Blessed Be the Ties that Bind

For my three readers who aren’t acquainted with the very confused soul who answers to the name of Peter LaBarbera, allow me to introduce you.

Peter is the president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (sic) (AFTAH), “a national organization devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda.” AFTAH also claims that it

“seeks to apply the same single-minded determination to opposing the radical homosexual agenda and standing for God-ordained sexuality and the natural family as countless homosexual groups do in promoting their harmful agenda. Americans For Truth is a rare single-issue national group on the other side of this critical ‘culture war’ issue. Meanwhile, there are over a dozen national American ‘gay’ groups with annual budgets ranging from just under $1 million to over $30 million working to advance this agenda — which threatens to criminalize Christian opposition to behavior that most Americans believe is wrong.”

I encourage you to have a look at the AFTAH website. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Seen enough? I certainly have. If you’ve read my posts on elephant you know that the ideas of a “gay agenda” and “culture wars” confuse me. Over the years I’ve asked many gay-haters what they mean when they use those terms, but not a single one has been able to give me a working definition we can all agree on. It’s frustrating, to say the least. Venture even a quick glance at AFTAH’s website and you’ll see both these terms thrown around like confetti at a Rip Taylor opener for Celine Dion.

I never signed up to fight in any culture war, did you? Can you, dear reader, give me a definition of the term that doesn’t make a mockery or a martyr of either side in the struggle? Is the culture war just between the gays and the straights, or are other groups involved as well? Am I going to be forced to engage in this battle forever, or will one side eventually win?

I think about these so-called culture wars a lot. I also think a lot about the war on drugs and the war on terror. All of these fabricated, asinine struggles have issued from the conservative Right. Every last one of them. The pattern stands out like a Judith Leiber clutch purse on Tony night. The semiotics here are dazzling… of the war imagery, not the clutch purse, silly.

I grew up in conservative parts of the country. Ever been to the small mountain towns of Colorado’s Western Slope? Ever been to the Show Me State? Then you have an idea of what I’m talking about. People are always at war against something in these places. They hoot ‘n’ holler when Lee Greenwood plays. They tear up easily whenever they see a yellow ribbon. If they leave these places for larger urban centers they invariably attend mega churches. They seem to have an appreciation for gingham. Growing up I heard these folks pepper their sentences in all seriousness with nigger, spic, gook and faggot. Not words “like” those… those very words! And these were proud, devout Christians! I grew up hearing things in Sunday school like ‘Hitler had the right idea with the faggots; they should all be lined up and shot.’ I crap you negatory, my friends. How did I not repress that memory?

I’ve also lived in relatively progressive parts of the country like Boulder and Chicago, so I’ve been able to make meaningful comparisons. Let’s just say there’s a reason I don’t live in small towns far from big cities anymore. There’s something to be said for an integrated urban neighborhood. It requires residents to educate themselves about the other. It puts the other in full view all the time. An integrated neighborhood promotes mutual understanding, and that leads to acceptance, and that leads to friendship, and that leads to compassion and regard for others’ wellbeing.

What’s unspoken yet implicit here is that in order to get from one point on this continuum to the next, one necessarily has to overcome something: fear of the unknown. It’s just that simple. Don’t let nobody tell ya it ain’t. Fear makes us do some pretty screwed up shit sometimes. I’d like to direct your attention once again to the AFTAH website and Peter LaBarbera.

Peter has literally built his career around his fear. He has made his life’s work about juxtaposing himself to the other. Peter LaBarbera has chosen to be of service to his nation and his world by promoting the very un-Christian notion that judging others is okay, nay, compulsory if you want to be an upstanding citizen in his God-fearing America. My friends, Peter LaBarbera is a mess!

I’m not going to psychologize Peter’s behavior by saying he’s just in denial of his own latent homosexuality or that he must have been sexually abused as a boy. Many people have already said such things about him, and much worse. Frankly, I find that kind of analysis non-nuanced, boring and plain old unhelpful. I do, however, want to point out the power of fear to motivate and inspire.

As a child, I chose to be baptized because I had heard one too many apocalypto-hellfire-piss-yer-pants-it-burns-so-bad sermons in church. I was scared shitless of hell. So I consciously decided that if not landing there meant I had to get a little wet while other people for whom I bore no respect witnessed the surreal spectacle, I’d go ahead and suffer the humiliation. You know, to cover all my bases. I was nothing if not a logical thinker. I say humiliation because at that age I was painfully shy about being exposed in public. I was mildly traumatized by the boys’ locker room Monday through Friday and I hated getting up in front of people to speak or perform. I literally remember thinking that these church-goers were going to be able to see my scrawny body through the wet baptismal gown and make fun of me. The semiotics here are also dazzling.

