Homophobia Is Still A Problem-- And Not Exclusively In The GOP... Meet Status Quo Joe, Who's No Harvey Milk

Biden's never passin' that torch voluntarily
-by Nancy Ohanian

Unlike most Americans, I didn’t first hear of Status Quo Joe when Obama used him to balance his ticket— one black guy + one racist guy; one anti-war guy + one warmonger; one moderate + one conservative— in 2008. Nope I had been carefully following Biden’s ugly and always-repulsive political career since he was just some lowlife racist piece of dog crap in Delaware trying to kickstart a political career by campaigning against busing— exactly as Louise Day Hicks was doing in Boston and Bobbi Fiedler was doing in L.A., both of whom were elected to Congress, same as Joe Biden was. Hicks and Fiedler are still remembered, if at all, as vicious, destructive racists to this day. And even though they were reading and singing from the exact same hymnal as Biden, he was allowed to slide on the issue. I wonder why.

Biden was generally wrong about every important issue while he was in Congress— a dyed-in-the-wool conservative from head to toe, always one of the worst Democraps in the Senate, largely why Obama chose him. One of the way I also recall Biden was as a homophobic asshole. He made me cringe watching the debate last week when he tried claiming— as he always does— that he was the father of the gay civil rights movement. He disrespected gays and always voted against the LGBTQ while he was in the Senate. Example: in 1966 the Delaware asshole, who wants us to think of him as another Harvey Milk, voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. You remember that one, right? It not only defined marriage as exclusively between a man and woman, Joe “States’ Rights” Biden backed a toxic provision that forbade states from recognizing same sex marriages. So then, just a little over a decade later, when Obama needed a trial balloon to see if a more pro-gay sentiment was acceptable, the administration sent Biden out to say he was for marriage equality. So was the public and soon after, Obama came out and said it too. But giving Biden credit? How is that different for giving Trump credit for putting out any of the fires he started?




On Saturday, Biden— still a reflexive homophobe at heart— was caught at a fundraiser in Seattle, hosted by a foolish wealthy gay man, making a clueless homophobic remark. I hope McKinsey Pete does a Kamala on him in the next debate! Joseph Simonson caught him in the act. “Biden,” he wrote, “drew jeers from a group of his wealthy donors Saturday evening after he asserted that public displays of homophobia were acceptable as recently as 2014. Addressing 50 guests at the Seattle home of public relations executive Roger Nyhus, the former vice president claimed businessmen making ‘fun of a gay waiter’ was routinely acceptable. Those remarks sparked outcries from the audience, who yelled ‘Not in Seattle!’ Others disputed that casual acts of bigotry such as the kind Biden described would not be met with objections.”

“Today, that person would not be invited back," Biden, 76, added.

Much of Biden's speech thereafter, according to his presidential campaign's pool report, were indecipherable due to the fact that he spoke so softly.

One can imagine what circles Biden was running in in 2014 where it was perfectly acceptable to make homophobic cracks. Not mine, that’s for sure. Yesterday, Axios reported on how Trumpanzee plans to re-energize evangelicals. Pretending Aaron Schock is a Democrat? Reenacting one of Biden’s 2014 dinner parties where everyone sits around making fun of gay people?

The RNC is also planning to host voter registration drives at churches in battleground states such as Ohio, Nevada and Florida, where they'll promote Trump's record on socially conservative issues.

"Getting this right and making sure we're maximizing their energy is huge," said Ralph Reed, a longtime Trump ally and head of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. Reed's group pledged this week to spend $50 million on get-out-the-vote efforts and register approximately 1 million new evangelical voters in battleground states.

And it's not like Aaron Schock was the only closeted self-loathing gay man in Congress-- let's not forget, for example, Patrick McHenry (NC) and Jason Smith (MO), who are still putting one over on their hapless rural constituents

How Does A Republican Know If He's Gay Or Not?

Let's take the best known Republican closet cases in Congress-- your Lindsey Grahams and Aaron Schocks-- out of the equation for a moment and look at the Ryan and Ryan Op-Ed in Last Sunday's NY Times, Homophobic? Maybe You're Gay without that crutch. Ryan and Ryan start with a simple question millions of Americans have asked themselves for years: "Why are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners?" This is something that haunts the hate-filled far right of American politics for decades. The louder and more strident an anti-gay politician or activist, the more likely that they're obsession is a sign of an internal struggle with homosexuality. Literally hundreds of anti-gay right-wing fanatics have been caught with, as the Dead Boys used to sing, with the meat in their mouth. Homosexuality doesn't ruin anyone's life; closets and bigotry do though.

One theory is that homosexual urges, when repressed out of shame or fear, can be expressed as homophobia. Freud famously called this process a “reaction formation”-- the angry battle against the outward symbol of feelings that are inwardly being stifled. Even Mr. Haggard seemed to endorse this idea when, apologizing after his scandal for his anti-gay rhetoric, he said, “I think I was partially so vehement because of my own war.”

It’s a compelling theory-- and now there is scientific reason to believe it. In this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we and our fellow researchers provide empirical evidence that homophobia can result, at least in part, from the suppression of same-sex desire.

Our paper describes six studies conducted in the United States and Germany involving 784 university students. Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were shown images and words indicative of hetero- and homosexuality (pictures of same-sex and straight couples, words like “homosexual” and “gay”) and were asked to sort them into the appropriate category, gay or straight, as quickly as possible. The computer measured their reaction times.

The twist was that before each word and image appeared, the word “me” or “other” was flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds-- long enough for participants to subliminally process the word but short enough that they could not consciously see it. The theory here, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person). This technique, adapted from similar tests used to assess attitudes like subconscious racial bias, reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Using this methodology we identified a subgroup of participants who, despite self-identifying as highly straight, indicated some level of same-sex attraction (that is, they associated “me” with gay-related words and pictures faster than they associated “me” with straight-related words and pictures). Over 20 percent of self-described highly straight individuals showed this discrepancy.

Notably, these “discrepant” individuals were also significantly more likely than other participants to favor anti-gay policies; to be willing to assign significantly harsher punishments to perpetrators of petty crimes if they were presumed to be homosexual; and to express greater implicit hostility toward gay subjects (also measured with the help of subliminal priming). Thus our research suggests that some who oppose homosexuality do tacitly harbor same-sex attraction.

What leads to this repression? We found that participants who reported having supportive and accepting parents were more in touch with their implicit sexual orientation and less susceptible to homophobia. Individuals whose sexual identity was at odds with their implicit sexual attraction were much more frequently raised by parents perceived to be controlling, less accepting and more prejudiced against homosexuals.

It’s important to stress the obvious: Not all those who campaign against gay men and lesbians secretly feel same-sex attractions. But at least some who oppose homosexuality are likely to be individuals struggling against parts of themselves, having themselves been victims of oppression and lack of acceptance. The costs are great, not only for the targets of anti-gay efforts but also often for the perpetrators. We would do well to remember that all involved deserve our compassion.

It's just over 3 years now that California's leading anti-gay conservative politician, state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield), was arrested, drunk, with a young male prostitute in his car. Thinking back as to why Ashburn chose the hell-on-earth so many gay conservatives do-- a sick life in a dark, morbid closet-- he points to a childhood experience. "When I was in sixth grade, the police had a raid in the sand dunes [near San Luis Obispo] and a bunch of gay men were arrested, probably charged with indecent activity. That sticks in my mind-- the publicity and the shame around it. One of my teachers was one of the people. The talk among the kids, the talk among the adults, the talk in the community, the press-- at that time the choice was pretty clear: If you were gay and open, it was a life of shame, ridicule, innuendo about molesting and perversion. It was a dark life. Given that choice of whether you come out or whether you're in secret, I mean, there really wasn't a choice."

