Mars Magazine 1965

Before  we had rights.  When even tame magazines like this skirted the law, and were harassed by the judgemental.

M2M kissing is not "disgusting", homo haters

Orlando

(Source)

Navy kiss

When a naval vessel comes home after a long deployment, the crew holds a draw to determine which sailor gets to disembark first and kiss their loved ones.

Canada’s HMC Winnipeg just returned from 255 days at sea, and the first kiss was historic.

And here is a charming video  about it from The Guardian

Gay Marriage

A Cathy Wilcox cartoon (from The Sydney Morning Herald)

(click to enlarge)

Finally

Gay marriage is now legal throughout the US.

Gay Rights Logo

Gay marriage is coming.  The tide has turned.  Emphatically turned.  Irresistibly turned.

Backwards

North Carolina votes to enshrine in their constitution het marriage as the only form of legal relationship.

Love one another as I have loved you.

Yeah, right.

[Pic from Blue Truck, Red State]

Don't ask, don't tell buried

Dan Swezy and Lt. Gary Ross get married

At last.  And a Navy officer marries his partner.


So right.  So sensible. 


Why did it take so long to get here?

Majorca Flats -- 190

First London Gay Pride March, 1971

Luigi couldn't get Jason and Keith out of his head. He felt that he was falling in love with the one and in lust with the other. Or was it the other way round? He smiled at his silliness.

After telling them all about Cody he felt better than he'd done for a long time. Their casual acceptance of him, with all his effeminate gestures, his obvious gayness, his complete unstraightness, warmed his heart. After Cody, he'd often felt indifferent to life, even after his deep depression had passed. Life was so pointless, so dull. Nothing seemed to matter. But when he stopped going to the gay help line, too depressed to get up, his colleague Stephen had rung him up and invited himself round for coffee. Luigi had expected pity and a jolly hockey-sticks encouragement. Instead, Stephen had said, simply, after they'd exchange pleasantries, “They need you Luigi. They miss you. You were doing good. That's all we can do, you know, in a shitty world. Try and make it better.”

Luigi had nodded. He'd been close to tears. His grandmother had kept on trying to cheer him up, but though he'd put on a face for her, he'd still not felt right inside. Stephen, though, had jolted him out of his rut. It was no good saying he wouldn't again feel anger or grief or loss, for he knew enough now to know he would, maybe always. So he'd gone back to work, and step by step, things had got better. Talking to Keith and Jason, and being accepted by them had quickened the process.

[Image from here]


First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#189)       Next MF post(#191)

Episodes 1 to 180 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)

Cultural Conservatism

As I write this, it's a mere 8C (that's 46F for Americans).  Tomorrow is the 4th of July in Oz (and a few hours later in the US, thanks to the International Date Line).  Bastille day, France's big national holiday is on 14th July.  While it might be high summer in North America or France, here it is mid winter.

It made me think about cultural conservatism.  By this I don't mean conservatism as a political ethos, I mean that cultures change slowly, sometimes very slowly.  So, just as we are in mid-winter here and wearing sweaters and long-johns, so Christmas in the southern hemisphere takes place in midsummer.  Yet Ozzies continue to produce, buy and send Christmas cards with pictures of robins, snow, Father Christmases in thick fur-lined cloaks.  Even the Christmas tree, a symbol in the northern hemisphere of rejuvenation, of the spring to come, holds pride of place in our living rooms, decked with gold and silver baubles and lights to illumine the gloom of a northern hemisphere midwinter when in fact outside it's 40C (104F) and the light is glaring white and all you want to do is swim or lie in a shaded room with the blinds drawn.

Yet White Ozzies have been here over 200 years.  We still carry on the cultural traditions of our long distant ancestral lands, despite the seasons being arse-about-face.  Cultures are conservative.  They change glacially.

So the fact that being gay has gone from a crime, a social disgrace and a psychologist-defined "disease" to be accepted and normal in just 40 years is very striking.  Of course there are places where being gay is still a crime, where the ChrisTaliban continue to perversely justify death and beatings up and imprisonment for gays as "Christian" and "loving" and other places where the MusTaliban do the same.  Yet in many many places young men don't even regard the once pejorative term "gay" (as in "that's so gay", for example) as an insult.  "I'm straight-ish," they say.  "I'm bi-curious".  "I kiss my male friends, big deal." Step by inexorable step gay rights are becoming the norm.  

