Salt Lake City - CTW Conference

I'm in Salt Lake City getting ready to attend the Circling the Wagons conference that begins later today. The conference is at the center of a great deal of controversy, and we'll see how that plays out as the weekend unfolds.

At the center of the controversy are questions of authenticity, identity, and life journeys that certain presenters at the conference have claimed and experienced. Much has already been written in blogs, and in online groups and forums. The tone has been strident and vituperative. I found the lack of dialogue, the anger, the personal attacks, and the bitterness of the exchanges to be uncharitable, uncomprehending, stigmatizing, and generally not useful to examine and explore perspectives and understanding that people coming from different backgrounds might have for the issues confronting Mormons grappling with gender, sexual orientation and attraction, and institutional stigmatization. And all of this happened before the conference even began!

This is what I hope happens here: I hope all of us can open our ears so that our heads and hearts can hear what is spoken. I hope we can ascribe all presenters good intentions, and proceed from that foundation. I hope we can be humble, be open to questions rather than answers, be satisfied with a carefully studied ambivalence, be able to bridge a wide gulf that in the past has been full of bitterness, hurt, despair, and loss.

Authenticity

Authenticity refers to our credibility, our truthfulness, our commitments, and our intentions. In short, it examines whether our conscious life choices are congruent with our values and beliefs. Gauging another person's authenticity is a difficult task because no empirical method exists to determine a person's values and beliefs other than that person's assertions. Consequently, we often use a person's behavior as a surrogate measure of his or her values and beliefs, without having a reliable understanding of that person's motivations that give rise to the observed behavior. Human beings attribute behavior to motivation, and almost always get the motivation wrong. We simply cannot look at behavior and claim it is based on a specific motivation. Because we cannot clearly explain another person's behavior, our comprehension of another person's authenticity is often incomplete.

Rather than search for authenticity in others, I hope that each of us look for our own authentic expression, and in the process, that we ascribe best intentions to others. I believe that will bring us closer to an honest and engaging dialogue with each other.

Identity

Identity names us, tells us who we are. It labels personal, social, and cultural characteristics with which a person describes him or herself. Struggles about identity chiefly affect members of subcultural groups. Members of a dominant culture don't, for the most part, struggle with issues of identity, except as identity affects people who they care about in a subculture. Identity serves a couple of purposes: it defines who is part of a subculture, and it serves as a brake against assimilation in the larger culture. Identity is not only what a subculture names itself, but it is also what the dominant culture labels the subculture.

Problems of identity arise out of stigmatization. A dominant culture almost always stigmatizes the subcultures within it. Subcultures are viewed by their dominant culture as problems, "other," mentally ill, dangerous, and immoral. Identity becomes an issue for members in a subculture when they internalize these kinds of stigmatizations.

Subcultures also identify themselves, and stigmatize and separate out their own subgroups. For example, within group of Mormons characterized by the larger Mormon society as having "homosexual inclinations," a rainbow of subgroups exist that don't identify with each other, but are grouped together by the Mormon society from which they spring. A lot of name-calling ensues, and I believe that identity issues lay at the root of the current controversy.

I offer a thought experiment: rather than making specific claims of identity, recast those claims such that they do not rest on attribution of being. For example, instead of saying, "I am a gay man," you could reformulate that as, "I prefer to have intimate relationships with other men." Identity that isn't rooted in physical characteristics is often culturally driven. Maybe we should practice some studied ambivalence about our orientation/attraction until we have heard what other stigmatized Mormons with "homosexual inclinations" might have to say about their individual situations. I believe their stories are important and that they should be heard.

Life Journeys

We are all on life journeys. No journey is identical to another. Every one of them is unique. I hope we can approach other peoples' journeys with a humility and respect for the sacredness of a path that ultimately is one's own. We are all broken. We have all stumbled. We are all bloodied. Let's not compound the injury and the pain that we have felt. We are taught in church to love, not judge. He who has ears, let him hear.

Pilgrim's Progress

In a comment to one of my recent Facebook posts a person asked me, "In light of the fact that you are 'an excommunicated homosexual apostate secular humanist' what is it that you gain from being at church in general?" I promised the person who made the comment an answer, and this post is an attempt at starting to answer her questions.

About Being a Secular Humanist

I'm a person whose heart wants to believe but whose head will have none of it. Up until my mid-thirties I tried to believe, but finally concluded that I didn't have that gene. That's my head talking, but I have a whole irrational part of my personality that hopes and prays. My rational side kicks in, then, and points out to my heart that I haven't the slightest idea what I'm praying to or to what end that prayer effects.

This is what I gain from being at church: I get to experience a faith community sharing its beliefs. Most of what is said I find incredible, but I feel the underlying spiritual longing, and I really understand that, because I've spent much of my adult life having that longing. Even though I know that what I am hearing is irrational according to my perspective, I hear another unconscious spiritual message of longing, hurt, burden, and suffering that is so deep that the speaker can't even recognize it in his or her own soul.

