Mike Alvear

from postsecret.com

From PostSecret

David Mixner had an interesting post about how straight media ignores the larger themes of hit gay movies to concentrate on the perceived ick factor.  The post’s money shot:

“One of my biggest regrets with “Brokeback Mountain” is that I did not speak out as we allowed this work of art to become a national joke. Not only did our straight friends mock it with one liners and parodies but, the LGBT community was first in line to make a joke out of a movie that had a powerful message for all to hear. It was a movie about love, the destruction of the closet, gay-bashing and the definitions of masculinity. Unfortunately, most missed these powerful messages as we watched clip after clip on “YouTube” of different, humorous (yes, they were funny) versions of “Brokeback Mountain”. The result of this was that we laughed “Brokeback Mountain” right out of an Academy Award. Please lets not allow the same thing to happen to “Milk” this year.”

He then rails against the recent David Letterman interview with the co-star of Gus Van Sant’s movie about the assassination of the country’s first elected openly gay politician, Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn).  See trailer after jump.

Why?  Because Letterman focused the interview on what it was like to kiss another man, not the larger themes of the movie.

Is he right?  Ahem.  I watched the clip (below)–yes, they were a little awkward, but it was cute actually, especially when franco kissed Letterman.  Look, straight guys WHO ARE NEVER GOING TO SEE OR RENT MILK, witnessed two famous straight guys talking about kissing men in a way that was not threatening, slightly comic and somehow ok.

I don’t disagree that they lowered the conversation from courage, freedom and the sacrifice that is often the midpoint between the two, but HELLO, it’s Letterman.  It’s TV.  It’s comedy.  And the truth is, “what it’s like to kiss a guy” has more resonance to straight men than a movie they’re never going to see.

I thought the interview made the kind of impact that everyone hopes the movie will make–to question, to engage, to reveal a higher truth.  The best way to change people’s mind is to meet them where they are and invite them forward.  Letterman and Franco reflected straight male discomfort (meeting them where they are) then pulled them toward a “no big deal” attitude that ended with a sweet peck on the cheek.  Sometimes, distractions from the point of a movie makes a bigger point.  

The Letterman Interview:

The trailer for “Milk”:

I’m moving in with my boyfriend in a few months.  I care about him very much, and I want to be with him, but part of me also wants to have one last “fling” before we make the step to move in together.  Should I allow myself to take a dip in the pool one last time?

– Slightly Confused

Dear Confused:
I love how you say “one last fling” as if you’re about to get into a committed relationship rather than already being in one. I understand it, though. It’s the same mentality I had the first time I moved in with a boyfriend. Instead of focusing on the reasons I wanted to live together (”I love him, he makes me laugh, he’s got a mean, hateful cock”) I started thinking, “OMFG! He’s the last guy I’m ever going to have sex with!”

And really, if that thought doesn’t make you panic I don’t know what will.

You’re also probably thinking, “It’s going to be impossible to trick once we live together so I better do it now.” Well, stop worrying. You’ll find a way. Men always do. Anyhow, you wouldn’t have asked my permission if you didn’t already know it was wrong. Instead of rationalizing an infidelity why don’t you neutralize it by taking to your boyfriend about it? Bring it up in a joking way. Like, “Do you ever get afraid that I’m the last guy you’ll ever sleep with? Do you ever think about having ‘one last fling?’”

You might be surprised at his answer. And the “permission” you might actually get. But there’s a more important reason to talk about it-to start an on-going dialogue about monogamy. Are you going to treat it as a necessary evil, something you both want, or a bored game by Milton Bradley? Don’t set yourselves up to be one of those couples that break up over “the silent issue.” Things shouldn’t end because one partner crossed a boundary that was never discussed.

If you don’t want to have a conversation with him then I say don’t have a fling.  Cheating is no way to start out a new life together.

It’s not because they work (please, let’s not go there).  It’s the economy.  When a recession walks in the door, the networks hike up their skirts.  These ads would have never aired when the economy was good.  

In the past, CNN and the upper-tier cable networks, especially the news networks, consistently refused to air ads like Enzyte because they know they’re selling packaged lies.  But when advertising from established companies with legitimate products dries up, you’ve got to fill up the ad space with something.  

Enzyte is particularly savvy at using the media.  First,   they’ve made a supplement look like a drug.  Under FDA rules drug companies have to list their chemical compositions.  For example, Viagra’s got to print “Sildenafil Citrate” under its brand name, usually in parentheses.

Well, Enzyte lists their chemical composition, too.  “Suffragium Asotas.”  Only problem is, there’s no such chemical. In fact, Suffragium is Latin for “Applause.”  Perfect, for a company trying to give us a standing ovation.

You’d think there’d be stiff penalties for mounting an ad campaign of this sort.  But Enzyte isn’t a drug so the FDA can’t touch it.  

Enzyte’s marketing is brilliant.  They’re not in sleazy tabloids.  They’re in legitimate magazines like Business Week.  They’re not on raunchy TV shows like Maury Povich.  They’re on serious cable channels like CNN and MSNBC.

It’s pure genius.  While the rest of the male enhancement industry is spamming our email with big promises, Enzyte is doing what a lot of dot.commers did in the mid-nineties:  “borrowing” legitimacy from the media.  Remember all those million dollar Super Bowl ads from companies that couldn’t meet payroll?

Men have always had a preoccupation with growing a certain body part.   But it’s always been held in check by the absurdity of the proposition.  Deep down, we know we might as well try to grow our livers.  

A while ago a search engine reported that Enzyte was close to passing Viagra in its “most frequent” search logs. I wish every time a man used a search engine and typed “supplement” they’d get back a response that said, Did You Mean to Type “Swindle?”

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

WTF?  

Why would women who love women watch sex between two men?   It’s a head-scratcher but the phenomenon is true.  Ask any lesbian and she’ll tell you, if she doesn’t watch gay porn she knows a lesbian who does.  

Here’s my take on it:  Most lesbians have a heightened awareness of how men have oppressed women and straight porn is often Exhibit A in that exploitation.  In gay porn, the bottoms (traditionally like women, receivers) are often just as ‘powerful’ as tops (traditionally, like men, givers).  So while it’s still male-on-male sex, there’s a power dynamic at work that appeals to lesbian political and personal sensibilities.  They’re not so much looking at the “players” in the play, but the roles they’re playing.  

Then there’s the impatience angle.  Lesbian porn takes FOREVER to get to the sex.  All that crap about love, intimacy and emotional connections takes up half the DVD.  As one lesbian fan of gay porn told me:

“I like gay porn because the actors having sex are unencumbered by a U-Haul.  It all boils down to different philosophies.  Men:  Fuck it or kill it.  Lesbians:  Take it to the vet or adopt it.” 

Third, a lot of lesbians are turned on by masculinity, so they get off on hot male bodies.  Not because they want to have sex with them but because they internalize and then express the masculinity they see onscreen (Comic Lea Delaria has a hilarious line about that: “It’s not that lesbians don’t like dick; it’s that we don’t like them on men!”).  

And finally, there’s my strap-on dildo theory.  Lots of lesbians use them.  They have to learn how and if straight porn isn’t going to show it and lesbian porn is too boring, then what’s left to show them how to use a tool they weren’t born with?

Sex is so interesting.  What makes no sense to you makes perfect sense to somebody else.    I’m like most people–when it comes to porn, I only want to see who I want to shtup.  Period, end of stroke.

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.