from postsecret.com

From PostSecret

I know that many of you can’t shake a sense of déjà vu since your vote—you know, that feeling that you’ve witnessed or been part of something before.  Certainly, your vote had an eerie metaphorical familiarity—someone standing at the doorway of a great institution, protecting it from people who shouldn’t  be there.  But if the rest seems a little fuzzy it’s probably because you’re confused about the role you played.  

See, you thought you were God’s warrior defending the institution of marriage from gay people.  But really, you were George Wallace blocking the entrance to the University of Alabama.  

In 1963, Governor George Wallace stood at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in a symbolic attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling at the school.  He used the same arguments to keep you out of school that you used to keep us out of marriage.  He used the same logic.  He even used the same language.

I’m sure many of you are looking for a way to shake that awful feeling you’ve revisited a shameful part of history.  I think there is, but it requires going further into that awful feeling, further into that history.  

As many of you know, George Wallace, one of the biggest racists who ever lived, at some point, stopped, and saw your humanity.   At some point he stopped and thought, “I have no right to take your rights away.”  At some point he stopped and said, “I’m sorry.  I was wrong.” And devoted his life to undoing his deeds.

My guess is that if you want that unsettling feeling to go away, you probably need to complete your experience of deja vu and act more like the guy who once stood in the doorway of a great institution to stop you from coming in.

Sincerely,

Everyone Who’s Been Locked Out for No Good Reason

I figured churches and other religious and conservative organizations know a lot about saving marriages because they deal with so much divorce.  Knowing that these good folks would not spend over $25 million to change California’s State Constitution to prevent gay people from marrying unless it truly threatened the institution of marriage, I figured they made a list of the Top 10 reasons couples get divorced and it looked something like this:

1.  Some guy they don’t know, who lives in a city they’ve never been to, marries a guy they’ve never met.

2.  Infidelity

3.  Domestic Abuse

4.  Financial issues

5.  Child rearing differences

6.  Substance Abuse

7.  Sexual Incompatibility

8.  Religious and cultural conflicts

9.  Lack of Communication

10.  Boredom

So, you see, spending $25 million on Proposition 8 makes sense.  A whole lot more than spending it on counseling centers that offer programs to deal with the bottom nine on this list.  

I mean, you gotta start at the top and work your way down, right?

History unfolded before us last night. And I’m proud to say that my vote was one of the snowflakes that created the avalanche.

Obama will be good for the country but will he be good for sex?  I think so.  We’re going to go from Recession Sex (doing it to get over something) to Recovery Sex (doing it to get under something).

Like most of Obama’s approaches, I’m sure his plan for our sexual recovery will be as well-thought out as his plan for our economic recovery.  My guess is he’s going to use a modified 12-step program:

Step 1: Admit we are powerless; that our lives have become unmanageable.

(We have to admit we had too much meaningless sex and it left us spent, unable to move forward.  Or back. And a little to the side)

Step 2:  Believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.

(Better Obama than that dildo with the kick-start.)

Step 3:  Turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

(Well, we did that when we pulled the lever).

Step 4  Make a fearless moral inventory of ourselves

(Wall Street made us realize that investing without oversight is like sex without condoms. . . we got infected with something Lysol can’t spray away).

Step 5:  Admit to God, to ourselves and to another human beings the exact nature of our wrongs

(”Honey, I really do watch as much porn as you think”)

Step 6:  Be ready to have God remove all these defects of character

(Do it, Obama! That’s why we elected you)

Step 7:  Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings

(Although the Republicans can still filibuster)

Step 8:  Make a list of all persons we’ve harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all

(If we start now we’ll be done by his first term)

Step 9:  Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others

(Hedge Fund managers, being the exception)

 
Step 10:  Continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it

(Especially when we make our partners the third wheel in the three way.)

Step 11:   Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God.

(”Please God, let the hottie pick me!)

Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

(especially the marital ones)

Welcome to “Recovery Sex” everyone!   Don’t fall off the wagon…unless there’s a bed to break your fall.

“Are we actually voting to take away other people’s rights?  Turning the American Constitution into American Idol?  Letting the contestants stay as long as they amuse us?” 

