Tag Archives: lgbt

’Zat you, Santa Claus?

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What's wrong with a black Santa?
What’s wrong with a black Santa?
Once again, some butt-hurt white guys are calling for a boycott and otherwise losing their minds because someone has hired an African-American man to play Santa at a mall. I could re-iterate the fact that the historical Saint Nicholas wasn’t a white guy. Or I could go on a rant about people who claim that queers, women, and people of color are the ones who are too sensitive being the ones getting up in arms, but I’d rather talk about Santa.

The real Santa.

I’ve made an extensive study of the topic. Part of this is because for more than 20 years I’ve been writing at least one new Ghost Story to read at our Holiday party. And I’m the sort of obsessive writer who has to run down every rabbit hole of information even slightly related to any project I’m working on. So if you want to get an earful of information on St. Nicholas, various countries’ folklore surrounding Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Ded Moroz/Grandfather Frost, Pere Noel, La Befana, Tomte, the Hogfather, or all 13 of the Jolasveinar, I’m your guy.

And then there are the companions or anti-Clauses: Krampus, La Pere Fouettard, and Black Peter. And allied mythical creatures such as Julesvenn, Julenisse, and Santa’s elves.

But all of those things are simply the means by which people have sought to encode into folklore the truth about Santa Claus. Fortunately, a version of the truth is being shared around and turned up on my Tumblr feed this week, so rather than paraphrase that, I’m just going to quote Charity Hutchinson:

In our family, we have a special way of transitioning the kids from receiving from Santa, to becoming a Santa. This way, the Santa construct is not a lie that gets discovered, but an unfolding series of good deeds and Christmas spirit.

When they are 6 or 7, whenever you see that dawning suspicion that Santa may not be a material being, that means the child is ready.

I take them out “for coffee” at the local wherever. We get a booth, order our drinks, and the following pronouncement is made:

“You sure have grown an awful lot this year. Not only are you taller, but I can see that your heart has grown, too. [ Point out 2-3 examples of empathetic behavior, consideration of people’s feelings, good deeds etc, the kid has done in the past year]. In fact, your heart has grown so much that I think you are ready to become a Santa Claus.

You probably have noticed that most of the Santas you see are people dressed up like him. Some of your friends might have even told you that there is no Santa. A lot of children think that, because they aren’t ready to BE a Santa yet, but YOU ARE. Tell me the best things about Santa. What does Santa get for all of his trouble? [lead the kid from “cookies” to the good feeling of having done something for someone else]. Well, now YOU are ready to do your first job as a Santa!”

Make sure you maintain the proper conspiratorial tone.

We then have the child choose someone they know–a neighbor, usually. The child’s mission is to secretly, deviously, find out something that the person needs, and then provide it, wrap it, deliver it–and never reveal to the target where it came from. Being a Santa isn’t about getting credit, you see. It’s unselfish giving.

My oldest chose the “witch lady” on the corner. She really was horrible–had a fence around the house and would never let the kids go in and get a stray ball or Frisbee. She’d yell at them to play quieter, etc–a real pill. He noticed when we drove to school that she came out every morning to get her paper in bare feet, so he decided she needed slippers. So then he had to go spy and decide how big her feet were. He hid in the bushes one Saturday, and decided she was a medium. We went to Kmart and bought warm slippers. He wrapped them up, and tagged it “merry Christmas from Santa.” After dinner one evening, he slipped down to her house, and slid the package under her driveway gate. The next morning, we watched her waddle out to get the paper, pick up the present, and go inside. My son was all excited, and couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. The next morning, as we drove off, there she was, out getting her paper–wearing the slippers. He was ecstatic. I had to remind him that NO ONE could ever know what he did, or he wouldn’t be a Santa.

Over the years, he chose a good number of targets, always coming up with a unique present just for them. One year, he polished up his bike, put a new seat on it, and gave it to one of our friend’s daughters. These people were and are very poor. We did ask the dad if it was ok. The look on her face, when she saw the bike on the patio with a big bow on it, was almost as good as the look on my son’s face.

When it came time for Son #2 to join the ranks, my oldest came along, and helped with the induction speech. They are both excellent gifters, by the way, and never felt that they had been lied to–because they were let in on the Secret of Being a Santa.

So, yeah, Santa is sometimes black, sometimes asian, sometimes young, sometimes old, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes genderfluid. Santa is sometimes pagan, sometimes Buddhist, sometimes atheist, sometimes Jewish. When I’m fulfilling the duties of Santa, then you better believe that Santa Claus is as queer as a clutchpurse full of canaries.

Some people think that nothing can exist that is not comprehensible to their little minds (to quote the late Francis Pharcellus Church in his famous New York Sun editorial responding to a question from a little girl named Virginia). They think admitting those things exist somehow takes something away from them. That somehow kindness shown to some people must always cost someone else. And that’s just wrong. Any heart where love, generosity, and kindness abounds is the heart of Santa. And when you share kindness, you don’t lose it, you gain more.