So Ashburn got married, had children... and lived a double life, filled with fear and (self) loathing. How did this impact his career, a career marked with any-gay hysteria? And here he sounds exactly like any closeted GOP anti-gay bigot in Congress, like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), like Miss McConnell (R-KY), like Trent Franks (R-AZ), like Dave Camp (R-MI), all of whom live double lives with poor deceived women they've married for the sake of political careers. Ashburn:

The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic "no" vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that.

"It is unfortunate he helped spread the bigotry that forced him to stay in the closet," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, a group supporting gay marriage. "We hope he now takes this opportunity to educate people in his district and throughout the state that his sexual orientation is irrelevant."

Manny Pacquiao-- Another Shabby Right Wing Icon

Yesterday, far right fanatic Bryan Fischer was whining on twitter how "ANOTHER rich guy takes his money - and his tax revenue - out of US because taxes are too high." And that was Manny Pacquiao, a Filipino boxer and the congressman representing Sarangani province back home. Since being sworn in on April 16, 2012 he's been representing Sarangani's 500,000 mostly poor farmers from his two beautiful homes in Los Angeles. He's in L.A. making millions doing commercials for NIKE, for detergents, medicines, telecomm companies, cheap beer, clothing and for anyone else who will write him a check. Lately he's been pretty unwelcome around L.A. He decided to spout off about how marriage equality offends his religious feelings.

I don't follow boxing and I would have never heard of Manny Pacquiao except that I have a Filipino friend who told me about how Pacquiao is still friends with two former boyfriends, who he used to have sex with back in the Philippines and still spends time with here in L.A. Oops... how Republican! He plans to run for president of his own country so he's been making plans to move back there, which seems like a sensible thing to do. And it's probably better to be a congressman if you live there and not here. But he made a commotion this week by telling the media he's leaving the U.S. because federal taxes are too burdensome. The sleazy little hypocrite has made tens of millions of dollars... but taxes are too high. Grover Norquist, the guy who wants to drown the government in a bathtub, is on the case: “Pacquiao’s concerns lie with the federal income tax. As Nevada is one of the nine states that do not have an income tax, Las Vegas has grown to become the home for major bouts because fighters do not have to worry about the state taking a bite out of their winnings or purse... Unfortunately, Nevada’s economic benefit is now overshadowed by the federal income tax rate... [F]or boxers who stand to earn over $1 million per fight through winnings, pay-per-view revenue shares, fight bonuses, and other forms of taxable income, they will be taxed at the top marginal income tax rate of 39.6 percent.”

Always so tragic when multimillionaires are asked to pay their share! In all likelihood, he'll be apologizing as fast as golfing millionaire Phil Mickelson did for the same kind of selfish, greedy comments. In Pacquaio's case, though, he should be encouraged to go back to his own country and stay there.

I know for sure that Pacquiao, like so many conservative homophobic hypocrites, has sex with young guys but I'm not claiming that he has-- or conservatives like Steve Southerland (R-FL) and John McCain (R-AZ)-- have sex with corpses. I ran across a discussion of what Erich Fromm referred to as the "necrophilious character" in Max Blumenthal's book, Republican Gommorah and it seems sadly relevant, not just to Pacquiao and Bryan Fischer but to the right-wing's bizarre and dysfunctional sexual obsessions in general.

In his 1973 book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Fromm analyzed the phenomenon of necrophilia, concluding that it extended beyond the traditional concept of erotic attraction to rotting flesh and also manifested itself in "malignant aggression... unalloyed from sex, in acts of the pure passion to destroy." The necophilious character, Fromm wrote, is passionately attracted "to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly... It is the passion to tear apart living structures."

Together with his research partner, Michael Moccoby, Fromm surveyed a diverse group of research subjects for necrophilious, "anti-life" tendencies. Across the board, Fromm detected a profound link between necrophilious character traits and right-wing ideology. "The study asked the respondents a number of questions that permitted correlating their political opinions to their character..." Fromm wrote. "In all of the samples, we found that anti-life tendencies were significantly correlated to political positions that supported increased military power and favored repression against dissenters."

Fromm identified necrophilious characteristics as among the most dangerous of any society. "They are the haters, the racists, those in favor of war, bloodshed and destruction," he wrote. "They are dangerous not only if they are political leaders, but also as the potential cohorts for a dictatorial leader. They become the executioners, terrorists, torturers; without them no terror system could be set up..."

Want to rethink the Republican Party's conservative base? A bit?

I Bet John Quinones Loves Eatin' Some Chick-fil-A

Cathy & Quiñones-- why do they always looks like this?

I bet Chick-fil-A is desperate to claim that homophobic sociopath Dan Cathy [could a name like that make someone homophobic or is it a genetic thing?] did not build his business-- and to distance itself from their own founder and president. Chick-fil-A's Facebook page sure is trying to make up for Cathy's assertion this week that the restaurant chain has an anti-gay agenda:

The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect-– regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender. We will continue this tradition in the over 1,600 Restaurants run by independent Owner/Operators. Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.

As Josh Israel reported at ThinkProgress yesterday, "The Chick-fil-A corporation has long funded anti-gay organizations. According to an Equality Matters analysis of public records, in 2010 the company’s foundation distributed nearly $2 million to anti-LGBT groups including the Marriage & Family Foundation, the Family Research Council, and Exodus International-- and millions more in previous years. But this past March, when Northeastern University rejected a proposed contract to bring a Chick-fil-A restaurant on campus, a Cathy bizarrely claimed that the company had 'no political agenda.' He said in a media statement 'we are not anti-anybody and Chick-fil-A have [sic] no agenda, policy or position against anyone as some reports continue to represent.' Chick-fil-A is one of a very small number of major national companies that refuses to offer any employment protections to LGBT employees. In fact, the company received a 0 rating from the Human Rights Campaign and has a record of firing employees it believes engage in 'sinful' behavior."

I'll bet that unless you're a political junkie in Florida you never heard of John Dowless, founder of Millenium Consulting and the chief consultant right now for John Quiñones, an Osceola County Commissioner and one of several Republicans attempting to run against Alan Grayson in the new blue district in central Florida. Quiñones hired himself an odd bird to run his efforts. Dowless, the former head of the Florida Christian Coalition is hysterically, vehemently anti-gay (obsessed with it many who know him say) and, of course, gay himself. Mubarak Dahir didn't report if Dowless was sucking down any Chick-fil-A thighs but he sure did spill the beans on one Republican hypocrite a few years ago:

On a humid day in Tampa last month, John Dowless could be seen passing out cards at Landry's Seafood House to a group of about 40 of Florida's most conservative religious leaders, including members of Family First of Tampa and the Pinellas Crisis Pregnancy Center, an anti-abortion group.

Dowless arranged the lunch on behalf of Mel Martinez, the former housing secretary who is now one of eight Republican candidates trying to get his party's nomination for the U.S. Senate race this fall.

As Martinez railed against the threat of same-sex marriages to the traditional family, Dowless handed out cards to the religious leaders imploring them to "pray for Mel Martinez" and to get involved in his
campaign.

Dowless was just doing his job. Formerly the executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida, Dowless is now a private political consultant in Orlando.

Because of Dowless' strong connections to the state's conservative religious groups, Martinez hired him several months ago to help the campaign reach out to conservative Christians.

"My role is organizing grassroots stuff for them," particularly among conservative Christians, Dowless said.

In a crowded primary field, many Republican candidates in Florida, including Martinez, are angling to get voter attention by running as far as possible to the right.

Martinez in particular has sought to distinguish himself as the candidate perhaps most vocal against gay rights, including running a statewide radio ad encouraging the Senate to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, and attacking one of his opponents for supporting hate crimes laws that would include protections based on sexual orientation.

