Posts from — November 2009

My generation hasn’t experienced a time where abortion hasn’t been legal.  Depending on the type of health care we were on, who we were employed by (if we were employed), where we lived and what our families were like, we may not have had easy access to abortion.  But, abortion has been a legal procedure since 1973, and we’ve known it no other way.

Do we take it for granted – yes.  We presume that abortion will be legal.  So we may also have a bit of a complex relationship with abortion.  Some of us may support the ability to choose while feeling fundamentally uncomfortable about it.  Some of us may never avail ourselves of an abortion procedure (although 1 in 3 probably will).  Some of us view abortion as a black-and-white issue where you’re either for women’s agency or against it.

But honestly, that nuance and ambiguity found within my generation’s opinions on abortion is NOT what is causing legislation like the Stupak-Pitts amendment to be up for a vote.  The New York Times article that suggests that my generation’s complacency leads to the climate that allows anti-abortion legislation is way off base. 

Legislation like the Stupak-Pitts amendment exist because the Democratic Party has made a calculated decision to court the dissatisfied/undecided religious middle.  This crisis that is apparent within women’s reproductive health and rights is one that ALL progressive movements that had hitched their ponies to the DNC cart are experiencing.  The DNC has rightfully assumed that those of us whose interests are being shoved to the backburner (or taken off the party platform altogether) will continue to

Gay marriage rights, abortion, insurance coverage for women having children (soon to be – woman as a preexisting condition), reproductive rights and choice, ending DOMA, DADT, promoting the ERA and ENDA.  These are all things that are not going to happen.  We have been told “We will come back for you, just wait your turn until the next election cycle, presidential election, whatever bullshit they’ve cooked up”, and it’s NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

So, if we’re going to lose the right to abortion, lose the fight for gay marriage and equality, lose the ability to have a secular nation, it’s not because of apathy regarding abortion on the part of my generation.  It’s because we as a people didn’t decide to stop voting and funding politicians who have betrayed us.

Click to embiggen.

So, basically, because some pompous old douche a long time ago said that all Catholics have, “the right to receive Holy Communion on the tongue*,” priests will be forced to touch people’s tongues and will be in a position to spread swine flu to all boys aged 8-12 in their parish.

The Church will gladly protect priests from allegations of fraud and child rape, but they will absolutely NOT protect priests and parishioners from swine flu.  Sorry guys, but the guy who made that rule was infallible.

* I’m resisting the obvious cheap joke about receiving Christ’s body on my tongue.  I’m also resisting the tacky, easy aside that I’ve met quite a few priests I would gladly receive on the tongue.  I will also be resisting the urge to say, “When a gentleman receives any man-god’s body on the tongue, he swallows, otherwise he is not a gentleman.”  There is also a slew of jokes about receiving infections from receiving Christ’s body on your tongue during a pandemic that I will be resisting the urge to tell.

Author’s Note:  I am, after deliberation, using the pronoun that the subject of the story seems to have personally identified with at the time of death.  As gender identity, body identity, and how society did or did not accept a particular person and how that struggle with identify influenced his life and death, it seemed inappropriate to use a generic “zie” or “zir” in reference to Mike Penner.

I hesitated to write about this.  It’s always touchy to write about someone after they have ceased to be, especially when their life is cut short in a tragedy.  Especially when that someone was a brilliant writer who could make even sports interesting and entertaining for me.  I fear that I do not have the words to express my sadness and dismay over his suicide, but I feel obligated to try.

Mike Penner, for the better part of 20 years, was an excellent sports writer who covered a multitude of topics with wit and clarity.  He was entertaining enough to read, even though I do not have any real affinity for sports.  I first started actively reading him in 2007 when he revealed to the world that he was going to transition to Christine Daniels.  He had a blog “Woman in Transition” (now defunct) that chronicled the transition into Christine Daniels and how she was navigating her space within the world.

Christine Daniels announced earlier this year in February 2009 that she was going to transition back into Mike Penner.  Mike Penner committed suicide and was pronounced dead in a hospital in LA County on Friday November 27, 2009.  He was suffering from transgender regret, which he pinpointed as the reason he transitioned back into a male identity.

I cannot fathom a world in which I feel so out of place in my body that I feel my entire life is a facade or an act.  It is an experience that I am literally incapable of comprehending.  I also cannot realize what it would be like to think I have figured out the solution to being in the wrong body and to realize that it didn’t fix everything.  But I wish there was a way none of that ever had to happen again.

I am sorry, Mike.  I am sorry that our world didn’t have a little more room for someone that didn’t quite fit into our arbitrary gender binary.  I am sorry for all those you’ve left behind.  You will be missed.