Some Sundays, I also hear messages of profound joy. I recognize that joy, too, because I have felt that, and I often experience it in my life. In the LDS church, members' beliefs are expressed publicly within the setting of the community. I'm attracted to that. I know that other faith communities can share in similar ways, but the Mormons do this very directly and effectively. The community sharing of sacrament talks and testimonies deeply touches me, even if the literal content of the messages contradict my own knowledge and experience or spring from a different "truth" paradigm.

About Being Excommunicated and an Apostate

This is what I gain from being at church: I get to be restored to a body from which I was cut off. I was cut off on the LDS church's terms, but because of the unique nature of excommunication, I can come back solely on my terms. The LDS church really can do nothing to prevent me from being in the pew on Sundays. Now it is true that I am not really LDS, because I am not an LDS church member, but I am a Mormon and that Mormonness springs from my days as a Saint when I shared the sacrament and when I attended the temple. Indeed, the LDS church cannot take that shared experience from me, no matter how final the excommunication or how cruel the shunning and the stigma. I remain Mormon, and I claim that. At church on Sunday I share my own Mormon experience with all the other Mormons. It's a regular lovefest. Really.

I still am apostate. I really don't believe the truth or literalness of the Book of Mormon the way LDS members believe it. I can posit all kinds of explanations, but none of them would hold any water in Sunday School class. I will admit it, Sunday School is a trial for me. The God in Whom I Don't Believe (GiWIDB) has a wicked sense of humor, and her cosmic joke is this week's Sunday School lesson, whichever one it happens to be. Which brings me to some reasons I'm an apostate attending Sunday School.

Sunday School teachers in my ward don't ask thoughtful, intellectual questions. Instead they ask questions inspired by the lesson manuals. Teachers, as a rule, don't ask questions that reflect an understanding of scriptural criticism, never use any sources that are not blessed by LDS church authorities. I think the biggest reason I'm apostate is because I've never been asked to think, only to parrot back groupthink answers to questions that only reinforce the LDS church's role as the sole arbiter of what is correct. I simply can't do that. I trust my own experience too much. The world I know outside the chapel or the classroom is not at all what our church leaders claim it to be.

Being apostate keeps me sane in Sunday School. I'm not sure that I'm gaining anything from being in Sunday School (which usually triggers my apostate self), but it's a growth experience offered me by the GiWIDB. She really is watching my back. I accept her gift. She's my Mother in Heaven.

About Being a Homosexual

This is what I gain from being in church: members have to deal with me as another Mormon in the pew. I'm there worshiping with them. The subject of my homosexuality has never come up directly, but it has come up many times when LDS members ask me if I'm married. I always reply, "No, but I have a husband at home." Some members quickly change the subject. Others follow up with, "Is he a member, too?" No one has been unkind or fled in haste. I have disclosed to perhaps two dozen or more members at this point. I am sure other members know, as well.

So the most important reason I go to church on Sunday is so that my sisters and brothers can know somebody like me. If I were not in the pew, their worship experience would be less than what it is. Every Sunday that I go to church someone comes up to, I think prompted by the GiWIDB, and tells me things like, "My sister is a lesbian. I want to love her, but she won't let me." "You're gay? I have a gay cousin. He left the church because of it." I begin to hear new stories, a different narrative, a reaching outside to bring me in.

As a people, we Mormons believe in revelation, and we believe in prophecy. The God in Which I Don't Believe called me to be in a place to which I didn't want to go. So I ended up in church. I was surprised by that deeply spiritual call to such a worldly person as I. I'm still that worldly person, but I go to church. Because God called me, She gave me a prophetic mission in my own little part of Her Vineyard. I intend to be faithful to her call, because she's quite a Mother, and I feel quite blessed to be an excommunicated homosexual secular humanist in the Kensington Ward.

Part III, Answering the Questions

This was the third comment I wrote on a post in a LGBTQ Mormon group on Facebook. The original post asked some difficult questions, and I finally got around to answering them in this comment.

Please forgive my ignorance of LDS scripture and doctrine. I have been absent from the LDS church for many years, so it’s fuzzy, but I do have to admit that it’s coming back fast. Therefore my answers to your questions are not going to be scriptural or doctrinal, more experiential.

Q. So where are the gaps between the intent to provide a loving and welcoming place in the LDS Church and the actual lived experience of the homosexual members?

A. I think that the big gap between the loving and welcoming church and the actual lived experience of LGBT and SGL members is that other members in the church have a conditional notion of love that is predicated on members behaving correctly. If lesbians, gay men, and SGL persons are actually involved in a loving faithful relationship, it is always thrown back at them as sin. I don’t think LGBT and SGL members will be barred from meetings and the like, but I know in my own experience, and in the experiences of gay friends in the church that a lot of “shunning” was going on. It’s very difficult to remain in a ward if members refuse to talk or sit next to you, or if you are the subject to vicious rumor and gossip.

So although members intend to be loving, the “known” presence of LGBT and SGL members causes a revulsion among the other members because of our unfaithfulness. That is a very difficult gap to overcome.

