Very Short Hiatus

I had intended to do a Friday Gay Blogging post today, but I'm just too unfocused right now. Maybe tomorrow, along with a Review in Brief of something that you're not expecting.

As a consolation prize, here's a picture:

Must Read

A very well-done article from Unite the Fight at Pam's House Blend on the Olson/Boies challenge to Prop 8. Essential reading if you're going to understand what's going on here, from the looks of it.

Effing Liar

Jeff Halstead, Fort Worth Chief of Police. From WFAA, via Dan Savage:

Monday, police chief Jeff Halstead said the officers' actions are being investigated. However, he also said that officers that entered the bar during the scheduled inspection were touched inappropriately.

"You're touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that's offensive," he said. "I'm happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that."

He has no objective evidence to support his statement, and the accounts of eyewitnesses -- including video recordings -- directly dispute everything he's claiming.

This man needs to be fired. That's for starters.

Savage has contact information for the Mayor and city council members in Fort Worth.

Jim Burroway has an update on the condition of Chad Gibson, the 160 pound man who is accused of "groping" Fort Worth Police officers --he's also the one who has been in the hospital in serious condition, which classification has now been revised to "fair."

Burroway also has a post detailing Gibson's treatment during his arrest, with an update that establishes that Gibson was drunk but nowhere near "alcohol poisoning."

Here's a TV news report on the incident:



Y'kow, it occurs to me that if it takes five Fort Worth police officers to subdue a 160 pound faggot who's offering no resistance, maybe they're right to be afraid of us.

Gay Boy Makes Good

Remember Jim McGreevey? He's not only turned his life around, he's helping others do the same:

He is in a healthy, happy relationship with Mark as he studies to become an Episcopal priest. He is giving back to others who have made mistakes, often because they were caught up in the circumstances of their lives.

Gay people mostly forgave McGreevey for his affair when it came to light five years ago. We are well aware of the many ludicrous situations that occur because men, particularly in McGreevey’s generation, have been forced to live their lives in the closet. That he is living such an honorable and giving life freed from the shame of the closet is testament to the real Jim McGreevey.

McGreevey volunteers at Exodus Transitional Community at the Church of Living Hope in East Harlem, New York, which tries to help newly-released prisoners learn life skills and handle the significant challenges that ex-convicts face.

News like this starts connections forming in my head, such as the fact that, in most non-Judaeo-Christian societies, those with same-sex orientation seem to occupy a very high proportion of spiritual roles in the community -- one thinks immediately of the North American berdache, men who adopted women's roles and dress, and who were regarded as spiritually very powerful by their community. The men who married them were seen as specially favored. There are equivalent institutions in other cultures.

There is also, in shamanism, a recurring motif of the shaman-in-the-making becoming, at least psychically, a member of the opposite sex. This is supposed to complete him/her and enable the shaman to serve the whole community.

And can we talk about the high proportion of gay men in the priesthoods of various Christian denominations? (It would also be interesting to see a breakdown of members of the "helping" professions -- doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists -- by sexual orientation.)

Edward O. Wilson once posited the development of altruism as a result of genetic economics: if a non-breeding member of a group devotes his/her time to caring for others in the group -- offspring, mostly -- that behavior and the root causes of it (i.e., the non-breeding part) would be reinforced as an adaptive trait and carried on through siblings and their descendants. Can we see the same mechanism at work in the maintenance of same-sex orientation in vertebrates?

No conclusions, but some interesting trains of thought.

Irreverence du jour

Patrick Appel notes a disagreement between Paul Krugman and John Cole, two of my favorite people: Cole objects to Krugman's use of the word "treason" in public debate over global warming, suggesting a version of Godwin's law. Appel wonders:

How do we apply this law when both sides of the debate accuse the other side of treason? They can't both "lose automatically."

Yes they can.

About That Stonewall Anniversary Celebration

Not the one at the White House -- I'm so disgusted with the Obama administration right now that I don't even want to comment on their dog and pony shows. I'm talking about the one in Forth Worth. Jim Burroway and Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin have been pulling together the resources. Just scroll down their posts over the past couple of days -- and pay attention to the pieces in the sidebar, as well.

It becomes plainer and plainer that the police claims just don't stand up to even the barest scrutiny.

