish Nationalist [Party] … with over 14 percent [is] the most LGBT-inclusive parliamentary party in the world. … Three of the six major party leaders in Scotland [in 2017] were lesbian, gay or bisexual: the Tory Ruth Davidson, Labour’s Kezia Dugdale, and Patrick Harvie of the Greens. Half of Scotland’s six-member delegation to the European Parliament were gay. In total that meant that twenty-two out of 194 elected representatives in a country of five million people were gay.

If it’s so gay friendly, it must be a nice place to visit. I understand they have some pretty castles.

source:

The Children of Harvey Milk: how LGBTQ politicians changed the world

by Andrew Reynolds

2019. Oxford University Press, New York

1961 agenda of Southern whites is the same as today’s

In Jeff Chang’s book-length essay on contemporary art and race, Who We Be, Chang quotes a pollster who illuminates a clash of cultures between whites and blacks in the south: 

 

In a 1961 study, Henry Allen Bullock argued that all consumers purchased things in order to have the security of ‘belonging,’ but that Blacks and whites had very different motivations. … 

Bullock illustrated his point by pointing to how Southern whites and Blacks that he interviewed completed the sentence ‘If I could change the world I would …’ The list of whites’ most frequent replies included: 

‘Make it so that people would not park in front of my driveway.’ 

‘Stop the neighbors’ children from cutting across my lawn.’ 

‘Destroy the United Nations.’  

‘Change the Supreme Court.’ 

But Blacks said: 

‘Make all people the same.’ 

‘Establish brotherhood.’ 

‘Do away with war.’ 

‘Break down segregation.’

I know who I want to bring home for dinner. 

source: 

Who We Be: the colorization of America

by Jeff Chang

2014. St Martin’s Press, New York

betting on the future

Taking marriage equality to the US Supreme Court was not something many gay rights advocates wanted to do, not until it was a sure thing, or as close to it as they could imagine, with perhaps the majority of the population already having marriage equality via success in individual states. Despite the huge expense and the stress and hate it would stir up, there were many who thought a new ballot measure in California was a better bet, for instance. 

Margaret Talbot reported to that effect in The New Yorker in early 2010:

Plenty of gay-marriage supporters agreed that it was smarter to wait until the movement had been successful in more states — and, possibly, the composition of the Supreme Court had shifted. (During the last year of a second Obama term, Scalia would be eighty-one.)

Talbot says advocates were haunted by the sodomy law decision back in 1986. The upholding of the constitutionality of sodomy laws had impeded legal progress for LGBT equality until it was struck down in 2003, a 17-year span no one thought we could afford to endure. 

Part of the bet involved Scalia. He was old, and, boy, did he look unhealthy. If he dropped dead while Obama was in office, we’d have a 5-4 Democrat-appointed majority. Hallelujah! 

Indeed, come 2018, God looked down and saw the time had come to remove that hateful man from our Supreme Court and provide President Obama the opportunity to bend the arc of history toward justice a little bit more. Sadly, the Devil had the stronger avatar on earth, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to seat Obama’s mild-mannered, uncontroversial pick (a pick who’d been approved by Utah’s Orrin Hatch!). Thus we got two Trump picks. 

Marriage equality did go before the Supreme Court before it was a sure thing — and we won it — in 2015, a too-close 5-4 vote. Scalia still alive and hating. Waiting would have taken us into the Trump era, and likely not worked out well. 

source: “A Risky Proposal: is it too soon to petition the Supreme Court on gay marriage?” 

by Margaret Talbot

The New Yorker, January 18, 2010, vol. 85 no. 45

Toast and coffee with your fried eggs?

When I came across “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut” (when I was a teen, I think) I was fascinated. The educator H. L. Chase had written the text to prove that you could switch out similar sounding words for the familiar ones and the listener would be able to discern the original sense as though interpreting an accent. “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut” equals “Little Red Riding Hood.” (The Exploratorium has Chase’s version of the classic fairy tale on its website.) I’ve seen something like this as well when writers attempt to reproduce the sounds of a particular accent. One less radical version you might have seen (or even accidentally used) is the switching out of the contraction for “have” with the soundalike “of” as in “He should of done that already!” (instead of “He should’ve done that already.”)

