Revisiting my inner homophobe

Why did it take me so long to discover Mark Simpson? Great thanks to RSL for the belated introduction.

Simpson is the editor of “Anti-Gay,” an acerbic collection of essays that skewer the petty queer establishment. It’s refreshing to discover a fellow traveler, having been castigated as a “self-hater”  more than once for daring to critique cheesy gay culture.

An excerpt from a Simpson-penned screed:

Isn’t it just fabby to be gay? Gay is, after all, good, and everyone fortunate enough to be gay is, of course, glad — when they’re not too busy feeling proud. Which is perfectly understandable since gays, as we all know, have the best clubs, the best drugs, the best underwear shop and the best time. In fact, gays are so glad and proud that they have a big, sweaty street party every year to show the world just how glad and proud they are and what great underwear they have.

As The Times of London review for “Anti-Gay” summarized, “oppression and prejudice do not become legitimate simply because they happen to be practised by the previously oppressed.”

Naturally, Simpson is reviled by the PQE. They don’t take kindly to those who question the orthodoxy, which makes it even more fun for contrarians like myself. We should continue challenging their stranglehold on the conversation. They don’t speak for me. Neither does Rosie nor the mopey guy from “Grey’s Anatomy” nor whichever boy bander came out last week.

Neither do the money-grubbing, do-nothing indigation councils like the Human Rights Campaign. And neither do pandering celebrities like Cyndi Lauper (although being a fag hag can prolong one’s career).

Why continue beating this drum? Selfishness, mainly — I’d prefer a more interesting community. You know, diversity.

And I also remember being a teen, driving down to the Tara theater to see “Torch Song Trilogy.” I was still coming to terms with my sexuality, but the movie depressed the fuck out of me … literally.

I didn’t want to live a life surrounded by the kind of melodramatic queens depicted in that flick. I had no interest in being a whiny, self-absorbed cliche. As a result I continued living a lie for a few more years. I blame Harvey Fierstein. I bet watching Sean Hayes has kept a few gay teens in the closet, too. 

So, once again, the mantra: We’re here, we’re queer and we’re not all caricatures.

Genarlow Wilson freed

A gross injustice has been corrected:

A judge today ordered that Genarlow Wilson be freed from prison, where he has spent more than two years for receiving consensual oral sex from a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson also amended Wilson’s felony conviction to a misdemeanor without the requirement that he register as a sex offender.

I guess Mark Cuban can come to Georgia now.

You dropped a bomb on me, bitch!

This story is not a farce:

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called “Gay Bomb.”

Deconstructing Tony

Heather Havrilesky raises a fair question in her analysis of “The Sopranos” finale:

As the screen went black in the middle of a line from the song “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey, it was hard not to wonder, Is Chase brilliant for so thoroughly subverting our expectations, or… is he just an asshole?

Thinking bad, God good

BlueGrassRoots visits the Creation Museum so you don’t have to:

Yes, the Garden of Eden was a Disney wonderland, even with dinosaurs! One of the most interesting discoveries of the museum is that The Flintstones was not merely a children’s’ cartoon, but rather a realistic depiction of man’s early interaction with their dinosaur friends. Never mind those foolish heathen scientists who say that humans came some 60 million years after the extinction of dinosaurs. The first image the visitor receives as he/she enters the museum is Eve/Pebbles Flintstone frolicking with her pet dinosaur, Dino. No worries for Pebbles, because this “velaciraptor” is a playful vegetarian pet here to serve you and be your buddy.

Meanwhile, Adam really wants to be your buddy..

The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.

After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.

Revisiting my inner homophobe

Why did it take me so long to discover Mark Simpson? Great thanks to RSL for the belated introduction.

Simpson is the editor of "Anti-Gay," an acerbic collection of essays that skewer the petty queer establishment. It’s refreshing to discover a fellow traveler, having been castigated as a "self-hater"  more than once for daring to critique cheesy gay culture.

An excerpt from a Simpson-penned screed:

Isn’t it just fabby to be gay? Gay is, after all, good, and everyone fortunate enough to be gay is, of course, glad — when they’re not too busy feeling proud. Which is perfectly understandable since gays, as we all know, have the best clubs, the best drugs, the best underwear shop and the best time. In fact, gays are so glad and proud that they have a big, sweaty street party every year to show the world just how glad and proud they are and what great underwear they have.

As The Times of London review for "Anti-Gay" summarized, "oppression and prejudice do not become legitimate simply because they happen to be practised by the previously oppressed."

Naturally, Simpson is reviled by the PQE. They don’t take kindly to those who question the orthodoxy, which makes it even more fun for contrarians like myself. We should continue challenging their stranglehold on the conversation. They don’t speak for me. Neither does Rosie nor the mopey guy from "Grey’s Anatomy" nor whichever boy bander came out last week.

Neither do the money-grubbing, do-nothing indigation councils like the Human Rights Campaign. And neither do pandering celebrities like Cyndi Lauper (although being a fag hag can prolong one’s career).

Why continue beating this drum? Selfishness, mainly — I’d prefer a more interesting community. You know, diversity.

And I also remember being a teen, driving down to the Tara theater to see "Torch Song Trilogy." I was still coming to terms with my sexuality, but the movie depressed the fuck out of me … literally.

I didn’t want to live a life surrounded by the kind of melodramatic queens depicted in that flick. I had no interest in being a whiny, self-absorbed cliche. As a result I continued living a lie for a few more years. I blame Harvey Fierstein. I bet watching Sean Hayes has kept a few gay teens in the closet, too. 

So, once again, the mantra: We’re here, we’re queer and we’re not all caricatures.