Look, we've all been in gay bars -- well, all of my gay readers, and probably a lot of the straight ones -- and we know that conditions are radically different than the police are claiming. Kincaid notes the reaction of one straight visitor to a gay bar: Jeff Prince of the Fort Worth Weekly's blog has this to say:

As I sat there, I kept figuring one of these guys would hit on me. I was going to politely explain to them that I wasn’t that way. Except nobody paid any attention to me. For 10 or 15 minutes not a single person spoke to me or approached me. I was relieved and offended at the same time. What am I chopped liver?

Another straight dude Weeklyteer Dan McGraw did a cover story called “Waking Up the Rainbow” in 2005 about gay politics in Fort Worth and spent several nights incognito at a gay bar called Best Friends. He had a similar experience of being ignored. “It was like hanging out at any other bar,” he said. “Most of the guys had been married before and had kids.”

For some reason, however, Fort Worth police and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officers went into a gay bar on Saturday night and the patrons allegedly became fraught with horn and damn near raped our boys in blue.

Yeah, gay bars can get kind of raunchy, late at night when the conditions are right. Somehow, a police raid doesn't really spark the right mood, you know? And to tell the truth, I've had straight guys come on to me in gay bars. I remember one who was there with his wife -- he was cute, she was -- well, a women. They wanted a three way. I explained that I don't do women, ever. Normally, however, if you don't know people there, they won't talk to you for a while -- even if you're gay. (Sometimes I think it's especially if you're gay.)

At any rate, check out the posts at BTB. The story we're getting from FWPD stinks. (Note: One of the commenters at Prince's post was there -- he says the police are lying.)

Stonewall Revisited

So on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, what do we get? A raid on a gay bar.

The Dallas Voice’s blog is reporting that a gay bar in Ft. Worth, Texas, was raided sometime last night:

This fish smell many day dead. The police are coming up with all sorts of rationales that sound pretty bogus. Reports are still coming in on this one, so there's not much I can say, except to wonder if they really think they can get away with it? Of course, now that we live in a police state, there's no way to know. I have to say, though, no one reports the police claiming illegal drugs. How odd. Do you suppose they actually thought about this before they did it? Doesn't sound like it.

Here's a report from Joe Sudbay, with this bright note:

Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns issued the following statement:

I want all citizens of Texas and Fort Worth to know and be assured that the laws and ordinances of our great State and City will be applied fairly, equally and without malice or selective enforcement. I consider this to be part of "The Fort Worth Way" here. As an elected representative of the city of Fort Worth, I am calling for an immediate and thorough investigation of the actions of the City of Fort Worth Police and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in relation to the incident at the Rainbow Lounge earlier this morning, June 28, 2009.

It is unfortunate that this incident occurred in Fort Worth and even more so to have occurred on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall protests. Unlike 40 years ago, though, the people of this community have elective representation that will make sure our government is accountable and that the rights of all of its citizens are protected. I are working together with our Mayor, Police Chief, the City of Fort Worth Human Relations Commission, and our State Legislative colleagues to get a complete and accurate accounting of what occurred.

Rest assured that neither the people of Fort Worth, nor the city government of Fort Worth, will tolerate discrimination against any of its citizens. And know that the GLBT Community is an integral part of the economic and cultural life of Fort Worth.

Every Fort Worth citizen deserves to have questions around this incident answered and I am working aggressively toward that end.

It will be interesting to see how much effort the Fort Worth police expend on protecting the instigators here. Maximum, I would suspect. There was one patron who suffered a head injury and is hospitalized. Should be an interesting law suit coming out of this -- a lot of them, I hope.

I know, I know. . .

I haven't posted in a couple of days. Chalk it up to the most annoying week in the history of Western civilization -- I finally just pooped out. I managed not to finish a single writing project yesterday, although I started several.

It was that kind of day.

However, I ran across something in passing at Pam's House Blend that made me think a bit. It's a post by The Author on those pre-medieval minds at Manifest Glory Ministries who tried to exorcise "the homosexual demons" from a sixteen-year-old boy.

I don't think I really need to comment on that, except to point out that the pastor and congregation appear to be a few centuries behind the rest of the world. (By the way, the boy, according to the blogosphere, is now attending an LGBT-affirming church.)

This comment made me stop:

I'm not even going to answer that silliness except for to say that not all gay pride parades are the same. Down here in South Carolina, our events are extremely family-friendly.

