Unsung heroes....

For every movement there is an antecedent. People think that the gay rights movement just spontaneously ignited the night of the Stonewall riots. There were people who were pushing for their rights waaaay before that.

Magnus Hirschfeld, for instance, who was a doctor and psychologist in pre-30's Berlin and died under the Hitler regime. The incredibly gifted Christopher Isherwood, whose books influenced me, especially the autobiographies, and who led an amazing life. The poet W. H. Auden. Even Walt Whitman in a way. They and so many others were influential, and knew EVERYONE who was anyone. They built a foundation for what came later.

In America, there was Harry Hay, who formed the Mattachine Society to better conditions for gays in the US. One of his members and an activist all his life was Frank Kameny. Mr. Kameny just passed on at age 86.

In MY corner of the world, when I was a kid and teen and young adult, the local rag and the only daily 'newpaper' in the state, vilified the Mattachine S0ciety as a bunch of pedophiles. (It's always the easiest thing to do, isn't it?) They weren't. They fought for equality. They said, 'this isn't right.' And they fought.

If you were to ask any young gay or lesbian person today, they would tell you the gay rights movement came about like... oh god, brain fart... some god springing out of Jupiter or Zeus' head. Or cite Harvey Milk, who was assassinated, and I don't even want to get INTO the Twinkie defense, that absolute low-life Dan White.

People laid the groundwork. People were jailed. People were killed for what they believed was right. People suffered and were still able to fight.

And THAT, my Precioussessssss... is what is needed now in a very different context. Vote next time. Examine your conscience. It won't be about gay rights. It will be about your reproductive rights, and many other things.

Rachel gave a fitting tribute to Mr. Kameny. It's to the point.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Am not sure, but I think when I embed these there are commercials from Mobil Exxon and Goldman Sachs first, which drive me totally crazy.

Especially Mobil Exxon, and that pock-marked Eric Oswald and his 'reassuring' message on fracking... (all praise HD) and saying it is so safe, well, I usually yell 'Tell THAT to the people who can take a Bic and light their tap water on fire, you git!' But that's just me... Everything has a price, doesn't it...

Ahh, hypocrisy...

If this were only a single story, it wouldn't be worth commenting on at all. But especially in Rethug land, it just happens over and over and over... and most of them still end up being seen as 'respectable'.

I hadn't known that 80 dollars is a going rate in 2011. I shudder to think what it was in the Seventies.

I'd feel sorry for this fuck-up.... if he weren't in legislature and passes laws that are actually against his own best interests. And I love the last line in that... oh, the self-righteous indignation. Yeah, your life is ruined, Mister.... but it already was because you were living a lie all your life. I wouldn't call that something easy to do.

As to the aesthetics.... well if the man in that picture looks like that... and I were eighteen... I'd have run away. Fast.

You can read the salacious details here. Rethugs---- sometimes I think they INVENTED hypocrisy, but no, it's always been around. However, they do seem to have it honed down to a fucking art form nowadays....

Jon Stewart

can slay me sometimes....

It's only excerpts, butcha get the idea...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Da culture wars are back on the agenda, bitchez...

You can't defend your new-fought-for freedoms enough. I should file this under one step forward, three decades back. Herrgottnochmal. One should always be vigilant. Link here.

Ok, NH, get on it...

Paradise Found, Paradise Lost...only to find guilt

Have been thinking this past week with the phone off the hook. And of the literally thousands of books I have read.... there wasn't much for a young gay person with any postitive message. And movies? Well the characters were so fucked up, they committed suicide, or became homicidal murderers, and were killed. Not much to aspire to, in my days growing up. James Baldwin's 'Giovanni's Room'. Beautiful, but oh please...