Christians always masturbate over, er I mean fantasize, about what it would be like to be living in heaven and being with God. But given what I (and any other Christian who has actually and thoughtfully read the Bible, you know, ex-Christians) know about the Christian view of the end times, what we can all expect can only be described as the horror of World War II and Nazi Germany. However, unlike Nazi Germany, this is all planned out by an all-powerful, immortal dictator who cannot die and has long-since went mentally insane. But that does not stop Christians believing that the Christian view of end times is good and that they should praise god for being so utterly wonderful to create a place that is a lot like Nazi Germany, including all of the events and features of Nazi Germany. So, I am going to explain, to the best of my ability how the Christian picture of the end times equates to Nazi Germany. Hopefully, this analytical approach will get a few people to see that the god of the Bible, who is touted as being all-loving and benevolent is actually evil and malevolent. However, I intend to use actual comparisons based on what we know from historical accounts of life in Nazi Germany, as a citizen of Germany, of Europe and as a resident of the death camps. However, I do hope that in my work, that I do not diminish the importance of remembering the Holocaust or the fact that unlike what is depicted in Christian folklore, the Holocaust actually happened. [Read more →]

I am extraordinarily privileged, at least from a global standpoint.  I am free to believe what it is I want and pursue opportunities as I see fit, with relatively minimal threat to my person.  I do not have to worry about being tortured because I am thought a witch, nor do I have to worry about being killed or disfigured by my family and community in an effort to control my sexuality.  I am not (usually) accosted or assaulted while protesting or engaging in activism.  My family did not withdraw social or financial support when I came out as an atheist, nor when my man and I moved in together without the benefit of “marriage”.  I can freely associate with the LGBTQ community, and can support their fight for equality without danger to my person.  These are assumptions that might be dangerous and unrealistic elsewhere in the world, especially for minority populations.

And that point is driven home with the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda.  I was absolutely floored when I read this opinion piece on the Daily Monitor.  This is someone who feels very strongly that democracy equals the ability to decide minority groups are not human and/or are not afforded protection within their government.  Sadly, this seems to be a widely held belief throughout Uganda and the rest of the world.  Specifically, it seems to be a belief defended by those with a particularly religious outlook:

[Rev. Dr. Fred Mwesigwa] strongly argue[s] that [the Anti-Homosexuality Bill] will be a bold statement about how democratic Uganda is. [Opponents have] a wrong notion of democracy that subscribes to the view that a minority who decide to promote un-African and un-Godly sexual expressions should have their rights safeguarded in a democratic country.

The UN (who does have some recognition that sex and gender should not be focus for discrimination but also doesn’t always do things quite right) recognizes some basic rights as “human rights”; things that cannot be taken away because they are not privileges.  Life is one of those things,as is the right to have a family, and to get married, and to have agency of their person.  This concept – that rights cannot be rescinded by popular vote because it then becomes a privilege — is not one that seems to hit the main-stream consciousness.

I struggle with the idea of making funding to alleviate the AIDS epidemic through PEPFAR conditional upon the adherence to a certain political agenda.  This is a country in an area that has been plagued by colonisation and enslavement of another people who “knew what’s best”.  But I also, as a decent human being, find the political actions being proposed by the Ugandan politicians abhorrent and terrifying.  So I don’t know how to feel that the Obama administration has come out saying that they’re “dialoguing” about it but don’t have plans to make the PEPFAR funding conditional.  I’m not okay with my tax dollars going to support a government that is intent on having

Do basic human rights trump democracy?  If so, how do we go about ensuring that gender identification, sexual orientation, the right to marry, the right to not be killed because you do not conform to a socio-religious standard, the basic human rights that are apparently being debated as such, are recognised?  Does another country have a right to make funding conditional, especially when there is such a history of oppression and exploitation?  I have no fucking clue what the answers are, only what I think they should be.

So, thanks to the generosity of a random tweeter, I have a shiny new Google Wave account.  After inviting the husband (because I HAVE to), I have 7 shiny new invites.  First 7 commenters who call dibs can have.

Edit:  Boy, it sure would be superhelpful for me to include my Waviness for you guys.  MerrieMelodyxx@googlewave.com for all of the gaytheists out there who perhaps would play sudoku/harass me.  I blame the several days in Ohio with family for my lack of thought.

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Update:

Follow @Gaytheists for our formal crap:  links to new posts, event updates (in the future), etc.

Follow the author list at @Gaytheists/gaytheists to creepily stalk the authors individually.

