God has no religion

So much for tolerance

Jay Claydon of the Sydney Convicts [Pic The Age/SMH]

Ppl keep on saying that being gay is tolerated now, and things are improving, yadda yadda.  And so they are.   Somewhat.  But even in tolerant civilised New Zealand  ...

It started with whispers in the change rooms and ended with a call from his coach.

At 18, Jay Claydon had told close friends and family he was gay. They accepted him. But inside his rugby club, he didn't feel safe coming out. He was right to be fearful.

"At training one night, people were looking at me funny. Somehow they'd found out.

"On the Friday night, I got a call from my coach saying the players had taken a vote at a meeting behind my back and they weren't comfortable having me in the team any more. He said, 'they don't want you to come back.' "

[Read more here]

 How cruel.  How vile.  How horrible.  How it reminds me of my youth.  

Pigs.

The ChrisTaliban strike again

Hetero Awareness Month?  Good grief!  These drongos really love their victimhood.

The story is that the son of Rick R Reed, the author, saw this specious tosh at this Facebook page, and responded thus:

"How come nobody asked me what I want?..." It's clear to me that no one who was involved in the creation of this BS site ever bothered to ask children of gay parents how we feel about it. Well, even though you scrupulously avoided asking (because you knew you probably wouldn't like the answer, and it certainly wouldn't be useful to this campaign of slander), let me tell you, as the son of a gay man. My father is a remarkable man, he's an accomplished artist, he was a caring and involved father and mentor, and I love him. Therefore, I'm glad he was lucky enough to find love and happiness with someone who loves him back and appreciates him. I certainly don't care what that someone has between his legs; that's your PRURIENT AND WHOLLY INAPPROPRIATE CONCERN, and I really wish you'd stop putting it on people like me. You already claim to speak for gay people ("It's a choice," "Every gay relationship is dysfunctional," "No gay person can really be a Christian," etc) is that not enough? Do you need to appropriate the speech of their children too?

Not long after he posted this, the comment was deleted and he was banned for life from that site.  Just as happened with me and so-called NOM.

These hate-mongers aren't interested in debate or discussion.  They just want to take a hammer and pound their narrow obscurantist pre-Copernican opinions into our heads.  Anybody who disagrees, no matter how politely, is silenced.

You can read more here.

Majorca Flats -- 36

“Wasn't that paedophilia? I mean, a guy of his age having sex with a young lightie like you?”

“I never thought of it like that,” answered Jason. “I wasn't so young. The age of consent in England is sixteen. And I was seventeen. He was only a year or so older than me. His dad bought him a car when he passed his driving licence when he turned eighteen. He would take me to pubs and I'd pretend to be old enough to drink.”

“What's happened to him?”

“He's married. Works in the City somewhere. I saw him at an old boys' day and he'd lost all his looks. He was pudgy and had bags under his eyes. There was nothing there for either of us.”

Luigi sighed. “I never had anyone. I suppose, I was too gay for most of the guys at school. My first guy was a pick up I made at a pub. I pretended I was eighteen. He screwed me. It was . . . ” he hesitated, “ it was good to feel loved for a bit. At school everybody used to . . . . well, it wasn't so good.”

First Majorca Flats post          Previous MF Post (#35)          Next MF Post (#37)

Kilts are Sinful

So saith this bloke.

Wreath-laying on a windy Anzac Day

This drongo has obviously never worn a kilt.  Or met Scotsmen.  Soft?  Pull the other one, it's got bells on.  Kilts are very hairy, made of a thick and oily wool so that men can stride through wet heather without getting the bottom half of their clothes wet.  (Socks can be dried in front of the fire).  Traditionally worn without underpants, they also rub in uncomfortable places.  Believe me, they are not 'soft'. 

Let's set that aside for a moment.  What if men had worn 'kilts' and women trousers in Biblical times?  Would the great and good of the Bible have instructed us that this was the natural order:  obviously men wore kilts and obviously women wore trousers?  It has always been so , and so obviously the Lord wanted it that way, and if you deviate from His word, Holy Macaroons, you are so going to hell.  Hell, if I go to Hell, you may depend on it: it will not be because of my attire.

Doubly Sinful

And why is a robe not a skirt?  What am I missing?  And is it OK for women to wear underpants, since they are pants not a skirt?  The Abbé de Somewhere-or-Other thought not, when  women's bloomers were first introduced.  He thought them immoral and a vile perversion.  So it always is:  the way we do things now (or in some mythical past) is the best way.

Roman and Greek men wore "skirts".  But then we all know that they were effete and immoral, unlike those manly Teutons and Celts, whose men wore trousers but also (like the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Indians, and everybody except the Jews -- oh, but wait, there was Jonathan and King David) slept with men.  An Irish wife could divorce her husband if he spent too much time with his (male) lover. The Teutonic tribal chiefs drove their chariots into battle with their young man beside them.