Nothing had a happy ending, not Gore Vidal's terrible novel, and especially not John Rechy's stellar 'City of Night'. I was about fifteen when that one fell into my hands, and it rocked my world.... the wrong way. It was about a very lonely young man who is so hurt, he prostitutes himself to anyone willing to pay. He wants love, but can't give it. It was gritty, graphic, but not pornographic, and horrific to read. It covers the major American cities where male prostitutes virtually eked out a living, and there was a time stamp on it, as long as they were young. It's a brilliant book... with so much packed into it you ended up breathless. The end was tragic, but not in the traditional sense. The main character meets someone who really wants to love him during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and is honest with him... and the main character just doesn't dare, and walks out on him on Ash Wednesday. Crushing. No, no happy end.

Later, authors got really 'out there', but I cannot think of one that was life-affirming, or offering any sort of hope. And the end-Seventies came, along with AIDS, just when people felt they were on an even keel, and wow. Just wow. Larry Kramer started it with his novel 'Faggots'. It was very controversial. He was alarmed at what he saw in that hedonistic time in New York, and although his novel was hilariously funny, he thought things had gone too far. And got a mess of flak for it. And his thesis was correct. There was was this explosion of freedom, and people did what they did sexually. And in the end, he warned about everything being too EASY, and the attitude of if you didn't hook up or someone had a wart or something... there was always a better one around the corner, and there were few commitments. Funny as it was... it was a warning. And came just as the first AIDS cases were reported.

So yeah, retribution from on high, or something. As if people hadn't had enough to deal with, guilt much? Terror? Just when you thought, hey... the world came crashing down, and people you knew were dying like proverbial flies being bombed with some sort of aerosol. Including a brilliant young man of 30 whom I wished would have been my real brother, because he was that to me.

Well yes, the world goes on, and the books came out. Andrew Holleran wrote the incredible 'Dancer From The Dance' in 1978. An wonderful epitaph of a culture that grew up, bloomed, and was obliterated. And very beautiful, but not positive.

Felice Picano wrote the stunning novel, 'The Lure', a pseudo 'krimi' which explored the dark side of that culture from the same time.

And there was the wonderful Edmund White... (who was sort of a snob, if erudite...) who wrote a wonderful trilogy. I couldn't get through his last one. Peter had that in German, and the title was 'Abschiedssymphonie'. (Departure symphonie.) He was ill. I couldn't finish it. It was too hurtful. That must have been in 2003 because he wrote about an artist who designed 'the island in the Mur for our cultural year. According to the book... he was nuts. An 'actionist', which I basically hate, and he would lie under stairs in an office building in NY, and masturbate to looking at ladies' underwear as they descended, and spill his seed into little boxes with soil, so to speak. And then sell them. I found THAT really odd. 'Where's the ART, hey?' That was in the Seventies, in 2003... he was a sensational architect.... go figure. Some people get success if they are brazen enough.

There was the devastating film 'Long Time Companion'. Great movie, but not if you're already depri. Or Torch Song Trilogy... which was uplifting, but more in the I will survive mode, although Harvey Fierstein knocks me out every time.

What I mean is.... every cultural reference I ever grew up with was negative in the end. You don't GET good references, or books or movies, and everything is 'you're gonna kill yourself and die, because you aren't worth anything.' That is the message, and it came from the gay authors, and movies, and the news.... How could you not help hating yourself?

I have YET to see something positive on that score. And I do NOT think the people mentioned above did much to better anything. You can write beautifully... and kill people with it. Kill their hope.

You can make people laugh till they hurt... but they end up hurting.

I've met artists of all kinds in my life. I've been intimate with them if our minds were on the same page. Writers, composers, theater people in my salad days. Connecting physically doesn't mean you will connect in your minds.

I would love to see something with a positive message of hope. For the next generation so that they do not despair.

for those who think there was nothing before Stonewall..

Hmm... you might find this interesting.

As to the above.... what WAS that again about Don't Ask, Don't Tell?????

And Blogger is driving me crazy not wanting to format this as I wanted it.

Thank whomever

That I didn't grow up in Texas. Because I would be believing that the US is shortly before the ultimate downfall. WHY should this be an issue??? I certainly didn't run around subverting the culture... There is balance in the call-ins below, but wow... 'teh crazy' is certainly out there...

And this from the tee-vee machine....

Another part of the 'It Gets Better campaign.