[chart from Box Turtle Bulletin]

Cultures change slowly.  Yet something once as reviled and despised as gayness moves from the extreme edge into the broad centre of acceptance.  As the chart above shows, in America, step by step, gays have been freed.  Of course, the US is behind the curve on this.  Europe, at least the western half, is far ahead.  On the other hand, Africa and the middle East are far behind.  But just as the logic of freedom for whites inevitably in the end meant, logically, that those same rights would have to be--and were--given to blacks, so it is that the inexorable logic of human rights means that we homos will be given the right to marry and to parent.   Young people in the advanced world are already there.  The victory for gay marriage and gay rights in New York State in the last week lights the road forward.

The battle is far from won.  But we can see the victory podium shining plain.  On this dismal midwinter's day, I'm cheered by it.

We shall overcome.     

Le baiser du trottoir

The kiss on the pavement (sidewalk).  A photograph by the great Robert Doisneau.

One day, two men or two women will be able to kiss like that too in public and no one will turn a hair.  In fact they'll saw awww just like we do when we see this picture.

The ChrisTaliban Zombies

A new -- and entertaining --  term for the Christian-Fascists, from The Rainbow Reporter, an Oz gay/bi/lesbian/trans magazine. 

I loved this:  They [the Christaliban zombies]are currently on a high, having consumed the brains of two state Attorneys General in the last week alone.

Way to go. 

Some Christians Get It

A Christian group says sorry at the Chicago Gay Pride Parade.

"I spent the day at Chicago’s Pride Parade. Some friends and I, with The Marin Foundation, wore shirts with 'I’m Sorry' written on it. We had signs that said, 'I’m sorry that Christians judge you,' 'I’m sorry the way churches have treated you,' 'I used to be a bible-banging homophobe, sorry.' We wanted to be an alternative Christian voice from the protestors that were there speaking hate into megaphones."

[Report from Towleroad]

A small minority, alas.

My 83 year-old mother-in-law is incensed at the behaviour of the Christian-Fascists:  it's unkind, she says angrily, and cruel -- and so it is.  Whatever happened to love thy neighbour?  But ... the rabid ratso right is still at it.  Kristen Hansen looks like Sarah Palin, all smiles and severe glasses.  It's amazing, isn't it,  that these people can still smile so winsomely while saying such thoughtless, horrible, cruel, unChristian things.

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:

China's very own Mandela

This article about China's Nobel Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, and China's poisonous and paranoid reaction to the honour bestowed on him and China, is worth reading.

I've lived in a police state.  In the end, they always lose, and democracy grows.

This John Stuart Mill quote came to mind:

[...] a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.

Human rights, whether they're for minority groups like gays, or for whole nations like China, must be fought for.  Their struggle is ultimately our struggle.  And, with gay rights or freedom in China, it will be successful.  We shall overcome, one day.

At it again

In a single school district in the Midwest, there have been 3 suicides of gay teenagers so far this year, as a result of bullying. The group Focus on Family (so-called: it's really nothing to do with family, just a bunch of trigger words of the sort they use in advertising food, like "pure", or "golden", or "natural", when the glop they manufacture is none of these things) is vehemently opposed to any attempt to reduce bullying of gay teens. This is, they say, "sexualising the issue". But we know that gay teens are disproportionately bullied. Read this and this to see the story in more detail.

Focus on Family consistently points to the horrors of homosexual life: drug abuse, STDs, depression and suicide. Somehow these cretins refuse to understand that it is precisely the hatred and disdain of the Christian-Fascists which cause these problems. If you are despised and hated and ridiculed, if you have nowhere to turn because even your family hates what you are, well, naturally you will be depressed. And these contemptible gnu-gnus, not content to just to rant, are in fact organising resistance to any attempt by parents or schools to address the unhappiness of gay teens. Almost as if they are glad that young gays die.

God is Love say the signs outside the churches, repeating what St John said : ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν. Well, He may be love, but his self-appointed representatives on Earth are not. Perhaps the best refutation to the hatred and hypocrisy of these loathsome people is this letter.

As they smugly 'pray' or have 'bible study' classes these contemptible, horrible, judgemental pseudo-Christians spread unhappiness, sorrow and loneliness. And then blame their victims when the inevitable happens. It would make me weep if I weren't so angry.

US citizens can sign a petition here.

Male Intimacy

Male intimacy. Three vignettes showing different aspects of it, yet all in a way related.