It's ningies like this who make religion look ludicrous.  Does anybody intelligent for one minute think that the Being who made the Universe cares about whether your nether garment has a dividing piece of cloth in it or not?  Somewhere between 100 and 200 billion stars in our own galaxy.  Billion.  Repeat after me:  our star is one of around 150 BILLION stars in this galaxy alone*. And as far as the Hubble telescope can see, for billions of light years in all directions, there are countless, literally countless, galaxies.  Each with billions of stars.  In the Amazon basin, there are, we are told, ten thousand species of beetle.  Why do these literal Christianists think God is so small?  He is Grand, Awesome, All-Powerful, Terrible, if He is anything at all.  He is Everywhere and in Everything, out in every direction, across limitless space.  He doesn't give a flying rat's clacker about kilts.  He's too busy contemplating the ineffable beauty of His creation.

Real men wear kilts.  With nothing on underneath.


[*Correction and update:  My tally of stars in our galaxy was from memory.  In fact there are at least 200 billion stars, and there may be as many as 400 billion.  Our close galactic neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, has one trillion stars.  And you can be sure, on every star system in both galaxies, God is having conniptions about men who wear skirts]

Flamers

A little while ago I read a remarkable blog post, from a blog which shall remain nameless. In it, the blogger described how he'd been approached by a effeminate (but very muscular) guy. This guy suffered from a -- shock! horror! -- lisp. Repelled, our intrepid blogger assaulted the "queen" and then vomited. There followed a diatribe against feminine guys.

A psychiatrist or psychologist would surely find the whole episode remarkably revealing. To me, it indicates a very strong internalised homophobia. Ah, many will reply, but what if you don't find effeminate men sexy? Well, what of it? If it had been a straight guy responding to a gay one in this way, the conclusions would have been obvious. It would have been seen as a gay hate crime. And let me make it quite clear: I'm not saying that you have to have it off with someone you find unappealing just to be politically correct. Some blokes prefer busty brunettes, others brunets with muscly pecs. Each to his own. But to hit the other guy and then vomit? C'mon! Whatever happened to Sorry, I have a headache?

So why do I call it a kind of (internalised) homophobia? Because what is going on here is a comparable to what happens in race-obsessed societies. In apartheid South Africa, the "whites" were the most desired, the "blacks" the least. The "coloureds" (mixed-race South Africans, who ironically spoke Afrikaans*, the language of the dominant "white" minority) were considered superior to the "blacks" but inferior to the "whites", and the "whiter" your skin was the higher your social standing. Manufacturers of (dangerous and ineffective) skin-whitening pastes and hair-straightening liquids did a roaring trade. Self-hatred brought on by the perverted values of society.

But how is this relevant to the spectrum of gays from queens through to clones? The most acceptable gays (to gays and straights) are those who can "pass". They're "masculine" and "straight-acting". When last did you see an ad in the hook-up section of the personals columns for a "gay-acting" partner?

It's not for nothing that one of the biggest story themes on Nifty is about straight guys turning gay. There are all sorts of reasons why this trope is so powerful to us, and I'll talk about them in a later post, but one of them clearly is that a despised and discriminated-against sexual alternative is embraced by the "real man" (gays, by definition, cannot be "real men"). A straight man turning gay validates us. And the machoer, the straighter, the more masculine the other man is before he turns to the dark side, the better. Hell's teeth, even in my own writing, I use these archetypal stories. In Footy, a straight man falls for his gay best friend.

The least acceptable gays are the "femmes", the "queens", the "gay-acting", the "flamers". When straight society talks disdainfully about "homos", this is mostly what they mean. Effeminate men are despised by most straights and gays. And it's worth asking why. 'Just because' is not an answer. Consider how many gays wish that drag queens would keep away from the gay parades. "They perpetuate stereotypes" is the politest comment I've heard. Why is it more acceptable for a woman to do "manly things" than for a man to do feminine things? Why is it OK for women to wear pants but not for men to wear dresses? Why is being a macho sportsman (even if from time to time you have a mutual blow job with your teammates) acceptable but being a male ballet dancer not?

Think of all the gay icons. Gays are turned on by construction workers and tradies, marines (but not, curiously to the same extent by other kinds of soldiers), cowboys, firefighters, bikies and the leather-clad, policemen, and of course, sportsmen. One can understand the attraction in each case, especially for sportsmen, who must be fit, healthy and muscular just to follow their calling. But so much of the attraction is for a kind of off-hand, totally self-confident, unthinking maleness. Men who don't gel their hair, who don't wear designer label undies, who sprawl in a masculine way in front of the TV to watch the game, who emerge filthy from under a car they've just fixed (competence is a very male virtue), who don't wear deodorant or aftershave. Real men. The kind of men we want to be. So, since we are homos not straights, we indulge in the equivalent of skin-lightening creams and hair straighteners. Even the term "clone" is horribly revealing.