Ironically, at least two powerful men working for the Martinez campaign are gay.

One of them is John Dowless, the political consultant. The other is Kirk Fordham, who is employed as Martinez's finance director.

It was about 10 p.m. on the evening of April 2 when a man called "Sam" entered the Lava Lounge, a gay bar in Orlando.

Sam, a gay resident of Washington, D.C., was in Orlando on business, and went out to meet a friend for drinks. After ordering a beer, Sam bumped into a former colleague from Washington, someone he describes as "a well-placed political operative."

When Sam asked the man how he liked working in Florida, the man replied that politics in the state was "weird."

How so?" Sam wanted to know.

"He began telling me about this guy who used to be the head of the Christian Coalition," Sam said. "He said the guy is gay and out, and goes to the gay bars all the time, but is involved in all this anti-gay political campaigning. That struck me as incredibly hypocritical."

Twenty minutes later, John Dowless walked into the Lava Lounge.

"The guy I used to know from D.C. pointed Dowless out to me, and I made it a point to go over and meet him," Sam said. "I was just so intrigued that someone could play both sides of the fence this way."

Dowless identified himself as gay and conflicted about how to reconcile his sexual orientation with his religion and his political beliefs, according to Sam, whose account of Dowless' statements that evening was witnessed by a Washington Blade editor, who was also present.

Sam describes Dowless as handsome and affable, a person who was easy to meet and talk to.

"We talked about his work, but we talked a lot more about religion," Sam said.

"I am a fairly devout Christian myself, and I was interested in why he felt being Christian and gay were so completely incompatible," Sam said. "He was very adamant that it just wasn't possible to be both, in his understanding."

After a few drinks at the Lava Lounge, Sam jumped into his rental car and followed Dowless' silver SUV to Southern Nights, another gay bar in Orlando, where the two men continued their conversation. All together, they spent approximately two hours speaking about religion and homosexuality that night, Sam said.

"When he admitted that he uses homosexuality as a weapon to win campaigns, I got the feeling this guy was not just struggling with the issue of being gay and Christian," Sam said. "I felt maybe he's a
ticking time bomb."

But Dowless didn't let their difference of opinions stop him from making a pass, Sam said.

"John [Dowless] made it very clear he was interested in me, that he found me attractive," Sam said. "I just told him I was out with friends and couldn't get away to spend the evening with him. Then he said he wanted to see me again."

Dowless took out a business card and, with a pen, wrote his cell phone number on it.

"He told me to call him the next time I was in Orlando," Sam said.

But if he happens to go back to Orlando, Sam won't be calling Dowless.

"I could never abide by someone being gay and using homosexuality to be so destructive in a political way," Sam said. "I found John both sad and deplorable."

Reached at his office at Millennium Consulting Inc. in Orlando, Dowless confirmed that he had been working for the Martinez campaign "for two or three months." But he declined to talk about his sexual orientation.

"Oh come on, I'm not going to talk about that," he said. "I'm just not going to address that with you or anyone else. That's about me, not about the Martinez campaign.

"I'm helping Mel Martinez, who I believe in, and who is a good candidate," he said. "My personal life has no regards to his campaign and it's no business of yours or anyone else's."

However, after being confronted with the fact that several sources identified him as a patron of the Lava Lounge in April, Dowless conceded, "Yeah, I go there."

He would not say what he was doing at the bar, and he continued to refuse to answer questions about his sexual orientation or how he reconciles being a gay man working for the political campaign of an
anti-gay politician.

"I told you I am not going to answer that. I don't know why you are doing this, why it matters," Dowless said.

...Bill Stephens, the current executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida, confirmed that John Dowless had been the organization's head for about five years in the mid to late 90s.

"Wow, that's shocking and that's news to me," said Stephens when asked if he knew Dowless was gay. "I didn't know anything about that."

When asked if it might affect Dowless' work among Christian conservatives, Stephens replied, "Of course it would, of course. But I don't think I want to say anything else about that right now."

Stephens made a point to say that Dowless was no longer affiliated in any way with the Christian Coalition. "He does not do any work for us anymore, and hasn't for some time."

In 1999, Dowless quit the Christian Coalition to work as the Florida director for the presidential campaign of millionaire Steve Forbes. Dowless promoted Forbes as a conservative alternative to Bush.

He told the St. Petersburg Times that social conservatives were upset that Bush was not outspoken enough on abortion. Forbes had pledged to appoint only judges who opposed abortion.

At the time, Dowless also said one reason he resigned from the Christian Coalition was because of his frustration at the group's inability to push its agenda through the Florida Legislature as much as he would have liked.

In 2000, Dowless ran an unsuccessful bid for a Republican House seat in District 40, an area around Orlando. He lost to Rep. Andy Gardiner in a 54 to 46 percent tally.

Throughout his career, both at the Christian Coalition and after, Dowless has had a long history of pushing an anti-gay agenda.

As far back as 1994, Dowless, then the director of the Christian Coalition of Florida, was quoted in the New York Times opposing the popular Gay Days event at Disney World in Orlando because it allegedly was a threat to kids.

"This whole day is focusing on sex," Dowless was quoted as saying, "and when you put these elements together, there is the greater possibility of illegal activities on children or some harassment."

In 1997, Dowless, still in his role as director of the state's Christian Coalition, cheered when the University of Florida rescinded a student spouse ID card that had been given to the partner of a lesbian student. The card gave spouses of students special advantages, such as use of the university's libraries and recreational facilities.

"Marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman," Dowless told the Alligator, the student publication.

In 1998, Dowless successfully blocked a move by the state legislature to write the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into the state Constitution. The move would have prohibited discrimination based on a variety of attributes, including gender.

But, according to the St. Petersburg Times, Dowless opposed the gender provision, saying it would be a possible loophole for allowing same-sex marriages.

And in 2002, Dowless created a misleading phone message for Gov. Jeb Bush. The message, sent to 50,000 social conservatives in the state, claimed that voters should cast their lot with Bush over Democratic rival Bill McBride because Bush was "the only candidate who supports traditional marriage."

But the statement was false. McBride did oppose same-sex marriage, and after a public controversy, the phone message campaign was pulled.

Just last year, Dowless was scheduled as one of 25 guest speakers at a "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference held Oct. 24-25 in Fort Lauderdale. Promotional materials indicate he spoke about grassroots organizing among conservative Christians.

Other speakers included such conservative religious icons as Roy Moore, the ousted chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Interestingly, of the 25 speakers listed, only the Dowless entry did not include a photo with his bio.

So what about Quiñones? Here's his voting record as concerns the LGBT community while he was in the Florida legislature:



Wednesday night I listened to a story on American Public Radio's The Story about a crackpot religious freak, a born again in Odessa, Texas. In the beginning of the piece "God" had persuaded her to be a bigoted jackass and by the end of the story God had persuaded her to be a decent human being. Reading about Dan Cathy and John Quiñones and John Dowless made me think of mindless people who claim some God made them do this or that or the other thing. Should these kinds of people really have the right to vote? I mean, come on, get real. This is 2012, not 2012 BC. The only people who still believe in this Chick-fil-A kind of homophobia are sad and befuddled throwbacks like Joe Pitts.

Punch A Gay Child? Beat Him Up? Kick Him Out Of The House? Is That What Jesus Teaches? Or Is That Satan's Work?

