Someone Help!

MisterC1962

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Thursday July 03, 2014 · 1:36 PM PDT

2014/07/03 · 13:36

I've contracted this serious case of schadenfreude, and it's not diminishing! It's getting worse!

What to do?

For some 411, this.

How Love For Someone He Didn't Even Know Helped Save A Life

MisterC1962

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Sunday June 15, 2014 · 11:02 AM PDT

2014/06/15 · 11:02

Short and sweet, and to the point.

Not much to have to explain here.

Watch David Stevens here...

And then read Alan Digges here.

A Father's Day Story of Hate

MisterC1962

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Friday June 13, 2014 · 12:17 PM PDT

2014/06/13 · 12:17

As you probably already know, this Sunday, June 15 is Father's Day.

My relationship with my father was complicated, but I suppose lots of other people can say that, too. I knew I was gay early on (well, at least as soon as I knew what "gay" meant anyway), and that just made my own situation all the more complicated.

A few years back, I posted my story on a website called I'm From Driftwood. The website explains that The stories on I'm From Driftwood send a simple yet powerful message to LGBTQ people everywhere: You are not alone. I found I'm From Driftwood at a time in my life when I felt particularly alone, so sharing my story was a catharsis of sorts for me. Though I am not proud to say it, I lived many years with a hatred for my father, and--as hatred always does--it almost destroyed me, but only almost.

On this Friday the 13th before Father's Day 2014, I wanted to share again because I just know that someone out there has also lived my life (or a close approximation to it), and needs to know that they're not alone.

And I believe we all could use a reminder of the mighty power of forgiveness.

Somehow, some way, I hope my story speaks to you.

I am the oldest of 5 children. All of us were born on even-numbered years (I lead the way starting in 1962; my first brother was born in 1964; my first sister was born in 1966; my youngest sister was born in 1968; and my youngest brother was born in 1970), and amongst the 5 of us, we were born in 4 different states (Ohio, Florida, California & 2 in Tennessee). Considering the foregoing, I’m sure the 60’s were just a haze of diapers, formula & screaming babies for my parents. Being at least part-time, quasi-Southern Baptists, I think it would be fair to say that my parents were (probably inadvertently) faithful to the biblical directive to “be fruitful & multiply”.

Neither of my parents (both of whom were born in Virginia) graduated from high school. Living most of their young lives in the rural Blue Ridge Mountains in the ‘40s & ‘50s, I’m sure they weren’t alone in that fact. The work available in their neck of the woods during that time was pretty limited & almost always physically-demanding. Though I never got a chance to ask him, I imagine that my father must have dreamed of a world beyond those mountains that offered more than the almost-nothing that was his everyday life back then. I suspect that it was those dreams of what might be in the valley on the other side of that mountain that drove my father’s wandering spirit, which probably accounted for the fact that in no place where we lived during my childhood, did we usually stay longer than about a year.

My mother was 12 years younger than my father. She was/is a thin, quiet, unassuming person who still is sometimes so painfully shy with people she doesn’t know. As her children were born, and her husband worked at least 6 days a week from sunrise to sunset, she was practically alone in the care & feeding of the “young’uns” (in case you weren’t aware, that’s Southern for “kids”). To look at her then (and even now) you couldn’t tell that she was as obviously strong as she is…strong in lots of ways.

My siblings & I didn’t really get to see much of our father as we were growing up. The jobs available to him, back then, offered no sick time & no vacation time, so he had to get up every day & head out to jobs he must have hated before we even awoke in the mornings; many times, we’d be back in bed before he was able to come back home. I can only imagine how broken & defeated he must have felt all those years, knowing that no matter how many hours he worked & no matter how good he was at the job he was doing, his lack of education meant that he would never go far & that he couldn’t properly support his family by himself. For my entire childhood, most of the meals we had were provided by the US government (we lived on Food Stamps at home & free lunches at school. Most times, the Food Stamps didn’t even last us the whole month. We literally had no idea sometimes when our next meal would be—especially on weekends or during the summer, when there was no school).

Looking back at those painfully-unfortunate circumstances through my now-adult eyes, I can see why my father never smiled much, and why he never spent much time with us doing “dad stuff”. He was too tired (both physically & spiritually). He literally gave all he had to the world, and he had nearly nothing to show for it (except a family who counted on him for everything). As a child, though, I could not be so gracious & so understanding. All I knew was that my father didn’t really seem to like being around us. My family may have been bereft of many physical things, and we may never have known the true meaning of “home”, but—for me—it was not the things I could hold in my hands that I missed, it was that vital connection between a father & a child for which my heart sorely longed.