And that’s the only thing that matters.
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It’s the most wonderful production number

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To get this on vinyl when it was released in 1965, you had to purchase it at either a tire store or a gas station.
To get this on vinyl when it was released in 1965, you had to purchase it at either a tire store or a gas station.
My childhood Christmases were propelled by an eclectic soundtrack of vinyl albums. Dad would have probably been fine with Elvis’ Christmas album, Johnny Cash’s The Christmas Spirit, and The Dean Martin Christmas Album. Mom had much more wide-ranging tastes, so gospel albums of Christmas hymns sat on the shelf next to Christmas albums by Loretta Lynn, the Chipmunks, Brenda Lee, Glenn Campbell, or the Philidelphia Orchestra. There were lots of compilations, such as the 1965 Goodyear’s Great Songs of Christmas (there’s a whole blog devoted to these albums which could only be purchased in tire stores Or at gas stations) or one of the Firestone Your Christmas Favorites albums, and then there were the (usually all instrumental) albums where none of the musicians were identified.

William's first Christmas album was released in 1963. He released four more over the next three decades.
William’s first Christmas album was released in 1963. He released four more over the next three decades.
Among my favorites were two different Andy Williams’ Christmas albums. For the longest time I thought the older album with the red cover had been recorded in the 1950s, because I couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t in the family collection of records. But also because I couldn’t remember a Christmas where we hadn’t watched Andy Williams and the Williams Brothers (and other guests) perform christmas music along with comedic sketches a couple of weeks or so before the holiday itself.

I don’t think I realized that Williams was the host of a weekly musical variety show until he changed networks in the late sixties. As far as I know, our family never watched his show except for the one Christmas-themed episode each year. There were a lot of variety shows on network TV back then, and there were several that we watched faithfully every week. I’m not sure why Andy’s wasn’t one.

And the Andy Williams Christmas shows were hardly the only Christmas-themed specials and musical programs we watched every year. I know I loved watching all of them. When I was about 10 or so one of my cousins went on a bit of a rant of what a freak I was because I liked watching specials—why would anyone want to watch people sing, for instance? But I realize the Andy William’s specials stuck out in my head precisely because we had the albums, which included some of his own original songs (“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “A Song and the Christmas Tree”), so I could listen to them until I’d learned the lyrics, but also learned a lot of the harmony and counter-melodies and other vocal flourishes. So when those particular production numbers came up on screen, I could follow along.

I understand, now, why the cousin (and other relatives) thought I was a freak. I was the kind of boy who danced and sang along with the big theatrical production numbers in movies and on variety shows. I thought nothing of behaving that way in front of the family television. Which was quite entertaining for my adult relatives when I was a cute four-year-old, but much more disturbing as I got older.

When I got my own record player so I could listen to music in my bedroom, the Christmas season was when I’d close the door and imagine that I was the star of my own musical variety show, with the elaborate sets and costumes and the large groups of dancers and singers backing me up. I was worse than that. With careful use of a portable cassette recorder, the big stereo in the living room (when I was home alone), and some of those studio musician instrumental-only Christmas albums, I recorded my own Christmas shows. Not just me singing along with the instrumental albums, but then playing that recording over the stereo then with the recorder and a second (and third, and sometimes fourth) tape, recording myself singing the harmony parts along with myself.

Freak might have been putting it mildly.

I watched Williams’ faithfully into my teens. Even the really disastrously bad one that involved the cast (along with special guests Captain Kangaroo and Gomez Addams) are transported to Rock Land and Doll Land and I don’t remember where all else in a strange attempt at an original Christmas fable that made no sense…

When Williams’ weekly series ended, he signed a deal with the network to produce three or four seasonal specials a year, and one of those each year was a Christmas special.

Williams’ work weren’t the only Christmas albums I sang along with. And they aren’t the only old albums of that vintage that I’ve since tracked down and added to the insane amount of Christmas music that resides on my computers and phone. But even now when I find newer recordings by modern singers and bands that I like, I find myself imagining those songs performed on a stage in the style of one of the Williams’ Christmas episodes, with the costumes, sets, fake snow, and multi-camera coverage.

And sometimes, especially if I’m listening during the long walk home each night from the office, you may still catch me at least doing jazz hands while I sing along. Might as well make a production out if it, right?

Make the Yuletide Gay.
Make the Yuletide Gay.

Yuletide, gay and otherwise

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© the late, great Bob Mizer (Click to embiggen)
© the late, great Bob Mizer (Click to embiggen)
I wrote a few blog posts before Thanksgiving about the reasons we were both feeling less than enthusiastic about spending the holiday with my family. As I mentioned in the Friday Links post after, we got through the day without any disasters. It helped an awful lot that one of my nieces is a new mother and her kid is at the toddling around being cute but can’t talk yet stage. She was a great distraction. There was a teensy bit of a close call. One of the relatives that I recently had to block on Facebook because of all the homophobia who wasn’t supposed to be at Mom’s for the holiday, had her plans fall through, and was texting Mom about coming over… but it was literally while we were in the middle of loading our car up to head back to Seattle, so we dodged that one.

We are staying at home for Christmas. Mom has been talking about a facetime call, but that’s a lot less grueling than being in the actual room with folks who cheerfully try to claim that they aren’t homophobic because they love me despite my lifestyle and that I’m clearly going to hell and that allowing us to get married is going to destroy the world.

For many years what we did was alternate which holiday we spent at Mom’s, while staying home for the other. When Mom was still working (she worked in retail for decades), which holiday she didn’t have to work dictated which one we came down for. Now that we no longer have that issue, we’ve tended to stick with Thanksgiving there and Christmas at home. One reason I do that is because, well, there’s a lot less god-talk on Thanksgiving.