You may be aware that there's a major anti-bullying campaign going on across the country, a campaign that discourages kids from antisocial behavior towards classmates perceived as "The Other," and thereby a legitimate target for abuse. That campaign wasn't bolstered last week when some Satan-worshipping phony minister in North Carolina, Sean Harris of the Berean Baptist "Church," urged fathers to punch and beat their sons who show signs of being gay. Listen to Harris in the clip above. To a normal person he sounds like someone in serious need of psychiatric help and spiritual counseling. To the Satan-worshippers in his coven... well listen to them yelling "Amen" when he works himself up into a violent tirade against 4 year olds with limp wrists. Jesus has a lot of work to do with impostors like Harris running around pushing Satan's message to morons who wouldn't know Jesus if the GOP was crucifying with on their front lawn today.

Judging by recent studies of homophobia, Harris and many of his most vocal supporters are repressed-- or closeted-- homosexuals who just can't come to terms with who they are. It's ugly. But it isn't new. I was reading some reminiscences of Pansy Division drummer Luis Illades in the new issue of Out that struck a chord.

A couple times, especially in the Midwest and South, kids wanted to run away with us. One kid ran away from the home of his super-Christian family and came to our show. He had all of his belongings with him, and he came to see Pansy Division because there was nowhere else for him to go. He asked us to give him a ride to wherever we were going next. He was 15, and it was heartbreaking. He had come out to his family, and his father tried to beat him up and kicked him out. He wanted to escape with the gay circus.

Yes, heartbreaking. It makes me realize how lucky I was when I finally figure out I was gay. I was living in Amsterdam at the time and hadn't seen my family in 4 or 5 years. I flew home for a visit to share the news. What I found was love and unconditional acceptance (well... one condition-- my mother said I couldn't borrow her wigs). A lot of homophobia stems from authoritarian parents, many of whom may themselves have same-sex desires, albeit undercover ones.

"Sometimes people are threatened by gays and lesbians because they are fearing their own impulses, in a sense they 'doth protest too much,'" Ryan told LiveScience. "In addition, it appears that sometimes those who would oppress others have been oppressed themselves, and we can have some compassion for them too, they may be unaccepting of others because they cannot be accepting of themselves."

...In all of the studies, participants who reported supportive and accepting parents were more in touch with their implicit sexual orientation, meaning it tended to jibe with their outward sexual orientation. Students who indicated they came from authoritarian homes showed the biggest discrepancy between the two measures of sexual orientation.

"In a predominately heterosexual society, 'know thyself' can be a challenge for many gay individuals," lead author Netta Weinstein, a lecturer at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "But in controlling and homophobic homes, embracing a minority sexual orientation can be terrifying."

Those participants who reported their heterosexuality despite having hidden same-sex desires were also the most likely to show hostility toward gay individuals, including self-reported anti-gay attitudes, endorsement of anti-gay policies and discrimination such as supporting harsher punishments for homosexuals.

The research may help to explain the underpinnings of anti-gay bullying and hate crimes, the researchers note. People in denial about their own sexual orientation, perhaps a denial fostered by authoritarian and homophobic parents, may feel a threat from other gay and lesbian individuals. Lashing out may ultimately be an indicator of the person's own internal conflict with sexual orientation.

This inner conflict can be seen in some high-profile cases in which anti-gay public figures are caught engaging in same-sex acts, the researchers say. For instance, evangelical preacher and anti-gay-marriage advocate Ted Haggard was caught in a gay sex scandal in 2006. And in 2010, prominent anti-gay activist and co-founder of conservative Family Research Council George Rekers was reportedly spotted in 2010 with a male escort rented from Rentboy.com. According to news reports, the escort confirmed Rekers is gay.

"We laugh at or make fun of such blatant hypocrisy, but in a real way, these people may often themselves be victims of repression and experience exaggerated feelings of threat," Ryan said. "Homophobia is not a laughing matter. It can sometimes have tragic consequences," as was the case in the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay man.

And that brings us to another Ryan, one of Congress' most virulently homophobic members, Paul Ryan. The Wall Street-owned Beltway media goes to great lengths to paint Ryan as a reasonable, mainstreamish conservative. But he's voted against every single bill that has pushed equality-- or even life itself-- for the LGBT community. His voting score on gay issues is a 0.00-- the exact same record of hatred and bigotry as outré sociopaths like Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Steve King (R-IA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and self-loathing closet queens Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Trent Franks (R-AZ). Look, I'm not trying o insinuate that Ryan is returning the affections of silly little Peoria hypocrite Aaron Schock (R-IL), who's always glancing at his ass and talking about it breathlessly. But... who knows what goes on between those two gym bunnies. Interestingly, the gay-friendly Gap just washed Ryan right out of it's hair over his homophobia, canceling a fundraiser just over a week ago. A spokesperson from the Gap denied that the company was ever hosting a fundraiser for Ryan-- although I'm suspicious about the veracity of that and fear they're just trying to weasel out of their association with Ryan because it was made public.

“Gap Inc. is not hosting or organizing a fundraiser for Congressman Ryan.  The fundraiser is a private event, and the location of the event has been moved.  To say that Gap Inc. was or is hosting a fundraiser for Congressman Paul Ryan is factually incorrect.”
“Gap Inc. and our brands have a very strong record on LGBTQ community issues as shown by our perfect rating by the Human Rights Campaign annual Corporate Equality Index for seven years in a row.  In addition, we are proud of the “Be One” Gap brand ads featuring a gay couple sharing a Gap t-shirt. This ad is part of a “Be Your Own T” campaign which expresses different personalities, heritages, styles and passions. (Incidentally, the men in the ad are a real couple).”

More thoughts on that interview with outed California State Sen. Roy Ashburn

"I have had the privilege of serving in elective office for 26 years and dealing with important legislation, and I did so with a huge secret and in many ways a career built upon lies and deceit."

-- Senator Ashburn, in the L.A. Times interview

by Ken

[from a dispatch carried on BakersfieldNow.com, "home of KBAK & KFFX Eyewitness News"]

Change of course: Roy Ashburn urges support for gay rights

By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press
May 27, 2010

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Sen. Roy Ashburn spoke out passionately in favor of gay rights during a legislative session.

The Republican from Bakersfield was forced to reveal he is gay after a recent arrest for drunken driving.

On Thursday, he urged his fellow senators to "rise above discrimination" and support letting gays serve openly in the military.

Ashburn also weighed in on a bill designed to protect clergy who refuse to perform gay marriages.

"I am no longer willing or able to remain silent on issues that affect sexual orientation, the rights of individuals, and so I, um, I'm doing something that is quite different and foreign to me. And it's highly emotional," Ashburn told fellow senators.

Ashburn said he would not be speaking at all were it not for his drunken driving arrest in March after he left a gay-friendly nightclub near the state Capitol. . . .

My agenda for today was an update on the state of the "conventional wisdom" on anti-incumbent fever, but that will have to wait till tomorrow. (I wish we could always shove the conventional wisdom out of sight this easily.) All I really have in mind for today is a gut reaction to Howie's morning post -- specifically, the large chunk of interview he reproduced by the Los Angeles Times's Patt Morrison with recently self-outed California State Sen. Roy Ashburn, whose "life as a 'family values' politician all but ended months ago," Patt recalls --

in the early morning hours of March 3. He was arrested for DUI after he'd left a gay club, and soon thereafter acknowledged that he was gay. His DUI cost him his driver's license for a time and put him back on a bike, pedaling his life in an altogether new direction.

Howie has repeatedly recommended former Rep. Bob Bauman's post-traumatic book The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative, written after he'd come to grips with his ignominious self-outing, and the life of repression and denial that preceded it. I gather from Howie that Bauman achieved some real understanding of the way he'd screwed up a large chunk of his life, and hurt a lot of people who didn't deserve to be hurt, by pretending to be someone other than he was, and in pursuit of that pretense donning the guise of a rabidly homophobic political warrior.

I'm embarrassed to say that I've never actually read Bauman's book, but in the wake of the Ashburn interview, I've just ordered a copy. (You can find them dirt-cheap on amazon.com.) Because what I find so fascinating about the Ashburn interview is how little he can muster to say about his long period of what we might call professional homophobia. It's not that he's inarticulate, just barely articulate on this subject -- and understandably so, given that he's probably only just getting past the "my life as a train wreck" stage.

Listen again as Patt points out, after establishing Ashburn's fascination with politics from his earliest memories, that "you must have realized a public career was incompatible with being open about your sexual preferences":

Something happened that I guess caused me to realize that. When I was in sixth grade, the police had a raid in the sand dunes [near San Luis Obispo] and a bunch of gay men were arrested, probably charged with indecent activity. That sticks in my mind — the publicity and the shame around it. One of my teachers was one of the people. The talk among the kids, the talk among the adults, the talk in the community, the press — at that time the choice was pretty clear: If you were gay and open, it was a life of shame, ridicule, innuendo about molesting and perversion. It was a dark life. Given that choice of whether you come out or whether you're in secret, I mean, there really wasn't a choice.

And when he was elected to public office himself, "Were your sexual preferences in the back of your mind, or did you just go about your business?"

The answer is both yes and no. I was married and had children. And I had a career and a passion. I also had a huge secret. But given my circumstances and my responsibilities, it wasn't an overwhelming issue for me. The desires were always there, but my focus was primarily on — well, pretty selfishly — on me and my career and my family.

Now Ashburn is set up for the crucial subject of his horrible record on every subject relating to the normal rights of gay people as citizens.

The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic "no" vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that.

What a way to live! Is it possible not to feel empathy for how hard it must have been? It doesn't excuse his professional homophobia, but now that he's come out the other side, it's hard not to wish him well. Not only is he dealing honestly, finally, with who he is, but he says he's dealing with his alcohol-abuse problem, which you have to figure is not unrelated.

I'm just trying to tell the truth from the reality of the life I've lived, which has been an amazing life. I have had the privilege of serving in elective office for 26 years and dealing with important legislation, and I did so with a huge secret and in many ways a career built upon lies and deceit. Now that the truth is known, actually I am comfortable talking about these things.

As I've said repeatedly, it seems to me that the dramatic shift in public attitudes toward LGBT folk has been largely attributable to the growing awareness of straight folk that they actually know representatives of the once-exotic "other." They're coworkers, friends, and family members, and once you know them as actual people, as opposed to the grotesque caricatures fobbed off by the masters of social orthodoxy, it turns out that they're people just like any other people -- some good, some bad, most somewhere in between, just like everybody else.

It has to be scary as well as deeply shameful for not just closeted by positively bunkered guys like Bob Bauman and Roy Ashburn to accept that ill-informed, malignant characterization of "the other" and applying it to themselves. This of course is the "internalized homophobia" that every LGBT person has to cope with -- and let me say once again (as I did most recently in a post called "Maybe it's not that mysterious why the upper ranks of the GOP and the Far Right are overflowing with homophobic closet cases") that for me nobody has made this more understandable than Mike Signorile, whose "Case for Outing on All Levels," in the June Advocate, Howie cited again this morning.

I'm thrilled in dealing with younger gay men to note how dramatically lower the internalized-homophobia quotient has become. The less of it there is to overcome, the better shot the victim has of getting beyond it. And that manufactured shame doesn't do anyone any good, except for primarily religion-peddling creeps who exploit homophobia for their personal advantage.

To return to that May 27 AP piece, reporter Don Thompson notes:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Sen. Roy Ashburn spoke out passionately in favor of gay rights during a legislative session.

The Republican from Bakersfield was forced to reveal he is gay after a recent arrest for drunken driving.

On Thursday, he urged his fellow senators to "rise above discrimination" and support letting gays serve openly in the military.

Ashburn also weighed in on a bill designed to protect clergy who refuse to perform gay marriages.

"I am no longer willing or able to remain silent on issues that affect sexual orientation, the rights of individuals, and so I, um, I'm doing something that is quite different and foreign to me. And it's highly emotional," Ashburn told fellow senators.

Ashburn said he would not be speaking at all were it not for his drunken driving arrest in March after he left a gay-friendly nightclub near the state Capitol.

Earlier on, Thompson reported:

"Does anyone really believe that a person's sexual orientation affects their ability to serve our nation and protect our freedom?" he said, supporting a resolution urging Congress to change the military's policy on gays.

"The answer is that being gay or straight has nothing to do with ability, devotion, courage, honor, skill and loyalty, the characteristics that I think we would all agree are desirable and necessary for those who serve in our national military," Ashburn said. "The current policy of 'don't ask, don't tell' is clearly out of date and discriminatory."

He cited conservative icon Barry Goldwater's view that government should stay out of people's private lives.

"It calls upon our nation's best instincts and seeks to correct a basic discrimination that is hurtful to people and to our country," he said of SJR9, the resolution by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, who is openly gay. "I respectfully ask that we rise above discrimination and vote aye on this resolution."

In this context it's good to hear the last words of Ashburn's quoted by the L.A. Times's Patt Morrison:

"I don't know that I've ever felt more optimistic about the future for myself. I don't know what the future holds, but I think it's going to be incredible."

#

Should The Catholic Hierarchy Be Punished For Running A Criminal Organization?

Quick, someone call the vice squad!

Yesterday's NY Times excused?... criticized? Pope Ratzinger for spending his time as the Nazi Cardinal in Munich pursuing ideological dissidents rather than a clergy riddled with child molesters. Easily the most reactionary pope since Hitler's boy Pio, Ratzinger didn't have a problem with priests raping young boys-- as long as they stuck with conservative dogma. When he ran the Munich diocese that was also the birthplace and heartland of the Nazism that he once fully and openly embraced, the future Pope had hundreds of child rapists and mentally unbalanced priests in his ranks and he never said a word beyond, "don't get caught, boys."

Vatican experts say there is little evidence that Benedict spent much time investigating more than 200 cases of “problem priests” in the diocese, with issues including alcohol abuse, adultery and, now under the microscope, pedophilia... Three decades ago it was common practice in the church to ignore or cover up incidents of molestation, or, in severe cases, to transfer priests to faraway parishes. Even outside the church, both victims and law enforcement authorities were less likely to take decisive steps to expose and combat abuse.

Church apologists are claiming he was never into "management" and was too "spiritual" to bother with the mundane tasks of keeping his employees from raping the faithful's small sons and daughters. I had never heard of one of his predecessor's favorite priests, a serial child rapist and right wing sociopath named Maciel until I read about him on Digby's blog today.

Marcial Maciel Degollado was a vicious, corrupt and drug addled old queen who surrounded himself with handsome young men as dedicated to far right-wing lunacy as he was. His right-wing army was called the Legion of Christ and seems to have been mostly dedicated to raping young boys. Even after Maciel was found out, he was never defrocked. A resident Fox News wingnut, Rev. Jonathan Morris, was one of Maciel's disciples and fits in perfectly with the Fox ideology of course. But don't get the idea that Maciel was gay. He just liked sex, fathering children all over the world with various women who he kept in high style with the money he stole from the suckers who give their hard earned cash to this institutionalized fount of corruption.

Morris, a baby-faced priest in his 30's, is a native of Michigan, who also writes an online column for FoxNews.com. He is a member of the Legion of Christ, an ultra-secret organization that many feel borders on being a cult. Its founder, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, was a very close friend of Pope John Paul II, a friendship that stood him in good stead in the 1990's when he was accused of eight counts of sexually molesting young boys over a 20 year period.