I'm not sure what that means. I was on a float a couple of years running, and there are lots of families in the audience here in Chicago. Most of them are straight. And all of them are cheering, the leatherfolk and dancers no less than the politicians. (Actually, for the dancers, probably more.) I suspect that "family friendly" doesn't mean the same thing in Chicago that it does on South Carolina. In fact, I'm sure of it.

I've commented on Pride Parades and their context before (here and here), but just want to restate it once again for those who have internalized their closets: It's our parade. It's not James Dobson's parade, it's not Barack Obama's parade, it's not Middle America's parade. It's our parade, with all the color, vitality, and in-your-face outrageousness that are the gay community. If it bothers you, stay home.

And, come to think of it, today is Parade day in Chicago. I'm probably not going to go -- those pesky writing projects, which do need to be finished tout suite. And I'm not really in the mood, although if I didn't have to work tomorrow I might be tempted to go out and tie one on. After this week, that might be the best course.

But no. I'm going to be responsible.

I hate myself sometimes.

Reviews in Brief: R. M. Meluch's The Sagittarius Command

A little departure for us today, an old-fashioned space opera (known these days as "military sf") with a couple of interesting twists.

The Sagittarius Command is the third volume in R. M. Meluch's series, The Tour of the Merrimack. The known galaxy is dominated by two interstellar empires, the United States of America and the Palatine Empire, a resurrected Rome. In previous volumes, we've seen the reaction of both to the advent of the Hive, an alien species that travels in groups, seems to have no particular intelligence other than a hive-mind, and eats anything organic in its path. In previous volumes we've seen the discovery of the Hive, the victory of the Merrimack over Roman forces that enabled its captain, John Farragut, to enforce an alliance (called by the Romans "The Subjugation," and bitterly resented), and gotten a good idea of the political context, both interstellar and earthbound.

This installment begins with a surprise encroachment by the Hive on a Roman colony in Near Space, close to both Palatine and Earth. Farragut and the Merrimack are able to save most of the inhabitants and destroy the Hive (individually known as "gorgons," "soldiers," and "gluies," depending on the type), much to the disgust and resentment of its Roman garrison, Legion LXXI Draconis, and its commander, Herius Asinius. The Dracs wind up as part of Attack Group I when the allied strategy changes and it looks as though the point of origin of the Hive has been located.

Meluch's earlier works were relatively straightforward, hard-edged, poetic stories. The edge is here, as well, but this series is a space opera with a lot of intrigue and political maneuvering -- try to think of a cross between E. E. "Doc" Smith and C. J. Cherryh. She also set up an anomaly in the first volume that continues to play itself out, although at this stage I'm beginning to wonder whether it's a device she's actually going to use, or she's just playing with our heads: at the end of The Myriad, she shifted everything into an alternate universe. We're still in that universe, but the previous one does crop up in something that Farragut remembers that he shouldn't.

Characters, by the way, are a treat: larger than life, and basically stereotypical, but strongly drawn, and they do manage to surmount their origins to become real people. And the relationship between Farragut and Augustus, a Roman patterner, is a nice, edgy, not-quite-homoerotic kind of thing (although Augustus' interest is not entirely platonic). (Augustus' brain and body have been altered to enable him to process vast amounts of data and draw connections; he has no memory of anything before that process began.)

I've reviewed previous volumes in other places. The Myriad is at Rambles, and Wolf Star at Epinions. This one's published by DAW.

Two Must-Reads

From Timothy Kincaid and Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin.

The first, from Kincaid, about building bridges with Christians. It's strategic, and makes a lot of sense.

Wendy Gritter of New Directions is seeking to increase communication and decrease hostility between the Christian community and the gay community. While I do not see these as necessarily exclusive communities, it is unquestionable that conservative Christians and gay people are to some extent at war with each other.

Towards the goal of healing, Wendy came up with the concept of a synchroblog, a time in which everyone would focus on their perspectives about such communication. She chose today, the Wednesday of Pride Week, for this effort. So today, a couple dozen bloggers with various Christian or gay perspectives will be participating in this joint conversation and Wendy invited me to join them.

