My Open Letter to Bruce La Bruce got picked up by the Huffington Post.

(sweet!)

"It's Time"

My Special Gentleman Friend found this video and I've been been getting wet in the face all morning.

(so sweet)

Let the Gay Agenda Be Liberty (an Open Letter to Bruce La Bruce)

Mr. La Bruce,

I want to thank you for taking time out of what is almost certainly a very busy schedule to respond to my criticism of your earlier piece in Vice. I also feel that i owe you two apologies. The first  for taking so long to respond. I know a week is an unforgivably long time on the Internets, but a recent move and the onset of the holidays have kept my hands full. The second is for somehow leaving you with the impression that i don’t think gay culture is worthy of criticism. Gay culture has some serious problems. The decline of gay bars, the rise of Grindr, and enemies. No, not the kids from Glee. Real enemies.

And while we are on the subject, I know you aren’t my enemy. I’ve always been a fan of your art, and while i suspect that you and i don’t share a definition of ‘satire,’ I have nothing but respect for you. Furthermore, while i might have trouble "getting (my)self dressed in the morning," it didn’t escape my attention that you were “merely launching a provocation.” But since only teenagers provoke for the fun of it, I naturally assumed trying to start a dialogue. I’ve risen to the bait, color me provoked.

I agree that our political class has become, with a few exceptions, a lamentable cadre of passionless assimilationists, begging for scraps at the Democratic table. But the Human Rights Campaign isn’t gay culture, and neither was Act Up before it. In every city in America (and i suspect, the western world) there are drag queens, DJs, artists, and performers busting their asses every day to make gay culture happen. And for you to airily decree gay culture to be dead is a kick in the face. You’ve basically told the generation of queer artists and activists who have come up behind you to give up and go home. (And since you stopped using ‘queer’ in the 90’s, i’m sure you won’t mind if we wear it for a while)

You deigned to “spell out” your position, so I will do what i can to clarify mine. When i suggested that your time, talent, and influence could be put to better use drawing attention to places around the world where gay lives and rights are in peril I didn’t mean  “The East Village,”(zing!) I meant places like Russia where sweeping anti gay legislation could make it illegal to say nice things about gay people in front of children, I mean places like Uganda where man on man love may soon be a capital offence, and I mean places like parts of the United States, where if I spit on someone it can be considered assault with a deadly weapon, because i'm HIV positive. And when i imply that you might be better served touting gay artists and historical figures, I didn’t mean “Lady Gaga & Hitler” (double zing!), I was speaking of brilliant performers such as Justin Bond and Penny Arcade, writers like Gregory Maguire and Christopher Rice, film makers such as Travis Matthews and David Weissman, and an endless parade of of first class photographers, dancers, comedians, poets, musicians, DJs, and promoters.

And finally, when i say gay men and women should be fighting for the" freedom to be ourselves," I mean just that. We have spent the last thirty years pursuing an agenda of Equality, and we’ve made admirable, even near miraculous strides. Now we need to pivot to Freedom. Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Association, and the Right to Peaceably Assemble. SOPA should be just as important to the gay rights movment as DOMA. Ending the War on Drugs and the Criminalization of HIV should be priorities as high as the Right to Marry and ending DADT.

In short; If there is a Gay Agenda, let it be Liberty.

to The Death of Gay Culture

   Recently, in Vice Magazine, beloved writer, photographer, and film maker, Bruce LaBruce, wondered aloud that “gay culture is dead,” (no, not “wondered if,” go read the title). And by the time I had finished reading I was fuming. It's not his hunger for attention that I object to. No one likes to tell the world how awesome I am more than I do, and I’d never begrudge that same quality in someone else. And let's leave aside, for the moment, that he is a gay artist who makes gay art for a primarily gay audience (and able to sell enough of that art to finance a trip to Italy). And let’s leave aside how unfocused the piece is; meandering from Jersey Shore to Italian dietary restrictions, to speculating on the sex lives of individual members of the Catholic clergy. His entire argument seemingly rests on the fact that Elton John isn't a rebel anymore and/or that he never made another album as good as Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Elton John had the temerity to be successful, fall in love, and get old. Good for Elton John! He pushed envelopes, he broadened minds, and he wore a dizzying array of ridiculous sun glasses. The man has done his job; let him retire to a life of happy child rearing.

(i'm glad you are a happy dad, but what is that kid wearing?)

 If you think our people are broadly moving in the wrong direction, as I often do, you have a responsibility to not only get out in front of the crowd and tell them they're going the wrong way, but to show them the right way to go. He could have used those column inches to tout any number of amazing queer artists, gay historical figures, or places around the world where gay rights are imperiled. Instead he chose to talk about what he ate on his vacation, and disparage homos who want to be parents. But this is the quote that irritated me the most.

“The engine of the gay movement used to be an idea of adventurous and extreme sexuality. Gay culture itself was regarded by the status quo as something pornographic and sexually radical.”

   First of all, I couldn’t care less what the status quo thinks about gay culture. The status quo is what keeps Two and a Half Men a Neilson darling year after year. And second, the engine of the gay movement shouldn’t be about who and how we fuck, but whom and how we love. And before I am tarred with the brush of being a “gay conservative,” I would like to state for the record that I am all about adventurous and extreme sexuality. I spent three years in a three way relationship with two other men, I’ve had sex on film, and I have spent the last two years throwing a party best known the carnal shenanigans of its back room (also? very good music). My bona fides as a sexual radical are kind of unassailable. But it’s not the sex we should be fighting for, but the freedom to be ourselves.

To Occupy Wall Street pt. 2: Occupy Oakland

(http://www.rblack.org/)

Last night on the streets of Oakland police clashed with the 99%. They were armored in riot gear, and met hurled rocks and slogans with rubber bullets and enough canisters of tear-gas to fill the streets of Oakland with billowing yellow clouds of poison. "A literal fog of war" i thought as watched live streaming video of the carnage in the streets; a miracle of the modern age, that we can be witness to the battlefield, live and in real time, as we watch the atrocities that are committed in our name. And there is no mistake in my mind, this was a battle. You only have to type "Oakland" into the YouTube search bar to see video after video of senseless brutality that seems as though they would be more fitting on the streets of Damascus than in an American city. Scene after scene of peaceful demands for change being met with violence.

Scott Olsen, a veteran of two tours in Iraq was critically wounded after being hit in the face with a police projectile. He is in the hospital, his condition is critical. And though it saddens and sickens me to say so, this will not be the last clash between police and protesters and Scott Olsen will not be the last man to fall. Because America's police departments are no longer the keepers of our civic peace, but soldiers in an ever growing number of domestic 'wars.' We have made war on Drugs, and war on Terror, and now the Oakland PD has made war on Dissent. 

But violence must not be met with violence. The cause of the Wall Street Protests is righteous; economic justice and corporate accountability, and most importantly an end to the open corruption in DC.  

To the Occupy Wall Street Movement

(photo by Bradley Roberge)

Recently in Florida Former Godfathers Pizza CEO/GOP Presidential Hopeful/Tea Party Flavor of the Week, Herman Cain, accused the Occupy Wall Street movement of "class warfare" and told the American people to "blame yourself" for being penniless and jobless in the worst economy anyone has seen since Hoover was president. Former Gov. of Mass./GOP Presidential Hopeful/First Class Empty Suit, Mitt Romney, went further, calling the protests "dangerous." And he's not wrong, the Occupy Wall Street is dangerous; but only to those who profit from the crimes and abuses of the status quo.

As of October 9th the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to 25 cities with more protests in the works, including Washington DC. It has gained the explicit support of some unions, and the implicit support of others. After weeks of ignoring the movement, the "MSM" has begun to recognize the movement's existence (if only derisively) the luminaries of the Democratic Party (who can smell a change in the political winds as well as any) are already starting to suck up. I think it's safe to say that OW is a growing, long term (if not permanent) fixture of American politics.

Of course not everyone thinks so. The movement's detractors mock it's lack of cohesion, sneering at the multitude of messages much in the same way the early Tea Party was for it's early inconsistencies ("get your government hands off my medicare," etc.). But, the movement is young and, like the Tea Party, it will come into focus as time goes on. Those in places of power who would see those occupying Wall Street as a flash in the pan are deluding themselves. Because, for all of it's lack of focus, these protests are tapping into and giving voice to a very real, almost tangible, emotion permeating the nation. Fear.

Fear of the American Autumn that so many of us sense over the horizon. In that way it is the younger twin of the Tea Party. One may rail against the evils of big government, and the other against the evils of the big banks, it is the death of the American middle class they are both fighting against. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are two side of the same coin, two fronts of the same struggle; and we shouldn't let the Powers That Be turn us against one another. We need both government and corporations (i like fire departments AND cell phones, public roads AND light bulbs) but they must be brought into balance with one another, and they must both be made to serve the interests of the American People.

Weekend Beats

Joe Goddard (of Hot Chip fame) and London based chanteuse, Valentia, have joined forces to craft this beautiful and haunting little dance number. The lyrics have an almost formal quality, as if the singer is challenging "Gabriel" to a duel, or laying a curse on him... or maybe i just need coffee...

I've been bouncing around to it all weekend. Enjoy!

to September 11th

Today is the 10th anniversary of the attacks of September 11th, and the internets are awash with "How has 9/11 changed America," & "Where were you when..?," stories. As to the second, i watched the Twin Towers fall through the haze of a whiskey hangover while i sat cross-legged on my living room floor. A good friend of mine had called to rouse me from bed with a near hysterical "We've been bombed! Those bastards attacked us." I'm not sure who she thought attacked us (i never did think to ask her), and it wasn't bombs they hit us with, but our own airplanes. But those details were almost irrelevant as i sat there this too-big pajama bottoms with tears streaming down my cheeks.

As to how the attacks have changed us? It hasn't been for the better: The fall of the Twin Towers wounded us, and made us a people afraid of the world beyond our borders. The obscene amount of blood and treasure that has been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan is staggering. We have created elaborate rituals to create the illusion of security, but don't actually make people any safer. And a huge Homeland Security apparatus that is unmanageable and who's ballooning costs simply can't be objectively justified. And all the while our leaders drape themselves in the American flag and tell us that this war against 'terror' (as if we were making war on the Boogie-man and his allies, the Monsters Under The Bed.) is unending.

 We aren't stronger, or freer, or safer (despite what some would have you believe) than we were before the attacks. We are manifestly none of those things. But the thing that strikes me most of all as i look back on the last ten years is the complete lack of vision on the parts of our political class. On September 12th George W. Bush squandered the opportunity to unify not just the people of the United States, but the whole world. He could have rallied the American people to new era of civil service and self-sacrifice. He could have stood behind that podium and said "We have to go to Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban, and afterwords we are going to build a proper nation there so this never happens again. Go out there and join the military or join the peace corps." Instead he told us to go shopping.

It wasn't just domestically where we dropped the ball. A crisis is also an opportunity, and Dubya had the opportunity to clean house in the Middle East. He could have not only brought Afghanistan out of the Dark Ages, and perhaps brought Iran into the American Hegemony (if Nixon can go to Beijing, Bush could have gone to Tehran). But most importantly the immediate aftermath of Sept 11th was the perfect moment for Bush to put real pressure on the Palestinians and Israelis to settle their borders and create a lasting peace.

I know, I know. Peace in the Middle East? Maybe I'm a dreamer, but he could have done more. Obama is no better. The economic melt-down was an opportunity to right our economy and revitalize the middle class.  He opted to put band-aides on the healthcare system.  These last ten years have been the very definition of extraordinary times, and our current political leaders aren't adequate to the task. We are a great people, and we can sense that greatness slipping away. But it doesn't have to. If we want to make America great again we need leadership big ideas and the courage and vision to make them a reality. That's not asking for too much, is it?

To The Debt Deal and American Jobs

The Debt Crisis has been resolved (though not before the manufactured melodrama was able to decrease the value of US debt) and now the Obama says he is planning a 'pivot to jobs.' Lets leave aside for the moment that the president pivots to jobs so often he must be doing pirouettes in the Oval Office. Instead lets focus on the kinds of jobs the president plans to create. What kind of jobs could the president create? If he really wanted to i'm sure he could resurrect the WPA and start churning out high speed rail lines and plays about how awesome america is, which would be awesome. This nation needs renewed infrastructure, and people need employment. Of course President Obama would never do anything this bold, when he talks about job creation all he's really talking about is tinkering with the tax codes and offering subsides for solar panels (i'm guessing.) But even if he did bring back the WPA, eventually all the bridges and parks would get built and then what? I don't believe that any amount of works projects or tax cuts will bring back the long term middle class jobs that the United States has been hemorrhaging since the 90s.

Republicans have cleverly re-branded rich people as "job creators," but "Creating Jobs" does not automatically mean creating the middle class jobs that are the ballast of this nation, and the engine of true economic growth.  Dan Carlin has a great podcast about jobs and the middle class where he quotes Henry Ford. When asked why he paid his workers such a high wage he replied, "so they can afford to buy my automobiles," and that right there is the key to maintaining our national power and prestige. The wealthy used to understand that it was in their best interest to maintain a thriving middle class, who could provide both the talent pool for creating first rate goods and services, and a market for their consumption.

But with globalization today's super rich have become divested from the American system. The fate of the huge multinationals in no longer tied to that of the American worker. Indians and Chinese workers are as well educated (mostly in American schools) and are willing to work for far less. Growing middle classes in Asia and Latin America means US and European markets are no longer the only place for these corporations to hock their wares. But if we can find a way to once again marry their fortunes to those of the United States we will ensure our continued greatness for 100 generations.

Bug Chaser: Coming Soon