As an adult, I recognize that what I feared back then was being outed as a gay boy. And one wet t-shirt was all it would take for my charade to come tumbling down like the walls of Jericho. (By the way, was Joshua always portrayed as a hottie in your children’s bibles like he was in mine?) So you can you imagine, then, how great my fear of damnation was if I decided it would be better to risk being outed (the greatest fear of my life) than face an eternity in hell. Yeah, fear’s a real fuckin’ motivator sometimes.

So I did it. I got dunked in front of all those Christian soldiers and I looked like a fool to any non-religious fly on the wall and I didn’t get run out of town on a rail for being a fag and God was in her heaven and all was still right with the world. Oh, and I’m not going to hell now!

That experience also made me realize something: reality almost never resembles what it looks like in my imagination. And so began my protracted, uphill slog toward emotional, intellectual and psychic maturity. Or at least that’s how I remember it. Who the hell knows what actually happened?

I think back on that time and I’m amazed at how much fear informed the things I did, the things I said, the choices I made, the ways I behaved. I also imagine all those church-goers who saw me get dunked that day still sitting in those pews, still singing the same hymns, still clutching on to the same old notions of heaven and hell, still motivated never to look squarely at the things that scare them, using that particular iteration of Christianity as a shield, putting their heads in the sand beneath the old rugged cross.

Dear God, if there is a heaven, I hope to hell there aren’t any Christians in it.

And that’s the kind of smart remark that gets me in trouble with the Peter LaBarberas of the world. Peter doesn’t understand the events of my life that led me to the place where I can say something like that and still love Jesus. Because I still do, despite all the smack people talked about him while I was growing up. I’ve been courageous enough to take a closer look... at Jesus, at fear, at love, at myself. I use that word hesitantly because it doesn’t feel like courage at all. It feels like a matter of survival.

If I had never questioned the things I was taught growing up, if I were still sitting in that church with all the other Christian soldiers knowing what I know about my homosexuality, I guarantee you I’d be dreaming up ways to off myself in the least painful, yet most dramatic way possible. Imagine me, freshly dead in my mother’s bed, wearing a sheer white chiffon dress, a thin crimson Hermés scarf tied around my neck, a bottle of Valium lying on its side on the powder room vanity, pills strewn about in a trail from the bathroom to the bed where I lie face up staring at the Home Depot Hunter ceiling fan, stigmata forming on my hands and feet. Aaaaand fade to black.

No, Peter doesn’t understand me. I’m complicated. Of course, I don’t understand the events of Peter’s life either, the ones that have led him to this place where he can forge a career out of fear, but there’s a difference. I’ve taken Jesus’ teachings to heart to some degree. I dare say Peter has not. I endeavor not to harm others by projecting my fear onto them. I try very hard to keep my heart open to all people who cross my path, not to judge them, to get to know them, to hear their stories in the name of cultivating compassion for them. When I fall short, I try to forgive myself and move forward with more awareness of my judgmental tendencies. In doing so for myself, I learn how to make allowances for others. And Peter’s the one who calls himself a Christian.

This August 5th through the 7th, Americans For Truth is holding its first ever Truth Academy to train youth ages 14 to 25 how to fight the gay agenda. AFTAH claims Truth Academy will be a three-day intensive that will
“bring together some of the country’s leading pro-family experts on homosexuality to teach both young and old how to answer the lies and myths that so readily emanate from the ‘GLBT’ (‘gay’) camp.”

Slated to appear at Truth Academy is a veritable who’s who of gay-haters and conversion therapy fetishists. Here’s the lineup.

Robert Knight, Coral Ridge Ministries
Ryan Sorba, Young Conservatives of California
Prof. Robert Gagnon, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Prof. Rena Lindevaldsen, Liberty University Law School
Matt Barber, Liberty Counsel
Laurie Higgins, Illinois Family Institute
Greg Quinlan, Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays

Read just a little about each of these characters and you’ll have a good sense of what the event holds in store for all the poor little bastards forced to attend by their homophobic parents. The only thing worse than having to sit through this fear-based, uninformed, bigoted, hypocritical horse shit at all is having to sit through it for three freakin’ days.

Don’t underestimate the psychic damage that will be done to many, many young people over the course of this torture fest. Peter LaBarbera bills it as a reversal of decades of “pro-gay brainwashing” in schools and popular culture. He’s very excited about the whole thing.