In addition to raising millions of dollars for the Church, the Legion of Christ, through an intensive recruitment drive, including a website called Vocation.com, has managed to do something the Church values even more highly: Recruit young men to the priesthood.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), acting for Pope John Paul II, refused to open an investigation into the allegations against Father Degollado until just before the papal elections. After he was elected Pope, he reversed course and closed it down again. Needless to say, this did not go over well with SNAP (The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests).

One cannot help but wonder if Ratzinger shrewdly manipulated Maciel's victims as pawns in the papal succession struggle. For years, Ratzinger ignored and rebuffed these victims. Suddenly, as the papal election neared, he reversed course.

At the time, some speculated that Ratzinger re-opened the probe as a calculated move toward the center, an effort to moderate his extreme image, and attract votes for his papal bid.

Now that Ratzinger is ensconsed as head of the worldwide church, he coldly tosses these victims aside again. Now, those skeptics must feel vindicated.

This decision is a severe blow to the optimists who had hoped that Pope Benedict might "grow into" his position, and somehow prove to become more compassionate than his reputation and track record would indicate. (David Clohessy, SNAP National Director, 5-21-05)

We don't need to be lectured on morality by these sick & corrupt criminals in frocks

Father Degollado founded the Legion of Christ in Mexico in 1941. Since then, the order has grown into a very wealthy, extremely conservative organization that includes 650 priests and 2500 seminarians.

Yesterday's Times is more circumspect of the Catholic cult's criminal behavior but did mention that Maciel's boys, "[a] powerful Roman Catholic religious order acknowledged in a statement on Friday that its founder, a close ally of the late Pope John Paul II, molested seminarians and fathered several children, and it expressed 'sorrow and grief' to anyone 'damaged by our founder’s actions.' Sounds dandy; let;s just move on, right? Isn't that what conservatives always say when they get caught? Let's move on.

For years, the Vatican ignored complaints against Father Maciel, who enjoyed a strong cult of personality. But in 2004 Cardinal Ratzinger reopened a stalled investigation into the order when he was the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, sending a Vatican official to interview Legionaries and accusers of Father Maciel worldwide.

The Legionaries’ statement offered no concrete changes to the management or traditions of the order, but in a rare case of a religious order disavowing its founder, it said, “We accept and regret that, given the gravity of his faults, we cannot take his person as a model of Christian or priestly life.”

The statement continued, “We had thought and hoped that the accusations brought against our founder were false and unfounded, since they conflicted with our experience of him personally and his work.”

Their experience of him personally? They all were forced to wear their hair parted on the same side, wear the same outfits and Maciel is said to have slept with most-- if not all-- of them. They must be referring to a different "experience of him personally." Maciel is estimated to have had sex with hundreds and hundreds of young boys in his care and it is widely assumed that every member of the Legionnaires of Christ who did not flee the organization, was taking part in the same kinds of activities with children. The U.S. spokesperson for the organization says they're taking a wait and see approach and waiting for Ratzinger to tell them what to do. "We'll have to wait for the indications of the Holy See," he said.

Juan Vaca, 73, who was sexually abused by Father Maciel in Mexico when he was 10 and for years tried to get the Vatican to investigate Father Maciel, said he was disappointed by the statement. “It’s very tepid, very general, nothing new,” he said.

Mr. Vaca, who left the Legionaries in the 1970s and is now a professor of psychology at Mercy College on Long Island, said, “They have to amend all these errors and mistakes by facts and actions, not words and promises.”

He said he did not expect much from the apostolic delegation. “They are communicating in secrecy,” he said, “and they will get everything under secrecy.”

In Mexico, the order reaches the upper echelons of business, the church and government, and for most of his life, Father Maciel was treated as something of a saint. The Legionaries’ acknowledgment that he had fathered at least three children out of wedlock and molested several boys, confirming the worst accusations and long-held suspicions among many Catholics there, seriously damaged the order’s reputation.

Elio Masferrer, a Mexican scholar who heads the Latin American Association for the Study of Religions, said the statement, with its vague plea for forgiveness, still did not address the damages done to victims by Father Maciel, or the civil crimes he committed.

“They think of the sexually abused as if they were people in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mr. Masferrer said. “The strategy is not to forgive the sinner; it is to protect the sinner.”

Mr. Fair, the spokesman for the order, said the statement had not gone into detail about possible crimes committed by Father Maciel in order to protect the privacy of the victims. He also said that the timing of the statement was not connected to the Vatican’s investigation.

And in a related matter...



UPDATE: The Priest And Papal Pal Was Also Sexually Molesting His Two Young Sons

You think I'm making it up? The L.A. Times covered Rev. Maciel today, the same predator priest the Vatican-- including Pope Benedict-- has been covering up for! Why? The right-wing organization Maciel founded and ran has $20 billion in assets that managed to rip off from suckers. And, of course, raping children is considered a perk of organized religion.

Two years after the death of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, a Mexico native, scandals continue to unfold: Just the other day in Mexico City, two brothers came forward, claiming tearfully that not only was Maciel their father, he had also sexually abused them... "I was 7, lying in bed with him like any child that age. He pulled down my underwear and tried to rape me... He made us masturbate him and took pictures of us doing it."

...As the Catholic Church is rocked by scandals about abusive priests and the failure of its hierarchy to confront them, Maciel in many ways embodies the insidiousness of the problem.

Maciel was dogged for years by allegations that he sexually molested young men studying to be priests, had affairs with women and was a drug addict. He evaded sanction thanks in large part to the privileged status granted him by the late Pope John Paul II. Only in 2006 did John Paul's successor, Benedict XVI, discipline Maciel by ordering him to stop functioning as a priest; by then, Maciel was 85.

Maciel was popular at the Vatican because the Legion was one of the fastest growing orders in the Catholic Church, able to produce wealth and recruit priests at a time of declining memberships and severe shortages in the clergy -- and because it espoused the conservative brand of Catholicism that recent popes have favored.

Today the Legionaries, as they are known, operate in nearly 40 countries with 800 priests, 2,600 seminarians and a lay branch called Regnum Christi ("Christ's Kingdom") that has more than 75,000 members.

Though blessed by John Paul, the Legion had detractors the world over who, quite apart from the abuse allegations, criticized the secretive group's cult-like practices. Seminarians were cut off from their families, their mail routinely intercepted; barred from criticizing Maciel and instructed to report anyone who did; and made to adhere to a military-style discipline. A cult of personality developed around Maciel, revered as a hero destined for sainthood.

In Mexico, the key to Maciel's success was his ability to ingratiate himself with the country's top entrepreneurs and richest families. Charismatic, persuasive and good-looking in his younger days, Maciel amassed so much money from his benefactors that the Legionaries for Christ are sometimes ridiculed as the Millionaires for Christ... He told Mexico's wealthy that God loved them more than the poor, just what they wanted to hear... [Pope] John Paul praised Maciel as a Jesus-like model for youth.

Eric Massa, Baba Ram Dass and...What LSD Could Have Done

No gay stereotypes here

I've been speculating that my friend Eric Massa has been having a nervous breakdown because he spent his life so tightly closeted that he had never had to really confront the possibility that he was... bisexual or something. When he was outed, his entire world came crashing down around him, including his inner world-- all in the bright, unforgiving klieg lights of cheap national notoriety. Then a few days ago Noah raised the possibility that Eric's erratic behavior is caused by Rituximab, a genetically engineered chimeric monoclonal antibody used to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma. a drug whose side effects sometimes include psychosis.

Eric's from a military family, went to Annapolis and has led a pretty regimented life. One of his kids remarked offhandedly that he always seemed angry.

I'll bet Eric doesn't read Out magazine. The newest issue has a short blurb about another man from our generation who had some trouble coping with his homosexuality, Richard Alpert. Never heard of him? How about Baba Ram Dass?

Both were important names-- of the same person-- when I was growing up. Alpert was a professor ay Harvard who worked with an old friend of mine-- the person who gave me my first acid trip-- Timothy Leary. I worked for Leary, briefly, in Millbrook, NY, where he and Alpert were doing LSD experiments. Soon after, Alpert went to India, immersed himself in spiritual Hinduism and came out the other side as an important teacher and the writer of one of the books most important to me in the world, Be Here Now. I never did ask Eric if he'd read it; I never thought he had. He should have-- that and maybe taken some acid.

The Out blurb riffs off a new book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin, and it addresses Alpert's/Ram Dass' coming to terms with his sexuality.

Out: Entwined in Alpert's part of the story is that he was having relationships with men from a young age.

Lattin: At boarding school he was caught rolling around naked with another boy-- he described it as "wrestling." Coming of age, he wasn't sure what to do with [his sexuality]-- it was the '50s. He danced around it for a long time. He called himself a bisexual in the '70s and '80s. He had a steady girlfriend. But he was basically gay.

Out: In the book, he says of his first trip, "For the first time, I felt good inside. It was OK to be me."

Lattin: Psychedelics break down the barriers we construct around our sexuality. People really open up on them-- not necessarily in a sexual way, but in an emotional and spiritual way.

Out: What did his colleagues think about him being gay?

Lattin: Leary didn't want him to come out. He thought it would be bad for their reputation. That reinforced Alpert's internalized homophobia. Leary did an interview with Playboy in 1966 where he said all kinds of crazy things, and one of the most ridiculous was that LSD was "a cure for homosexuality."

Out: You write that Alpert decided "he was more homosexual than bisexual, but that being gay would never be his central, defining characteristic." What eventually led him to this resolution?

Lattin: He was on a spiritual quest-- another reason he didn't want to come out. It wasn't what he was about. The AIDS epidemic got him comfortable with dealing with his sexuality. He'd been doing grief counseling before [the crisis] and later saw himself as a counselor for people dying of AIDS, and many of them were gay. That really opened him up. Ultimately, he came to a reconciliation of his sexuality and his spirituality that's really beautiful.

Eric isn't taking my phone calls. I hope he's reading DWT, and I hope he's unwinding and relaxing and coming to grips with who he is in the context of his family and the rest of his life.

An excellent suggestion: No more "free passes" for homophobes who claim to hate the "sin" but love the sinner

"This may come as a shock to the 'hate the sin, love the sinner' set, but by quoting that verse, it's not God saying that gays should be put to death -- it's YOU. It's not simply a personal religious view or a debatable 'political difference' or a great talking point. YOU are saying that I should be put to death."

-- Waymon Hudson, in a recent Bilerico post, referring
to the homophobes' go-to quote from Leviticus about
a man lying with a man as he would lie with a woman

by Ken

I see from the comments that I wasn't the only one who really enjoyed Howie's post earlier today which, among other things, told the story of coming to grips with his sexual orientation. One thing I think it's important to remember about that post was that he contrasts his luck in finding his way to self-acceptance and the acceptance of the people around him with the misfortune of the tormented right-wing homophobes who think they have no chance of achieving either level of acceptance and are forced to live in their closets of self-loathing. One difference, perhaps, between my response and that of other readers is that I knew Howie all through the period he retraces, and knew his family (Lee, I guarantee you would have loved his mother), and didn't know most of the stuff I read today.

My story is much less interesting, in fact so dull as to barely qualify as a story, but one thing I finally learned is how crucial that level of self-acceptance is. When everyone in a position of authority is telling you how perverted and abnormal you are, it takes a lot of grit -- and ideally a lot of sane community -- to arrive at the realization that they're wrong. Some of them are wrong for the most obvious and understandable reason: It's part of the indoctrination they grew up with. But too many of them are wrong for a much more sinister reason: They have an investment in segregating and even loathing anyone who doesn't fit into, and thus threatens, their perverted and abnormal social orthodoxy. Man, it can't be easy to be a well-trained fire-breathing homo-hater and meanwhile discover that you are the very thing you spend so much time and energy denouncing. Ironically, the more self-loathing you can build up, the easier it must be to muddle through, since you know how desperately important it is to keep your filthy, disgusting secret.

Of course I realize I'm preaching to the choir, as it were. But the very fact that such a community of readers, straight as well as gay, exists, and that we can now talk about this so casually, is a measure of how much the world has changed. Nobody knows it better than the die-hard homophobes, which is why they're digging in so frantically. One of the especially good reasons for that panic is the realization, at least among the smarter homophobic enforcers, of just how little they have to back up their homophobia -- beyond their proud tradition of bigotry, that is.

Really, what it comes down to is "the" passage from Leviticus, the one that says, "They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them." As those smarter homophobes know, this is merely one prohibition ripped out of an enormous series of prohibitions many of which can only be described as crackpot. The less-informed homophobes probably don't even know what Leviticus is, and would no doubt be horrified if strict enforcement of all the "laws" suddenly became a high church priority. Irony of ironies, the most committed Leviticus-worshiping homophobes tend to be the most vicious anti-Semites, who would normally spit on the Old Testament rather than cite it as the word of God.

Of course it isn't the word of God. It's a bunch of mumbo-jumbo written by descendants of primitive nomadic tribes. You can, of course, claim that the mumbo-jumbo writers were inspired by God, but the writing was done by humans, and not surprisingly reflects either (a) the common prejudices and suppositions of their time or (b) attempts by the self-anointed guardians of higher morality to counteract prejudices and suppositions they didn't like.

Usually my response to the inevitable flaunting of the one piece of "evidence" the homophobes have in support of their bigotry is along the lines of the above: a reasoned response pointing out the selectivity of the zealots' attachment to Leviticus, with maybe a gentle underscoring that we have simply codified the beliefs of a bunch of people who had actually given some thought to law and ethics but were hardly experts, and whose expertise, such as it was, related only to their immediate world. In the Bilerico post I've quoted from at the top of this post, Waymon Hudson takes a simpler, more direct approach that I have to say I love.

He staked out his territory straightaway: "Let's get one thing straight, fundie homophobes -- you don't get a pass when you 'quote' the Leviticus Bible verse." Waymon, it appears, has had his fill of blowhards, from American beauty-pageant princesses who like to insist that they don't hate gay people to bloodthirsty Ugandan Crap Christians intent on rewriting their civil laws to make it easier to persecute homos.

Think it's a stretch to mention the Ugandan Pastor and a California Beauty Queen in the same post? It's not. It's the "trickle down" hate effect. Leaders crow about how gays should die and then small-minded bigots use it in casual conversation. It's all the same hate.

That's why it's important that we don't give passes to people like Miss Beverly Hills. She invoked 'death for gays' in a discussion on gay marriage (and pageants) and wasn't challenged by the interviewer. That's how accepted the talking point has become. That's what we are facing.

And that's why we have to always call it out.

Let's be clear: when you trot out this Bible verse, you are endorsing it, embracing it, and wrapping yourself in it. No amount of "I have gay friends", "it's just the act", or excuse-making will soften it. YOU are saying I should be killed.

You can't wipe your hands of it, you can't act shocked when violence happens to LGBT people, and you can't distance yourself from it. YOU own it. YOU are part of it.

And no amount of fancy pageant walking will change that.

I really encourage you to read the whole post. It's wonderfully angry and wonderfully funny and wonderfully wise.