Furthermore, even if an LGBT or SGL member is NOT unfaithful to his or her baptismal and temple covenants, if it is known in the ward, ostracism is likely to occur among some members. This isn’t to say that those members aren’t good and loving people, it’s just that they (and possibly their priesthood leaders) haven’t conceptualized a non-judgmental love that can transcend real and important differences.

A word about the actual lived experience of homosexual members: thirty years ago, I did everything I could to be a worthy member of the LDS church, believing that God would answer my prayers to be made whole. I suspect that scenario is still being played out in every ward in the church today. Every Sunday tweaks our personal holiness codes to an exquisitely nuanced degree. Expecting to be perfect, but always being broken is the actual lived experience of homosexual members. Of course, that’s also to some degree the experience of most members of the church, but I don’t think it’s played out as dramatically and tragically as it is for LGBT and SGL members. For some reason the church leadership and church members believe that homosexuality is the very worst sin in the book. And we bear that burden and stigma.

Q. What are the details of the lived experiences that would help inform a more comprehensive and sincere application of this dictum?

A. I think the means to a comprehensive and sincere application of loving and welcoming homosexual members is for LGBT and SGL members talk with the straight members of their wards. If we don’t tell our stories, we are completely invisible, and we will continue to be victims of the church’s unintended oppression. So what details should we talk about?

Church members should know that we are human beings, not homosexuals. We are not labels; we are people who need the love of God’s people.

Church members should know that we are capable of great love for each other and for them. They should know that many of us have respect and love for the church in spite of the sin of inhospitality that the church and its members unintentionally (or not) continue to practice against its LGBT and SGL members.

Church members should know that we have strong life-long relationships, that we have children that we love, that we work hard, that we love our country. In short, we are very much like them, and in fact, are part of their families and their friends.

Church members must finally come to know that no one chooses to be ostracized, stigmatized, and hated by the families and communities in which they grew up. We are part of them, but were thrown out. They need to know how much suffering and grief we bear in our lives for their actions. We did not choose to be scapegoats, but that is what many of them would have us become.

Q. What do straight members not understand about the lives of the gay members and what do the gay members not understand about what it's like for the straight members to negotiate the living of this principle?

A. I’m guessing that straight members do not understand the depth of despair, the burden, the hurt, the weight of sin that LGBT and SGL members often carry with them. I don’t think most straight members ask the question, “if a loving Heavenly Father created me this way, what did I do in the pre-existence to merit this?” And then be told by prophets and priesthood leaders that you have to buck up and fight the good fight during this mortal existence; well that’s often too difficult. When I was dealing with this issue, no one around me in my family or in the church understood the despair and condemnation that I felt.

I think what LGBT and SGL members may not understand of the experience of straight members trying to love and welcome them is that straight members have been taught well to practice a conditional, judgmental love. In the midst of this, LGBT and SGL members have to bear witness about what the true Love of Christ might actually look like in their ward. The ONLY thing that any member of the church needs to do to live this principle is to love one another. As members of the church (with a few limited exceptions) we are NOT called to judge, only to love. We are called to respect one another, to bear each other up, to give succor. I think it’s is long past time for Zion to invite its sons and daughters to gather again.

Part I, Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

The following blog post is a comment I wrote on a post in a LGBTQ Mormon Facebook group. I am really tired of hearing about loving the sinner and hating the sin.

The love the sinner, hate the sin talk is completely judgmental and damaging. I think LDS church leaders and family members would love to love us, but they can't get past the roadblock of sin with which our sexual feelings and behavior confront them. How do you love a sinner and hate the sin without preaching to the sinner and judging her or him? This whole "hate the sin" conundrum certainly doesn't provide sound advice to families, and it drives LGBT people right out of the LDS church because HATE THE SIN = HATE MY LIFE, which gets internalized as I hate me.

Hating the sin is not compassion, and it isn't the gospel of Jesus. It's just plain hate, well intentioned, perhaps, but hate, nevertheless.

So while I acknowledge the LDS church can (and did) discipline me, I maintain that the grace of Jesus Christ covers me. The fortunate thing about being excommunicated is that there is nothing that the LDS church can do to me. So I can be there in sacrament meeting, Sunday School, and Priesthood meeting and know that I am a witness to them about hate every time I hear this cruel HATE THE SIN, which I heard today in Priesthood Meeting. I spoke up. We don't have to be silent at church. We can be disciplined, but we can't be silenced.

I trust in the grace of Jesus Christ. I pray for the wisdom and compassion of my priesthood leaders. While the LDS church can never make right what it did to me, I can make right what I did to the LDS church, and I pray for the humility and the righteous anger, and the love of Jesus to be able to do that. We have the power to be a voice. The church members have ears. Let them hear.

What Would Jesus Do?

Jonathan Dudley says it much better than I ever could. He wrote an interesting piece on CNN's Belief Blog about the Bible and Gay Marriage. Historical context is everything, and our collective memory is very short when it comes to "traditional values."

Sometimes on this blog, it's just so much easier, and better, to let someone else do the writing.

Civil Marriage Protection Act

It's not gay marriage or same-sex marriage. It's marriage. It's not a different kind of marriage. It's not about being lesbian or gay or straight. It's simply about marriage. That's all that it's about. Marriage.

I'm deeply disappointed that the House of Delegates did not pass the Civil Marriage Protection Act, but instead sent the bill back to committee. The delegates took their action because of the religious prejudice of some of the delegates, and because of the religious prejudice that many constituents have about homosexuality. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "Religious bigotry makes bad public policy."

I resent that this whole topic is even up for discussion. Marriage is a basic human right - a right to form and nurture a family. I am angry that legislators, responding to a religious proscription that is 5,000 years old, would deny me my civil right to marriage. These same legislators wear linen/wool blends, but they certainly don't act on that ancient religious proscription.

Religious bigotry is insidious for several reasons. First of all, it's a useful cover in the United States, because our society has an extremely high regard for "Judeo-Christian" beliefs and practices. Secondly, this kind of bigotry is highly selective in the kinds of proscriptions it professes to be God's will. It used to be that slavery was God's will. Today, it is God's will that gay and lesbian people cannot marry. In America, if you can wrap your rhetoric in the Bible, then wrap it in the flag, you're well on your way.

Okay, I'll calm down some. But I ask the members in the House of Delegates, how would my marriage undermine marriage? If any of those delegates who voted to recommit the bill are divorced, or have committed adultery, I submit they are truly undermining marriage, and maybe they should re-examine their stance on the Civil Marriage Protection Act.

Fort Lauderdale, Days 1 and 2

We arrived here yesterday around 2 p.m. Ron's bag wouldn't fit in an overhead bin, so it got checked, which meant baggage claim. (Fortunately, he was not charged for the checked bag.) This is tourist season, and the shuttle ride to the rental car center was crammed full. It was a harbinger of things to come.

I had reserved a car with Thrifty. When I made the reservation, I had forgotten to change the default pickup and return times. When I went back to the web site to change the times, the cost of the rental went up $80. Ron printed out both confirmation letters and took them with us. We were able to get the original contract price, then when we went to add Ron to the contract, the woman helping us had already printed out the contract, so she just added him gratis. It certainly makes me a loyal Thrifty customer!

We headed out of the airport to our guest house, the Alcazar Resort. The staff here is very friendly. It's clean and neat, and just a little spartan, two pools, and a hot tub. It's very comfortable.

As soon as we got settled in, we headed (walking) for the beach. We found a cafe and had a pizza. I finished it all off with some ice cream. We walked up and down A1A for a couple of hours. There are a lot of us tourists in town, and an abundance of gay men, too. For dinner, we went out to the Casablanca Cafe. We had a great meal, Ron eating about half his entree (I ate an additional quarter), and I had mussels in a cream sauce.

Evening found us in the hot tub back at the Worthington (the Alcazar's sister (brother?) resort. We stayed there for an hour and a half. My backache was gone this morning. My arm felt 100% better. It must be something in the water.

Today we got up late for breakfast. Then I caught up on email this morning, and laid out in the sun for a while. We took a long walk before lunch, walking up on Sunrise Avenue. We ended up eating lunch at The Deck. We had quite a character for a waiter. He made some recommendations that we followed, and we were quite happy with the result, a seafood salad (and I had a side of potato salad). After lunch we walked down to the gay beach. It is exactly one block wide. It's this invisible line in the sand that quite visibly separates gay and straight. I know where I'm going to be tomorrow.

The afternoon saw more time at the pool, then a nap, then dinner. We went to Il Mulino, an old-style Italian restaurant, and another delicious meal. We've decided we're probably not going to lose a lot of weight on this vacation.

Spiderman

O Spiderman of sticky web
How did you end up in my bed?
I dreamed of this, you know, quite wet
Revealing that you're not quite het.
No Mary Jane could turn your head:
instead a fag in spandex skin,
A circumstance I revel in,
A situation, queer, indeed.

I can't believe your hairless chest
is getting my attention best.
I dreamed of this, a spider's nest
of comfy love togetherness.
A tighty white across my pecs,
You, Spiderman, made quite a mess!

Post Commentary Sparks Revisionist Art

The Washington Post published a commentary by Phillip Kennicott in today's Style Section that got me thinking about the recent art/censorship/gay controversy surrounding a video created by the artist David Wojnarowicz, and subsequently removed from the National Portrait Gallery exhibit, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.

The dustup was sparked by Bill Donohue, president (and apparently the only member of) the Catholic League who vehemently attacked Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly as being anti-catholic. His real agenda appears to be to stoke the tiresome culture wars that continue around homosexuality in this country, and Mr. Donohue is quite successful in that regard. He set an anti-gay trap for the exhibition and for the Smithsonian, and R. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian walked right into it.