Despite the fact that I can still recite from memory the entirety of the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, and can sing “O, Holy Night” in three languages, and love to sing along to Christmas hymns such as “Angels We Have Heard On High,” I don’t look at Christmas the way my Bible-thumping relatives do. I’m taoist, now, and Christmas is the season of twinkling lights and mistletoe and brightly wrapped presents and eggnog and ginger cookies and times laughing with friends. My husband is pagan, and has an even lower tolerance for the “baby Jesus stuff” than I do. I expend a bit of effort crafting Christmas music playlists that don’t contain any of the religious music to play around him. I still listen to the hymns and such, I just use headphones or listen when he’s not around.

So what is our Queer Christmas like? How does a gay taoist and his pagan bisexual husband celebrate yuletide? We put up a tree every year. We usually have a theme. This year’s is Up In the Air, built around a tin zeppelin toy my hubby got last year. So the tree has all my Star Trek ornaments and all his Star Wars ornaments, and a bunch of or My Little Pony pegasus figures, plus birds and flying reindeer and several Santas, my Marvin the Martin ornaments, lots of moons and stars. One plastic flying Santa sleigh & reindeer was a table decoration that belonged to my great-grandmother. There are also three glass ball ornaments (one pink, one lime green, and one red) with glitter that also belonged to that grandmother. They go onto the tree somewhere every year no matter what the theme is.

I make two wreaths every year. One goes on the inside of the front door, and one on the outside. We have lights that go in the windows. I have too many lights, so I have to decide which ones to put up each year. We also have some lights for the shrubbery outside, and some cheesy decorations that go on the lawn. We sometimes wear Santa hats at social gatherings during the season. We send presents (and some years Christmas cards) to friends and relatives.

We own a lot of Christmas movies and Christmas specials. I watch some of them during the weeks leading up to the holiday. I could do a multi-day marathon of just my adaptations of A Christmas Carol. And I may very well have done exactly that at least once. We frequently watch a bunch together on Christmas Eve.

Every year we host or co-host a holiday get-together with a particular set of friends. The annual party includes the Ghost Story Challenge: I pledge to have an original Christmas Ghost Story to read each year, and challenge other people to bring a story, or sing a song, or otherwise share something with the group. There’s a lot of food, a lot of laughter, and there’s a gift exchange.

On Christmas morning we check our stockings to see what Santa brought. We open presents from family members and each other. We spend the day either watching more Christmas movies, or playing with our new toys, and making dinner. We have this bad habit of making way too much food for just the two of us, but we each have some traditional dishes we like to have, and we also like to experiment with new foods. At least we always have leftovers!

In other words, our celebration of this mid-winter holiday probably sounds an awful lot like everyone else’s. We don’t have drunken orgies. We don’t decorate our Christmas tree with sex toys. We don’t perform weird anti-Christian rituals. We don’t call for the oppression of our more overtly religious relatives or neighbors. We both say “Merry Christmas” at least as often as we say “Happy Holidays!”

We’re not making war on Christmas. We’re not trying to ruin anyone else’s holiday.

So why are anti-gay groups posting pictures of the White House lit up in rainbow lights from a couple of years ago with captions saying, “Trump should project Merry Christmas on the White House! That will show them!”

Show us what? That their ability to make false equivalencies knows no bounds? That they think being asked to treat people who believe differently than them with respect is oppression? We’ve known that for a long, long time.

We’re not the ones disrespecting the message of the Prince of Peace, who told his followers to love their neighbors as themselves, to love their enemies, bless those that curse the, and do good to those that hate them. In that way, our queer Christmas is a lot closer to the message of Christ than anything they’re doing.

Make the Yuletide Gay.
Make the Yuletide Gay.

Totally not-Gay Aaron Schock in the news again

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A few years ago Aaron Schock's instagram account (his tendency to follow openly gay models and athletes who posted lots of beefcake pictures of themselves, his own interesting fashion choices and selfies that caused even conservative think tank spokespeople to allude to his presumed gayness, et cetera) wound up in the news, prompting the then-Congressman to unfollow all the gay people and stop posting.
A few years ago Aaron Schock’s instagram account (his tendency to follow openly gay models and athletes who posted lots of beefcake pictures of themselves, his own interesting fashion choices and selfies that caused even conservative think tank spokespeople to allude to his presumed gayness, et cetera) wound up in the news, prompting the then-Congressman to unfollow all the gay people and stop posting.
The last couple of days a post from a few months back, (Getting indicted, still faking it (badly), & other weekend updates) has been getting a lot of hits. I assume it’s because yesterday Totally Not-Gay Former GOP Rep. Aaron Schock Pleads Not Guilty to Funds Misuse. And a few days before that: Judge denies gag order in Aaron Schock case. So people are searching for information on him and some are coming to my snarky little blog.

The most important new bit of news about the former Congressman and current sad closet case is: Springfield trial hardly a stretch for ex-Rep. Schock, prosecutors say: Schock has maintained his high-flying ways since quitting Congress in 2015, traveling to Jamaica, Peru, China, Hong Kong, Mexico and Canada, federal prosecutors said in a new court filing. So poor Aaron was trying to get his trial moved because it is so, so hard for him to drive all the way to Springfield. Meanwhile, he’s still galavanting all over the world, presumably financed in part with the proceeds of his shady selling of one of his homes (which was originally purchased with profits from some of the corrupt activities he’s currently under indictment for): Aaron Schock Sells Home Above Market Value to Political Donor.