As I grew older, I never grew used to the rootless, joyless impermanence of the life that the fates had seemed to assign us. Coincidentally, I began to realize how “different” I was from the rest of my family (and, as far as I knew, from the rest of the world), and I intuitively knew that I couldn’t risk giving away my secret by getting too close to my siblings, my friends at school, or any other living soul. I couldn’t even figure out myself why I felt the way I felt, so how could I hope to explain it to anyone else? With the near-constant pain of having to leave people & places that I had allowed myself to become close to and what seemed like a loveless family life added to what I saw as the deep, dark secret of my sexual orientation, I began to shut down. It has been said that no man is an island, yet, as a child, I worked diligently at trying to be.

After many years of trying, I was “successful” at building a huge wall around my heart, and I was the consummate actor, playing whatever role I figured the world demanded of me…anything that would throw them off my track. It had gotten to the point that I hidden the real ME for so long, I didn’t even know who that was anymore.

As a young adult, I saw my father grow sicker & weaker as the effects of many years of untreated hypertension had taken its toll on his heart & his kidneys. He never had health insurance, and only finally got treatment for his condition when his headaches got so bad he couldn’t stand it any longer, and he went to the emergency room. Hypertension generally has no symptoms unless it remains untreated, so by the time he got help, it was too late to fix his heart or kidneys. This man, who—I am ashamed to say—I grew to hate because I thought he hated his own children, had worked hard nearly every day of his life went from being a larger-than-life figure to a helpless, pitiful, sad, little man who was in physical pain during most of the last years of his life. He had to travel 40 miles round-trip 3 times a week for dialysis, and he never seemed to recuperate fully from the previous session before it was time for the next one. In the waning years of his life, he knew very little peace and he never got to enjoy his well-deserved retirement after a lifetime of giving all he could give and then some.

Watching my father slowly die, I was forced to examine more closely the complicated relationship that existed between him and me. I felt guilty hating a man who was now in so much pain and who could never seem to come to terms with his own short-comings because he never had many free moments to take stock of what had comprised his life. I decided during his last few months of life that I had to forgive my father for all he was not and—as I came to realize—could not be for my siblings and me. To accomplish this, I had to learn the difference between “forgiving” & “excusing”.

Even now—14 years after his death—I find it difficult to excuse his inability to show his family the version of love that we had expected & deserved, but I forgive him for hurting us, when he worked so hard to give us all he knew to give. I forgave him, too, because I knew that, in my pending post-closet life, which sadly came shortly after his death, I couldn’t afford to carry such a huge burden any more.

The hatred I had for my father truly hurt me more than it probably ever hurt him, and as much as I wanted his pain to mercifully stop, I NEEDED my own pain to stop, too.

Link to my story on I'm From Driftwood: http://imfromdriftwood.com/...

Killing All The Right People

MisterC1962

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Thursday June 12, 2014 · 8:01 PM PDT

2014/06/12 · 20:01

All the way back in 1985, the TV series, Designing Women (huge fan here) produced an episode titled, "Killing All The Right People". In this episode, the fictional design firm of Sugarbakers was hired to decorate the funeral of the character Kendall Dobbs, who was dying of AIDS (as a side note, Kendall was portrayed by Tony Goldwyn, grandson of famous film producer, Samuel Goldwyn).

In the scene included here (link = http://youtu.be/...), Kendall is discussing his plans with the women, and one of their other clients, Imogene Salinger, happens to overhear the conversation, and proceeds to tell Julia Sugarbaker (awesomely played by Dixie Carter) what she really thinks about AIDS and people with AIDS (and it's not pretty):

As far as I'm concerned, this disease has one thing going for it: it's killing all the right people.

Well, if you've never seen an instance of Julia Sugarbaker going off, then (first of all) you've missed some kind of acting, and (second) when you view this clip, you're about to see Julia at her best!

And, one last thing: how awesome that Designing Women took on doing its small part to educate the public about this new disease back in the middle 80s when even the POTUS couldn't seem to find time to even utter the word "AIDS".

Kudos to them!

Oh, here's the transcript of part of Julia's rant. You'll want to see it in writing (the actual rant starts at about the 4:35 mark):

Imogene, get serious! Who do you think you're talking to?! I've known you for 27 years, and all I can say is, if God was giving out sexually transmitted diseases to people as a punishment for sinning, then you would be at the free clinic all the time! And so would the rest of us!

Happy Loving Day!

MisterC1962

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Thursday June 12, 2014 · 5:32 PM PDT

2014/06/12 · 17:32

It's Loving Day!

Today, June 12 marks the 47th Anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling in Loving v. Virginia that state laws prohibiting marriage between two people of different races was a violation of the constitutional right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment. Interestingly enough, Virginia's law only applied to couples in which one of the party's was white.