And R. Wayne Clough just kept right on walking. He's been silent on the issue ever since he made the decision to remove the video. The controversy (air quotes), the anti-catholic message (ironic air quotes) of the video stems from an approximately eleven second segment which shows ants climbing over a crucifix. Donohue took this segment completely out of the context of the remainder of the video, and denounced the whole piece as being anti-catholic. And Mr. Clough went along for the ride, feeling that it was better to appease the Catholic League, then to let museum goers make up their own minds.

Mr. Kennicott in his commentary calls for Mr. Clough to resign his post as Secretary. Kennicott further states that the curators of the exhibit should honor AA Bronson's request to have his work, Felix, June 5, 1994, removed from the exhibition in protest over the censoring of Wojnarwoicz's video. Indeed, the huge blank wall at the end of the exhibition would bear mute testimony to something, but I'm not sure to what. I have a better idea.

The curators should remove Felix, June 5, 1994 from the exhibition. Then they should nail R. Wayne Clough to the wall in its place. It serves the catholic need of Mr. Donohue, and it certainly is Roman in its application of justice. It will also please the masses.

R. Wayne Clough after the exhibition curators added him to "Hide/Seek"

Dinner and All That (Explained to the Uninitiated)

Ron pointed out to me that I tend to gloss over details in my blog entries. So I thought I'd try to explain better what I mean in my annotated version of yesterday's entry.

Sometimes, dinner is just what dinner is. You can't explain it. It just happens. Well, actually you can explain it, but I put in those two sentences for dramatic affect. And dinner doesn't "just" happen, it takes a fair amount of work, if not planning. The less planning the more chopping, paring, and drinking spirited beverages. I know this from personal experience.I like the word melange*. I'm not quite sure what it means (I really do know what it means, because I looked it up before I published this blog post), but I think it explains tonight's dinner perfectly (It didn't, but that's the subject of another blog post).

Ron had prepared a list of dining possibilities inside our kitchen. I kid you not! He withdrew a list from his shirt pocket. I was totally amazed! They included green salad; warmed over veggie stew (more about that later*); watermelon, beet, and tomato salad; potatoes; roasted cauliflower; corn on the cob; and beet greens. He said we didn't need to fix all of it(!), but these were the options. He was going to pass on the veggie stew, but everything else was in play, if I wanted it.

Okay, here's the lowdown on those asterisks and the veggie stew. I'm not sure that I literally "like" the word "melange," but it fits in well with my narrative style, at least I think so, and I'm writing this blog. If you can come up with a better word, please comment on this post. Oh, and about the veggie stew, it was another chili debacle. I accidentally put too much heat in it, like two ancho chilies and a fair amount of chipotle chili powder, plus some significant amount of cayenne pepper, and many grinds of black pepper. Honestly, it did not taste too hot for me, but when Ron started sweating profusely, I kind of figured maybe I could have used a lighter touch. Bless his heart, he did not complain until after eating at least three spoonfuls, and then he ate the rest of the bowl with a manly determination. You have to love this guy!

Ron's keen on corn, almost like he was born in Kansas Do Tel Aviv natives eat corn on the cob? or something. I really wanted some fried potatoes (it's a well-known fact that fried potatoes contain significant amounts of essential vitamins and minerals, especially if they are Idaho potatoes). The veggie stew had so much chili in it, that I figured the fried potatoes would cut a little of the heat, and my heartburn wouldn't kill me when I went to bed. I did have heartburn, and it did affect me when I went to bed, but I consider that as a minor penance for subjecting Ron to the veggie stew earlier. Besides, it really tasted wonderful, smoky and hot. I was a go on the beet and watermelon salad, and the beet greens. Operation Melange Dinner* was about to get underway.

*I started using nomenclature like this after Operation Iraqi Freedom. I figured if Dick Cheney could co-opt a perfectly useful word and turn it into a militaristic slogan of American Imperialism, I could do the same when referring to certain culinary operations in my own kitchen. Besides, I'm quite sure that Dick and Lynne must love chili because they are from Wyoming, and Wyoming is famous for buffalo chili. The Cheney's would probably think that my vegetable chili was a little effete, and if the shoe fits, wear it.

I figured Ron could eat the corn, and I would eat the veggie stew. I peeled the potatoes; he finished prepping the watermelon, beet, and tomato salad*, husked the corn on the cob, and washed the beet greens. *Did you do a double take when you read watermelon, beets, and tomatoes? I did, too. But I have learned that Ron's recipes, while exotic, are more than worth the experiment. The salad was very good, with watermelon sweetness and crunch, and the subtle flavor of the beets, plus their texture. This dish deserves a repeat on the dinner table. I got the potatoes frying about the time the beet greens were cleaned. Then all we had to do was to wait on the potatoes, warm up the veggie stew, and zap the corn on the cob.

And we did all that, got it on the table, and had an absolutely wonderful meal. He loved his corn, and the potatoes did cut the chili burn on the veggies. We had this colorful, delightful, and fresh meal that was tasty, and didn't have any cholesterol, corn syrup, BHA, or BHT. Nothing came from a box. Most of it came from the CSA farm in Pennsylvania. The food was good, and the company unsurpassed. I enjoy these cooking adventures with Ron, and appreciate his skill, talents, and inquisitiveness in the kitchen. I'm happy he cooks for me! Real food for real homosexuals.