It's the weekend, dreary

history lesson. Sad. If you right click on the picture instead of playing it here, you can watch it full screen on YouTube.

Well even Jon Stewart wasn't surprised....

Ken Mehlman, he with the ugly mouf, is gay. I know. Whoopee.

It wouldn't matter... except as head of the RNC, he helped launch the most vicious campaign ever to harm the GLBT I have ever seen.

For money. And now.... after a year or so out of the national spotlight, he's all 'oh, sorry'?

The man is a MESS. And I'm supposed to 'boo-hoo?' It's a joke, right? Right?

And that is supposed to make it all right, and we're gonna kiss his boo-boo. WRONG. The man is scum. EVERYBODY in the community KNEW at the time what sort of spineless creep he was. No one dared pick the story up in the mainstream.

Cripes, the Righties are so twisted, you can't even imagine whatever distortions are coming next, and then you find out they betray every 'Value', they profess to hold.

Sad.

Am linking as an exception to an article here. I like Joe Jervis, he's sorta cool.

Oh... OUCH....

Who thinks shit like this up, huh? I 'lurvs' me the 50's touch, but a mess of people won't 'get' it...
And yeah, am sleepless in Graz again at 2 a.m. My keyboard takes me to strange places.



Am back to bed... travelling tomorrow....

Was busy today with my own personal disasters... and head-shaking... and went to Macdonalds for the first time in over 25 years, but it was political

And sick yesterday. Yesterday was a horriday, so nothing to report. Everyone goes away for a long weekend, even though they just had one.

(Pentecost)

So the country shut down for a week, and I went to Gamlitz today... without realising it was a school-free day. This meant sitting on the 'mayor's bench' in Ehrenhausen at the bus stop for a full hour instead of less than fifteen minutes to get the connection to my destination, and another hour on the way back in Café Purgatory, and in the meanwhile, there were contentious problems to solve, the weather was the pits, I had a headache, my eyes were bothering me, there are other problems I do not wish to discuss, and I was really put out.

I was so put out, I stopped in MacD's for the first time in twenty five years and ate a fishburger. I ordered fries, but they weren't good, and way too greasy, and lost my appetite for the latter, and left most of them.

It was sort of a masochistic thing, going there. I needed some carbs fast, didn't care what it was, and have been often criticised that I have some sort of predjudice against them. The bread was disgusting, there was too much tarter sauce, and I realised I was right. I will never darken their doors again.

There was an ulterior motive as well: Solidarity. Bill O' of Faux attacked the French branch of MacD's for one of their ads. Yesterday, I believe.... And was 'incensed, I tells ya, incensed!' over the new series of ads they run in France. The motto is 'Come as you are'. Any walk of life hey. The one he took umbrage at was aimed at gay people. (Who are they gonna wanna appeal to next?' he bleated, 'Al Queada'??)

Nice comparison, Bill O'.... He maintained it would NEVER run in the US. The ad in question is so subtle, and not 'out there', I thought it was cute. It was charming, and most people wouldn't even know what it is 'about'. If I were running that campaign, I would do one about them even welcoming racist bigots. Rand Paul would like it am sure. 'Come as you are'. But it would be hard to do subtly. But we musn't forget that Bill O' once declared war on France and probably still claims his call for a boycott on their products worked.... Remember Freedom Fries???

I really wish he or Glen Beck had seen the German ads for something called 'Smints'. A breath freshener lozenge. In the first one, this car driver is alone in the car, gets pulled over by the state police, pops one, and the cop leans in the window, and gives him one hell of a kiss, which really throws him. In the second, he is with a woman in the car gets pulled over by the State Police, looks happy about it, pops a lozenge, looking forward to it, and the cop kisses the guy passionately, the woman looks schocked and the end line is always, 'No Smints, no kiss.' Hell it even shocked even me for daringness. And sent me off the charts for hilarity and admired how funny it was.



Bill O is such an idiot.

Can you please tell me what was so offensive about this ad? I thought it was charming. Which is why I broke my boycott, today. The French can be so cute.... And I should know...

Ok, this is ridiculous, and so typical of the msm...