The first one: when I went to pick up my son at the airport, there were two young men -- 19? 20? -- also waiting for someone. Their parents came from somewhere in south-eastern Europe or the Levant -- olive skin, with one having warm coffee-coloured eyes and the other greenish-hazel; glossy dark brown hair; absurdly slim in the way so many boys turning into men are. They weren't of Greek or Italian extraction, because they would occasionally drop into their natal language, and I didn't recognise it. Perhaps Turkish or Yugoslav. They were both pleasing to look at, but the hazel/green eyed one was beautiful, in a way that perhaps only boys on the cusp of manhood can be.

At the arrivals hall, there is a sort of safety-glass barrier, and about a foot away from it, a stainless steel handrail. The one young man was slim enough to contrive to fit in between the glass barrier and the rail, so that he could be as close as possible to his friend and still face him. He rested his hands on the rail on either side of the other man, about 3 or 4 centimetres from his friend's body. I got the impression he was the one who longed more for physical contact, yet all the same his friend didn't move away. He stayed right there, in an almost embrace with his mate. They talked pretty much exclusively with each other, even though they were with two youngish women of the same ethnicity (sisters? girlfriends?) Their eyes would meet and hold often. They talked softly together, and from time to time the one between the barrier and the rail would move his hands from their position either side of his friend. Once he clasped his friend's shoulder, for several seconds, and the friend just smiled, his body totally relaxed. Another time he moved his hands up and down his friend's torso, not actually touching him, but as if that's what he wanted to do, to caress him. I would say that they probably weren't lovers, yet there was the intimacy and closeness of lovers, the way in which lovers in public will mould themselves and their space to each other, their physical and sexual intimacy making them a comfort to each other. It was very touching.

Annie Proulx said she wrote Brokeback Mountain after seeing an old cowboy in a bar wistfully watching two handsome young cowboys. And I wondered what any author watching me would have seen in my face, my body language. Embarrassing, really.

It made me think about a party I went to a couple of years ago (this is the second vignette).

As soon as the party started, the men and the women divided into two groups by gender. I went with men: it would not have done to go with the women. On ne se fait pas! But as I knew no one, and I didn't want to let them see what I was, I didn't speak unless spoken to. I just watched and listened.

These blokes were truck-drivers, foremen at factories or car-yards or tyre-shops; they had plumbing or electrical businesses; they were utterly manly and normal. As the evening progressed, and their inhibitions were loosened by the beers they were downing, they would reach out unconsciously to touch each other, and then, their hands halfway raised, would stop as the inhibitions drummed into them since childhood took control again. They laughed and smiled at each other, they were obviously growing to like each other or already did (because many of them seemed to be already acquainted) but every tentative reaching out was aborted. I don't think these guys were gay or bi (though no doubt there were the usual percentages present). They were straight. Because it might be misinterpreted if they physically expressed their liking for each other, they didn't touch. They couldn't bring themselves to do it. It saddened me so much.

And lastly, my son at 11 or 12 and his then best friend, standing in a line at school with their arms resting casually on each other, as close to each other as they could get, their love entirely innocent, and entirely untrammelled by any fear of sex or others' interpretation of what they were doing. My son wouldn't do that now, because he would be too aware of what it could imply.

The overriding point of these three vignettes? The Christian hatred for homosexuality and homosexuals has poisoned the wellsprings of straight men loving each other too. Men are afraid of touching other men, of getting too fond of other men. The deep cultural aversion to gayness, continually refreshed by churchly poison, makes straight men lonelier and less happy. The two young men at the airport were noticeable precisely because one so seldom sees this. And it was a lovely sight to see. How long until expressed affection between men is normal? How long before men stop not doing things because they're "too gay"?

Gay lib is straight lib too. Getting acceptance for us will in the end shift the male landscape, and make straight men less lonely. Eventually.

Writing

I feel a bit depressed about my writing. I know I'm no great shakes as an author--I'm certainly not in the top 10%, maybe not even above average. But I've always known that, so what's changed?

The problem is that I've gone off writing about the classic gay themes. You know them: stunningly beautiful man with seven-incher has hot butt-sex with straight guy who at once turns gay after sex so good he just has no choice. No uglies. No wrinklies. No shorties. No fatties. Let's exclude, in other words, about 90% of the human race. What am I writing, Harlequin for men?

I had a romantic view of m2m love once, but these days my perspective is more jaundiced. Men are bastards. We cannot think with our hearts, we struggle to think with our bigger heads, and far too often we take decisions based on the reactions of our small head. Yup, I know: these are all massive generalizations, and all generalizations are false (including this one.) There are many exceptions: many men are very loving and not totally obsessed with sex. All the same.... Also, I like female characters in my stories, I like a world with women in it. To make me even more of a weirdo, I believe that humans are pretty much bisexual. But lots of gays won't even read stories with women or male bisexual characters.