I have used this homonymesque technique in my writing, poetry particularly, adding slightly hidden meanings or puns. I like to stretch the soundalike across more than one word. Chase does this, too. Here’s Red Riding Hood to the Wolf in grandmother disguise:

"O Grammar, water bag noise! A nervous sore suture anomalous prognosis!”

Let’s see if I can translate: O Grandma, what a big nose! I never saw such an enormous proboscis. I think I got that right. “Anomalous prognosis” doesn’t sound much like “enormous proboscis” to me and I had to struggle a little figuring out what Chase meant us to read. In the category of soundalike covering more than one word: "suture" stands in for "such a", "water" for "what a". You can break words up, too. "Grandma" might be written "gray maw," for instance. (If there’s an authoritative translation of "Ladle Rat" I haven’t seen it.)

It’s tricky. Push this too much and the hidden meaning is so hidden as to be absent. I often have trouble parsing Chase’s “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut” and it’s not supposed to be a big challenge. 

In his memoir/essay about being young and fighting the good fight in ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, Dale Peck writes about a bit of goofiness amid the fierce seriousness:

Byron … taught me to yell “ACT UP! Fight back! Fried eggs!” (instead of “ACT UP! Fight back! Fight AIDS!”) to relieve the monotony of two- or three-hour chants at demos: you could shout it right in cops’ faces, in reporters’; they never knew the difference.

Given that I often can’t make out the words in chants if I don’t already know what the chanters are shouting, I’m not surprised Peck heard no one puzzle over the fried eggs part. Close enough, right?

on the dangers of metaphor

Former U. S. Congressmember Barney Frank takes on metaphor:

As a civil libertarian, I would make few exceptions to the right to free speech. But I admit I’d be tempted to ban the use of metaphors in the discussion of public policy. Metaphors more often distort discussion than improve it. For example, countries are not dominoes; they do not lurch into their neighbors and knock them over if their regime changes. The Reaganite claim that a “rising tide lifts all boats” was also very harmful. People are not boats, and increases in GDP are not a tide that rises uniformly. To fight the metaphor on its own simplistic terms, if you are too poor to afford a boat and are standing on tiptoes in the water, the rising tide can go up your nose. Or, in real terms, the fact that some — even most — people become wealthier may have adverse consequences on those who do not share in the prosperity. In the case of housing, the economic advances that made downtowns more desirable places to live threatened to submerge the existing residents, not float them. It took the government to ensure that good news in the private sector — sharply improved property values — did not become very bad news for low-income people who would have been driven out of their homes.

Metaphors are dangerous. They seem to be basic to the way people think. Yet, as Barney Frank illustrates, metaphors “often distort” reality.

Fighting back against a metaphor can be tricky. You don’t want to do what people do reflexively — you don’t want to argue on the metaphor’s own terms. Barney Frank knows this but can’t help himself. He is clever enough to be able to turn the “rising tide” metaphor from one of benign floating to the danger of drowning. This sort of turn can win an argument. But if you find yourself arguing over metaphor, you are leaving reality behind. That’s not good. And I say that as a poet. Who loves metaphor, especially outrageous metaphor.

“Countries are not dominoes.” We are not talking about boats and tides; we are talking about people and whether they have enough to survive.

It is neither possible (nor desirable) to ban metaphor. But watch out for it, and when you see it, be ready to cut it off at the knees.

source: Frank: a life in politics from the Great Society to same-sex marriage by Barney Frank
2015. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York

“all this straight support”

In the 1970s Barney Frank was a closeted state legislator in Massachusetts. He knew he was gay; he’d sought political office knowing he was gay and knowing he would hide it. But, even if he didn’t feel he could be elected as an out gay man, Barney Frank resolved not only never to do anything to harm gay people but to be a forthright advocate once in office.

Says Barney Frank:

I was delighted when the activist Steve Endean was elected to the board of one of the leading liberal organizations in the country, Americans for Democratic Action, as its first openly gay member in 1974. … [When I] confide[d] to him that I was also gay — one of the very first times I admitted this to anyone[, h]is reaction at first disappointed me … ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you’re the third sponsor of a state gay rights bill to come out to me this year. Here I’ve been bragging about all this straight support we have, but it turns out to be mostly from closet cases!’”