Peter gets so excited about de-programming gays from deviant sexual behavior, in fact, that he makes the ultimate sacrifice on occasion. He travels to BDSM and leather sex venues like the Folsom Street Fair and gay bath houses across the land to takes pictures. He then posts those pictures on the AFTAH website to show Christian soldiers everywhere what they’re up against in the culture war. Check it out.

Dirty, dirty gays.

Creeped out yet?

No? How about now?

You get the point.

Just so we’re clear, I find the spectacle of naked bodies walking down a public street scintillating and beautiful. Male and female! I find the idea of public displays of sexual behavior in an age-appropriate context exciting and fascinating. I think group sex among consenting adults in the privacy of a D.C. hotel room is a bang-up idea. Doesn’t matter if it’s all men, all women, men and women, inter-sexed, transgendered.... If it offends you, don’t go! It’s just that simple. Don’t let nobody tell ya it ain’t.

People… Peter posts this stuff on a “pro-family” Christian website. If it’s “pro-family,” it stands to reason children will be looking at it. The issues LaBarbera writes about and the photos and videos he posts have to be viewed in an age-appropriate context. Anything else is child sexual abuse, in my humble opinion.

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently listed AFTAH as a hate group in response to heavy lobbying by the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network. Personally, I wish there were such a thing as ‘fear groups’. It’s a much more apt moniker for groups like AFTAH.

I totally get that the Peter LaBarberas of the world don’t feel like they come from a place of hate when they espouse their prescriptions for a moral society. I believe them when they say they’re out to save people. The problem is, they’re wearing the emperor’s new clothes. And George Rekers is the emperor’s poster child.

Lately, every time I hear a right-wing evangelical type attack gays and lesbians in a public forum, I start my countdown clock: T-minus sixty seconds before the highway patrol discovers him in a car under an overpass with a boy’s dick in his mouth. You can set your watch by it. See also Pastor Ted Haggard. If you don’t want to Google his name, just type in “drug-fueled gay trysts.”

Who do these people think they’re fooling? Who are they trying to convince?

Listen, Peter, George, Ted, I know what it’s like to live with so much fear that it clouds your judgment. I know how that fear can kill your mind and make you believe black is white and good is bad. In a world paralyzed by fear, you can turn the most beautiful thing in the world into a corrupt, horrible, monster. But have hope, my friends, because Jesus saves! He saved my wretched ass. And he can save yours, too. Blessed be the ties that bind.

I’m not going to psychologize your behavior because I don’t care if you’re gay or straight. I have a feeling God doesn’t give a shit either. Now, I won’t pretend to speak for God, but my prayer for you is that one day you’re able to see this beautiful, mixed up, paradoxical world through lenses other than fear. My prayer for you is that you might be capable one day of ceasing projecting your fear onto others, hurting them deeply in the process. My prayer for you is my ongoing prayer for myself.

I think I love you, Steve King (R-IA)

Ah, the merry, merry month of May. Spring is in full bloom. So are fear and ignorance in Washington. This month I witnessed another unabashed display of willful, harmful ignorance and fear on the part of social conservatives. This time it was about sexual orientation and gender identity and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Two weeks ago in an interview with gay-obsessed Family Research Council president, Tony Perkins, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) expounded upon his opposition to ENDA by saying that employers only discriminate against gays and lesbians because “they wear their sexuality on their sleeve.” He went on to put glitter and day-glo streamers on the depth of his ignorance and fear by adding, “If you don’t project it, if you don’t advertise it, how would anyone know to discriminate against you?”Ugh. This again? It’s like saying you’d have more black friends if they just didn’t act so… black.

This brought up some pretty strong feelings in me. I wanted to put them in a song and serenade Steve beneath his D.C. bedroom window. But I thought I’d probably get myself shot and, at any rate, I refuse to subject anyone to my singing, even Steve King. You see, I’m a nice person who takes others’ feelings into account before I speak and act… and sing. So I sat with this for a good long while before deciding, instead, to write him a letter that I thought might actually be helpful. In the process, I discovered a soft spot in my heart for the man I didn’t know was there. Or maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome. Whatever. I’m sharing it with you here. Steve doesn’t know, though, so please don’t say anything to him. I think he’d be pretty embarrassed if he knew this was out there....