I first got the hint from Steven Colbert's show yesterday. And it went viral......

Obama picked a Supreme Justice candidate, and the other side went so LOW as to cast aspersions.. The Talking points: She was never married, never had a child. She plays softball. (Oh my gawwd). She smokes cigars sometimes. Which makes her.... shhhh!!!!... a lesbian?

OMG, OMG, OMG.

Wow, oh just wow... This is so fucking sick, I can't find the words any more. I've seen some total smears in my life in politics in NH. This is so below the belt, I am fighting angry. And it is just political, and the ones running it aren't people with consciounses. Soulless.

They are just pissed off over the Harriet Meiers debacle, and it is payback time.

But to denigrate someone like that..... oh boy...

Well what about 'golden boy' John Roberts who has proably had more rent boys than anyone knows.....

I would like to punch him in his smug face rather than look at him.

Look, am on the GBLT theme today, but some things really piss me off. I really do not care about who gets elected to SCOTUS. I DO care about a balance there. And for the right to come after her for maybe being lesbian, and hey, she didn't propagate.....

Well, uh-huh...

I would rather have Rachel Maddow be on the Supreme Court, because she is rational, and out, and a wonderful person. And fair, I respect her intellect and integrity.

I do not know who Elena Kagan is... but this sort of smear before it even goes to comittee, just sucks.

This is a smear that is so beneath anything ethical, I could just holler.

Leave it to the Repubs, who do very odious things, and then point their fingers at other people.

Disgusting, and this will not be an ongoing topic. It makes me nauseous.

ok, ok, I have had enough already....

Look, I don't know why some people in 'Murka find the gay issue a 'hot button'. If Laura Bush comes out on Larry King, looking like she was in the make-up wardrobe with someone named 'Vampira', to get her whiter than white... well then I ask myself wtf is going on with the msm.

It is just a question, hey....

How is that important, other than to polarise people, to raise their ratings among the rowdies, and just jump on an issue that should be dead by now. Laura said 'It's a generational thing.. On Larry King, of all places....' Joy Behar of 'The View' ratched it up a notch, because it is sooooo on topic.

Well, I don't go around asking people where they put their pegs in some hole. It's none of my friggin' business. People are people, and either they are good, or someone you'd rather avoid, no matter what persuasion they are.

And I like the clips of Joy Behar and enjoy her humour when I find a clip, I do. And she is Glbt friendly, and has a mess of fans. However....

There comes a point when the issue becomes political, and people get used for whatever reason, and I do not appreciate it. At all. The Gulf of Mexico is drowning in oil spawned by completely inept arseholes, and this is the theme of the day? Oh no.... so not going there, but I have a message: get the hell off my back.

Rachel Maddow just rocks

I found this so on target.

These are just throwaway pictchas...

Spring has arrived.... on the way to the home...








Newly planted fields, and verdant hills.






and a glimpse of my 'chauffeur' in the rear view mirror....








An odd thing happened last week when I was in what I call 'The Café Purgatory', where I have to wait 45 minutes for my train back to Graz. I was out on the terrace, you see, had to go to the WC, and took my new camera because I was NOT gonna leave it unattended on the table. Well, they saw me go with it, and thought it was a men's pocket book, or something, and I returned in time to hear the S word. Which is the F word in local dialect. (yeah, faggot...)

I pretended I hadn't heard that, and took the camera out of its' case, and screened what I had shot that day. Whereupon the guy with the foul mouf got interested, and we talked for about fifteen minutes or so, and he was curious about what I keep doing down there, and where I come from, and what kind of camera I have, and so forth and so on... And I was honest enough, just basic facts... and he was pleasant. He is probably in his forties, sort of rowdy, has long blonde thinning hair, an earing, and looks nine months pregnant, because he seemingly drinks beer instead of anything healthy. And then the train came, and off I went.... I really didn't think about it any more.

So today, I got to the Café Purgatory, as I call it, walked into the door, called out for my mineral water with a twist, and was just finishing my book, because I only read it on the train, or waiting for one. And when I ordered it, I hear this 'WHOA!' in the background, as all the rowdies were at the bar.... And I said, 'What?' And they said 'oh, nothing...' And went out on the terrace, and got back into my book because it was the last two chapters.