Happy Birthday Gene Wilder

He’s 74 today — which should motivate me to finish my script, “Mall Across America.” Wilder will play a billionaire megalomaniac bidding to construct a mall connecting New York to Los Angeles. Prince will play his nemesis, the Ted Turner to Wilder’s Rupert Murdoch. The casting came to me in the shower years ago, and on that there will be no compromise. (I can be a naive optimist at times.) 

Some of Wilder’s most memorable scenes:

Puttin’ on the Ritz;

Seducing a sheep;

Terrorizing children (I like Johnny Depp, but there’s only one Willy Wonka).

Battle of the Claymates

Some of Clay Aiken‘s most devoted fans are having a hard time accepting his homosexuality:

There’s a civil war among the Claymates in Claynation. … An insider said, “The war is between the batty members that are still clinging to their heterosexual fantasies of him and others that don’t harbor such illusions.” Aiken’s sexuality has been a subject of speculation ever since several men came out publicly and said they’d met him in gay chat rooms and had relations with him. Aiken has always refused to discuss his inclinations. The Claymates’ clash got so bad that the Official Fan Club at clayonline.com completely suspended its message board and noted, “Due to reports of extensive unrest and disrespect amongst members that has been carrying on for several weeks, the Official Fan Club Message Board will be shut down until further notice. Please note that should tensions continue on other areas of the fan club, severe consequences may occur.”

Don’t ask, don’t tell, do read

Two incisive columns about our military’s inane “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. It’s indefensible, as Maureen Dowd points out (TimesSelect; no link):

Even Rudy Giuliani, who loves to cross-dress and who stayed with old friends, a gay couple, to avoid Gracie Mansion when his second marriage was disintegrating, had an antediluvian answer.

Wolf Blitzer asked him about the Arabic linguists trained by the government who have been ousted from the military after being outed.

Mr. Giuliani, who procured three deferments to avoid Vietnam, replied that, with the war in Iraq raging, “This is not the time to deal with disruptive issues like this.” …

Mitt Romney agreed with Rudy on the issue. Instead of going to Vietnam, Mr. Romney spent two and a half years doing Mormon missionary work in France. Isn’t that like doing Peace Corps work in Monte Carlo?

At the memorial for Mark Bingham, the gay 6-foot-5 rugby player who was on Flight 93 on 9/11, John McCain said he might owe his life to the young man who helped fight the hijackers, bringing down the plane aiming to crash into the Capitol.

But Senator McCain wants gay troops to stay closeted. The policy, he said, is “working.” But it’s not. The Army in Iraq is like that exhausted nag Scarlett O’Hara whipped on to Tara. Yet Republicans surge on, even as they expel gays.

Meanwhile, the America Embassy in Iraq has only a handful of fluent Arabic speakers. Stephen Benjamin should’ve been one of them:

After joining the Navy in 2003, I attended the Defense Language Institute, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class and then spent two years giving our troops the critical translation services they desperately needed. I was ready to serve in Iraq.

But I never got to. In March, I was ousted from the Navy under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which mandates dismissal if a service member is found to be gay.

Be careful what you google

In a report released Saturday, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with “comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy.” …

While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to “achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy,” Privacy International said in an explanation of its findings.

Meanwhile …

A jailed Chinese reporter accused of leaking state secrets has joined a U.S. lawsuit claiming Yahoo Inc. helped the Chinese government convict dissidents, his mother said Sunday.

Shi Tao, who was sentenced in 2005 to 10 years in prison, is seeking compensation from the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet company, claiming Yahoo Hong Kong and Yahoo China provided information to the Chinese authorities that led to his arrest.

Genarlow Wilson freed

A gross injustice has been corrected:

A judge today ordered that Genarlow Wilson be freed from prison, where he has spent more than two years for receiving consensual oral sex from a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson also amended Wilson’s felony conviction to a misdemeanor without the requirement that he register as a sex offender.

I guess Mark Cuban can come to Georgia now.

You dropped a bomb on me, bitch!

This story is not a farce:

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called “Gay Bomb.”

Deconstructing Tony

Heather Havrilesky raises a fair question in her analysis of “The Sopranos” finale:

As the screen went black in the middle of a line from the song “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey, it was hard not to wonder, Is Chase brilliant for so thoroughly subverting our expectations, or… is he just an asshole?

Thinking bad, God good

BlueGrassRoots visits the Creation Museum so you don’t have to:

Yes, the Garden of Eden was a Disney wonderland, even with dinosaurs! One of the most interesting discoveries of the museum is that The Flintstones was not merely a children’s’ cartoon, but rather a realistic depiction of man’s early interaction with their dinosaur friends. Never mind those foolish heathen scientists who say that humans came some 60 million years after the extinction of dinosaurs. The first image the visitor receives as he/she enters the museum is Eve/Pebbles Flintstone frolicking with her pet dinosaur, Dino. No worries for Pebbles, because this “velaciraptor” is a playful vegetarian pet here to serve you and be your buddy.

Meanwhile, Adam really wants to be your buddy..

The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.

After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.

Happy Birthday Gene Wilder

He’s 74 today — which should motivate me to finish my script, "Mall Across America." Wilder will play a billionaire megalomaniac bidding to construct a mall connecting New York to Los Angeles. Prince will play his nemesis, the Ted Turner to Wilder’s Rupert Murdoch. The casting came to me in the shower years ago, and on that there will be no compromise. (I can be a naive optimist at times.) 

Some of Wilder’s most memorable scenes:

Puttin’ on the Ritz;

Seducing a sheep;

Terrorizing children (I like Johnny Depp, but there’s only one Willy Wonka).