Dear Representative Steve King, Republican from the Great State of Iowa,

Hi. How are you? I’m fine. I hope you are, too. You’ve been on my radar a lot lately. I think it’s because of those pesky gay activists. They seem miffed and a little confused by your comments about us wearing our sexuality on our sleeve. You know, Steve (can I call you Steve?), I’m a lover, not a fighter. I am dead-dog tired of these “culture wars” you talk about so much. I never signed up to fight in them. Know what else? It seems like just when I’ve started to forget about them, you drag matters up again, like a dog with a bone. Well, more like a cute little puppy with a bone. Or... whatever.

Hey, what if the nation held a culture war and nobody showed up? JK! LOL! I’m crazy! But I do wonder if it wouldn’t free up a lot of your energy to do good things for your constituents. As it stands, I’m worried about them. I heard what you said to Tony Perkins about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act a couple of weeks ago. I know Tony’s your friend and all, but you’re hurting your constituents when you say stuff like that, Steve. Not to mention postponing the inevitable.

I’m a gay man who’s been pretty lucky in life. First off, I’m a man (duh! lol!). Secondly, I’m a white man. Then there’s the fact that I was raised in a middle-class household and went to college and got a Master’s degree. I’ve had it much easier than a lot of my brothers and sisters out there. I know this because, as a gay man, I’ve also been on the receiving end of discrimination. So I recognize it more readily when it affects others. I know what it feels like to be judged purely on the basis of who I am, on realities I have no control over and no ability to change. So I have a different perspective on discrimination than it appears you do, my educated, Caucasian brother. Mine is subtler and more nuanced. Yours is kinda blunt. That’s not good for a political career. Just ask George W.

The ENDA legislation would accomplish one thing and one thing only. It would make it illegal to engage in discriminatory employment practices against ANY person on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity for civilian and non-religious employers with more than 15 employees. That’s it. It’s pretty simple. This thing isn’t new, Steve. It’s been introduced in every Congress but one since 1994, minus the gender identity piece. That’s just in there this time because we’re acting more uppity than usual these days. You know the old saying… Give em an inch!

I work at a Chicago-based LGBTQ organization with 200 employees. We would be required to abide by the ENDA legislation if it ever makes it to the President’s desk. That means we wouldn’t be able to discriminate against a straight man like you, Steve, if you ever came to us asking for a job. I think that’s a good thing, don’t you? As it stands now, I could totally tell you we weren’t hiring you because you’re a breeder and you’d be powerless to do anything about it. JK! You know you’re my BFF!

I’ve been to your Congressional webpage. I’ve read your ideas there. Man, you sure are against an awful lot of stuff. It’s kind of a drag to read after a while. Can’t you please talk about something positive now and then? When I start to glaze over at all the negativity, I have to remind myself to go back to your picture at the top of the page. Okay, I’m just going to say this and get it out of the way.
Girl, you have the most gorgeous blue eyes! I could get lost in those robin’s eggs for days! Don’t be shy, now. You know you have pretty eyes. Don’t hide them. Show off what the good Lord gave you! LOL!

Anyhoo… when you do, try this little game I like to play. Imagine you’re in a different world, one where people despised you and were mean to you all the time because you had blue eyes. How nightmarish to imagine a life where you were constantly in fear of your brilliant blue eyes being discovered. What would you do to hide the fact? How would you convince the world that your eyes weren’t that awful (and by “awful” I mean “heavenly”) shade? Would you wear colored contact lenses? Would you hide away in your home, isolated from a world that didn’t affirm you, where you never saw healthy images of yourself reflected back to you on TV, on billboards, in print, on the internet? One thing’s for sure. You’d waste a lot of energy worrying about it and trying to keep it a secret, energy that could be used for much more constructive purposes, like serving Iowans.

Eventually you’d have to go outside, though. Sooner or later one of those contact lenses would pop out in public revealing your icy, azure, sublimely blue eyes. You’d be caught. The innate blue-eyed wonder of YOU would reveal itself, beyond your control, against your steeled will. The veil would drop and your true nature would claim its birthright: TO BE… openly and unashamedly in the world just as you are, beautiful with dreamy, blue eyes till Tuesday. OMG! I can’t believe I just said that! I’m such a freak!

Hey Steve, did you know that years ago I used to see a lot of personal ads by men-seeking men who would describe themselves as “straight-acting.” I sort of understood this, but it also used to confuse me. It’s not hard to understand why a guy might want to “act straight” so as not to be recognized in public as the giant homo that he is. I get it. I spent more than 20 years trying to do it, albeit not very convincingly. What confused me, though, was the description itself. I mean, please, “straight-acting?” I think any guy who sucks dicks is pretty “gay-acting.” Am I right? ROTFLMAO!

