By Kelly Jean Cogswell
804 words
Last Thursday, as Iraq burned and flared and burst into an S-O-S of body parts, the visionaries responsible for lighting that bomb sat comfortably in D.C. writing the script of a post-Castro Cuba.
Condoleezza Rice and Karl Rove were there, so at first I figured the "leak" about the meeting was just a little Rovian propaganda geared towards earning Cuban American votes for Republicans.
Then I found out the meeting capped two days of enormous games at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center in which 520 officials from 75 different federal, state and local agencies played the Cuban-U.S. version of Dungeons and Dragons. With us taxpayers footing the mini-bar bill.
One popular scenario had Fidel's death throwing the island into such chaos that Cuban refugees filled up detention centers from Florida to Texas, never mind that power has already calmly passed into his brother Raúl's hands.
Then there was the version that had the Cuban military in hand-to-hand combat in Havana against the island's pro-democracy forces, all sixteen aging radicals of them, who I guess assault the troops with Metamucil instead of Molotov cocktails.
Even if there are young firebrands among Cuba's splintered dissidents, they will be too busy squabbling with each other to go after the army, and none of them will have guns unless the U.S. brings them. Which might be the idea.
Homeland Security's Rear Admiral David W. Kunkel claimed they were only preparing for the remote chance of a mass exodus from the island. But if it were so remote, why have so many involved in the games, and why now when the U.S. is struggling to pull some kind of plan for Iraq out of its star-spangled ass?
The only answer that makes sense is that the same directors that brought us "Bombs Over Baghdad," and the "Adventure of Hurricane Katrina," are seriously preparing for another ball-buster of a hit, "Bay of Idiots: First Blood."
That's America for you, a can-do optimism that knows no bounds, neither time nor space, history, or common sense. If there's a will there's a way, always look on the sunny side.
In 2007, I will lose ten pounds on a diet of ice cream and Cheese Whiz. I will make myself smarter by watching more of the history channel, and stronger, not by getting off the subway one stop sooner, but by wrestling with my neighbors for the last available seat.
Cubans have their own cock-eyed history of optimism. What else can you call a cultural revolution, the belief you can bulldoze a nation and start again?
It happens on a smaller scale every New Year's Eve, or it used to. That day you sweep and mop the whole house. On the stroke of midnight, you toss all the filthy water out the window and start the New Year clean. (If you happen to be in the East Village Sunday night, don't look up.)
So why not an invasion?
After all, we've had success in Cuba before. Teddy took San Juan hill. Meyer Lansky conquered Havana with his craps tables and roulette wheels.
Blind faith can be enough. Of course, desperation is better.
Put the two together you get the Black civil rights moment and Martin Luther King. You don't need optimism when you're staring into a past marked with slavery, and a present of lynchings, segregated lunch counters and poverty.
The drag queens and bull dykes of the Stonewall riots weren't fighting for a bright future of equal rights and gay marriage, but against a present of beatings, raids, incarceration, death.
That's what's missing in Cuba. The desperate famine of the post-USSR "Special Period" is long gone. So is the totalitarian nature of the dictatorship that spurred the Mariel boatlift.
Sure, half a million Cubans would like to leave, but will they? Half the New Yorkers I know want out, but they don't leave their island either.
I was in Cuba a couple of years ago, and if I had to use two word to describe the place it would be "depressed" and "anxious." Forget blood in the streets, or mass migrations. Certainly, a U.S. invasion won't spur a democratic revolution.
Cubans have had their fill of trouble. They want more freedom, but won't kill to get it. The revolution is dead, and so are the revolutionaries. What Cuba has now is plenty of functionaries, mostly ones we can work with -- if we want to.
Raúl has officially extended his hand. Informally, women's groups in the U.S. are forming alliances with women there. Farmers are working on plans for Cross-Strait trade. Queers, at least Marina and I, are talking about what we can do to support our friends there.
That's a word Americans should learn in the New Year, "support," and let Cubans write their own future acts.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Eating Raúl Castro: Brother Act, Too
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
804 words
Last Thursday, as Iraq burned and flared and burst into an S-O-S of body parts, the visionaries responsible for lighting that bomb sat comfortably in D.C. writing the script of a post-Castro Cuba.
Condoleezza Rice and Karl Rove were there, so at first I figured the "leak" about the meeting was just a little Rovian propaganda geared towards earning Cuban American votes for Republicans.
Then I found out the meeting capped two days of enormous games at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center in which 520 officials from 75 different federal, state and local agencies played the Cuban-U.S. version of Dungeons and Dragons. With us taxpayers footing the mini-bar bill.