Dinner and All That

Sometimes, dinner is just what dinner is. You can't explain it. It just happens. I like the word melange. I'm not quite sure what it means, but I think it explains tonight's dinner perfectly.

Ron had prepared a list of dining possibilities inside our kitchen. They included green salad; warmed over veggie stew (more about that later); watermelon, beet, and tomato salad; potatoes; roasted cauliflower; corn on the cob; and beet greens. He said we didn't need to fix all of it(!), but these were the options. He was going to pass on the veggie stew, but everything else was in play, if I wanted it.

Ron's keen on corn, almost like he was born in Kansas or something. I really wanted some fried potatoes. The veggie stew had so much chili in it, that I figured the fried potatoes would cut a little of the heat, and my heartburn wouldn't kill me when I went to bed. I was a go on the beet and watermelon salad, and the beet greens. Operation Melange Dinner was about to get underway.

I figured Ron could eat the corn, and I would eat the veggie stew. I peeled the potatoes; he finished prepping the watermelon, beet, and tomato salad, husked the corn on the cob, and washed the beet greens. I got the potatoes frying about the time the beet greens were cleaned. Then all we had to do was to wait on the potatoes, warm up the veggie stew, and zap the corn on the cob.

And we did all that, got it on the table, and had an absolutely wonderful meal. He loved his corn, and the potatoes did cut the chili burn on the veggies. We had this colorful, delightful, and fresh meal that was tasty, and didn't have any cholesterol, corn syrup, BHA, or BHT. Nothing came from a box. Most of it came from the CSA farm in Pennsylvania. Real food for real homosexuals.

A New Dawn

I don't mean to be ironic; it just comes out that way. I slept in my own bed for the first time in a week, and indeed, it is a new dawn, a gentler dawn, a more rested dawn.

Ron and I spent the last week at the IMEN Gathering at Camp Ramblewood near Havre de Grace, Maryland. It's a gay naturist gathering, full of a lot of flair and verve, although not always at the same time. I added my own atmospheric presence at the gathering, too.

And I wasn't even one of the fabulous ones, although if I keep it up, I'll be fabulous before I die. The pic is the part of me that can be displayed in this blog. I wouldn't want to violate my TOS.... I was participating in a Rocky Horror costume contest. I looked very scary, complete with fishnet and leather corset, not to mention the thigh-length vinyl boots with 7" heels. I was in orbit.

I continued to the wear the costume for six hours which included dinner, and a talent show performance. A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do. Beauty doesn't come cheap! Classy means more than being born in a trailer park on Christmas Eve. Sometimes, you have to show your trouper colors and persevere. I think I look pretty good for an old man.

I'm on Battery Power

The passing thunderstorm caused me to unplug my trusty computer. Is that for real? Can computers really fry themselves? Inquiring minds want to know. Drop me a line and tell me your horror story.

Big things happening in Washington! West Virginia Senator Drops Dead. Jeff Sessions Questions Elena Kagan's Experience! Salahis Sighted Near White House! It must be summer time in the city. Well of course - the Supreme Court's out of session, but not before assuring that every citizen has a right to a handgun. Richard Daley, you should be ashamed of yourself! Republicans are introducing legislation requiring hospitals to distribute a loaded handgun to each newborn when it leaves the hospital. U Betcha!

Speaking of Chicago, a bunch of gay square dancers will be there next week subverting the local citizenry at the Hilton Chicago Hotel. Grab your pets and your children. Watch out for gender benders. Don't drink the water. Of course, I'll be covering this event right here in this blog so that you don't have to go yourself. It's a public service that I take seriously.

Oh, I almost forgot. The Proposition 8 case has gone to the judge. It seems that the defenders of marriage aren't very good at defending "traditional" marriage; I'm guessing because they couldn't figure out exactly what they were defending. Their argument went something like this. Homosexual people should not get married to each other because they cannot procreate (not because Proposition 8 discriminates...). When asked by the judge about heterosexual people who can't have children, the defense backtracked quickly saying that heterosexual, but procreationally impaired people had a right to marry, because traditionally they had always had a right to marry. Hmmm sounds like the same thing to me. The case come down to the state putting the rights of a minority on the ballot and letting the voters decide that discrimination is okay. Should the state be allowed to arbitrarily remove basic constitutional rights of a large group of people because the voters think it's okay? It seems to me that the state should be promoting families rather than finding ways to weaken them. How would heterosexual couples feel if they were on the wrong side of this argument? Let me know. I'll publish your comments.

Well, that's the word from Wheaton. Tune is sometime soon for an update. I promise a pic or two from Chicago.

Crumbling Rubber

I sort through piles of clothes
shirts that I wore at my desk at work
the desk where I spent hours managing
and drinking coffee.
The shirts were once white,
but drift into other faded shades
maybe token gay shades in the office
because nobody would ever bring up the subject
except me.

