Also, gray area bigotry like this is the most frightening. it basically says: "Gosh, I hate fags too, but the death penalty seems too extreme. I feel uncomfortable when my own aggressive ignorance comes to its natural conclusion before my thoughtless eyes." Call me crazy, but I like my bigots out in the open where I can see them.
I finishing a wonderful novel entitled Lord Dismiss Us by Michael Campbell. It's the story of two boys in love at Weatherhill, a fictitious English boys' school, during the 1960's. Actually, the school is rampant with homos and the antagonist of the book is a pernicious new headmaster and his wife who have come to Weatherhill to stamp out vice and immorality.
The language is super flowery and over-the-top and the plot points are very soap opera-ish. I ADORE IT. I especially love the head master's tarhearted daughter, Lucretia, who is obsessed with raising rabbits and spies on the boys and then sells the information to her mother. She's constantly scowling and skulking behind trees, just like a character from Gossip Girl. And I don't think I need to point out what a beautiful name Lucretia is.
The love story between the two boys is highly entertaining, like something a twelve-year-old girl fantasizes about. Still, I can't help but feel pulled in by it. Probably because I'm simple minded. I love this exchange. Picture two boys in cricket whites with English accents, hiding in a cathedral during a rain storm:
"Oh, I do love you. I love you, my darling. Don't be shy, look at me. Do you love me?" "Yes."
"Do you swear?"
"Yes."
The Boyfriend and I rarely, if ever, speak to each other this way.
If only I had the edition with this cover:
I've decided to wear more black this next year, and this illustrated boy is my inspiration. I'm so sad that I'm almost finished. I need more over-the-top romanticism! what should I read? Peyton Place? VC Andrews?
You'll have to excuse me, but I don't particularly feel like writing about obscure 80's New Wave or fashion atrocities right now. I'm still reeling from the piss poor decision the cowards of the New York Senate made this week.
I stumbled upon a really great blog written by one half of a married gay couple in California (one of the 18,000 that got legally married before Proposition 8 passed and gets to stay married.) He writes about gay rights in the context of America's history of affording rights to other minorities, and far more eloquently than I have been. Hell, I've just been writing "I hate America."
The whole post, and really the whole blog, is worth reading, but here's is what I loved so much:
We
are rightly known for our great freedoms and opportunity, but we guard
those benefits jealously; we do not like to share them. We shut our
borders to the needy who ask would come to us, we turn our backs on the
starving and the sick in faraway parts of the world, we ignore those in
our own cities who are so poor and downtrodden that they can no longer
even dream of the better life which the rest of us believe is our
birthright.
Really, is it any wonder that, when handed the
opportunity to shut down someone else’s dream at no cost to themselves,
our lawmakers jump at the chance? Is it any wonder that, offered the
chance to make themselves feel better by pushing down another group and
curtailing its rights, the majority of voters across the country do not
behave according to their best impulses, but immediately fall back into
their most shallow, fearful, selfish selves and vote against us?
For
the record, no group has ever been awarded rights by popular vote.
That’s right: the majority of us, no matter what we say in polls or
after the fact, has never once, in 234 years, willingly shared our
freedoms with any minority group. If Emancipation had been put to the
popular vote, do you think we would have given up buying and selling
human beings? Of course not — we love to have power over one another,
and besides, slavery was a great economic engine.
If mixed-race
marriage had needed the approval of the staid white masses, do you
think they'd have given it? Don’t be ridiculous. The same arguments
which are levied against gay marriage now were used for interracial
couples in just a few decades ago: against God's law, a redefinition
that betrays tradition, and — our ultimate bugaboo — bad for the
children. Sorry folks! Stick to your own color or stay single!
So
when it comes right down to it, getting upset over the New York Senate
vote against gay marriage this week just seems pointless. They behaved
callously, selfishly, and foolishly. But the truth is that all too
often such bad behavior is — no matter how many glowing, hopeful
patriotic speeches we make — the American Way.
I won't put words into his mouth, because he seems much more patriotic than I am and a hell of a lot nicer. It just reflects what i've been thinking about over the past year or so. Bill Maher has talked about it a lot on his show as well. To paraphrase: maybe America has the governemnt it deserves because when you get right down to it, we're just not a good people, plain and simple.
I briefly attended the incredibly frustrating rally in Time Square last night. I stayed for as long as I could take it, but honestly I'm sick to death of these prescribed and police accepted forms of protest. They have accomplished nothing. What good did it do to march around in a police approved circle last night? Also, tourists kept coming up to us and taking our picture.
People were laughing at us. That is how effective the protest was.
I'd really like to engage in guerrilla tactics and civil disobedience, but I'm not sure how or what to do. Quite frankly, I was in the mood to riot, not chant cute slogans like, "2-4-6-8! All these tourists can't be straight!" I know that some people feel that this behavior would hurt our cause, but our movement started with a riot. And, frankly, if the gays had torn up Manhattan last night, Manhattan had it coming.
I did contact the eight democratic senators who voted no on Marriage Equality, including Monseerate who slashes girls faces with broken bottles, and Joseph Addabbo, whose no vote was of particular annoyance being that gay money put him in office.
What should we do? Start targeting people's weddings? Chelsea Clinton's upcoming wedding would be a good place to start.
What would happen if The Boyfriend and I had a ceremony and just started calling each other husbands? What would be the legal ramifications of us filinbg our taxes as married, and then maybe not paying them if they made a problem for us? What if we filled out all paperwork as married? And then what if lots of gay couples in New York did the same?
There is another rally in Union Square tonight at 6:00. I'll be there. As frustrating as they are, it's better to go then to do nothing.
Still no marriage equality in New York. Thanks for nothing, senators.
My heart is broken.
I can't take much more of this.