On November 4, Californians will vote to amend the State Constitution, which currently allows the right of same-sex couples to marry. 

There will be no winners in this referendum.  Whether the proposition succeeds or fails, we’ll all be diminished by it.  That always happens when one group of people has the authority to take rights away from another. 

In California, gay couples have a right to marry.  Prop 8 isn’t about preventing people from enjoying that right, it’s going to the unprecedented step of  taking it away.  It’s the equivalent of voting to take away a woman’s right to vote.  

It’s too bad we can’t get online and pull up a moral Mapquest.  We could input the starting location (the corner of Rule and Law) and the ending location (the corner of Playing and God).  We’d click the “Get Directions” button and see the quickest route:  Proposition 8.   

Voting to take people’s rights away circumvents the rule of law.  Actually, it does more than that—it transforms the law into a tool for persecution. Which may sound fine, if you believe the persecuted pose a danger.  But who gets to decide that?  You?  Me?  What if we disagree?  Majority rule?  But what if you’re not in the majority?

Here’s the exact wording on Proposition 8:  “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

The problem with “letting the voters decide” on that simple sentence is that once we get used to deciding who deserves a right and who doesn’t, once we get a taste of that kind of power, we’ll want to exercise it again and again.  Where would we stop?  Imagine if you will, a Proposition 80:

“Only marriage between a Christian man and a Christian woman is valid or recognized in California.”

 . . . 

Part of the reason so many can’t see the folly of Prop 8 is the belief that the vote is about preserving the sanctity of marriage.  It’s not.  Imagine yourself at the entrance of a dying man’s hospital room.  He doesn’t want to die alone.  His lover is in the room.  You’re voting on the right to throw him out.

Part of the folly is the belief by so many that the vote is about stopping two women from getting a marriage license or two men from registering at Bloomingdale’s.  It’s not.  Imagine yourself at an orphanage with an eight-year old girl nobody wants.  She found a couple who’ll love and take care of her.  The papers are signed.  You’re voting on the right to leave her in the orphanage.

Part of the folly is the belief by so many that the vote is about stopping two women from entering into a committed relationship or two men from filing joint tax returns.  It’s not.  Imagine a lonely 70-year-old woman who can stay in her home because she’s receiving spousal death benefits.  You’re voting on the right to cancel her checks.  

Is that what being an American is about? Voting to take away other people’s rights?  Are we going to turn the American Constitution into American Idol?  As long as the contestants amuse us we’ll give them another chance?  

This isn’t just about gay marriage.  It’s about codifying the ability of one group of people to punish another by taking away their rights.  That’s why it’s imperative that this amendment fail– so it doesn’t continue as an option to be used against others.  Vote No on 8.  Not because you’re for gay marriage, but because you don’t believe you have the right to stand in the entrance of that hospital room and reverse a dying man’s decision, because you don’t believe you have the right to keep that little girl from loving parents, because you don’t believe you have the right to cancel a widower’s checks.

But most of all, vote no because you don’t believe other people should have the power to take away your own rights.

                                             Liar, Liar.

The New York Times had a great article on the latest study of infidelity.  Though the real news, as editors saw it, was the rise of infidelity among women over the past few years, I couldn’t get past the overall number:

Married men who cheat in a given year:           12%

Married women who cheat in a given year:      7%

Men who cheat over their lifetime:                28%  

Women who cheat over their lifetime:        15%

Please.  These numbers are so low they could walk under a closed door.  With a hat.  Almost all studies tend to have what are called “statistical outliers” — Numbers that are so off the average they suggest they’re part of a different population or that the sample is weak.  These infidelity figures are so low, I’d like to suggest a new term for the study of infidelity:  Statistical Outliars.  

With the divorce rate hovering at 50% and infidelity cited as one of the top three reasons for splitting up, how the hell can you believe a study that shows such low numbers?  The article acknowledges the difficulty in getting people to fess up to strangers, but it doesn’t go far enough.  Yes, the numbers are extremely low when face to face studies are conducted.  And they shoot up when it’s done on the internet because it provides a lot more anonymity.  