Richard and Mildred Loving were married in Washington, D.C. in 1958. As improbable as it may seem, the couple recounted that about a month later, after they had returned to their home state of Virginia, police actually busted into their bedroom and inquired of them what they were doing together (apparently the police were called by an upset neighbor). When the couple explained that they were legally wed, they were taken into custody and actually spent time in jail.

When they were brought before a judge, the Lovings were charged with violation of Virginia's Racial Integrity Act, and both were given a one-year prison sentence. The sentence was suspended, though, when they agreed to a plea deal which forbad the couple from physically entering into the state of Virginia together for 25 years...that's right, one quarter of a century!

It took nine long years to appeal their conviction, but on June 12, 1967, SCOTUS unanimously ruled that all state anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.

In the decision that was handed down, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, in part,

The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

To me, there are so many parallels between the fight against the old anti-miscegenation laws and today's fight for equal marriage rights for same-gender couples. The link provided here (http://www.slate.com/...) enumerates those similarities.

Also, in June 2007, on the 40th anniversary of that landmark decision (less than a year before her death), Mildred Loving wrote of her support of marriage freedom for gay people:

I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry... I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Amen, sister!

Happy Loving Everybody! :-)

With Enemies Like This, Who Needs Friends?

MisterC1962

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Tuesday June 10, 2014 · 4:49 PM PDT

2014/06/10 · 16:49

You know, I never cease to be amazed at how the opponents of gay rights in general (and marriage equality for same-sex couples, specifically) all continue to read from the same tired, worn-out page. They seem to relish using scare tactics against the LGBT community that simply wore out long ago. They cling to the old lies like an old dog with a bone, stubbornly refusing to let go. Where their arguments for keeping that Infamous closet door slammed shut and packed with as many of us as it can fit are concerned, the Bible puts it best, "there is nothing new under the sun".

The quotes below just prove that fact in my mind. That's why I included them here. They're just random quotes I found, but when you read some of these words, don't be surprised if you start wondering--like I do--if these people actually live on this planet in the 21st century or not. Their words--if they weren't so sad and hateful--would almost be funny...ALMOST. It's the sentiment that the words portray, though, that is far from funny, and is actually quite disheartening.

To me, the silver lining in all this is that America is apparently listening to and engaging this debate. And I firmly believe that--with the unwitting assistance from our opponents--the public is starting to understand just how simple our demands for equality are. Americans, by and large, seem to be finding fewer and fewer reasons for the government to legally keep us from our due as full-fledged citizens of the United States of America, and just as fellow human beings living on the same little blue marble in space.

Hold on to your hats...it's gonna be a bumpy ride...

1. Rabbi Noson Leiter, of Torah Jews for Decency, explained that Hurricane Sandy hit the northeastern U.S. in late 2012 because New England is "one of the national centers for homosexuality." I'll bet you had no idea where our national center was located, did you? In all seriousness, though, it doesn't sound like much compassion at all for all those people (of course, including children) who aren't of the homosexual persuasion, does it? Organized Religion strikes again.

2. Former singer and spokesperson for Florida Orange Juice, as well as celebrated anti-gay rights crusader from the 1970s, Anita Bryant once warned that "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters." Boy, there's no doubt why Florida Orange Growers chose little Miss Sunshine (no offense intended to the awesome movie by the same name) to pedal their juice, is there?

Now, fast forward to 2013...

3. Showing how some things just never change (especially when you're entirely devoid of logical arguments), Kentucky U.S. Senator Rand Paul, on the occasion of the Supreme Court's striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act (a.k.a. DOMA) last summer, regurgitated essentially the same old discredited line. Said Senator Paul: "I think it's a conundrum. If we have no laws on this, people take it to one extension further, does it have to be humans, you know?" (To answer the senator's question: no...I really DON'T know. Maybe it's because I live in the real world, you know?)

4. Now that we've broached the inter-species marriage question, what list of unquotable quotes would be complete without the old incest canard? Back in April 2013, actor Jeremy Irons, weighed in on the subject and asked, rhetorically, I suppose, "Could a father not marry his son? It's not incest between men [because] incest [law] is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don't breed. I don't have a strong feeling either way. Living with another animal, whether it be a husband or a dog, is great. It's lovely to have someone to love." I guess that those last couple of sentences represent Irons' feeble attempt at sarcasm. Seems that, just as it was for now-infamous former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the man-on-dog comparison was just too good for Irons to pass up.

5. Phyllis Schlafly of the very conservative Eagle Forum (or "Phyllis Shoo Fly", as former Senator Ted Kennedy called her) whose own son, John is gay (and who actually supports his mom's work), appears to have thoroughly studied the subject of marriage equality, and is able to actually quantify the damage the evil gays are perpetrating on the "sanctity of marriage". Using her bigoted math, Mrs. Schlafly contends that "the gays are about 5 percent of the attack on marriage in this country, and the feminists are about 95 percent." Come on guys (I mean, GAYS), can't we do any better than 5 measly percent? Where's that enthusiasm for "the homosexual agenda"?