When Schock was a congressman he never missed an opportunity to vote in favor of any anti-gay bill that came along. He gave speeches about how not only shouldn’t anti-discrimination laws apply to gay people, but that employers should be free to fire employees simply because they suspected the employee might be gay, that landlords should be free to evict or refuse to rent to people who they simply suspected might be gay, and so on. Which is the reason a lot of us in the queer community starting pointing out that there was a lot of reason to suspect Schock was gay (still unmarried, has gone through a series of very hunky male roommates who also are unmarried, has taken hunky male roommates on trips–sometimes at taxpayer expense–where they act like a couple, has been photographed and filmed outside gay bars and bathhouses a lot (he once gave a media site a filmed interview while walking around a gay neighborhood a week before Pride in which his gaze was frequently seen being drawn to shirtless queer men walking by, for goodness sake!), spent a lot of time going to Gay Republican fundraisers and such. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So we aren’t attacking him for being queer, we’re pointing out what seems to be a very big instance of hypocrisy in which a closeted queer Republican has (once again) built a career out of attacking and oppressing other queer people.

Anyway, so he’s a douche who doesn’t mind stealing money from the taxpayers and his constituents, who doesn’t mind throwing queers under the bus to get that money, and doesn’t believe he should face any consequences for this. Let’s hope the court system proves that belief false: ANTI-GAY GOP REP. AARON SCHOCK ARRAIGNED ON 24 CORRUPTION CHARGES.

Six months out, Pulse shooting still hurts

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“Every time you let a homophobic or transphobic joke or slur pass, you tell the speaker that you condone their speech, and you help perpetuate a culture in which hatred of LGBTQIA people is acceptable and in which violence against LGBTQIA people is inevitable.” — MakeMeASammich.Org
“Every time you let a homophobic or transphobic joke or slur pass, you tell the speaker that you condone their speech, and you help perpetuate a culture in which hatred of LGBTQIA people is acceptable and in which violence against LGBTQIA people is inevitable. ” — MakeMeASammich.Org
Six months ago today an angry man walked into Pulse, a queer nightclub in Orlando, and murdered 49 people. According to the FBI and his own family, during the weeks and months leading up to the attack, he had become more noticeably outraged every time he saw gay men in public together. He plotted the crime carefully. He set up fake profiles on gay hook-up apps and used conversations there to find out which night clubs would have the biggest crowd. It was a carefully crafted anti-queer hate crime.

49 Pulse victims remembered in Orlando 6 months after massacre.

A moment of silence at 2:02 a.m., the exact time the gunman started shooting inside the gay nightclub.

I’ve written before about why this particular crime hits so hard for queer people in general, and me in particular. I’ve also written about why we shouldn’t ignore the hate crime aspect of this act of terror, and why the people who do so are perpetuating and enabling the hate that caused it. I’ve also written about why it is unacceptable to argue there is nothing that we can do about this kind of crime: They used to insist that drunk driving couldn’t be reduced, either.

All of those things are still true. And with hate crimes on the rise since November 8, even more heart wrenching.

Please take to heart the words in the graphic I included at the top of this post: “Every time you let a homophobic or transphobic joke or slur pass, you tell the speaker that you condone their speech, and you help perpetuate a culture in which hatred of LGBTQIA people is acceptable and in which violence against LGBTQIA people is inevitable.” That’s not an exaggeration. If our very existence is nothing more than a joke, that implies our lives and deaths don’t matter. Those attacks and dismissals perpetuate the lie that we deserve pain and suffering. They perpetuate the lie that we shouldn’t exist. They perpetuate the lie that our love isn’t real.

And all of those lies add up to one message that some angry people are all too ready to take to heart: that beating us, shooting us, and killing us isn’t really a crime.

Five months later, Pulse shooting still a gut punch

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“Our hearts are broken, but our pulse is strong.”
“Our hearts are broken, but our pulse is strong.”
Five months ago, an angry homophobe walked into an Orlando, Florida gay night club and murdered 49 people, wounding 53 more. It was a Saturday night during Queer Pride month, and it was specifically Latinx Night at that club. It was a planned hate crime. According to the FBI’s reconstruction (and the testimony of the killer’s father), the homophobic killer had decided to buy an assault rifle to kill as many queers as he could after seeing two men kissing in public. In the days before the massacre, the killer had staked out the location several times. He picked the target by setting up a fake profile on a gay hook-up app, chatting up men, and asking them what the busiest clubs were (he never met up with any of the men). Then yesterday, just before the five-month anniversary of the massacre: Newly Released Police Body Cam Video of Orlando Shooting.

Five months later, thinking about the shooting still feels like a punch in my gut. I’m a queer man who has been out of the closet for a quarter of a century. But I grew up in redneck communities during the 60s and 70s. Any time I am out in public with my husband and we show any affection, I experience a moment of fear. I check to see who is around. I am never able to be completely in the moment because a part of me is staying alert to any and all strangers around us and preparing in case they react badly. It’s a dread calculation I find myself making whenever we are out, even with friends: is it all right if I call him “honey,” or will we get harassed? Can I safely say, “I love you,” or will we get threatened?