As I got a little older, I developed a relationship with my own internalized homophobia, shame and self-hatred. Once I realized I had been trained to hate myself and had even colluded in the process, I understood what describing oneself as “straight-acting” really is. It’s a survival mechanism. Don’t believe me? Ask Matt Shepard. Oh wait, you can’t. Two straight guys killed him in 1998. Maybe if he’d been a little more “straight-acting” he’d still be here and you could ask him all about survival mechanisms. What do you think, Steve? (sad trombone)

In your interview with Tony Perkins you said, “This [ENDA] is the homosexual lobby taking it out on the rest of society and they are demanding affirmation for their lifestyle, that’s at the bottom of this.”

I like you, Steve, and I want to help you think straight about this, so let’s look closely at that statement as a way of working toward mutual understanding.

For the sake of clarity, I would like very much for you to define “homosexual lobby,” mister. Because unless you’re referring to the lobby of the Chicago Palmer House Hilton during the annual International Mister Leather convention and expo, that term means nothing to me or anybody else. Referring to LGBTQ folks as the “homosexual lobby” just makes us the “other” in your culture war. It certainly has no foundation in any reasonable person’s understanding of reality. It’s just faulty thinking, Steve, and faulty thinking can be the death knell for a political career. It goes hand-in-hand with non-nuanced interpretations of the world.

Then there’s the “taking it out on the rest of society” bit. Assuming I’m part of the “homosexual lobby” you speak of, what exactly is “it” that I’m “taking out” on the “rest of” you? You need to be clear about that, Steve. Otherwise, you leave your listeners to fill in the blanks themselves. I’ll assume you mean I’m taking my anger out on you. Isn’t that what people usually “take out” on others? Perhaps it’s my frustration or my confusion or my sadness and grief. Those all work well with the definition, too. Oh, Mr. King… lord knows I’d have reason enough to take all that out on you if I considered myself a victim. But that’s a conversation for another day. JK!

Let’s move on to the last part of your sentence: “they are demanding affirmation of their lifestyle.” Heavy, heavy sigh, Steve. How many times do you have to be told this before you get it? Vegetarianism is a lifestyle. Belonging to a country club is a lifestyle. Being gay is not.

Lifestyles are predicated upon choice, either conscious or unconscious. I choose to eat meat. I choose to pay exorbitant monthly dues so I can hang out in the men’s locker room at the club. Being gay is no more a lifestyle than having blue eyes. It is not a choice, Steve. Until you can understand this fundamental truth, until you and I can start our conversations with this truth as our common logical ground, any communication between us is going to look and feel like a culture war. I don’t want to fight with you anymore, Steve.

And as for needing to have affirmation from society… Okay. I’ll give you that one. But my question for you is, “And????” We all need that. Even you, Steve. The problem is, you get it with every dollar you spend, in every personal interaction you have and with every breath you take. In your America you are so entitled to unquestioned affirmation as a straight, white man that you don’t even see it. It’s literally the air you breathe. You can’t honestly fault the rest of us for wanting the same thing, Steve. Not unless you’re a complete and total asshole. I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. I want to like you. No, let me be clear. I really want to like you.

Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered persons, queers, inter-sexed people, straights…. None of us walks around wearing our sexuality on our sleeve. Do you? Of course you don’t. You just walk around and breathe and talk and work and play and contribute and take and love and fight and grieve and dance and sleep and eat and pee and poop, same as the rest of us. And like me, you walk around with blue eyes. Nothing you can do to change that. Not that you’d ever want to. Your eyes are pretty, Steve, like the pool on the Lido Deck of a Disney cruise ship.

The country is changing, Steve. I know you know this. I also know how hard it can be to work with big changes. Trust me, I KNOW. It’s not easy waking up one day and realizing that nothing is what you thought it was, that you’ve been deceived and that you’ve been deceiving yourself all these years. That’s one hell of a kick in the nuts. It’s okay. Take a few deep breaths and find your happy place. It’ll feel much better once it stops hurting. If I were with you right now, I’d totally hold you, BFF.

Once you’ve calmed down, take a look at this recent ABC/Washington Post poll. Turns out three-quarters of the people they asked are in favor of letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the armed forces. People are much more accepting of us than they used to be. It’s obvious. In fact, even better, I hear fewer people speaking about the issue in terms of acceptance and more in terms of not really giving a shit one way or the other. I don’t see very many men-seeking men in the personals these days describing themselves as “straight-acting” either. I see a lot of (relatively) healthy images of myself reflected back at me in popular culture, too. I mean, admit it. It’s becoming harder and harder to find a hit TV show that DOESN’T have gays and lesbians in it. I consider all these things a triumph of the heart. I wish you would, too, Steve.