UPDATE: here is a list of the Senators along with how they voted. (one of the surprise "nos" is Monserrate, who cut up his girlfriend's face. Clearly he knows all about godly relationships.) I'm going to try and find their address and phone numbers. FUCK. WITH. THEM.
Adams - Yes. "(H)oping New York State comes out of the closet and
understands that all Americans deserve the right to marry and love…this
is about love."
Addabbo - No.
Alesi - No.
Aubertine - No.
Bonacic - No.
Breslin - Yes.
DeFrancisco - No
Diaz Sr. - No.
Dilan - Yes.
Duane - Yes.
Espada Jr. - Yes. "Yes to this bill and to as many do-overs as we need to bring it home."
Farley - No.
Flanagan - No.
Foley - Yes.
Fuschillo - No.
Golden - No.
Griffo - No.
Hannon - No.
Hassell-Thompson - Yes.
Huntley - No.
C. Johnson. Yes.
O. Johnson. - No.
Klein - Yes.
L. Krueger - Yes.
C. Kruger - No.
Lanza - No.
Larkin - No.
Lavalle - No.
Leibell - No.
Libous - No.
Little - No.
Marcellino - No.
Maziarz - No.
McDonald - No.
Monserrate - No.
Montgomery - Yes.
Morahan - No.
Nozzolio - No.
Onorato - No.
Oppenheimer - Yes.
Padavan - No.
Parker - Yes. "This is the right thing to do, and we should do it now. I proudly vote 'aye'."
Thanksgiving was beautiful and I'm back to work and feeling renewed. The Boyfriend and I had ten people over and managed to throw together a lovely Thanksgiving meal. Now, here are four things I'd like to bring your attention to:
1. I watched the beautiful french musical, Love Songs, or Les chansons d'amour if you're so inclined. It made miss miss Paris so hard. It's still my fantasy to live there somehow. Too bad it's near impossible. Anyhow, it's a beautiful film with hot boy-on-boy action and it stars this hot piece:
The music is stunning and at a lot of moments it really reminded me of one of my favorite films of all time, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Here is the trailer:
2. I'm so in love with this San Francisco band, Girls, and their single "Lust for Life."
"The Girls" was always one of my band names on reserve, in case I ever had one. I won't, so I'm glad to gift it to them, sans "the."
The video is also adorable. The dude with the short hair who mouths the lyric "maybe if I really try with all of my heart..." is super cute.
I love New York a lot, but I'm a West Coast boy at heart. I would love to live in San Francisco, but I'm afraid that I wouldn't be able to find a job there.
3. I wrote an episode of Hooray! Confidence. This is a web series that my friend Nikole and I want to make about two alcoholic, hateful, loser shut-ins who embark on a journey of self-improvement. It'll be kind of a ghetto Absolutely Fabulous. Or something? Anyway, fun stuff! details to come.
4. Episode One of my soap opera, Sinking Hearts, is finished. I don't want to say much about it yet, but inspirations include Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and The Metamorphasis by Kafka.
I might make fun of people's clothes from time to time, but one needn't look too hard to see who the truly tarhearted Americans are. They're the ones pretending to be the most pious, though if they spent half of the time and resources helping the poor or healing the broken ecosystem as they do stripping civil rights from fellow Americans and tormenting women, America wouldn't be the hell hole of primitive minded lardos that it is today.
The radical "christian" right has released their so-called "Manhattan Declaration." (It makes me shiver that this is named after my fair city, by the way.) Here it is in its rotten entirety. The emphasis on particularly cruel or bigoted sections and the most salacious lies are mine.
Let this be a reminder to progressives that the Christian right cannot be given an inch. They seek to create a theocracy by destroying the separation of church and state. They ought have no seat at the national table.
Read it if you can do so without vomiting or crying.
I'm not talking about that annoying English "downtown" Julie Brown with a face like a foot. I'm talking about red headed Julie Brown of Just Say Julie, the greatest MTV show ever, and of hit films such as Earth Girls Are Easy. This one:
I don't know why, but I've been missing Julie a lot lately. I was obsessed with her as a little boy, and even had her record, Trapped in the Body of a White Girl, which contained instant hits like "I Like 'Em Big and Stupid" and "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun."
Apparently, the real Miss Julie got her start in gay clubs. No surprise there. The ego maniacal valley girl character she created for herself was practically a drag queen. And everybody knows the gays are early arbiters of cool (except for approximately half of Americans, who are retarded and don't matter anyway.)
Julie is now on a Canadian soap opera, but it's my new dream to write a play for her. She would be PERFECT for my writing. The above picture feels like a production shot from a Conkel play already. Maybe she could star in the Broadway production of my new play, The Sluts of Sutton Drive.
Let's revisit the magic of Just Say Julie. Shall we?
I am joining the Don't Ask, Don't Give Boycott of the DNC and I would encourage you all to do the same. The Democrats have a long history of making promises to the LGBT community, only to swiftly forget said promises once they've secured our funds and/or votes.
To my straight friends and family, I'm especially talking to you. We need your advocacy really badly. Frankly, I'm not convinced that most of you ever even consider what it's like for gay and lesbian folks. Here's one hint: it's really painful for some of us to sit through your weddings. And that's just a start.
And to those of you who say that equal rights aren't a priority in these difficult economical times when we have two wars going on, I say "so?" Until I have full and equal citizenship in my own country, I couldn't care less what happens to it. I'm not budging. Or voting for Democrats either.
To those who worry that if the gays and their allies' withdrawal of support from the DNC could lead to Republican victories I say, "Yep. That's true." Guess you should work harder for equality now, then.
Oh, and to the Catholics of Washington D.C. who seek to deny equal treatment of your fellow citizens by threatening to cease charity work, you are truly evil and wouldn't know charity if it raped your children. Hell, you didn't even know it when your priests were doing it.