And the barkeeperess.... is that a word?... delivered it with a smile, and said, 'This is on the house, a man is putting it on his tab.' Well you could have knocked me over with an axe, hey. I suppose I must have looked mystified, because she added, 'The guy with the long blonde hair inside.' Then the penny dropped, the guy from last week...

So I went inside, and there he was in the corner, and I said 'Thank you. Next week I return the favour', and he got all embarrassed, and said 'Oh no, that isn't necessary.' He knew I had heard... No dummy, in other words.

So I guess I embarassed him last week. It was just the usual hypocrisy, and predjudice, but his way of saying sorry, I guess, and he isn't mean or anything. Try that one in a bar in NH. You'd be dead in an instant....

I never get this macho, 'guys' thing, and if you get perceived as 'different', people are somehow odd, and ostracised. But I know enough about how to turn it around, and if people know you for who you really are, all is well.

I received this crazy sentence about having chosen a 'life-style' recently. I could have screamed, and ranted, and yelled. But am just too tired, and I guess the fight went out of me.

NO one 'chooses' what their sexual orientation is, and they have to struggle a lot, because it isn't in the norm. But they do NOT choose. They just are, and it is not a good thing, sometimes.

It is not a lifestyle. NOT. They are just wired that way, and as in any orientation, they can choose paths that are destructive, or paths that are positive, and there are so many stumbling blocks on the way to feeling whole, and doing the right thing, it isn't easy.

So the guy in Café Purgatory wasn't mean.... he realised that he had been unfair, because he didn't KNOW me. And was quick to apologise in his own way, and I guess that is what it was.

Am not reading more into it than what I KNOW.

If you keep showing up in a very small community, people start wondering, and you have to come up to snuff, so to speak. It isn't always easy, hey. But have been here long enough to defuse any bombs.....

Have to go under the bed now....

More snow...

And I had to take Peter downtown to his bank person. And it snowed. Fine wet snow.

Can we say I didn't LIKE it, Preciousses?

When it snows here, I go into hibernation under my blankies....

And cuddle in the warmth...

But no...

Had to go out. And bring Peter downtown. On the fucking bus.

We must have a horriday, they let the ramps down.

Wonder of wonders, hey....

The driver didn't 'like' my sarcasm. Uh-uh... Ask me if I care...

So somehow we got the the bank... and for the very first time in over thirty years....

I messed with Peter's finances.

I TOLD the guy... 'You get him to sign this that his telly-com bill gets automatically taken from his account. Because I am not going into a fight with them for a month again when he forgets next time.'

And I WALKED.

I am so glad I do not have that provider.

Ruthless.

So I rolled him home through the snow, we got some groceries, and went home. Ramps out, ooooo.....

He ate a bit, and then fell asleep.

I was looking at things on his internets... he wakes up after half an hour and asked.....

'How long have you been here?'

I remained calm.... and said, 'You just slept half an hour... and we were in town and it was snowing...' (Now the killer) 'Oh, I forgot.'

Right.

Listen, I knew this was coming....

But when it comes.... no one is really ready for it.

He can't concentrate on anything for more than ten minutes.

At the moment...

It breaks my heart.

And you are so ill-equpped to deal with it. Really.

So you take a deep breath, and try to remain calm, and do what you can....

When you WANT TO SCREAM and SHOUT and be VERY NASTY, because it isn't fair.

Except you do not. It is inside.

NOTHING is perfect, ok? Nothing.

But I KNOW... if Peter doesn't do something soon on his own... he will die.

Because I think he WANTS to. I can talk myself blue-in-the face... nada, niente, schon gar nichts.

For those of you who have known him in his 'good years'.... and he was already ill then, he was funny, brilliant, had a history.

Before, he was athletic, interesting, knew so much about the world of theater and arts...

And he chose to love me....

And teach me.... about 'SO-CI-ETY'.... uh-huh...