Most hets don’t really think about gays. To them the treatment of gay people doesn’t much matter. Not until the gay rights movement did most hets even realize they counted gay people among their acquaintances. This is not to say the average het isn’t deeply complicit in the policing of gender norms nor the expectation that the people around them behave in a manner that doesn’t challenge what they’ve been led to take for granted.

But the people with passion for a subject usually have a stake in it. The most egregious homophobes are typically battling their own proclivities, demanding society help them to suppress the behavior (even the thoughts) they are sure are unacceptable, sinful, horrifying. The most passionate seekers of justice want to be able to take advantage of the freedoms they see their peers flaunting.

It is certainly true that people without same sex attraction can advocate for equal treatment or demand what they see as immoral be punished accordingly. But it’s exceedingly rare to find people fighting with real passion merely out of principle. This is a truism. Everybody knows it. There are always going to be exceptions. But the person passionately advocating for or against something knows everyone else will, with good reason, at least suspect them of a more than academic interest. It’s long been known among gay people that the most excitable homophobes are queer inside. This assumption has only recently, however, become more general in the body public. Used to be shouting as the nastiest hater was great camouflage. Used to be nobody would think the biggest opponent to fairness would be crying out for that unfairness to be applied to self. That seems so weird.

It’s long been assumed that those most committed to gay freedom want that freedom for themselves, of course. Only natural. That’s why it took courage to push for a good thing that most people considered bad.

One of the unexpected advantages of the gay movement has been this disengagement by the majority. It’s been easy for the majority to agree to keep the gays down because it’s always been so, why change, things are okay as they are, who cares. Yet once gay people started pushing, change came quickly. Het legislators listened to reasonable arguments and figured, well, no skin off my nose, why not, and the first gay rights legislation was enacted.

Change ran into the roadblock of the hulking closets of those who had invested huge amounts of resources in self-denial and hiding. You don’t just abandon bad investments. You defend them, you put more energy into them. Thus the gay movement has, in a sense, been an internal battle. Convention has long favored the status quo and pushback to change was easily mounted.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled for marriage equality the undoing of that decision will take more work, it seems, than there is passion for. Convention hasn’t overturned completely. Justice is never assured. But the complacency of the majority, the indifference of most hets to gay matters, can be an advantage. Who cares, no skin off my nose. why change, things are okay as they are.

source: Frank: a life in politics from the Great Society to same-sex marriage by Barney Frank
2015. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York

Masterpiece Theatre: A Very British Coup

from the book log (1/16/89):

Masterpiece Theatre: A Very British Coup.
aired in 2 parts: Jan 15, 9:00-10:00pm and Jan 16, 9:00-11:00pm on channel 9, KQED

An interesting entertainment. Lots of quick cutting from scene to scene, overlap of dialogue & background noises as locale changed, lots of extreme close-ups, the faces from lower lip to eyebrow filling the screen. Well-written drama about a “radical” from the Labour Party left, Perkins, [who] wins a landslide victory. He tells the U.S. to take its bases and go home. He dismantles the British nukes. He fights a CIA-led electric power workers’ strike. And there’s a happy ending that almost seems plausible.

Our Time Has Come: a delegate’s diary of Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign

In 1988 Jesse Jackson made a second run for the presidency. I remember splitting my California Democratic primary delegate vote between Jesse Jackson and Sen. Gary Hart. Did I do that in 1984 or 1988? Looking over the Wikipedia pages for the campaigns I’d guess it was ’84. I’m pretty sure I was ready to go all in for Jackson in 1988; besides, I don’t think you could split your vote the same way in ’88.

I attended my first (& so far only) presidential campaign rally when Jesse Jackson came to the Santa Rosa fairgrounds to give a speech. I remember Eric Shanower wearing a Jackson ’88 campaign pin at the Oz Convention that year. (When I met Kent I discovered two Jackson ’88 campaign coffee mugs in his kitchen. We still use them.)

As an out gay man I was sick of the Democratic squeamishness around my kind, an attitude that hobbled the fight against AIDS as well as limiting the recognition of equality. Jesse Jackson spoke out for gay people and for major funding in the AIDS fight. It was thrilling seeing him win state primaries. It felt like there was Hope.