The irony is that I myself am not immune to the attraction of these archetypes. And that I had to spend a lot of time and thought to getting over my own internalised homophobia which made me despise myself because I wasn't real man enough, and made me deeply uncomfortable with flamers. But the first step to coming to terms with this is to recognise it for what it is.

I'm sure I'll get heaps of emails and comments, saying stuff like "but that's just what I like/dislike, it's not homophobia." Fair enough. But the question is: why do we have these likes and dislikes? Our personal values don't happen in a vacuum. They are affected, coloured, driven by societal values. We must understand, because if we end up disliking ourselves because we don't conform to some outdated sexist stereotype than we will just get hurt. Effeminate gay men are us, too. Flamers have feelings. Until they/we are whole-heartedly accepted, gay liberation will not be complete.

[This is the third of a linked series of posts. The previous two are Darl and Homophobia and Behaviour Modification. These articles I wrote for Wilde Oats also consider some of the issues I touch on here: The End of Gay and Gay, Then and Now.]

The Village People, making fun of the stereotypes.

*the first book written in Afrikaans was written in Arabic script to convert the "Malay" (Indonesian) Muslim slaves in Cape Town in the early 19th century. Ironic that their creole of Dutch became the language of the apartheid regime. Now there's self-hatred for you! And apartheid is pronounced apart+hate. Easy to remember.

Guilt, self-hatred and deceit.

Guilt, self-hatred and deceit: a deadly and toxic brew.

From the Blog Bi Like Me:

I had this feeling a while ago, and maybe you've had the same one. I obviously haven't been truthful and forthright to my wife and family about my bisexuality. But am I being punished? I may seem happy, I may act great. You may say, he's handsome, he's got a wonderful family and wife. You see me from the outside..but you don't know my insides are a bubbling cauldron of deceit, lies, and evilness. That's the way I feel sometimes. Sometimes I feel that god is punishing me for my actions. 

and: 

I could refrain from having sexual liaisons outside my marriage: I've tried..and unless I get castrated, not gonna happen. 'Nuff said? As a result of my choice to remain secretive, I am in a constant personality upheaval. Some days, I'm great. Relatively calm, pretty content. Other days, I'm downright nasty, unhappy and resentful. Unfortunately, I take it out on some of the people closest to me

and:

I'm constantly feeling the pull between my family and my desire to be with another man. There is always a conflict within me. The emotional roller coaster is terrible. A long time ago, after I first got married and had my experiments with other men I would be wrought with guilt. I'd swear off not only being with another man, but also everything associated with the action..like looking on the internet, chatting in chat rooms, etc. It doesn't work. The pull and attraction is obviously too great. I am clearly not the person people see me as. Those who know me would be shocked if they knew of my real life - my true feelings. In college, I was quite the lady's man My friends, family and co-workers see me as a stable, smart, honest, hardworking, loyal and loving father. ....don't assume that my sexual encounters are taken lightly. They are not. It is a cross I must bear, and if I wasn't worried about the affect on my kids lives, clearly there would be an easier way out of the constant internal struggle that I go through. I don't go there or do something because of my loyalty to them, and in spite of my unhappiness, I plod on..every day

It seems to me that we are born the way we are. We are born with (or they inexorably and inevitably develop within us) feelings towards men, feelings of love and desire. We try hard to be moral and decent, not just by the standards of society, but by our own perhaps more demanding standards. And we fail, too often. And then we endure guilt and self-hatred, and our lives are poisoned as a result. How much simpler it would be if the world quietly accepted that feeling love or desire for another man is not wrong or evil, but part of the natural continuum of human interaction, that in fact m2m love might even be noble and uplifting, and that in any case, we are what we are. A friend once said that asking someone to be straight if they are gay-shaded is like asking them to be two inches taller. We can't do it. And by trying to contort ourselves into the strict (& strait) paradigms demanded by the Christian-Fascists, we damage ourselves and those round us.

I am not unfaithful to my wife, because I love her and don't want to hurt her. But there is an aching void in me where I lack men: not for sex, but for love.

Michael Breyette

Another website I pop into now and again is Michael Breyette's, also in the links on the right of this blog page. He draws and paints extraordinarily beautiful men. This is his latest image. You can buy copies of his paintings from his website.

I like the title of the painting: Rapture. A moment's thought will tell you why.

I confess that it's a little discouraging looking on these idealized, perfect beauties, since I am quite a long way from that. Never mind, I'm very slowly losing weight. But even slender, I won't look like his guys.

[Image copyright Michael Breyette; used with permission]