When I hear you talk about me “projecting” and “advertising” my sexuality, I can’t help but think you’re afraid of effeminate men, or maybe it’s masculine women, or perhaps it’s anyone who displays gender-variant behavior of any kind. How many LGBTQ folk do you actually know, Steve? Do you ever invite them over for dinner? Maybe play a round of golf with them at the country club? Sit next to them in church? Maybe you should. Familiarity leads to acceptance leads to understanding leads to the end of the culture wars, Steve. Hallelujah! Let’s catch a movie some time! Dutch treat, of course. Unless you want me to pay. Because I totally would.

I see your swagger on the House floor on CSPAN. Hell, I can hear it in your voice on the radio. Why are masculine men like you so afraid of the effeminate ones? I’ve thought about this for many years and when I drill down to the bottom of that rabbit hole, there are only two answers that make sense. You’re either gay yourself (oh please, oh please, oh please) and scared shitless of being found out, or you just have a deep-seated fear of being penetrated. Either way, you’re afraid all gay men are gonna want to have sex with you.

In your dirty place.

Uhhhh… conceited much? Just because you’re a powerful, white man doesn’t mean everybody wants to be you… or be in you, as it were. But I’m getting sidetracked now. See? That’s what happens when I start talking about man-sex, you little tease. LOL! ZOMG! Can you believe I said that?!

What I’m trying to say is, please summon up enough courage to take a mean, hard look at that fear. When you do, you’ll find it’s just like any other fear. It dries up and blows away when you stare it down. Take a deep breath. Not all gay men want to have sex with you, Steve. Okay, I do, but not all gay men want to. There, I said it. It’s out there now so let’s just move on. (OMG, I’m so embarrassed right now.)

The world is changing, Steve, and you’re not. Words like ‘mass-extinction event’, ‘dust bin’ and ‘trash heap of history’ come to mind. Your fear is hurting you, Steve. It’s also hurting your constituents. I thought you had learned after 9-11 that great leaders never lead by stoking fear in the people. They lead by reaching out and forming connections between groups who wouldn’t otherwise reach out to one another. They lead by assuring people that their fears are nothing, just the ghosts of their pasts. They lead by example, by facing their own fears and conquering them. They lead out of love and their life’s purpose to serve others.

Until you realize this, your fellow Iowans are suckling desperately at your teat and getting nothing but black, poisonous milk. Is that the kind of mother you want to be? I don’t think so. I know you have a heart as big as your eyes are blue. I love you, Steve. (OMG, I’m so nervous right now!!) I want what’s best for you. I’ll be here for you if you want to talk on the phone some night, if you need a shoulder, an ear. Your secrets are safe with me. I would never take advantage of your vulnerability, Steve. Please believe that.

I bought you a ring. I can’t wait to see if it fits!

Call me!

Love,

Kert

I come home wanting to touch everyone

The dogs greet me, I descend
into their world of fur and tongues
and then my wife and I embrace
as if we'd just closed the door
in a motel, our two girls slip in
between us and we're all saying
each other's names and the dogs
Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs,
people-style, seeking more love.
I've come home wanting to touch
everyone, everything; usually I turn
the key and they're all lost
in food or homework, even the dogs
are preoccupied with themselves,
I desire only to ease
back in, the mail, a drink,
but tonight the body-hungers have sent out
their long-range signals
or love itself has risen
from its squalor of neglect.
Everytime the kids turn their backs
I touch my wife's breasts
and when she checks the dinner
the unfriendly cat on the dishwasher
wants to rub heads, starts to speak
with his little motor and violin--
everything, everyone is intelligible
in the language of touch,
and we sit down to dinner inarticulate
as blood, all difficulties postponed
because the weather is so good.

-Stephen Dunn

Why We Hate

One reason we hate is that we don't see the full force of the other's situation. When I can't feel compassion whether I'm fighting with my partner or listening to a news item on the radio—I can ask myself, "What is it I don't understand?" The more thoroughly we can understand the source of pain—causing actions, the more we personalize the supposed evildoer rather than being caught in projection and assumption, which generally breed more misunderstanding and hatred.