And it isn’t just me being paranoid. There was a specific incident years ago when my husband was threatened with violence after we exchanged a quick kiss when I dropped him off at a bus stop, for instance. There have been numerous incidents throughout my life where strangers called out slurs and made threats because I was a guy wearing earrings, or purple, or sometimes I don’t know how the person decided I was a faggot, but they did.

For the last few years before this my level of dread had decreased, just a little bit. It was still there, just not quite as bad. Especially when we were in familiar places.

And then the Pulse shooting happened. It is a reminder that even our queer places aren’t safe. And the reaction afterward, as people tried to say that it wasn’t an anti-gay crime. The very same people who have been fighting to take away what rights we have trying to erase the evidence of the anti-gay motives of the killer—to try to say we weren’t targeted because of who we love—reminded me that plenty of people who don’t think of themselves as homophobic are more than willing to ignore blatant crimes against us if it suits them.

When a couple of people who I had long thought were friends were angry at me for being angry, that also reminded me that I can’t always know who will have our back.

So I’m not getting over it. I have absolutely no intention to get over it. If you tell me I should get over it, that just means you either don’t understand how real the threat to queer people remains, or you don’t care.

It took me a while to find the link to the story that didn’t include the actual video on auto-play. The first link, up at the top of this post is that link. They have some pictures, and a link to the video, but no video. Most of the other stories include the video. Like this one: Warning! The following link to the Orlando Sentinel includes some of the actual body cam footage and it plays automatically: Deputies release body cam footage from inside Pulse.

And seeing those threatening letters and such being given to gay and lesbian couples from Trump supporters telling them that they’re going to burn in hell and worse? Yeah, that isn’t helping, either.

Stay Sane Inside Insanity – more of why I love sf/f

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Frank, Riff -Raff, Magenta and Columbia from the original Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Frank, Riff -Raff, Magenta and Columbia from the original Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I was 17 or 18 years old when two friends took me on a drive down to Portland, Oregon to see a “funny movie” that I might like. It wasn’t the first time that Jim and Bob had taken me to Portland to shop for comics and then catch a movie, but it was the first time that we left so late in the evening. The movie was only shown at midnight, they said.

I confess I was a bit freaked out once we got there. It was a neighborhood we hadn’t been to before, and they hadn’t warned me that almost everyone waiting in line for the show would be in costumes. Many of them oddly sexual costumes. They also hadn’t warned me that it was an R-rated show. It was only after we had sat down, and the lights dimmed that Jim handed me a newspaper and told me to hang onto it, “you’ll need it later.” So they also didn’t warn me about the audience participation that was about to go down.

The original Rocky Horror Picture Show was released on film in 1975. The show had started as a musical stage play written by London actor Richard O’Brien, who poured all of his love for schlocky 40s and 50s muscle-man movies, horror and sci fi films ranging from the 30s through 70s, and rock and roll into the show. It played first in a small 60-seat theatre, but well enough to quickly move to bigger venues, and then the play’s director, Jay Sharman, secured funding to make a movie.

O’Brien’s original script focused on the unintentional humor of the older sci fi and horror film, with only a sprinkling of references to the homoeroticism found in films such as Hercules Unchained and Duel of the Titans. But as they developed the play, and the actors (particularly a young Tim Curry) figured out how they wanted to play the characters, the pansexual and transsexual elements become much more important.

The film didn’t do very well, at all. Mainstream audiences just didn’t understand it. But a studio executive, noting that the movies Pink Flamingos and Reefer Madness were making money in midnight showings, had the idea to get some theaters to show it at midnight (the first showing on April Fool’s Day 1976). And then the show quickly gained a cult following, with people showing up in costume, and then fully costumed local casts re-enacting the show just in front of the screen as it was playing.

I was totally unprepared. People in the audience started chanting “Lips! Lips!” before the movie started. People were singing along and shouting things that I couldn’t quite understand. And then the cast started mimicking what was happening. The one time I asked my friends what was happening they just shushed me and said, “it’ll make sense eventually!”

I was very uncomfortable and confused and a little bit angry at my friends. I couldn’t always understand what was happening on screen because of the shouting from the audience.

Tim Curry during the Sweet Transvestite show-stopper.
Tim Curry during the Sweet Transvestite show-stopper.
And then, with a big build up of rising music (and the audience clapping in time with the bass beat), suddenly Tim Curry was there, in the corset and fishnets belting out, “How’d’ya do I, see you’ve met my, faithful.. HANDY-man…”

It was like a punch right in my chest. And a rush of adrenaline (and other hormones) as he prowled and pranced while belting out “Sweet Transvestite.”

I was completely closeted. This was at least seven years before the first moment I would say aloud (very anxiously) the words “I think I might be gay.” I was still living in a small town attending a conservative evangelical church. I sang in an evangelical touring choir! At least 99% of the people I could categorize as friends were members of either the choir or very similar churches. I lived in a state of constant fear of someone not just calling me a fag (which happened all the time at school), but of deciding that it was actually true. I was constantly monitoring myself, trying to stop myself from saying things that didn’t conform to people’s expectations, trying to stop myself from doing things that didn’t conform, from admitting to liking things that people didn’t think a normal guy should like, and so forth.

And there, on the screen (not to mention sitting all around me) were people flaunting and reveling in nonconformity. Specifically sexual nonconformity!

It blew my mind.