#

Only An Idiot-- Like Our Mass Media-- Would Compare Eric Massa To Mark Foley... Now Sen. Roy Ashburn Is Something Else

When I was really young, like maybe 11 or 12, my mom must have sensed I was gay. I hadn't thought about it myself... didn't even know what it was, although I did feel some kind of undefined attraction for some of the older guys in the neighborhood (older meaning 16 or 17). Anyway, she told me she wanted me to meet someone and to hang around because he was coming over before dinner. It was her hairdresser, a guy with two first names, one of which was Michelle (or at least whatever it was was pronounced "Michelle," like in Bachmann). So Michelle is a walking, breathing stereotype. I can still recall the fluffy pink mohair sweater, the screamingly dyed blonde hair in a style that didn't look like anything any man I had ever noticed had. And his wrist was the limpest wrist I had ever seen. Maybe he was just putting it on thick for me. But it worked. Although I had a couple of discreet "experiments" while I was a teenager, I stuck with girls; I forced myself to, without even making a conscious decision. I knew I wasn't like Michelle; that's all.

I read Hubert Selby's then brand new 1964 now-classic Last Exit To Brooklyn and realized there are gay people in Brooklyn, although it was a painful revelation. Wikipedia synopsizes two of the 6 parts:

• The Queen Is Dead: Georgette, a transvestite hooker, is thrown out of the family home by her brother and tries to attract the attention of a hoodlum named Vinnie at a benzedrine-driven party. [And, yes, I'm certain that's where Morrissey got his song title.]

• Strike: Harry, a machinist in a factory, becomes a local official in the union. A closeted homosexual, he abuses his wife and gets in fights to convince himself that he is a man. He gains a temporary status and importance during a long strike, and uses the union's money to entertain the young street punks and buy the company of drag queens.

That kept me in the closet for another few years. It really all seemed so furtive and ugly and sad back then. The experiences I had-- as a hitchhiker going back and forth from Brooklyn to Manhattan-- weren't very satisfying. Girls were way better. But... something wasn't right and sometimes I got this unconscious feeling. By the time I was in college drugs were an integral part of my life-- and in a very big way. They do wonders for inhibitions... as well as for denial. I had sex with a guy who I really liked but when my girlfriend found out and demanded I make a choice, I picked her and quickly "forgot" I had ever even had sex with a guy, even though, in the depths of my consciousness I knew that that was exactly the right thing for me.

I had a big transitionary stage after graduation when I was celibate for years, traveling around Asia looking for myself. I found me... in Amsterdam (of all places) and when I went to a psychologist and told him I suspected I might be gay he was waiting for the punchline. Finally he asked me if I had come to see him to get addresses of places where I could meet other gay guys. I took that as a professional blessing-- and I didn't need any addresses because I lived directly across the street from the Vondel Park.

I started making up for lost time with a vengeance. But the closet had scarred me and it took another year before I was able to tell my family (back in America) and my old friends. I was lucky. My mother's reaction, after trying a little denial for a few moments, was "Does this mean you want to start wearing my wigs?" I didn't and there was never a bump, not even the tiniest one. No one ever considered inviting me to anything without my boyfriend or didn't accord him the same love and respect and acceptance they had always given girlfriends I brought home.

I was very lucky. Not every gay person is. Ex-Congressman Bob Bauman's wife, like him a devout Catholic and, also like him, devouter conservative, was-- again, like him-- a founder of the Young Americans For Freedom, had their marriage annulled when he was outed. He wrote the best book I ever read on the topic of a closeted conservative politician coming to grips with himself, The Gentleman From Maryland-- The Conscience Of A Gay Conservative. It should be a must-read for every closeted politician who winds up running for office. The blurb from Publishers Weekly:

Claiming that financial need compelled him to publish this "near-perfect Greek tragedy" of a life "flawed by a great weakness," ex-Congressman Bauman reveals with relentless candor the alcoholic and homosexual behavior that led to the ruin of his political career and marriage. His story is engrossing both on a personal level and as an expose of Washington's gay scene to which, he maintains, belong government, professional and corporate leaders of all political casts. While admitting his guilt, Bauman alleges that his indictment for sexual solicitation and attendant activities, based on evidence from paid FBI informants, was politically motivated by the Carter administration, "Tip" O'Neill and by a Maryland senator who considered him a potential rival. Now practicing law, Bauman still suffers from rejection of his professional talents and from social prejudice, he stresses, and, as a Roman Catholic, finds little comfort in his religion's ambivalent stance toward homosexuality.

Bakersfield state Senator Roy Ashburn, vicious homophobic Republican sociopath by day, bar trawler by night, should have read it long ago. It might have saved him a lot of misery. Outed last week when he was pulled over, drunk, with a young male he had picked up in a Sacramento bar, he actually went on a big Bakersfield radio station and told his constituents "I am gay." No shit, Sherlock! On personal leave since his arrest early Wednesday morning and avoiding the press, he figured he couldn't deny it any longer.

The arrest touched off rampant speculation about his sexuality after a Sacramento television station reported he had been at a gay nightclub in Sacramento just before he was pulled over by California Highway Patrol officers. But Ashburn had declined to comment.

He broke his silence in an interview on Bakersfield radio station KERN (1180 AM) with talk-show host Inga Barks on Monday morning, saying the incident had led to "restless nights" and "soul searching." Ashburn said he had "brought this on myself." When he told Barks he owed his constituents an explanation, she responded, "Do you want me to ask you … the question, or do you want to just tell people?"

"I am gay,'' Ashburn answered, "and so I … those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long. But I am gay. But it is something that is personal and …. I felt with my heart that being gay didn't affect-- wouldn't affect-- how I did my job." He did not express any resentment that his sexuality had come under scrutiny, saying, "Through my own actions, I made my personal life public."

The episode, widely discussed on Internet blogs, in newspapers and on TV, spurred charges of hypocrisy against the senator from gay-rights activists who noted that Ashburn, a divorced father of four, had voted several times against legislation favoring gays and lesbians.

On Sept. 1, 2005, Ashburn voted against a bill that would have allowed same-sex marriages in California. The bill was later vetoed by the governor. Ashburn also was among the minority in voting against legislation last year that designated May 22 of each year as Harvey Milk Day.

"It is unfortunate he helped spread the bigotry that forced him to stay in the closet," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, a group supporting gay marriage. "We hope he now takes this opportunity to educate people in his district and throughout the state that his sexual orientation is irrelevant.''

Ashburn defended his votes against gay-rights legislation, saying he was reflecting how the voters in his district felt.

Listen to the whole interview with a right-wing radio host Part I:



Part II, in which he shows he doesn't understand what it means to be a self-loathing Republican homosexual:



Now, what about Eric Massa? I know Eric for a long time-- and I don't know. He told me last week that he expected to get slandered, although he was expecting to get slandered by Republicans. He was very specific about that. He said they were out to get him because he was fighting for ending DADT. Today he's going on the Glenn Beck show to denounce the Democrats for screwing him up instead! (Apparently many of his new allies don't trust him or realize that he's mentally unstable now, adding to the personal tragedy of this guy.) I think he's in a great deal of pain and overwhelmed by a sense of desperation in regard to his crumbling life. All I can say is that I'm going to pray for him (rather than for Ashburn; I'm not that pure of heart at this point on my evolutionary journey). Oh-- and I'm going to continue to work towards eliminating the strictures that closets confine people in. Politically speaking, I could use some help on that one.


UPDATE: Oy Veh!

Hoyer, as expected, called Massa's wild charges absurd but the big news-- just as Glenn Beck is about to start his exploitation session with a dangerously sick man-- and who better than Glenn Beck?-- the Washington Post reports an even worse assessment than anyone expected.

Former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has been under investigation for allegations that he groped multiple male staffers working in his office, according to three sources familiar with the probe.

The allegations surrounding the former lawmaker date back at least a year, and involve "a pattern of behavior and physical harassment," according to one source. The new claims of alleged groping contradict statements by Massa, who resigned his office on Monday after it became public that he was the subject of a House ethics committee investigation for possible harassment.