When I spotted Our Time Has Come at the library I was looking forward to at least some discussion of the ’88 run. Got none.

from the book log (1/13/89):

Our Time Has Come: a delegate’s diary of Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign by Lucius J. Barker. 1988. University of Illinois Press

It’s curious that the book, emerging in 1988, deals exclusively with Jackson’s 1984 campaign. A bit disappointing because one would like some comparisons and contrasting of the ’84 with the ’88 campaigns.

Lucius Barker does go on. Goodly portions of the book could be excised without trauma (without noticing). He chose a strange middle ground between objective analysis and personal involvement narrative — strange because I got such a sense of “neither here nor there.”

Barker talked an awful lot about his objective/subjective dilemma — he talked about his dilemma. [I didn’t record what Barker’s “objective/subjective dilemma” was exactly, but I’ll guess the dilemma was what stance to take when writing about the campaign.] The old saw: Show, don’t tell. He does a lot of tell. Not nearly enough show. Yet until I find a better book about Jesse’s campaign this is better than nothing. I liked Barker’s observation that, win or lose, Jesse’s campaign gave a lot of minority and social justice-type people valuable experience in running a national presidential campaign, experience you can’t get elsewhere. Hope some of these folks move into positions of power and leadership because of Jesse’s runs.

The campaign began with black leadership divided between Jesse & Mondale, then came Lt. Goodman’s Jesse-made release from Syrian prison, then the overblown Hymietown remark, the frustrating convention where all of Jackson’s minority planks were not only defeated but ignored and the boffo speech (which is reprinted in this book and; reads well too).

The “delegate’s diary” of the title is just one chapter but gives a feel of the convention. More show than tell, finally.

I’ll make the prediction that if Jesse runs in 1992, his negatives will have come down — not all the way but some, and he will be first or a close second in those stupid “if the primary were held today for whom would you vote” polls in early 1992. Whether he’ll stay on top I won’t predict but I do think he’ll do better than in ’88. I’m not sure he can remain a perennial presidential candidate too many more years. ’92, I think so. ’96? The year 2000? I’m inclined to doubt that he’ll be a big force unless he does gain the presidency in the 90s. Who knows. What is he doing now I wonder … He made some statement about how corruption is not a color issue & bad when anyone engages in it, in reference to Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, D.C., & the trouble Barry is in.

Jesse Jackson did not run again in 1992. I thought Jackson could build on his ’88 successes, since there was no Democratic incumbent and the people who had supported him were as ignored and discounted as ever. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton came along and spoke up for gay people in a way no one had. Despite my doubts about a Southern politician really being there for us when the going got rough I pinned a Clinton/Gore political button to my college backpack.

The Color of Honor

from the book log (1/11/89):

The Color of Honor documentary, 1987, 1 1/2 hours, shown on KQED

Another very effective and informative documentary. Focused on the students of a U.S. Army language school who became interpreters throughout the Pacific Theater [during World War II]. These interpreters were Nisei — young men born in America to Issei, parents who had immigrated here from Japan. The Japanese-Americans of Hawaii were not interned and many young men from that territory volunteered enthusiastically for the Armed Services. But, of course, many Japanese-Americans were interned on the mainland [out of the racist supposition that they were likely to betray the U.S.] and their treatment was disgraceful.

Fighting for Our Lives

from the book log (1/11/89):

Fighting for Our Lives, documentary on KQED, the San Francisco PBS affiliate. Narration by Linda Hunt. Produced in 1986? 1987? The latest dates mentioned were in 1986. (30 minutes)

This is a very good to excellent documentary. About as deep as this audio-visual medium can get. Made me drip a few tears. AIDS. They interviewed Randy Shilts among others, gave a brief overview of gay history in San Francisco, talked about the way AIDS crept into consciousness. Gay plague? Originally people scoffed, but when it hit home how real and deadly was this thing, behavior as well as attitudes changed. One in three gay men in San Francisco is expected to die. Yet the gay community is now a community in ways it never was before, with community support services, choruses, marching bands, theatre, food banks, health care, political action, bowling leagues, and so on. The makers of this doc stressed how the existence of an out gay population in powerful positions in the area made the model AIDScare program. Highlighted the efforts of lesbians. Interviewed Roberta Achtenberg.