- Diana Winston

Taking Off Emily Dickenson's Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

- Billy Collins

Being with Yourself

The practice is being with yourself, with actually sitting down and being in that space.... When you sit down, all that you’re exposed to is your own mind, there is nothing else. It’s no different really from being in retreat. I’m not trying to claim anything here. It’s just a natural process. You sit with your mind and in the beginning you don’t have much patience, and after years and years of doing this work patience begins to develop. Just to remain in that space and to let things arise and fade without having to grasp at them makes one realize that everything is already here, that no higher teaching is needed or to be grasped at. Things just come and go. It’s an endless process that goes on and on, and probably even after a thousand years it will keep going on like that.

– Robert Beer

My Sincere Letter of Support to GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN (R)

Dear GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN (R), of California’s 18th District,

Kudos, sister!  You came out of the closet as a gay man on Monday. I'm so proud of you!  “I am gay,” you told conservative talk show host Inga Banks. “ And so, those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long.” Brava, chica!  Congratulations!  Shame on you!  I'm with you all the way!

As a rite of passage in the life of a gay man, coming out is a watershed moment, for sure. It takes a herculean mustering of will and courage for gay men to be ourselves in a society that would prefer us otherwise.  I understand the shame and emotional anguish you surely felt in coming out as a gay man.  I do.  I have compassion for you in the midst of this very challenging time.  I get it.  I understand internalized shame, even hatred.  I wish we lived in a world where whom we love didn’t matter, where love could be love could be love, dude. I so do.

I see you, ROY ASHBURN, as the beautiful GAY MAN that you are as you sift through the detritus of your personal life and, now, probably your political career as well.  May you find pleasant comfort as you dance with these gods of disruption.  No doubt you’ll come out on the other side of this experience a very different person, more fully yourself for having been through the crucible.  It’s gonna be some journey, dude.  The ship has sailed and there’s no turning back.  I’m with you all the way, my brother.  I want what’s best for you.  I'm being serious!

Hold on, though, GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN.  You’ve had your sugar.  Now it’s time to take your medicine.  As people smarter than George W. Bush everywhere will tell you, it ain’t never that easy.  One moment of honesty does not win you a get-out-of-jail-free card.  Okay, your honesty was refreshing, but dude, this whole thing stinks of death and decay.  And I’d like to tell you why.  It’ll give you something to ponder on your oceanic travels.

Throughout your career as a state legislator, you've been vehemently anti-gay.  You were in favor of Proposition 8, dude.  You do realize it was an initiative that defined marriage as a heterosexual union in your State’s constitution, effectively trumping a California Supreme Court ruling that legally afforded all of us equal access to the institution, right?  Okay, I’ll admit it appears citizens in your district voted overwhelmingly in favor of Prop 8, and, true-to-form, you defended your anti-gay record during Monday’s interview, saying, “I felt my duty, and I still feel this way, is to represent my constituents.”  But you're missing the obvious point, dude.

The voters of the 18th District, they’re not your constituents.  They’re some other fictitious dude’s constituents.  That guy’s a family man who once had a beautiful wife.  He has four lovely daughters.  He’s a lady’s man, a smooth-talkin’, cigar-smokin’, locker room schmoozin’, pussy-trollin’ power broker from up Sacramento way.  That's the guy constituents in the 18th District voted for. That's the guy they chose to represent their interests at the State capitol.  Not you. No… not you,  dude.  You’re the LAST person they would choose to represent them.  Dude... you deceived them.

And man, are they PISSED!

Your old friend Randy Thomasson, president of the Christian-based SaveCalifornia.com, said it best in a statement released Tuesday.  “Roy Ashburn should resign.  His lying, cheating ways have boiled over and the public's trust has been shattered.”  Dude, Randy’s right to be pissed off. He's trying to save California.  From whom, you ask?

From the likes of you, GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN, that’s who.

How does it feel to be an enemy of Randy’s State?  How does it feel to know that you helped diminish your own civil rights by pushing legislation that defined you as a second-class citizen, that codified that abuse in your State’s Constitution?  Oh, wait... I guess it’s not really your State anymore, is it, GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN?  It’s Randy Thomasson’s State.  The bewildering thing is, it always has been.  You’re just seeing that now from the outside with your nose pressed up against the glass.  It doesn’t look a thing like it did last week, does it, dude?