For all the things in our lives... he made me who I am.

I never gave up anything. I gained.

In his sickness, he did some terrible, hurtful things.

It comes with the territory.

But when I look back....

I miss the man who held me every night like a teddy bear to his chest like a child, and made me feel safe and protected, and go off the next day to want to conquer the world.

And now I just have to look on, and want to cry...,

If you have something or someone good in your life.. use each day to the fullest.

I have heard some fucking fucked up things in my life...

One of my favorites was being at a Jehovah Witness gathering in Boston... in the Red Sox stadium, no less...

I don't even want to GET into it, because I went up to the top tier and lit a cigarette, and was looked at as the devil in person. It was sorta fun, to tell the truth... I thought they were out and out crazy.... I LIKED being da devil...

Tja, it was my bio-mom's JW phase, 'oh, we're in the last times, and the fucking world is going to end.' How cheering.... ( And I would think, 'Well, how about NOW? NOW?... um, someone doesn't know math for shit if you ask ME....)

I've been hearing that since the Fifties at a cobbler's shop. 'You'll see...'

Uh-huh.... Well, am still waiting....

But some things aren't funny.... not at all. A few weeks ago, Rachel Maddow called attention to a law that is up for resolution in Uganda. Draconian, to say the least, but the 'interesting' thing is that it is the US evangelicals and US Congresspeople, and Senators who are behind it, and spreading hate throughout the world. And putting basically innocent people in grave danger.

With an interest in getting a foothold economically in Africa.

I just ran across a video on Daily Kos.... if you have a fast connection, take a look as long as you can stand it. It runs about sixteen minutes, and it sickened me.

Your taxpayer's dollars at work, hey...

How 'proud-making'...

And what is all those fucking 'white-bread' folks even DOING there, häh? Who is paying for that?

Ok, here comes the link... you will not be happy with it...

Transforming Uganda / low resolution from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.

Wow.... oh just wow....

Y'know... people often ask me why I never go to 'Murka. It's a valid question...

And I look at them askew, and think, 'You HAVE to be kidding me, right? ME... in 'Murka'. Uh-huh....

Yesterday... I mailed 'The Venerable', and explained that it was Annti who found out where he was. And why, without going into much detail. No one knew where he was, whom I knew... And I was not about to cross verbal swords with the one person who did and seemingly despises me, not just from the past weeks, but over decades.

And what did I fucking get for an answer? 'GET OVER IT' (fa chrissakes... not said, but I know he was thinking it...)

And that no one hates me... (uh-HUH...) And I should stop trash-talking about my family.

(Oooo... he saw 'the post'. I got some grief about that one, my only slip-up. The writer would have preferred it not to be gender-specific.)

Listen... when someone really, really goes after you in a time of extreme stress, and is insulting, denigrating, and hateful... you fight back, and all I have is words.

Except for that one slip-up, I have never had one negative thing to say on this piece of insignificance about family, or friends. You'd have to stab me for that to happen.... But I did feel stabbed that day. In the heart.

And a mess of people do not 'get' it.... really not.

In my youth, I have seen hateful, very hateful things happen. Like a first cousin of mine being thrown out on the streets when he was only sixteen, because his parents caught him in flagranti with a 'friend'. He was a good kid. Really.

I hope he is still alive today...

Everyone seems to go on and pretend they are sooo liberal, or sooo understanding, but they don't understand SHIT.

And I am too bloody old to face that sort of denial, and hatefulness....

It is why I can go off the charts for anger about many things.....

This week's theme is seemingly gonna be about racist remarks on MSNBC. Well, not surprising....

EVERYBODY 'profiles' everyone they see on any given street. No matter where.

And part of that 'profiling' is discerning if you are gay or straight.

I have never gotten anything hateful about the latter.... where I live....

And whether The Venerable likes it or not.... I have NEVER been so insulted, humiliated, denigrated anywhere as in the town I grew up in, and if he doesn't recognise hate when he sees it... then I am very very sorry.

So when I get asked why I never go there any more... I ask 'Whaaa? You're joking, right? Right?'