I found the documentary on youtube. Throughout, and distractingly, “Fighting for Our Lives” hovers over the lower third of the screen, added, I'm sure, for the youtube version.

The bit in my log entry about the gay community being “a community in ways it never was before,” etc. seems to be paraphrasing Randy Shilts.

DONAHUE

My mother was a DONAHUE fan. Phil Donahue’s talk show addressed serious issues that the cooking and celebrity focused talk of other daytime programming ignored. Abortion, gays … According to Wikipedia, consumer advocate Ralph Nader was Phil’s “most frequent guest.” Each episode’s guests would be seated on the stage and Phil would circulate through the audience with a handheld microphone offering audience members the opportunity to ask questions of the experts. It was a democratization of the questioning that was really refreshing, for a while, at least. DONAHUE gave me a chance to see real live gay people speaking up for themselves, witnessing for their lives. Even before I dealt with my own unresolved same sex attractions, I was fine with rooting for the gays who certainly should be able to live forthrightly, legally and safely. On DONAHUE questioning tended to be respectful. I don’t recall Phil necessarily including “the other side;” that is, the bigot contingent wasn’t obligatorily presented as a valid and equal authority on whether everyone got to have civil rights.

from the book log (1/11/89):

DONAHUE

The Supreme Court has decided to review a Missouri law (?) that restricts abortion. So Donahue had a couple anti-abortionists, both young women (relatively) and two women who were pro-choice; and some guy from The New York Times (formerly) who reports on the Sup Ct gave a rundown on how the nine will likely vote. It infuriates me how the “pro-life” fools call the terms of the debate. [Those] who define the terms have already won. I thought of a “pro-life” counterpart. Why not call the pro-choice advocates “real life counselors,” or something. The Real Life Action Coalition.

Also the hour talk show — [with commercials] some hour — when dealing with a complex subject like this cannot even sketch the real situation. And the “debate” becomes largely a repetition of slogans and a shouting match — the pro-choicers never shout loud enough, they are too nice. More men stood up than I ever remember in a Donahue audience. [Is this irony?] The [men] were speaking on both sides of the issue — as were the women. The show’s concluding comment was from a teenage girl and she was cut off by the credits. I thought she made one of the best statements in the show because it was a chance to turn the debate. She said the “pro-lifers” seem so concerned about the “unborn children,” what about the “born children”? The “pro-lifers” seem uninterested.

The case that the DONAHUE guests were addressing was called, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. The Supreme Court ultimately decided that the states could further restrict abortion, despite the Court’s earlier declaration in the Roe v. Wade decision that abortion was a right women held under the Constitution.

A few days ago there was a diary at DailyKos about Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan’s change of position on abortion. After listening to women describe situations that made their decisions about whether to carry a fetus to term something other than a simplistic Shall I Kill My Baby?, Ryan decided he would no longer vote to make abortion illegal. I left a comment:

I’ve been rereading my diary from 1989 and I came across a formulation that I proposed -- instead of Pro-Life being opposed by Pro-Choice, it seemed to me more accurately one should contrast the fantasies behind the "Pro-Life" position with "Real Life" as lived. Whatever we learn about fetuses it will still be true that they are sited in grown persons and that the real lived experience of the person must take priority.

“These women gave me a better understanding of how complex and difficult certain situations can become,” says Rep. Ryan.

It's easy -- way, way too easy -- to imagine a few cells burgeoning with potential as having a right to life, a right to develop into a human being. Why is it so so difficult to imagine the grown human beings struggling with all the things we have to deal with and recognize that some will make choices that nip the potential of those burgeoning cells? And that punishing women for making this decision is, at best, counterproductive to the professed (but actually fantastical) Culture of Life?

Real Life versus Your Dreamland.

Rep. Ryan woke up to reality?

In a debate it probably doesn’t help to accuse the other side of living in a fantasy world.

Anyway, let’s get back to the gays for a paragraph. I remember trying to suss out my attraction to boys by debating whether I felt any physical draw to Phil Donahue. Not even when he took off his shirt to be bound in clear plastic wrap on a show about packing your fat tightly so you wouldn’t look flabby. Not even then! Well. I will admit I did stick out the whole episode to make sure.

screen capture of 80s Donahue source