Dr. Frank N. Furter made a man explicitly to be his sexual plaything.
Dr. Frank N. Furter made a man explicitly to be his sexual plaything.
I was pulled into the movie. All the audience participation, the local cast, and everything that wasn’t happening on the screen just vanished for the rest of the movie. It didn’t matter. I just wanted to know what would happen next on screen.

I tried to talk about the plot of the movie with my friends during the drive home after. They were immensely amused that I actually followed the show for the plot. They insisted the movie was just an excuse for the audience to yell and leer. “It doesn’t really have a plot!”

I didn’t see it again for several years. But by then I could sing along to most of the songs, because I’d gotten hold of the soundtrack and listened to it about a million times. The audience participation bits had changed in those years. And when I saw it in a theatre one more time a few years later, they had changed further. I am a huge Rocky Horror fan who doesn’t know most of the audience participation stuff.

The movie is meant to be a parody of all those schlocky sci fi and horror films particularly of the 50s and 60s. The story isn’t meant to be literature. But the film isn’t, really about the story. It’s about taking what was subtext everywhere else—coded homosexual relationships, homoerotic tension (whether intentional or not), sexual relationships of all kinds—and making it manifest. Frank N Furter builds a man for the express purpose of being his sexual plaything, for goodness sake! Several of the characters are casually bisexual or pansexual, but the fact that traditional romances also involve sex (which films and stories before that virtually never acknowledged) is also shoved front and center.

The film doesn’t just poke fun at convention and conformity of all kinds, it dresses convention up in fishnet stockings and makes it sing and dance about why noncomfority is great.

Over the years I’ve watched the film many, many times at home, thanks to availability on VHS back in the day and later DVD. I’ve also attended a couple of live performances of the stage version, as well as really, really enjoying last year’s Rocky Horror Show LIVE by the BBC. I was thus really hopeful about the Fox remake of the film starring trans actress Laverne Cox… and I was sorely disappointed. They were both too timid and too slavishly committed to imitating the 1975 film. There were good moment. I’m happy to see that Tim Curry is able to work, despite the severe stroke he suffered a few years ago. And Adam Lambert rocked the Eddie role, but many of the other casting and design choices were… well, not good.

The BBC version of the live performance (with rotating actors playing the Criminologist–Anthony Stewart Head among them) is available in its entirely on YouTube. I quite enjoyed streaming it to my TV via the YouTube app on my Apple TV last week after watching the Fox version. And the original is available in many formats.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a parody of many sci fi and horror movies, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t sci fi itself. Particularly if you define speculative fiction the way that my new favorite author, Nisi Shawl sometimes does: fiction that de-privileges the status quo. Rocky Horror does that, in spades, while celebrating the outsider, the misfits, and the freaks (and showing that there’s at least a little bit of a freak inside everyone). I wasn’t ready to come out after watching it the first time, but it was another step down the path of realizing that this queer sci fi geek was not alone in the world, and that it isn’t enough to just dream it, you have to let yourself be it.

Come Out and Celebrate!

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“Keep Calm and Be Proud of Who You Are.”
“Keep Calm and Be Proud of Who You Are.”
Today is National Coming Out Day. If Ray were still alive, it would also be the day we’d be celebrating the twenty-third anniversary of our commitment ceremony (he promised to stay with me for the rest of his life, and he did).

I’ve written more than once about why I think it is important for all Queer people (by which I mean people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Genderqueer, Nonbinary, Pansexual, Genderfluid, Questioning, Polyamorous and their Allies) to be out about who they are. Because it can be dangerous to come out (kill the gays laws exist in many parts of the world, while here in the U.S. about 40% of homeless teens are children who were kicked out of their house by their parents for being queer or being suspected of being queer), there are some people who probably shouldn’t be out until their situation changes. But being in the closet is harmful in many ways. Studies and history has shown that the fastest way to get other people (and society at large) to accept and support queers is when queer people come out.

The more straight people who actually know queer people, the more minds are opened.

So, in case somehow it isn’t clear: I’m queer. Specifically, I’m a gay man married to a bisexual man.

Being in the closet takes an incredible emotional toll which affects your physical health as well. When you’re in the closet, you’re living in constant fear of rejection. Particularly if, like me, you grew up in a fundamentalist religious family and community. The fear of losing people you love—people who you have depended on—can be debilitating. The constant anxiety of what people’s reactions will be corrodes your soul.

The thing is, staying in the closet is no guarantee against that rejection. Someday someone is going to figure it out, not at a time when you’ve picked and prepared yourself.

Coming out was hard, and there was drama (oh, was there drama). I put up with all the wailing and the angry letters (28-page handwritten letter from one aunt outlining all of the words and topics I would not be allowed to bring up around her, explaining several times that if I brought my partner to visit we would not even be allowed to call each other honey, et cetera). But while many reacted badly to begin with, it wasn’t everyone. Another one of my aunts was the first to call to tell me she loved and supported me. She made it clear to folks on her side of the family that if they had a problem with me being gay, they would have a bigger problem with her.

If and when there is drama about your coming out, you have to treat said drama as your parents (or whoever) throwing a tantrum. They are trying to force you to pretend to be someone you aren’t for their convenience. And just as when a child throws a tantrum, you can’t reward that bad behavior. Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist and gay activist, puts it this way: the only leverage adult queer people have over parents and other family members is our presence in their lives. We shouldn’t fear losing them, they should fear losing us.

It took a few years for some of my family members to come around. I remain grateful that my mom and one set of grandparents did so before my first partner, Ray, died. He had only a short period of time of feeling welcomed into the family. Now, years later, my husband Michael isn’t just welcomed, I’m pretty sure some of them like him more than they do me. And I can hardly blame them!

A few of my relatives never became accepting before they died, and it was their loss.

There will be some surprises. Some people who you were certain before you came out would never accept you will become your biggest defenders. Some people who you thought might understand will disown you and go to their grave without reaching out. You will definitely learn which people really love you, and which only love the idea of who they think you ought to be.

The thing is, being loved for who you are, instead of the illusionary non-queer person you pretended to be, is wonderful. The sooner you are able to find those people the better. And remember the wisdom of Dr. Seuss: “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

And being out doesn’t just free you. Being out frees others.

HRC Celebrates National Coming Out Day 2016:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

What We Lose When We Don’t Teach LGBTQ History In Schools.

I don’t need to watch the debate, I know which candidate thinks I have a right to exist, and which doesn’t

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“Gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes. And whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality.” —Hillary Clinton
“Gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes. And whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality.” —Hillary Clinton
I’ve had a few people ping me to ask if I’m going to watch the first official debate between Hillary Clinton and Trump. Short answer: no. Trump has vowed to appoint to the federal bench only judges approved by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation doesn’t just oppose gay marriage, they oppose gay rights of all levels, and still regularly call for overturned the Supreme Court decision that blocked anti-sodomy laws. They don’t just want to end my marriage, they want it to be literally illegal for someone to be queer. And if you happen to be straight or otherwise don’t consider yourself queer: they also think it should be illegal for straight unmarried people to have sex. They aren’t just anti-abortion, they think that it should be illegal for straight people, married or not, to buy birth control.

Whether you believe that a seat is going to open up on the Supreme Court in the next four years (and statistically it is extremely likely it will), there are hundreds of open appointments at lower levels of the federal judiciary that haven’t been filled because the Republicans in the Senate resist confirming anyone Obama nominates for just about anything. If Trump is elected, judges who think that being gay should be illegal (and a whole lot worse) will be appointed. The damage that alone will do to everyone’s civil rights is frightening to contemplate.

I wrote before that Hillary wasn’t my first choice this time. But you know what, she was my second choice, both this time and in 2008. Because (among other things) I remember back in the 1990s when she and her husband made Republican heads explode simply by saying that gay people deserve any legal rights at all. I hear a lot of people still giving her grief for not coming around on marriage equality until 2013, completely unaware of how far ahead of the rest of the Democratic party both she and her husband had been on the matter of gay rights for more than two decades before that. And really, if we insist on punishing politicians who were slow to come around on some of our issues, what incentive do any of them have to change their minds when we advocate for our needs?

And don’t start spouting stuff off about the third party candidates. Johnson, the Libertarian, doesn’t believe in anti-discrimination laws. Like most libertarians, he says discrimination is wrong, but he supports policies that let it happen. Johnson also wants to repeal the minimum wage. He wants to not just rollback the Affordable Health Care Act, but also eliminate Medicare. I could go on, but particularly if you were a Bernie Sanders supporter, it is criminally stupid for you to support Johnson, since literally every single one of his specific policy proposals are the exact opposite of Bernie’s. Every one.

I’ve written before about the many reasons not to support Stein. The quick answer is, she doesn’t have consistent policies, half of her policies are anti-science, and she doesn’t have the experience or political resources to put any of her polices in place if she did get elected. The truth is she’s not a serious candidate, she’s a troll.

Mathematically, voting for Johnson or Stein is exactly the same as voting for Trump. It isn’t a protest, it’s putting a bullet in the head of a lot of your fellow citizen. Also, voting for third parties in our system betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of coalitions and the electoral system.

But you don’t just have to take my word for it:

i will not be watching the debate tonight:

Virtually every election I’ve ever witnessed has been some kind of referendum on whether I’m a legal person – ever done ground work, going door to door, arguing with people why they shouldn’t vote to make you illegal? I have, and it sucks – and in that way, this election is no different.

The hate is just a lot more broadly aimed this time.

So I’m not watching the debate tonight. It’s bad enough being reminded every two to four years that about half the country is just fine voting to lock me up. This whole thing is yet another referendum on my existence, so why the fuck would I subject myself to that?

Bernie Sanders: ‘This is not the time for a protest vote’

This is time to elect Hillary Clinton and then work after the election to mobilize millions of people to make sure she can be the most progressive president she can be.

Hillary Clinton Was Liberal. Hillary Clinton Is Liberal.

According to an analysis of roll call votes by Voteview, Clinton’s record was more liberal than 70 percent of Democrats in her final term in the Senate. She was more liberal than 85 percent of all members. Her 2008 rival in the Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama, was nearby with a record more liberal than 82 percent of all members — he was not more liberal than Clinton.