You see, Randy Thomasson’s State taxes you without representation, since you are not allowed all the constitutional benefits afforded your straight brothers and sisters in California and in states across the nation. Now you have a real reason to have a Tea Party!  Randy’s State creates, maintains and promotes the social reality where you’ve had to lie, hide, live in constant fear of being discovered, and deceive people by making them believe you’re someone you’re not. Randy’s State props up constructs where, not only do you have to suffer the abuse of others, you have to heap it upon yourself as well.  Randy’s State would have you believe you’re an awful, sinful person unworthy of the praise and adulation you’ve become so accustomed to.  Randy’s State tells you that if the world finds out who you REALLY are, it will reject you, chastise you, ostracize and deny you all the power and wealth you’ve accumulated for yourself.

What a fortunate reversal of fortune!

Randy Thomasson and his fundamentalist ilk are hateful, cruel, abusive pricks.  But then, you already knew that, didn't you, GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN?  You've been working with people like him for many years, cutting country club smoking lounge deals to deny gay citizens their rights, feeding a culture of homophobia where the abusers are divinely endowed with the blessing, nay... the righteous DUTY to destroy their enemies.

Well... this is what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that kind of bullshit, GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN.  Let it sink in for a while before you make your next maneuver in these treacherous waters. If you do, it can inform your tack in helpful ways.

Feel the embarassment in your very core.  Feel the shame slice you to the bone.  It's awesome and horrifying and it'll make you feel like you're dying.  Oh, you're not, don't worry.  It just feels like it.  Hang with the torment until it becomes familiar.  Sit with it, shine a bright spotlight on it, observe it from every angle until it becomes your friend.  Yes, I said your friend.  Talk to it, caress it, get close enough to it that it becomes your lover.  That's right, I said your lover.  Live with it for so long that you grow tired of it.  It is very boring after all... a real one-noter.

There will come a day when you realize you've spent one too many evenings with it, watching television in silence, taking it for granted, even forgetting it was there.  That will be the day you can pack it away.  Oh, you'll never be rid of it completely, and that's a good thing.  Because no matter how sick and tired you become of it, you'll always have a bit of appreciation for it somewhere, in some dark corner of the house the two of you shared for so long.  Why?  Because it will be the mother of your most precious child.  And you'll name that child Compassion.  As that child grows, it will teach you a lot about your world, about your gay brothers and sisters, in particular.  It will show you that pain and suffering is the ground you share with every other human being.  It will show you that the only thing that matters in this world is how we treat one another, dear, GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN.

And that will be the day you'll have reached the other shore.

Okay, dude, this is getting way too real.  Sorry.  It's just that I have high hopes for you and, like I said, I really do want what's best for you.  But you've got a lot of hurt to atone for.

This may come as a surprise to you, but I understand how Randy Thomasson feels.  Angry, betrayed, bewildered, shocked, disappointed, vengeful...  You deceived your constituents, dude. That's is SOOOO not cool.  You lied to your gay brothers and sisters, too.  You hurt them in many ways for many years.  But the hardest thing for you to accept (believe me, I know) will be that you lied to yourself, dude.

You lied to "fit in."  You lied to gain wealth, power and notoriety.  You lied so the people who hold the keys to your brand of success wouldn't look at you and say "ewwwwwww."  Your entire political career has been out of integrity since the beginning.  You have led an inauthentic life, GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN.

So I think Randy Thomasson is right in calling for your resignation.  I think it would be a great first step in a new life of integrity.  Step aside and go away to reflect.  Please, dude just go.  Stop trying to convince yourself that your job was to represent the constituents of the 18th District. They are not your constituents.  Dude, your people are all Californians who have ever been beaten down, despised, judged, abused, and denied their rights.  And the bewildering thing is, they always have been.

Representing your constituents is one part of your job.  Wielding power with wisdom, recognizing that what's right may not always be what the majority of your constituents want... that's also part of your job.  Defending those people in your district who are discriminated against, who have no voice of their own, that's also what your state's constitution calls upon you to do.  As a GAY MAN, SENATOR ROY ASHBURN, deep down inside you've always known that.  The difference is now you can't deny it anymore.  Now you have to live and breathe it.  You can be authentic.  You can find true success.  Hell, you can even be a great senator.  Anything less is death and decay.

So congratulations, shame on you, and I'm with you all the way, GAY SENATOR ROY ASHBURN!  These things can exist side by side.  It's not me being contradictory, dude.  No, it's not!  I can hear you now.  Just stop.  This is what it means to have a nuanced, healthy relationship with my brothers and sisters.  Try it.  You'll grow to like it.

And when Randy Thomasson and his minions run you out of town on a rail (and they will), just remember there are people who love and support you.  And never forget that there is such a thing as healthy shame.

Best to you,

Kert Hubin