I dunno. Maybe because I'm still not well (5 weeks of illness so far), maybe because I'm feeling a bit down, but I'm just thinking what's the point? My focus on love instead of sex is so old-fashioned and passé. Who cares? Who will read my stories? Will I ever make even enough money to pay for a daily cup of coffee from them? Why not just give up? I started writing because I hoped that I would make it easier for guys coming out now. But though the world is still full of horrible gay-haters, many younger blokes I talk to have no idea of the struggles we went through. They don't care. Same-sex acts when I was in my twenties were illegal in most places. Now most civilized countries have legalised gay marriage or its near equivalent. I talk to youngsters who are accepted instantly by their parents, friends and society when they come out. Gay ceases to be relevant when things are like that. And why would anyone need uplifting gay-shaded stories about finding someone to love, about living happily ever after, when their lives are so peachy?

I fear I am a troglodyte, outdated, dull, uninspiring and irrelevant.

Never mind, I expect I'll feel better tomorrow!

The Rabid Religious Right's Agenda

I found this on a blog written by a gay dad, married to a bloke. It's a polemic written by a religious nutter in 1884 about... well see if you can guess what! Read the blog post in full, because it shows how the conservative Christian right is always against progress and reform.

Here's an excerpt (see if you can guess what dreadful thing he opposes):

“AMONG the social questions now under discussion, none is more important or more freighted with principles and issues that outreach present consequences and take hold of the very life of society, than that of _________. The frequency and urgency with which this measure is pressed upon our legislative bodies by a certain class of reformers, encouraged by partial success in some of the newer states and territories, and the recent advocacy of it in full or limited form by some who have very largely the ear of the public, and the apparently increasing drift of public sentiment in this direction manifest in many quarters,—call for a sober and reflective revision not only of the reasons and supposed advantages of the so-called reform, but of the very serious issues and consequences involved in it. These issues are not immediate and do not lie on the surface."

Read the whole blog post. It's an eye-opener.

The same sort of people who now oppose gay marriage were also opposed to interracial marriage. And that was only struck down by the Supreme court in 1967. Once again, if you were to draw a map of the US, it would be the northeast, which never passed legislation against interracial marriage which is now the main area where gay marriage is legal. And just like the repeal of laws against interracial marriage, the acceptance of gay marriage is moving out from there, with Iowa the first state outside the northeast to allow same-sex marriage. We shall overcome, I have no doubt. But it is depressing that mankind never learns from the past. One day the church will be as embarrassed about its anti-gay rhetoric as it is by its support for slavery and its opposition to women's rights.

Backward Malawi -- and Australia

I was born there, which somehow makes it all worse.

Malawi has just sentenced a gay couple to 14 years in jail. Not for theft. Not for violence. Not for child abuse. For being gay. For being gay. Think about it. They've done no one any harm, but all the same, they're going to jail for 14 years. Extraordinary.

Before the missionaries arrived in Africa, homosexuality was a non-issue. As a child I would often see men walking hand-in-hand in the streets. But the relentless poison drip from the Christian-Fascists had turned the average African against homosexuality. In Uganda they're planning to execute gays for being gay. It has subsequently turned out that this push has been funded and encouraged by American fundamentalist churches, a more extreme version of what the Mormons did with prop 8 in California. In Malawi... Just look at the unseemly -- the unChristian -- joy on the faces of the bystanders in the picture from the Beeb. Ugh.

A barbarous, backward country. Nihil bonum ex Africa. But led into darkness by so-called Christian churches.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the rusted-on Catholics who dominate our government on left and right, want to turn back the clock on freedom. Senator Conroy of Labor (Minister for Communication) has proposed an internet censorship program which no one who knows anything about the technical operations of the internet thinks will work. Allegedly it is about child porn, and of course, if we can stop that, that would be wonderful. But the list of proscribed sites is to be kept secret (why?), and after Wikileaks published the preliminary list (which included a Queensland dentist, for God's sake) the founder of Wikileaks had his passport taken from him and was questioned about his computer hacking offences in 1991. Yes, that's right. 1991. We'll show you not to question authority! We'll keep dissent under wraps! We are the Thought-Police! Sung to the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers.

Since the powers that be in Canberra appear to have several perfectly harmless gay sites on their blacklist, quite possibly your humble correspondent will be blacklisted too. I'll keep you posted. If I can.