Misleading definitions of middle-ground, or the return of the false equivalency

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Two men, one in a gay pride t-shirt, the other with a cross on his tie. Guy with cross hits the other guy on the head with a stick. Gay guys asks him to stop. The other guy says, "Why, that's anti-gay bigotry!"
An oldie but a goodie from D.C. Simpson’s retired ‘I Drew This’ strip. Context note: a pink triangle use to be a more common gay pride emblem than a rainbow. © 2005 D.C. Simpson. (Click to embiggen)
Lately a lot of people on the conservative end of the spectrum have been calling for more compromise. For instance: “If you can’t be friends with someone just because you don’t agree on everything, something’s wrong.” And then there was, “Religious people no longer feel safe in social spaces. Maybe we could meet halfway?” But my favorite was, “LGBT people and Christians seem locked in their different and opposing camps. Where can we reach a meeting point of common ground?”

Let’s start with the first one: why should disagreements keep us from being friends? It depends entirely on the disagreement. My husband and I have been together for 18 years, and we love each other very much. We are also both very geeky nerds who are both fairly well informed on a variety of topics ranging from astrophysics to the old Donald Duck comic books. You can bet there are things we disagree about, and sometimes our discussions get very spirited. In 2008 you should have heard us debating whether to support Obama or Clinton in our upcoming caucus meeting, for instance.

If you think that I don’t deserve equal rights before the law, if you vote for measures to take my civil rights away, if you vote for candidates who have prayed openly that gays deserve death (almost the entire Republican Congressional Caucus just months ago), if you insist in the face of overwhelming medical evidence that being non-heterosexual is a matter of choice or mental illness, you aren’t my friend. And it isn’t even a matter of me not wanting to be your friend: you aren’t being a friend to any queer people by doing those things.

There are some medical studies that ultra-conservatives frequently misquote that draw a causal link between the discrimination and pervasive prejudice against queer people and negative health outcomes. We’ve known since George H.W. Bush’s surgeon general released the first of many other studies that there is a causal link between societal prejudice against queer people and teen suicide (about 1500 queer and non-gendering conforming children and teen-agers commit suicide every year because they are bullied, told that being queer is a sin, et cetera). Discrimination kills.

It’s not just the actual gay bashers who harm us, it’s the anti-gay attitudes and misinformation. Also, nice conservatives who claim that they don’t hate anyone, but also say that queer people don’t deserve legal rights, that our identities are sins, et cetera, create an atmosphere that encourages and excuses the violence.

So, no, when what we disagree about is our right to exist and live our lives as we wish, we can’t be friends. No one should feel obligated to cozy up to people who are actually hurting you. You can be civil to one another, but we’re not going to be friends.

I confess that I find it very hard to keep a straight face when religious conservatives claim that society is no longer a safe place merely because they’re no longer allowed to discriminate against other people, or to spout off their bigotry without someone disagreeing with them. For literally centuries society hasn’t been a safe place for queer people, or for people who don’t subscribe to the dominant religion, or for people who are the wrong ethnicity, et cetera. People were bashed, and lynched, and denied a place to live, denied health care, and so forth—often with the blessings of laws passed by conservative religious people. And you don’t feel safe because people disagree with you?

If people are actually threatening you, that’s bad. I am very sorry, and when I hear that kind of talk I do speak up. But the simple fact is that no one on my side is proposing laws to take away your rights. No one on my side is calling for laws to criminalize your sexuality. And some of the people who are currently asking for compromise and middle ground are the same people (literally in two very specific cases that I could name) who were actively trying to prevent hate crime laws being enacted, or trying to prevent civil union laws being enacting (a decade ago), or voting for candidates who literally were calling for gay men to be put into so-called quarantine camps (in the ’90s).

They are the same people who this year are trying to enact the anti-trans bathroom bills.

Me saying that you’re being a bigot when you call my sexual orientation a sin is not the equivalent of you supporting laws making it illegal for some people to go into public restrooms. Nor is it the equivalent of making it a crime for my husband and I to have sex even in the privacy of our own home. So the middle ground isn’t where you get to actually discriminate against me, and I have to listen respectfully when you express opinions that those laws and their rationales are right.

If you want to end the war between queer people and religious people, here’s what you do: stop attacking queer people, stop rationalizing discrimination, and stop defending the people who attack us. Because we aren’t actively attacking you. What you are perceiving as attack is a little thing called self-defense. We’re just trying to ward off the constant and pervasive and insidious grind of anti-gay rhetoric disguised as pro-family or traditional values.

If you don’t want to be called a bigot, stop being one. There are millions of religious people—people in your religion, whichever it is—who don’t believe that queers are evil demonic beings.

I am friends with religious people. I am friends with conservative people. We don’t agree on everything. We can get into very spirited debates about some of the things we disagree about. But they don’t tell me that I don’t have the right to live my life as an openly queer man. They don’t tell me that it should be illegal for me to live my life as an openly queer man. They don’t tell me that it should be legal for me to be fired, or denied housing, or denied services, or denied medical care, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They aren’t sending queer children off to conversion therapy to be tortured. They aren’t demanding that books and movies should have warning labels merely for including any queer characters at all. They aren’t telling me that children should be protected from even knowing of the existence of queer people. They don’t tell me that “I don’t hate gay people—it isn’t your fault that you’re mentally diseased.”

To be friends, there has to be mutual respect. If you think that god is going to destroy this country for treating me equally under the law, you don’t respect me, and you’re not my friend. And yes, there is something wrong with that situation, but it isn’t me.

Re-posting this link from a recent Friday Links post, because it’s very relevant: On Peace Between Christians and GBLT People.