Kincaid goes on to give his position. It's a good, and thought-provoking, read. Realizing full well that I am one of the angrier posters on gay issues (although in my own defense, I do try to maintain a relatively moderate tone and not go into shrill mode -- I have this thing about factual accuracy, you see, although my diction is sometimes blunt), I strongly support what's being proposed here.

Burroway's comments are more tactical:

About the White House cocktail party on June 29:

But a cocktail party? I can’t imagine that any self-respecting gay person would agree to go to a cocktail party at this stage in our difficult relationship with the current administration. . .

The seeds for my turnaround were planted when I finished that sentence:

…although I have to concede that House and Senate Republicans, even some of the most conservative ones, have taken the White House up on similar invitations.

Burroway points out something that I hadn't known and that radically changes my thinking on this event:

The third argument concerns His Friendly Gays themselves, and builds on the much-hated image of “A-Gays” drinking and schmoozing and not getting much done. That’s a hard image to knock down, but we do have to remember that in a town like Washington, D.C., relationships are formed and messages put across over exactly these kinds of activities. This is true in D.C. much moreso than in anywhere else, where these events are typically little more than non-work social hours.

And as for His Friendly Gays, it appears the gathering will be much broader than that. Some of those invited include some of the administration’s harsher critics on LGBT issues. One of those who will be there is Lt. Colonel Victor Fehrenbach, who is about to be fired from the Air Force for being gay. He’ll be there as a guest of the Servicemember’s Legal Defense Network. The invite list isn’t limited to those from inside the Beltway, which is exactly what’s needed to punch through the Presidential bubble. They aren’t the get-along-to-go-along usual suspects, although I’m sure some of them will be there also.

Knowing that it's not going to be the A Gays only makes a big difference in my thinking on this, because it's the non-As that need to be heard.

I'm still not happy with Obama's lack of support for gay issues, and to be honest I don't expect a big turn-around after something like this, but frankly, if increments are all you've got, then use the increments.

Local News

This is a good one -- and (my bad!) I had to go to Lawyers, Guns and Money to find it.

I don't know if anyone remembers this incident, of an off-duty Chicago cop beating a tiny little female bartender because she wouldn't serve him another drink. He was obviously inebriated, and by law she's required to cut him off. Here's the video:



It came to court, and the judge -- that Judge John J. Fleming, remember that name -- well, here's Paul Campos' summary:

Judge John J. Fleming thought this didn't merit any jail time, because a two-minute vicious beating of an 115-pound woman by a 250-pound drunk psychopath only resulted in "some bumps and bruises."

On the upside, the CPD is trying to fire the guy -- she was the third person he'd beaten up that day (yes -- that day!).

And Judge John J. Fleming is up for retention in the next election. Guess how I'm voting on that one.

It Just Doesn't Stop

I realize this has become almost a one-issue blog, but -- well, it's an important issue, at least for me, and it's very revealing, I think, of just what we've installed in the White House.

Here's the latest on the appeal by members of Congress to Obama to stop discharges under DADT. From Kerry Eleveld at The Advocate:

The White House has responded to an inquiry from The Advocate about a letter sent from 77 House members Monday urging President Barack Obama to take immediate action to stop the investigations of "don't ask, don't tell" violations.

"President Obama remains committed to a legislative repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which he believes will provide a durable and lasting solution to this issue. He welcomes the commitment of these members to seeing Congress take action," read the statement.

The president's position is ridiculous on its face: we're talking about the repeal of a law here. Yes, the law is odious and reflects a terrible policy, and it should be repealed. But that's the whole point: laws can be repealed, so what is this bullshit about a "durable and lasting solution?" It's noise, that's all. It's white noise to mask the fact that the Obama administration, if spite of his fine words, has absolutely no commitment to insuring equality for gay Americans -- and is, in fact, backing off from opportunities to do just that. (And note that the letter didn't even request an executive order -- just an implementation of the "Don't Pursue" part of the policy. The full text is included in the article, along with a list of signers. If your congresscritter isn't among them, make noise.)

Let's get it straight: nothing is permanent in a democracy, not even in a democratic republic like ours: laws can be made and repealed, court decisions can be overridden, even the Constitution can be amended -- and fundamental rights, at least in some places, can be withheld by popular vote. Let's cut the crap, OK?

Well, boys and girls, there you have it: we seem to have another liar in the Oval Office.

There may be more: I'm just getting started this morning.