The bedroom piles are disappearing.
It's like an achaeological dig full
of dirt, dust, crumbling rubber,
and spent elastic.
Old papers mixed in clothes, some dead, some saved.
The saved get bundled for Purple Heart.

I cannot do this for very long, because it unnerves me.
Sorting these clothes digs up memories,
Reminds me that I'm cast off too.
Sorting my life,
Discarding my crumbling rubber,
Living out my Purple Heart.

Sometimes Everything Looks Like a Penis

Ron's out of town, and I'm randy. When I was 29 (or 39, or 49), I didn't expect to be sexually active, and well, horny at the age of 59. I thought the day would come when sex just wouldn't interest me anymore. That's not proving to be the case. The desire remains strong, even if the implementation isn't always exactly on target.

That's a blog entry in itself. When Pfizer put Viagra® on the market, it changed my life. Although the drug doesn't create or increase sexual desire, it makes the result of sexual desire obtainable. After decades of having no follow through whatsoever, Viagra was an epiphany, and an enabler of possibilities, and it probably kept my interest in sex active because it made the possibility of sexual connection with other men real. When I couldn't get a hard on, I always felt that I had let the other guy down. Now that I could actually have a much larger sexual repertoire (with Viagra's gentle, insistent help), I felt a sexual validation that I had not experienced in decades. Of course, that's in my head, and I should probably be talking to a therapist about that.

I used Viagra yesterday. I had a happy afternoon with Tim. We enjoyed the completely undignified time with each other. Sex like this reminds me of who I am.

This morning I was still a little blissful. I was walking past the Discovery Building in Silver Spring, on my way to the farmers market to pick up some produce. The Discovery Building has this huge mural along the sidewalk that combines themes of Prometheus, the Tree of Life, Neil Armstrong, Hal, and the Ultimate Answers of Physics (that's my interpretation). And the mural has a lot of penis-shaped objects in it: the Tree of Life, flaming planetoids streaking, fish of a sort, and a starry universe heading out to the Big Chill, penises everywhere, and it didn't take a huge amount of imagination for me to see them! They are there. I saw them with my own eyes. And I'm cutting my dosage in about half.

Stigma and the Supreme Court

Elena Kagan is not a lesbian. Ruth Marcus, a columnist in the Washington Post, said so, and of all people, Ruth should know (evidently). Oh, and the White House also announced that Elena Kagan is not a lesbian. I needed to know this.

A Musing

I'm finally on a computer that doesn't have a worthless browser like the one on my BlackBerry. Not that I'm dissing the piece of crap that passes for software on my phone. I'm sitting in front of my Mom's computer cruising the Internet, and doing my darndest to remove all traces of my virtual journey across the web. The boys in Moscow are having none of it, and that's probably okay, considering that most of them travel rather than host.

I went out to The Barn today out in Uniontown, Washington. The Barn houses an eclectic group of artists' studios in many different mediums, plus it has the world's niftiest gift shop. My sister, Katherine, has a studio there, and she showed me her latest watercolor that will one day end up on a grateful wall of my home. I like her painting for its sense of place, and my connection to the place. I guess I'm a natural born humanist, or something like that. Currently, The Barn is hosting an exhibit from the Washington State University School of Architecture about the wooden grain elevators that dot the Palouse country. I grew up seeing grain elevators everywhere, but without any connection or knowledge about them. I liked the exhibit, and will quietly regret the demise of these prairie sentinels.

Tie Dye. Who knew that it's alive and well in Moscow, Idaho? Moscow has a tie-dye business (curiously called Tye-Dye Everything) and has had for ten years. I talked to one of the owners, and we're talking hardcore hippie. She and her husband lived in the woods in a recycled school bus. She's been making tie-dyed goods since 1989. The shop is overwhelming. There is nothing there that doesn't come out psychidelically enhanced. I was impressed. It reminded me of my dorm room at Theophilus Tower.

My Busy Week

Last week was (what passes for me) a busy week. I'm not altogether sure that it was a busy week, because when you are retired, it skews your sense of how the world works, but I think it was a busy week, when I reflect on it, which I do now that I'm retired and really have little else to do except to comment, reflectively, on my busy (or not so busy) week.

Monday started off with a SAGE - Metro DC meeting. That seems like weeks ago, but it was only last Monday. SAGE used to mean Seniors Active in a Gay Environment. Now, I'm not sure what it means. The organization didn't change its acronym, it just changed the words, which confuses the hell out of me. I can't keep up with all this change. Excuse me while I adjust my teeth. They are chattering. Afterwards, Joe and I went out to dinner at Sergio's a Salvadorean restaurant in the 'hood. It's pretty basic, and very good. Go for the taco special and for the pupusas. You can't go wrong with that advice.

Tuesday, Tim came over for some recreation, and we ended up at Sergio's for dinner. Imagine that - taco special twice in one week! The tacos are are white corn soft-shell filled with chopped meat and sauce, slathered with sour cream and guacamole. It's not for the faint hearted. The margaritas are good, too, but I opted out on Tuesday, because Tim and I headed out to Billy's for C1 dancing. Billy is a great caller, and it's a fun floor.