Source for first 5 quotes: http://www.rollingstone.com/...

6. Back in 2004, U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, on a radio program called, “Prophetic Views Behind The News”, talked about her "serious" fear of marriage equality. Why, you may ask? Why, it's "because it is our children who are the prize for this community. They are specifically targeting our children." In case you're keeping track, so far we've covered the big three major talking points for the opposition to marriage equality: bestiality, incest and child molestation.

7. Professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC, Daniel Heimbach, spoke about his opposition to marriage equality by, of course, referencing the "bestiality thing" (I guess he just couldn't help himself), but he gets points for originality for making a comparison I'd personally never heard before: Heimbach wondered if "people who love ice cream [will have the legal right] to marry ice cream.” You'd think a college professor might think a little before speaking. The sad part is that he probably DID think before he spoke.

Source for quotes 6 & 7: http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/...

8. Alan Chambers, former Executive Director of the now-defunct "ex-gay" group, Exodus North America, put God's stamp of disapproval on homosexuality, remarking, “One of the many evils this world has to offer is the sin of homosexuality. Satan, the enemy is using people to further his agenda to destroy the Kingdom of God and as many souls as he can.”

Source for quote 8: http://www.truthwinsout.org/...

9. The Right Reverend Tyrone Queen (what a fabulous last name, right?) of Oakland Baptist Church in Oakland, California practically admits that no sensible case can be made against marriage equality. Apparently, he believes that the burden of proof as regards the effects of equality on the moral fabric of America is on the proponents of allowIng gays and lesbians to marry, contending, "same-sex 'marriage' advocates have not proven it will NOT [emphasis mine] harm the traditionally [sic] family unit.” Sounds to me like he's saying, "Well, the opponents of marriage equality can't really prove that same-sex marriages will harm society, but you guys can prove it won't." Convoluted reasoning, anyone?

Source for quote 9: http://www.bluepage.org/...

10. Back in 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas, that the Lone Star state's anti-sodomy law was unconstitutional. One of the arguments used on behalf of those seeking to overturn the law was that, while heterosexuals could have non-procreative sex legally in Texas, same-gender people could not, thus placing an additional burden on gay people, which, the plaintiffs contended, violated the constitutional right to equal protection. Arch conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia, who (of course) dissented from the majority opinion striking down the law, callously pointed out that the Texas law didn't prevent gays and lesbians from having "any sexual intimacy. It says you cannot have sexual intimacy with a person of the same sex." He went on to write that all "men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals [in Texas]" are prohibited from engaging in "deviate sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex." Yep, he went there. Scalia, head firmly ensconced up his own ass, contended that not only can gay people in Texas not have gay sex, straight people in Texas can't have gay sex either. Wow! And all this time, we though we weren't being treated equally under the law. Thankfully, Justice Scalia was there to set us straight...so to speak.

Source for quote 10: http://www.motherjones.com/...

After reading all the foregoing, and having heard all of it again and again over the years, I personally think that the words chosen by the foes of fairness and equality for LGBT people to describe who they think we are and what "the Homosexual Agenda" seeks to maliciously extract from society actually say more about THEM than they do about US. So much so that, really and truly, I've come to the conclusion that we who support LGBT rights should almost be thankful for those who oppose equality. They speak volumes for us simply by speaking their minds. We should never, ever stop our fight for what is right and just, but we also should pray that they keep on talking, using the same old-same old to make their points. We should hope that the (basically fair-minded) American public continues to hear every single ignorant, hateful, hurtful word they utter, knowing that--just like those of us in the LGBT community and our allies--most of them are completely nonplussed by the "logic" utilized in the fight against our rights. After reading all the foregoing, and having heard all of it again and again over the years, I personally think that the words chosen by the foes of fairness and equality for LGBT people to describe who they think we are and what "the Homosexual Agenda" seeks to maliciously extract from society actually say more about THEM than they do about US. So much so that, really and truly, I've come to the conclusion that we who support LGBT rights should almost be thankful for those who oppose equality. They speak volumes for us simply by speaking their minds. We should never, ever stop our fight for what is right and just, but we also should pray that they keep on talking, using the same old-same old to make their points. We should hope that the (basically fair-minded) American public continues to hear every single ignorant, hateful, hurtful word they utter, knowing that--just like those of us in the LGBT community and our allies--most of them are just as completely nonplussed by the "logic" utilized in the fight against our rights as we are.

And they're probably shaking their collective heads in utter disbelief, too.

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