But still, what kind of idiot do you have to be to tell a stranger that you’re boinking somebody who isn’t your spouse?  The fear of that information getting out would make a lot, if not most of us, go into truthiness overdrive. 

And let’s not forget the ever-expanding capacity for people, especially men, to rationalize their behavior so that they can lie and feel like they’re telling the truth.  

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman” anybody?

Or “It depends on what your meaning of ‘is’ is?”

I’m always amazed by letters I get from people who don’t consider sleeping around cheating because they didn’t stick it in the right orifice.  Right.  Is a test any less of a test because it was an oral exam?

My point is that it’s ridiculous to ask somebody a question that makes them admit to others a behavior they don’t admit to themselves.   You know why the Centers for Disease Control does not use the word “Gay” when reporting HIV infections?  When they ask somebody if they’re gay the answer is a WHOLE LOT LOWER than if they ask them if they’ve had sex with another man.  So they tag it MSM (men having sex with men) rather than gay.

The infidelity study I’d like to see would have the following question.  I think you’d get a more accurate number, if not a more interesting one:

“Do you think your partner has ever cheated on you?”

 Hillary Duff and Wanda Sykes star in a series of public service announcements dedicated to getting teens to stop saying the phrase, “That’s so gay!”   The idea is to discourage anti-gay language after the latest student climate report shows nearly 90% of gay middle and high school students reported being harassed, sometimes violently.   

. . . 

The first time I heard a teenager say, “That’s so gay,” she was referring to a vacation she took with her parents.  I got that look ostriches get when they hear two whistles:  WHAT?  It was completely out of context to anything I know about being gay. 

I asked a nineteen-year-old friend for a reality check.  “Yeah, I got a brain fart the first time my younger brother, who’s 17 and straight, used it,” he said.  “I couldn’t understand the context–there was no connection to being gay.”

That’s because teens don’t really say, “That’s so gay” to refer to gay people or our perceived characteristics or activities.   Not only is it pretty much divorced from the offensive gay stereotypes-like being campy or effeminate-it doesn’t even reference the positive ones-that we’re all hip, stylish trend-setters.  Teens use it to tag objects, places or activities as lame, tired, or silly.  There’s no venom in the phrase-it’s just the updated 50’s version of, “That’s so square.”  

Yet, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is using Hillary Duff and Wanda Sykes as spokespeople on national TV to stop middle and high school students from saying the phrase.  (see below)

GLSEN is rightfully worried about the latest student climate report that shows almost 90% of students have suffered some form of harassment in school.  But they should be more worried that they’re adding fuel to the fire.  By trying ban the phrase for a meaning it doesn’t have, they’re just going to rile up straight students.

Teens, who have an unerring sense of when they’re being manipulated for no good reason are going to seize on this campaign and use the phrase even more.  Try telling a teen not to do something he knows is harmless and see what’ll happen.  GLSEN should stop doing the new math and go back to basics: 

 

Best of intentions + worst of tactics = More of what you don’t want. 

 

GLSEN should be discouraging students from saying incendiary words like Faggot or Dyke, not banning some kitschy phrase.  It’s noble to discourage language that sets up an environment for harassment or violence,  but as somebody who’s been attacked on the street by a bunch of homophobes, I can promise you when they swung their bats and tire irons they weren’t yelling, “That’s so gay!”

There are better words to discourage teens from using.  If you want to stop a fire, douse the matches, not the pin lights. If I were a teen, I’d take one look at this campaign and say, “That’s so gay.”

 

Hillary Duff’s Video:

Wanda Sykes’ video:

The spot where Mathew Shepard was beaten, tied and left to die in a cold, deserted Wyoming field.

For being himself.

For being different.

For being.

When it happened, most of my gay friends thought, “That could have been me on that fence.”  It wasn’t long after his murder that I came face to face with my own Matthew Shepard moment.  As I chronicled it in a local newspaper:

It was midnight.  I could sense the car slowing behind me as I walked toward a gay bar.

My friend John walked about ten feet behind me, the freezing temperature slowing him down and speeding me up.  A voice called from the slowing car and I turned around, thinking the driver was lost, looking for directions.

He wasn’t lost.  He and his friends found exactly what they were looking for.  And in that instant of realization, that moment when your heart stops and your feet take off, you understand, profoundly, what it means to be the object of unbridled hate.

Everything happened in a burst-all four doors in the car flinging open, fours sets of hands gripping of tire irons, bats and pipes. We took off, John and I, without a word uttered between us.  In the horrifying first few seconds of attempted escape, it dawned on me that they were more likely to catch John because I had been walking ahead of him.

Suddenly I heard the dull thud of metal on flesh and knew they had gotten him.  My heart was pounding so loud, my body was moving so fast and yet I could hear some little voice inside me saying *”You have to help him.  You can’t abandon him.  Even if it means dying in the process, you have to help him.”*

I stopped.  Turned around.  We were outnumbered two to one and we had no weapons.  What would I do?  What *could* I do?

I never had to answer the question.  By some miracle, they had only grazed John with the tire iron, and he managed to keep on running.  We reached a main thoroughfare and the oncoming traffic scared our attackers into retreat.  We had escaped.

John didn’t say much and didn’t stay long at the bar.  I realized only later that he had gone into mild shock.  The next day he knocked on my door and showed me something repulsive.  The backs of his legs, from his hamstrings to his calves were a sheet of swollen black and blue bruises.

A common result, his doctor had said, from the trauma of a full and sudden sprint from a standing position.  His tendons and muscles had nearly snapped at the explosive sprint that had saved his life, swelling and discoloring his legs with the blood of burst capillaries.  

To be the object of careening disgust, to be hunted for sport, these are the shadows cast by America’s darkest values.  It would be easy to dismiss our attackers as violent thugs but that would miss a larger point.  The men who chased us weren’t monsters; they were attentive pupils sitting at the foot of America’s great institutions. 

Whether it’s the military banning gay recruits, the Boy Scouts enshrining a policy of exclusion, or the church ex-communicating us for loving the wrong person, many of America’s institutions teach a very Un-American lesson:  Hate Thy Neighbor. 

Our attackers weren’t a cause of physical violence.  They were the effect of a dark consciousness.  A few years ago, Judy Shepard told an Oregon paper, “Do I blame the two young men who murdered my son?  No.  I blame society for giving them permission.”

Society gave our attackers permission, too.  They were simply taking the next logical step laid out by so many churches, families and institutions.   What comes after exclusion, expelling and ex-communicating? 

Elimination. 

Sometimes the lessons of America’s intolerance ends with helpless boys left to die on rural fence posts; other times it ends with grown men left to the luck of their instincts.

Fortunately, the numbers of those lessons are shrinking.  America’s social curriculum is changing, much like its science curriculum changed when evolution replaced creationism.  It is increasingly possible to be different and live a good, safe, productive life in America.

As long as you’re fast enough.

A condom ashtray? 

Yeah, I was faked out by their headline, too.  I was doing research on condom carrying cases and HAD TO CLICK on their “put your butt in my condom” link.  Really, I was hoping for so much more.  It kinda felt like finally whacking the pinata but good, only to have breath mints fall out.

At any rate, I loved the question I was researching:

Yo, Mike!

I have a condom issue that I thought you might be able to help with. I consider safer sex to be an extremely important thing, and so I simply will not have sex with someone unless a condom is involved. My problem: If I don’t have my own condoms with me, there is often a good chance that the other guy either doesn’t have condoms or doesn’t have ones that are comfortable for me (I’m not huge, but I am thicker than average, and that one ubiquitous brand that seems to be handed out for free everywhere just doesn’t cut it for me). But I also was always told that carrying condoms in your wallet or pants pocket is a good way to make them completely ineffective. So, where exactly CAN a guy carry his condoms so that he’s always prepared like a good Boy Scout?

This question is a perfect example of why I love writing my columns.  He could have just emailed me a simple “Where’s the best place to carry a condom?” and be done with it.  But instead, he gives me background, color, opinion and context.  And really, I find that so much more fascinating than the question itself.