Wednesday made its way into my life. The day was cool, but sunny, so I took off for several hours of bike riding trails in Montgomery County. I explored the lower part of the Matthew Henson Trail, which branches off the Rock Creek Trail near Dewey and Randolph Roads. The trail is beautiful, and I want to go back and see how far beyond Georgia Avenue it runs. I biked 31 miles and called it a day.

I had been anticipating Thursday all week long. Thursday was the day of the DC Lambda Squares Annual Meeting. I spent much of the day preparing for the meeting, getting items printed, and preparing a report. The meeting went well, although I'm always nervous when I'm in front of a lot of people. We had a good turnout, and the beginning of a good discussion about the future of the club.

Friday dawned very early. I got up shortly before 5 a.m. and headed on down to the three husbands to get them off to the airport to Buffalo. Afterwards, Ron and I headed off to the Silver Diner for breakfast, where I received a call from Buffalo - Michael had forgotten Flat Margy, so I had to break into their suburban castle, kidnap Margy, and send her by overnight to the Crowne Plaza in Niagara Falls, New York. I couldn't figure out how to fix the lock box, so I'll return the keys when they get back.... The rest of the day is a blur. We had some soup, then watched a movie, although I haven't a clue at this point what it was.

Yesterday wasn't quite as eventful. I did my laundry, and stretched that out over several hours. I also sent out a flurry of DC Lambda Square-related emails. Sometimes the appearance of busyness is business. It salves my corporate guilt. Perry and I took a coffee break at Starbucks. We also discovered a comprehensive neighborhood bakery, which makes excellent eclairs. I made chili and cornbread for dinner. Ron fixed his famous Parmesan Cauliflower. It's simple food that's simply delicious.

And finally, today, the beginning of a new week. We'd put off shopping for several days, so I was preoccupied thinking about provisioning at Giant. It was Giant's Grand Re-Opening. Pretty weird if you ask me. But the store is offering a lot more selection in food, and vastly more shelf space for all of us mindless consumers. Today, I did some research for Caribbean recipes. I'll be trying them out on Ron for the next three weeks or so. Tonight was fried bananas. Okay, but I need a little work on my technique. Maybe there is a Jerk Chicken in my future. Is that similar to Choke a Chicken? Inquiring Minds Want To Know.

Are There Wedding Bells in My Future?

Let me state right off that I feel ambivalent about the subject of same-sex marriage in general, but maybe not about my same-sex marriage in particular. I think that anybody who wants to get married should be able to get married. Deep down inside, I'm pretty sure I want to get married. I'm not convinced that marriage is the gay issue, but it has come down to that ever since the Massachusetts court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.

So where does this find me and Ron? I was talking with a friend last night, and he and his partner have decided to get married. Like us, they live in Maryland. They will go to the District in a few days and get their license. Soon after, they'll tie the knot. Two square dancers that I know, also from Maryland, danced down the aisle together last week. The reason for all this activity is that Maryland Attorney-General Douglas Gansler has ruled that Maryland will recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.

The square dancers married for love. My other friends married for the benefits that Maryland offers married couples. Perhaps Ron and I should get married for the showers. After 27 years, lots of stuff begins to wear out, and nothing matches anymore. Is that a good enough reason to get married?

For all practical purposes, Ron and I have tied all the legal knots that we can to make sure that we remain together and that our wishes our followed in times of illness or death. Admittedly, marriage would make much simpler (and considerably less expensive) what we have done with trusts, will, and powers of attorney (and several thousand dollars). And marriage would add a guarantee about our intentions that all of our legal work can't, because under the eyes of the law, in spite of everything we have done, we are still regarded as two unrelated adult men who live at the same address.

Should we get married? Will you search out our bridal registry? Should I wear white?

Design Competition!

The last time this blog sponsored a contest, nobody participated. This doesn't surprise me, considering that only four people know about this blog. So here's the contest:

Design a Cereal Box

Now, this isn't just any cereal box. This is a very special cereal.

1. Think about a relationship that you have been or currently are in. What kind of cereal would that relationship be, and what would the cereal look like and taste like? You might want to talk this over with your significant (former?) other.
2. With that in mind, design the cereal box. Include the following items:
   1. The name of the cereal.
   2. A sketch of the box. What does the box look like? What's the color scheme? Include, the front, back, side, top, and bottom panels.
   3. Dimensions of the box. Is it square? Is it a cylinder? How big is it?
   4. Include all of the text on the box, the copy, the tag lines, the ingredient list, the nutritional information.

Remember, this cereal box represents a relationship, and every item of the box (and cereal) design should be a reflection of that relationship. Are you up for this project?

Send your entries to cerealbox@happydoodle.net before March 31, 2010. I'll share the entries here. I may dragoon some of you to help me judge what I know will be an avalanche of entries. The top three winning entries will be posted here, if indeed, I receive any entries. The winning entry will receive something really cool, that I would otherwise sell at a flea market this summer.