- JRB

I hate all pop culture news, but sometimes a pop icon does something stupid that sparks a reaction that’s relevant to my agenda.  And then I am obligated to grudgingly write a post about these nitwits and the inevitable harm that their decisions cause to the gay rights movement.

That said, the following is an open letter to Adam Lambert.

Dear Mr. Lambert,

Adam, honey, please stop.  I know you’re loving all this media attention, but there is such a thing as bad press and you’re wallowing in it.  Here is what the American public is seeing right now:

Still pictures and muted audio clips, and you can thank your record label for removing all the musical content from your softcore cable porno.  How are you planning on using this stunt to sell your music when no one can hear your music?  But really, none of this is about your music, it’s all about you… which is why you’re revelling in the muck that the media is dragging you through without letting your music speak for itself.

Although, if you did that, what would your music have to say for itself?  “I need to be entertained,” “I’ma work ya ’til you’re totally blown,” “It’s me – I’m a freak,” “I never felt so satisfied,”  “I just wanna listen to music again,”  “I’ve had enough/Searching for love/But I miss the touch/Of someone new…”  It’s all about you!

Okay, Adam, dear.  You have our attention.  What do you want?

You want to out-weird Lady Gaga so we’ll buy your new album, you say?  Well, Adam, I might steal your music, but I’m definitely not going to pay you for it.  It hurts my head to listen to.  Plus, I’m buying Lady Gaga’s new album The Fame Monster on Friday because her piano shoots fireballs when she smashes vodka bottles on it.  Sorry, kiddo.

So, at least for me, your stunt didn’t work, and until you tell your lawyers to let the audio play on the YouTube videos of the AMAs, it won’t work for anyone.  We can’t hear your music, we can only see you acting like a male prostitute with syphilis-induced brain damage.  Thanks to shows like Mad Men, Glee, Desperate Housewives, Will & Grace, Queer Eye…, Modern Family, and a slew of other programs on almost every TV network, “gay shit” no longer has the sucker-punch power of, say, a crazy tramp shattering vodka bottles on a piano THAT! IS! ON! FIRE!!!  No one is going to see you sucking face with an emaciated keyboardist who has a Flock of Seagulls haircut and immediately forget that almost every one of your “money notes” in the song were flat and that you were unable to successfully follow real divas like Whitney Houston and Mary J. Blige.  It didn’t work for Madonna/Christina/Britney, and it won’t work for you.  Dry-humping a man’s face and carrying leather-clad women around by their lady-parts while confusing everyone in the nation about your sexuality is not going to peddle your wares.  You’re just the mediocre Cher to Lady Gaga’s glorious Madonna.

But, since you now see why your intended, selfish consequences of this stunt won’t pan out, let’s take a look at the consequences that did pan out.

Because of your gallivanting around with leather pants and Heat Miser haircut, fondling everything around you that has a pulse and shoving faces into your junk, no one in the country cares any more about the struggle for gay rights.  Where last week the news covered marriage and adoption as their major focuses on gay culture, this week, the media can only talk about one gay thing:  Adam Lambert’s publicity stunt.

Your selfishness took all emphasis off of equality in the media’s coverage of LGBT affairs and changed it into cheap self-promotion, causing the media to temporarily ignore the fight for our rights and causing the public to view your performance as an example of how gay people of our generation act.

And now, with people ignoring positive people in the gay movement like Dan Savage, Barney Frank and Andrew Sullivan, all the news about how gay people live and what we do is being given by you.  Do you know how many straight people have asked me since your little romp at the AMAs if gay people actually think shit like that is normal?  I’ll give you a hint:  8.  Seeing as I don’t often talk to straight guys, that’s a surprisingly large number.  People watched your act and, without real gay people to tell them that’s not how most gay people act, they assume that we’re all the Elton John 2.0 (Twice the glitz and half the talent!) that you’ve styled yourself to be.

For once, Adam, can’t you use your fame to promote equality instead of promoting yourself and harming the cause of equality?

No, I highly doubt you can.

As a gay man in the spotlight, you put yourself in the position of having to make a choice:  Do you want to help the rest of us secure our rights or do you want to send a big “Fuck you” to the gay community and lose half of your fanbase?  Stop harming us who are trying to make a serious case for our rights.  Stop reinforcing the stereotypes that have taken us so long to whittle away to almost nothing.

Fuck off.

Sincerely,

John Reed Braden,
A pissed-off homo

And, Adam, next time you go to scrub the gratuitous amounts of eyeliner off your face, do this into the mirror:

=

Here’s the new Symphony of Science video featuring Carl Sagan,Richard Dawkins, Michio Kaku and Robert Jastrow: