Echoes of a past life: Learning to Be an Edgewalker

Somewhere between being a revolutionary and today I got religion. To the dismay of my family, rather than knocking on the doors of churches and seeing whether I felt welcome, I took another left turn and explored the world of Goddess worship, or Neo-Paganism, especially a vaguely-feminist vaguely free-thinking unorthodox form of Wicca, the re-created "Witchcraft as nature religion" that had been codified by English occultist Gerald Brousseau Gardner in the mid-twentieth century. I ultimately found a lot to dislike about Wicca, and it proved to be only a station on a longer spiritual journey. But my years exploring, studying, practicing, and innovating Neo-Pagan ritual became a transformational experience.

After a couple years involvement I joined with some co-practitioners and created a group in New York City called "Queer Pagans." It was about the time of post ACT-UP "Queer Nation" activism, and while I have some misgivings now about what "Queer" has come to mean--and how it has come to almost denigrate mere gay male identity--at the time it seemed like a miraculously inclusive and liberating word. We tried to incorporate that inclusive and liberating spirit, and held open rituals, mostly at New York's Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, that regularly drew dozens and on at least one occasion hundreds of participants. The rituals drew gay men, lesbians, transsexuals and transgendered people, and all sorts of people along the "LGBT" spectrum. Along with the open ceremonies, we published a zine. It started out mostly as a calendar, but expanded into a small showcase of "Queer Pagan" theory. I designed it on a Mac staying late after work; wrote much of it, and collected other writings from friends and co-thinkers. We even managed to get it professionally xeroxed. Before QP collapsed for a variety of reasons--rather quickly but mercifully without drama or accusation--I found myself in the midst of an explosion of creativity.

As with my early political writings, re-reading the QP zine there's plenty to find that seems dated or, well, almost cloyingly ingenuous. I was certainly a true believer. But there's a lot here I'm proud of: I wanted to communicate not some kind of religious orthodoxy but the authenticity of spiritual experience: the conviction that mystical experiences, that faith--no, certainty--in God's presence in the world, that deep ancient wisdom was something free for the taking, not off library or bookstore shelves, but by living life and daring to explore and play with otherwise dusty ideas on the solid earth of the real world.

Here's one of my articles; many more to come later.

Learning to Be an Edgewalker
by ian scott horst
reprinted from QP #13, Sun & Rainbow 9994 [Mid-Summer, 1994]

It occurred to me the other day that from a certain vantage point, the story of my life would make a lurid and bizarre tale. Its telling would be fantastically picaresque: episodes laying shock upon shock, revealing me to be a denizen of a kind of secret society, a connoiseur of perverse comraderies and purveyor of dubious morality and eccentricity.

So OK, it's true that my friends and I used to call each other "comrade" and were once pursued in a high-speed car chase through the highways of suburban Chicago by a gang of swastikaed Neo-Nazis. It's true that for a handful of months I was a member of a political group organized into anonymous cells where none of us knew each other's real names or phone numbers: we would meet at six in the morning to pass out subversive flyers to factory workers It's true that for a year, twice a month at midnight, I would venture alone deep into Prospect Park to call forth the spirits. It's true that I went to a gay club where the bathroom had bathtubs for urinals and bathers in the bathtubs (well, ok, I only went there twice, and that room wasn't to my taste). It's true that me and my friends get together now in rituals where we wear the oddest clothes and whirl in circles and talk to the air, and shake and mumble uncontrollably, and listen to voices no one else can hear.

But really, I work for a living. I have a nice apartment and I pay my rent. I only have pierced ears, and my tattoo is very discreetly above the line of even very short sleeved shirts. I don't smoke, don't drink to excess, don't do drugs. Hell, I don't even watch much TV. (Well, OK, maybe I do have more CDs than anyone else I know.) Like most people, I hope one day to retire in style and comfort; I'd love to visit Hawaii, and I return my Publishers Clearinghouse entries when I remember to. And all my stories -- and the ones above are just a teeny portion of them -- at the time didn't seem so extraordinary. They just sort of, well, happened along the way.

But in retrospect, I see a kind of razor's edge that I have walked along. And by this I mean not just a path along a thin edge between social underworld and the dominant culture, but also a shining and compelling sharpness with a hypnotic fascination. I remember once as a very young child finding a razor blade in the bathroom wastebasket. It was a grown-up thing, and its edge was smooth and sharp, tempered by unimaginable forces into a tool that would be willfully used and then discarded with no afterthought. I remember feeling the uncontrollable need to understand its mystery: I ran my finger along the blade, amazed to find thick red blood bubble to the surface of my fingertip. And at the moment where my soft flesh met the wonderfully smooth steel I felt no pain.

So you see, we do make mistakes.

What I am getting at here is not just some trite cliche about learning through experience. That, of course, is the human condition. Nor am I offering a cautionary tale about thrill-seeking. What I am saying is that those of us who, by virtue of our twin membership in the Pagan and queer worlds, are learning to find the edge and walk it, and in so doing are making magic.

Here's another story. At the most recent Queer Pagans ritual, we asked participants to bring somthing symbolically male and something symbolically female to ritually place on the altars. Some people would have expected a stack of phallic wands wound have been piled upon God's altar while a stack of holed objects would have materialized on Goddess's. That is, after all, what the Pagan books tell us toplace at such moments. But it wasn't that way at all. There was not a dick-like object placed, nor anything resembling a vagina. I brought flowers for the God altar, saying that flowers were short-lived and beautiful and intense like a male orgasm. I brought a rock for Goddess, saying it was solid and real like the earth. And every participant's offering was like that. None of them were symbols from books: they were pieces of people's lives; a transsexual woman even offered her estrogen pills. You see, the God/dess is indeed within, and to the queer Pagans in that circle, this was only obvious.

I would now no more address my friends "comrade" than I would pull a razor through my skin. The knowledge given to me by these particular experiences remains with me, by the edge has turned away in another direction. My wretched youthful political affinities have been set aside, transformed by the telling into a chapter in my personal mythology. But by the same token, I continue to explore my sexuality in ways that my day-job peers might find shocking, and I continue to listen for voices and whisper to both the mysterious and visible forces of nature. The metaphorical razor's edge continues to compel and hypnotize. As near as I can tell now, the difference is that today, understanding its nature, I seek to wield the razor as well.

Magic involves consciousness. Starhawk calls it the art of changing consciousness at will. I used to find this definition unglamourous. Today I feind it awesome and profound, hinting at possibilities I can scarcely grasp and barely struggle to name. History begins to teach us that queer people have always found and walked this edge, grasping for this magical meaning. The walk is sometimes decadent and self-destructive and sometimes it is liberating and revolutionary. But it is magic and, walker, you will be changed.

Anti-American Art

Here, from an English-language Chinese magazine cover of 1965, is another propaganda image. An unarmed South Vietnamese woman single-handedly grabs the rifles of two ghostly-pale caricatures of US soldiers while anti-war protesters rage in the background. Her steely-eyed countenounce reflects determination and bravery. From the early days of the Vietnam war this image seems more allegorical than later images, which came to focus on the large number of American aircraft downed over Vietnam.

Afolabi, Ibaye

I received very sad news today that a fellow Santeria priest has left this world. Clay Keck, who as an initiated priest of Yemaya was known as Afolabi, and as a proud Queer Jew was known as Shloma Rosenberg, passed on yesterday, November 8, after suffering a medical emergency. I believe Afolabi was older than I in ocha but younger than I in birth years.

We never met in person: I knew him only through e-mail conversations which we had over the course of many years since my early days in the religion. I ran across him first on "Orisha List," before I realized how counter-productive virtual forums on the religion could be. I found him to be knowledgeable and wise, with a wild eccentric streak (see photo) that was a singular gift from Yemaya Herself. As another gay, non-hispanic practitioner of the religion (with a soft spot for leftwing politics) I felt a sense of connection with him even though our paths never directly crossed. He owned a Magick shop in Michigan, and was gifted with an incredible creative ability. He initiated many many godchildren into the religion.

Some of Afolabi's writings can be read at his website. My heart goes out to his family in life and in ocha, his lovers, his godchildren, and his friends. May God bless him; he will be missed in this world.

Thanks, Obatala

Thirteen years ago I woke up on a thin straw mat on a hard concrete floor. It was one of the most transformative days of my life; I was initiated that day as a priest of Obatala, the santeria orisha of creation and wisdom. The ceremony went off and on for a week; the initiation lasted a year: a year of wearing white, of changing my life's patterns. But the initiation has lasted a lifetime.

While I'm not very active in the religion, every day I feel my connection to the world of spirit, to the presence of the ancestors, to the mysterious blessings and grace of the orishas, and give thanks to Olodumare--to God--for this life, with all its good and its hardship; for my creative abilities which earn my paycheck and keep me sane; for health, for love and friendship, for the sun shining on gold and green leaves outside my window, for the warmth of my cat, for the amazing joys of words and music, for the tastes of chocolate and hot sauce.

Maferefun babami Obatala! Maferefun iyami Ochun!

(Obatala doll art from this site)

Echoes of a past life: Will the Gay Movement Survive AIDS?

I wrote this article a long long time ago. With so much water under the bridge I have been remembering this piece off and on and dragged it out of a dusty file. The newsprint it's printed on is brittle; the pseudonym I used amusing. Many of its ideas seem quaint and without context; many of its reference points are lost to time. I'm fascinated by its mix of pessimism and optimism. I'm struck by how I anticipated the rise of the era of ACT-UP and Queer Nation, even as I remember that my own personal journey took me away from these new forms of gay activism I espoused. But let's bring this slice of twentieth-century radicalism into our new millennium. Any errors in the re-typing will be mine; and all italics are in the original. I won't edit or abridge this.

In modern blogs I've read many younger gays revile this forgotten past. There's no such thing as "gay culture" they say. The older generation brought death on itself through its rampant promiscuity they say, neatly forgetting that it was a deadly virus not a sexual lifestyle that erased the generation that by its very existence built the foundation of whatever the gay community is today.

(The following article is reprinted from the long-defunct "Torch/La Antorcha," newspaper of the Revolutionary Socialist League, June 15-July 14, 1985 "Lesbian and Gay Pride Day" edition.)

Reflections on a Troubled Community:
Will the Gay Movement Survive AIDS?
by Ian Daniels

In 1983, four gay men with AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) came to New York's Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee (CSLDC), which plans the city's annual lesbian and gay pride march and rally, with a request: a person with AIDS should speak at the rally. They pleaded that a message about AIDS would be important for the crowd to hear, adding that this gay pride rally might be their last. After a heated discussion, their request was voted down, though eventually an AIDS speaker was included in the final program. It is now summer, 1985. Three of the four men are dead.
***
In the fall of 1983 a coalition of gay organizations organized a boycott of a new gay bar that was refusing entry to people on the basis of race, age and size. The campaign was successful; the owner was forced to put a sign in the front window stating "We do not discriminate." A friend and I went to the bar shortly after the victory. The place was practically empty. A man was dancing with fans, by himself, to the loud music. Despite being alone, he looked happy and content. The three of us talked.

Spring 1985. My friend called me and asked if I remembered that night at the Union Club. The man we had met was on a panel at an AIDS conference, speaking as a person with AIDS.

Summer. A week ago I got another call from my friend. The man was dead.
***
Some statistics from the June 3 issue of The New York Native, New York's main gay paper: the Centers for Disease Control reports 10,400 AIDS cases in the U.S.; 49% of those who have contracted the disease are now dead; 74% of the people with AIDS are gay men.

Because the disease remains largely mysterious, the course of the disease is unclear and subject to debate and speculation. Some researchers believe the incubation period is five years. Thus far, the AIDS caseload has doubled eveyry nine months. Accepting these projections, simple math suggests that as many as one million people already have the disease--with symptoms not to show up for up to five years. Perhaps 74% of these people are gay men too. Those exposed to the AIDS-related virus, LAV or HTLV III, may count in the multi millions. The U.S. medical establishment has yet to find either a prevention or a cure.

An international conference on AIDS was held in Atlanta in April. The remarks of one government official provoked an angry statement by the lesbians and gays present at the conference:

"On April 15, Secretary Margaret Heckler of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, made a distinction between those classified as being at risk for AIDS and the 'general public.' We point out that gay men, hemophiliacs, intravenous drug users, Haitians and people with AIDS are also among the general public, and failure to Acknowledge this is a denial of our basic humanity.

"Secretary Heckler has stated on many occasions, as she did again on April 15, that AIDS is the nation's number one health priority; yet her department has requested fewer financial resources to deal with a growing and indeed overwhelming problem. In fact, the Reagan Administration is proposing to spend $11.9 million less on AIDS in fiscal year 1986 in the face of an expected doubling of AIDS cases...."

***
I wake up in the morning hearing "Smalltown Boy" play on the radio. The song, by the group Bronski Beat, tells of a guy who has to leave the repressive atmosphere of a small town. Bronski Beat is one of a tiny handful of gay musical groups who have hit the "big time," and their songs are about being gay. The DJ comes on the radio and says, "You know what that song's about, right?" He sneers. "Yeah, FAN dancers." I think of the man who is dead.

I wait for the subway. Scribbled on a billboard behind me is "faggot." At work, where I typeset a respectable, if pornographic, gay magazine (straight-owned), I work on an article about a gay bank in California. The article discusses how far gay people have come; look, it says, we even have a bank. After work I meet a friend in the ever-so-trendy East Village for dinner. On parting, we kiss casually. We hear a voice. "Come on guys. Can't you take that somewhere else?"

I'm watching Cagney and Lacy. Good triumphs over nasty criminals. One cop says to the other, "Yeah, lots of cops have drug problems. Some drink too much. And some put on makeup and a dress and go cruise the West Village." I call the TV station to complain. "Thanks you for your comments," I am told.
***
In 1981 New York's Gay Activist Alliance died a quiet death. The group had been around for over ten years, after the death of the Gay Liberation Front it was, along with the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Righths, a viable and important community organization. Some say the left killed GAA, but in truth New York's lesbian and gay community was no longer able to sustain such an organization. But still, there were groups to carry on a movement. Though fraught with factionalism, groups like Lavender Left, Committee of Lesbian and Gay Male Socialists, Dykes Against Racism Everywhere, and even CLGR continued. And the left "parties" were also active. The Revolutionary Socialist League, Freedom Socialist Party, Workers World Party, International Socialist Organization, and the New Alliance Party were all involved.

By the time of last year's International March for Lesbian and Gay Freedom, Lavender Left, CLGMS, and DARE had disbanded. CLGR was a group still claiming to represent "over 50 gay and lesbian organizations," but in reality consisting of four people. And the organized left was mostly no longer there; FSP had other things to do, which apparently didn't include work in the gay movement. NAP had an election campaign to run, but since that time they haven't been back. WWP was busy elsewhere. The RSL was the only left organization involved on any real level. And since then, the gay community has offerred few areas where "politics" as we have known them are involved, where the ideas of a radical movement can be raised. The RSL is active in one of them, in the fledgling Lesbian and Gay Task Force of the Mobilization for Survival.

But even this arena is limited: for the first time inn recent national demonstrations, no unified lesbiand and gay contingent marched at the April 20 march for Peace, Jobs and Justice in Washington, D.C.

One gay organization in New York City is growing. It's the Gay Men's Health Crisis, a social services organization that helps care for AIDS patients and their relatives, conducts education about AIDS, and raises money to fight AIDS.
***
Lesbian and gay pride day is June 30 in New York City. CSLDC is now a corporation, "Heritage of Pride, Inc." The march, now called a parade, will go from Central Park down to the West Village, where along with a rally, the Christopher Street Festival will take place, offereing the gay community the same Filipino noodles and Italian sausage sandwiches that are standard fare at New York's ethnic festivals all summer. A lavender strip will be painted on Fifth Avenue, just like the green stripe painted for St. Patrick's Day.
***
The New York Native recently published a series of articles on "sexual compulsion." This disputed theory is relatively new, a product of the AIDS generation. Its advocates argue that sexual compulsion is a disease, driving gay men to have sex against their better judgment, setting themselves up to catch AIDS. Its proponents talk about people who are constantly looking to have sex, or who masturbate to the point where their genitals become chafed and chapped. "Curing" sexual compulsion is the latest craze in gay psychotherapy.

The only read medical advice on preventing AIDS is the so-called "Safe Sex Guidelines," whereby sex should be altered to avoid exchange of bodily fluids (the probable transmission belt of the AIDS virus). It's hard advice, but probably sound advice (although as the caseload rises, the guidelines are coming to be called "Safer Sex Guidelines" rather than "Safe Sex Guidelines"). The choice is a personal one; but there is reason to believe that gay men, who, like all human beings, need sex, can have sex without jeoparizing their lives. The theory of sexual compulsion, however, in essence tells gay men that it is, indeed, their sexuality that is at fault for AUDS. "Gay men get AIDS because they can't control themselves."

How long agao it seems that gay militants argued, as they did in the landmark 1974 pamphlet With Downcast Gays, that gay people have nothing to apologize for:

"Puritanism lies at the heart of the distrust of promiscuity... Gay activists should stand up for the variety and freedom in sexuality that gay people can enjoy, and yet how often do we read articles in the gay press containing words to the effect that 'we shall never deserve our liberation until we stop being so promiscuous.' Such phrases expose two aspects of self-oppression. Not only are our moral standards being measured against those of our heterosexual oppressors, but liberation is accepted as something that must be worked for and deserved rather than a fundamental right of which we have been deprived. Itw ould be nearer the truth to say that we shall never deserve our liberation so long as we attempt to ingratiate ourselves into heterosexual favour by adopting the standards of the non-gay world."

***
During the 1984 presidential race, most gay organizations worked for a Democratic Party victory. This May the Democratic National Committee met and voted to abolish seven "special interest" caucuses in the party, including the lesbian and gay caucus. The move was part of the Democrats' desire to renounce their image of catering to "special interests" rather than mainstream "Middle America."

Parts of the gay movement once knew something about liberals:

"Liberals are liberation's most insidious enemy. Their deep sense of heterosexual superiority remains untouched by their concern for the 'plight' of gay people. They appear to concede so much while in reality conceding nothing; leaving the underprivileged to struggle against--not genuinely expressed reaction and hatred, but 'sympthay' and 'understanding'....Talk of 'intolerance' being 'genuine' or 'complete' is meaningless. Tolerance is extended to something regrettable. Wy be grateful for it?" (Also from With Downcast Gays)

***
AIDS, which came at a time when the gay movement was already faltering, is proving to deliver teh last blows to the movement. But a real problem in this demise is that AIDS has left the radical gay movement without answers.

As an issue, AIDS is not being raised by the left. There s some attempt to combine issues, like the chant Workers Works Party originated, "Money for AIDS, Not for War; U.S. Out of El Salvador." But as the overall response of the gay community to AIDS is fear and sadness, not anger, the connection between radical political ideas and the felt needs of the community is breaking. The left, in turn, is losing out to those like "sexual compulsion" theorists, or to gay misleaders like those in San Francisco who petition city governments to close gay bathhouses. As survival itself becomes the need of the gay community, the left needs to find ways to address that community in a way that means something to it, and provides for continuing a gay liberationist perspective.
***
It's Gay Pride Day 1985. Death is in the air: most anyone marching in the "parades" this year now knows what it means to lose a friend, or a lover, or an acquaintance, to death by AIDS (or to beatings by queer-bashers, or to the incessant pressures of a hostile world). The gay movement is in trouble like never before; the gay community is haunted by real and consuming fear. We can blame ourselves. We can hate ourselves. We can isolate ourselves. We can "go with the flow" and let the movement fall down around us. We are understandably--and necessarily--consumed by the need to stay healthy, to live. But will we live in closets? Is the price of our lives a return to the days before Stonewall?

There is another choice. As we struggle to live, we can continue to fight to be free. The fight, the movement, must take new forms, new directions. It must cast off its old leaders who have berayed us again and again. It must learn how to combine our new priorities with the old ones. We can't let AIDS finish off what's left of the movement, what's left of a fighting, liberationist politics. We can't let the overwhelming system of heterosexism--bred and fostered by capitalism--dance at our funeral.

Happy Columbus Day!

Today is the day for celebrating the brave voyager to the new world...who cut off the hands of the indigenous Arawak tribes for not giving the Spanish enough gold.

The Renewal of Hope...in the World!

Just a quick entry to note that Barack Obama has just been awarded 2009's Nobel Prize for Peace. The Nobel Committee said that the award was due for the President's renewal of the world's hope in the promise of diplomacy.

While the word is still out on what President Obama will be able to actually achieve--and it's fair to say what he wants to achieve is debatable--what an amazing affirmation from an esteemed world body of our repudiation, as a nation, of President's Bush.

Wake up, dinosaurs and troglodytes, the world is changing!

Anti-American Art

I'm not sure when this one is from, but I'm guessing ca. Korean War. A Chinese People's Liberation Army hero holds a bayonetted rifle; strung on the bayonet are a Japanese flag, a Kuomintang (Chinese nationalist) flag, and a US helmet, signifying China's serial victories. It's convenient for everybody to "forget" that the Korean war was really a war between the United States and China acted out on the stage of Korea. It's also convenient to forget that nobody actually "won" that war.

Anti-American Art

Here's an early 1970s poster from OSPAAL, the Cuba-based Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The caption: "US IMPERIALIST TROOPS, GET OUT OF SOUTH KOREA AT ONCE!"

This is certainly not particularly subtle propaganda: as the US soldier falls backward, kicked off the globe by an armed Korean civilian, he even drops his UN olive branch. The requisite multi-national solidarity contingent looks on, bayonets fixed.

I'm fascinated by this kind of art, and will be posting examples of it here from time to time. Hopefully I'll find something meaningful to say about it. This kind of fantasy socialist realism is sort of the equivalent to sword & sorcery's Frank Frazetta, for the anti-imperialist set, of course.

The face of racism

This picture was in the Times today. It shows an Israeli "settler" casually assaulting a Palestinian woman in Hebron, on the West Bank. It reminds me of those pictures from the 1950s and 1960s of white crackers casually spitting on black civil rights marchers in the south. Simply horrifying.

Why I won't be going to the October 11 March on Washington

Disappointed at President Obama's apparent failure to immediately fulfill many of his campaign promises in the sphere of LGBT rights, gay organizations have hastily coalesced around a new March on Washington for this October 11, 2009. The march is called "The March for Equality," and has been organized without the coalition-building and platform-exploration that marked the previous efforts. Although I proudly attended all of the previous national gay marches on Washington starting in 1979, I will not be attending this one.

Today, September 12, a right-wing white racist demonstration descended on Washington to express its opposition to President Obama. Below are three photos from this demonstration, which reportedly drew a hate-filled racist mob tens of thousands strong. In these photos, plain for all to see, are expressed shocking racism and ignorance, profound intolerance, and active calls for the violent overthrow of our first African-American president. I have neglected to post the photos that show signs saying things like "We came unarmed...this time" and "where's my gun."





The gay community has been drifting rightwards for some time. I don't know if it's the ill-advised campaign for marriage equality (which I support abstractly), or its surprising embrace of Hillary Clinton's more right-wing campaign during the democratic primary, but today's gay activists seem self-obsessed, narrow-minded, and strategically adrift.

I am disappointed that everything we hoped and prayed and voted for about Obama last year has come crashing into reality. The intensified war in Afghanistan, the difficulty of healthcare reform, economic recovery for the banks and corporations without recovery for regular people, and the failure of LGBT legislation to advance have all been wakeup calls about the strength of right-wing resistance to the will of the people expressed last November. In some of these spheres I disagree profoundly with Obama; but in others I cannot fault him.

The gay establishment has been quick to suggest Obama's failures on LGBT advancement are evidence of dishonesty and betrayal. Blogs have been filled with angry rants suggesting he is bigoted and beholden to right-wing Christians.

However, the summer of discontent over healthcare reform--frankly an issue I place in higher import over "DADT reform" (allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the armed forces--who the FUCK would want to do THAT!), ENDA (employment non-discimination), hate crimes legislation, or ending DOMA (the vile Defense of Marriage Act signed by Bill Clinton enshrining hatred of homosexuality into law)--has shown a massive not-yet-violent civil war waging in this country between the forces of white racist ignorance and right-wing reaction on one side, and the vast majority of regular people of all colors and sexual orientations on the other.

Now is not the time for the lesbian and gay community to take to the streets against Obama, effectively swelling the ranks of the wrong side of this social and cultural civil war. Although it might be argued that the demands of the October 11 march are not right-wing like the demands of this weekend's racist lynchmob dress rehearsal, I believe this distinction will be ultimately lost. I think it's also fairly guaranteed that the October 11 march will be overwhelmingly white, thus further edging the consciousness of a rightward drifting community away from what should be unifying themes of social justice.

After the tragic victory of Prop 8 in California, repealing marriage equality in that state, it was suggested that this defeat for gays was the "fault" of California's black population. While statistically later debunked, this notion has stuck in the white gay popular imagination. Obama's complex position at the time--clear opposition to Prop 8 combined with opposition to gay marriage in favor of full civil equality expressed as domestic partnerships--has confused gay activists.

Quite aside from these concerns I think this march is also not going to actually do any favors for its avowed agenda. I believe it was the last MOW I went to that was overwhelming dominated by the gay lobby group "Human Rights Campaign." The HRC is known for advocating for LGBT rights without ever using the words "gay" or "lesbian." NONE of their hundreds of thousands of placards for that last march mentioned our identity openly. HRC is assimiliationist in the worst way: seeing equality marked by the number of cocktail parties they're invited to. It is ironic that the people behind the current march initiated their plans with a posture of militancy and outrage. Now that their organization is under way, their sloganeering is equally timid and closeted, and their fundraising is marked by some peculiar efforts to stay within certain tax codes. While quite a few LGBT organizations have now issued paper endorsements of this October 11 MOW, I am not convinced that the force of the internets will be enough to replace the organizing efforts and grass-roots outreach that marked previous efforts. As a principal organizer of a failed potemkin-village mass demonstration for LGBT rights in 1984 (a story I will tell someday), I know that enthusiasm is not a replacement for organizing skill and vast numbers of ordinary people.

There are many battlefronts for gay activists: fighting marriage equality repeal attempts in the states where equality has been won, for example. At best the MOW is a diversion away from these, and at worst a massive misalignment of our community. I'm not suggesting that our community be silent about its own demands, but I am very clear that we must do so in manner with long-term strategic benefits.

If the Obama adminstration is defeated by the right-wing white mob with the assistance of the gay community, that mob will thank the gay community only briefly for its assistance before it offers us our own special kick to the curb.

Advice for President Obama on his healthcare speech

I love it.

Letter to the Whitehouse on healthcare

"Last year, in the only opinion poll that actually mattered, President Obama received the overwhelming mandate to reform our health care system. Many of us knew that compromises would have to be made; in my case I understand that a single-payer government health service like most of the world's progressive nations already have is not on the immediate agenda. But having made this compromise, it's important for our President and his administration to understand that this is the line drawn in the sand. The "public option" must not be abandoned. It represents our only hope to take a step toward justice for the un- and underinsured. Please don't take this crucial option off the table. It is vital to many--like me--who are marginally employed and frantic about our inadequate healthcare, at the mercy of rich insurance companies, rising payments, and rising costs.

The compromises have already been made--the Public Option MUST remain part of healthcare reform!"

Boy Crazy!

My pal Candy Samples is back with a new video and it's super hot! Jesse helped Candy and Allan write the song, and once again he and I are cast members. If you like the song, you can buy it on Amazon or iTunes!

There are some serious costume changes and the song is catchy as hell. Candy is now my favorite drag queen EVER.

News flash! MY Kenyan Birth certificate exposed!

Yes, I have been exposed as a Kenyan immigrant. Get your own fact-busting birth certificate, just like our Communist/Muslim president has, right here!

Victor Jara's Prayer

I found this translation of Victor Jara's "Plegaria a un Labrador"

Stand up, look at the mountains
Source of the wind, the sun, the water
You, who change the course of rivers,
Who, with the seed, sow the flight of your soul,
Stand up, look at your hands,
Give to your hand to your brother so you can grow.
We'll go together, united by blood,
Today is the day
We can make the future.
Deliver us from the master
who keeps us in misery.
The kingdom of justice and equality come.
Blow, like the wind blows
the wild flowers of the mountain pass.

Clean the barrel of my gun like fire
They will be done at last on earth
Give us your strength and courage to struggle.
Blow, like the wind blows
the wild flowers of the mountain pass

Clean the barrel of my gun like fire
Stand up, look at your hands,
Give to your hand to your brother so you can grow.
We'll go together, united by blood,
Now and in the hour of our death.
Amen. Amen. Amen.

Taken up by a younger generation!

Healthcare is a right

I'm amazed sometimes at the gulf between my own values and those of what seem to be a sizable portion of this country's population. Here we have yet another racist image being circulated among the Republican right-wing mob that neatly ties its ugly racist ignorance to the mind-bogglingly ignorant campaign against healthcare reform.

Why are these knuckle-dragging dolts so beholden to the existing healthcare system that makes the US a sicker, shorter-lived, and poorer nation than those with progressive national health services? Why are they so anxious to sacrifice their health and their money to an industry designed foremost not to provide affordable healthcare but TO MAKE A PROFIT FOR ITS SHAREHOLDERS?. It just doesn't add up.

Well this graphic provides vital insight into their real motives: we don't want nothing to do with that communist ni**er.

This country desperately needs national healthcare: not better insurance but better healthcare. Sadly, it looks like all we may get, if we're very very lucky, are a few regulations on the obscenity that is insurance.

RIP Michael Jackson.

My appreciation is here.


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update: I've cross-posted this article here from its original Ile Oxumare home.


"How Does It Feel? When You're Alone And Cold Inside"--MJ, Stranger in Moscow

I remember when I first heard the Jackson 5. It was back in Chicago in the late 1960s, and they were so joyously infectious, and little Michael was the same age as me! He became the background noise of my youth and young adulthood, ever present. Sure by the late seventies I was a nascent jazzhead, but who didn't like the Jacksons? "Blame It On The Boogie," "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough," I remember the excitement I'd feel if I was entering a club and heard those songs playing over the distant dancefloor.

After I moved to New York City there was "Human Nature" and the unbelieveable world-gripping love-affair with "Thriller" and his absolute mastery of the human body through dance. Yeah I listened to my jazz and I was getting into New Wave but who didn't like Michael Jackson? I listened to "Bad" and was amazed at the technology of his sound. The last Michael I bought was "HIStory" and oh my God there he is singing the word "SHIT!"

I'm not really one for Disney-esque gloss and by then, well everybody loves Michael Jackson, but I stopped being so interested in his music and the "King of Pop" hype machine being stacked around him like so much plastic, so I probably can't name a single one of his songs since then. But he was always there, in the background.

And now, shockingly, he isn't. He's gone!

There is of course, the other Michael Jackson story, the one that began somewhere between his driven, task-mastering parents and that love song to a rat. The other story is the one where the adorable black boy grows into a strange powder-white not-quite-a-man, his face carved into unnatural shapes, and his reputation stretching the limits of belief. The weird Peter Pan obsession, the ugly theme-park garden estate, the sleeping with children, the peculiar marriages and strangely named children, the weird public faux-pas like babies being dangled off balconies, and the face and hair every year seeming stranger and stranger. His voice always a boyishly innocent falsetto, his singing evolved into an odd ritual of yelps and whoops.

I remember in New York City somewhere around the time his friend Diana Ross was trying to ingratiate herself to the citizens of our city in the early 1980s and she gave those unforgettable storm- and mob-plagued Central Park concerts (both of which I attended), there was an ugly ugly headline on a local African-American newspaper: "THE WHITE LADY AND THE FAGGOT." The white lady of course was Diana Ross and MJ was "the faggot" and I have long since forgotten why this now-defunct newspaper hated them and their friendship so much but it must have been a lifetime of dealing with such harsh judgments that pushed MJ so deeply into a unbreachably private life.

I hope in some way that the strangeness of MJ's last two decades was its own kind of hype. Was he happier than he seemed? I hope his family loved him and treated him well behind the walls of public persona. Was his world the lonely hard-edged place that seems to dominate the lyrics of "HIStory" or was it something filled with the joy of love and creativity and artistry?

It's always sad to lose one's musical idols, and the cost of living to middle age as I have done is outliving many of those responsible for my own life's soundtrack. Of course the music these amazing people created stays alive and ever-present. But as much as I have wondered in disbelief what the hell he was up to, I never thought Michael Jackson wouldn't be there in the background.

Goodbye Michael! Thanks for your music. Peace and blessings to you and all of those who loved you.

Notes on opposition

Just a comment duped here, forworking into something. I'm frustrated as hell at the current trahectory of the gay community. It's a timeof such promise but it's being so seriously mislead. Anyway, from a comment I wrote on a blog:

You and many many other blog commenters with your same bullying tone and lack of substantial argument have in fact made numerous expressions of buyer's remorse for Obama and nostalgic note of your previous support of Hillary Clinton. I'm not inventing that.

I'm not actually negating any of the community's frustration, which is obvious. What I am negating is this hyped-up campaign of hyperbole, led by people who never actually supported Obama in the first place, for reasons that were as questionable then as they are now.

What I call upon the community to recognize is the dangerous trajectory that you Obama haters (and yes that's what you are "Michael") are playing with as you attempt to steer a frustrated community into open opposition to the Obama presidency.

Rachel Maddow may be enjoyable entertainment but the community led by a TV network's quest for ratings and popularity is one that will soon find itself floundering and leaderless. Rachel Maddow is not our community's leader, and nor should be the defeated Hillaryites who sensing blood in the water have come back to feed. They offer no real solution and their leadership will end in tragedy for our community as what POSES LIKE righteous opposition soon turns bitter into eventual rightward drift.

If you think I am making that up look at what has happened in many gay communities in Europe where squeaky clean and tidy Eurofascism has found acceptance among a privileged white layer that now includes some gays.

I'm frustrated with a lot of what Obama has done or not done. But the battlelines are clear for all to see, and I am not eager to stand with the wingnuts and American religious fascists who are mobilizing against not only the centrist Obama as he is, but the symbolic Obama we voted for with the (as yet) unfulfilled promises.

Which side are you on?