One popular scenario had Fidel's death throwing the island into such chaos that Cuban refugees filled up detention centers from Florida to Texas, never mind that power has already calmly passed into his brother Raúl's hands.
Then there was the version that had the Cuban military in hand-to-hand combat in Havana against the island's pro-democracy forces, all sixteen aging radicals of them, who I guess assault the troops with Metamucil instead of Molotov cocktails.
Even if there are young firebrands among Cuba's splintered dissidents, they will be too busy squabbling with each other to go after the army, and none of them will have guns unless the U.S. brings them. Which might be the idea.
Homeland Security's Rear Admiral David W. Kunkel claimed they were only preparing for the remote chance of a mass exodus from the island. But if it were so remote, why have so many involved in the games, and why now when the U.S. is struggling to pull some kind of plan for Iraq out of its star-spangled ass?
The only answer that makes sense is that the same directors that brought us "Bombs Over Baghdad," and the "Adventure of Hurricane Katrina," are seriously preparing for another ball-buster of a hit, "Bay of Idiots: First Blood."
That's America for you, a can-do optimism that knows no bounds, neither time nor space, history, or common sense. If there's a will there's a way, always look on the sunny side.
In 2007, I will lose ten pounds on a diet of ice cream and Cheese Whiz. I will make myself smarter by watching more of the history channel, and stronger, not by getting off the subway one stop sooner, but by wrestling with my neighbors for the last available seat.
Cubans have their own cock-eyed history of optimism. What else can you call a cultural revolution, the belief you can bulldoze a nation and start again?
It happens on a smaller scale every New Year's Eve, or it used to. That day you sweep and mop the whole house. On the stroke of midnight, you toss all the filthy water out the window and start the New Year clean. (If you happen to be in the East Village Sunday night, don't look up.)
So why not an invasion?
After all, we've had success in Cuba before. Teddy took San Juan hill. Meyer Lansky conquered Havana with his craps tables and roulette wheels.
Blind faith can be enough. Of course, desperation is better.
Put the two together you get the Black civil rights moment and Martin Luther King. You don't need optimism when you're staring into a past marked with slavery, and a present of lynchings, segregated lunch counters and poverty.
The drag queens and bull dykes of the Stonewall riots weren't fighting for a bright future of equal rights and gay marriage, but against a present of beatings, raids, incarceration, death.
That's what's missing in Cuba. The desperate famine of the post-USSR "Special Period" is long gone. So is the totalitarian nature of the dictatorship that spurred the Mariel boatlift.
Sure, half a million Cubans would like to leave, but will they? Half the New Yorkers I know want out, but they don't leave their island either.
I was in Cuba a couple of years ago, and if I had to use two word to describe the place it would be "depressed" and "anxious." Forget blood in the streets, or mass migrations. Certainly, a U.S. invasion won't spur a democratic revolution.
Cubans have had their fill of trouble. They want more freedom, but won't kill to get it. The revolution is dead, and so are the revolutionaries. What Cuba has now is plenty of functionaries, mostly ones we can work with -- if we want to.
Raúl has officially extended his hand. Informally, women's groups in the U.S. are forming alliances with women there. Farmers are working on plans for Cross-Strait trade. Queers, at least Marina and I, are talking about what we can do to support our friends there.
That's a word Americans should learn in the New Year, "support," and let Cubans write their own future acts.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
804 words
Last Thursday, as Iraq burned and flared and burst into an S-O-S of body parts, the visionaries responsible for lighting that bomb sat comfortably in D.C. writing the script of a post-Castro Cuba.
Condoleezza Rice and Karl Rove were there, so at first I figured the "leak" about the meeting was just a little Rovian propaganda geared towards earning Cuban American votes for Republicans.
Then I found out the meeting capped two days of enormous games at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center in which 520 officials from 75 different federal, state and local agencies played the Cuban-U.S. version of Dungeons and Dragons. With us taxpayers footing the mini-bar bill.
One popular scenario had Fidel's death throwing the island into such chaos that Cuban refugees filled up detention centers from Florida to Texas, never mind that power has already calmly passed into his brother Raúl's hands.
Then there was the version that had the Cuban military in hand-to-hand combat in Havana against the island's pro-democracy forces, all sixteen aging radicals of them, who I guess assault the troops with Metamucil instead of Molotov cocktails.
Even if there are young firebrands among Cuba's splintered dissidents, they will be too busy squabbling with each other to go after the army, and none of them will have guns unless the U.S. brings them. Which might be the idea.
Homeland Security's Rear Admiral David W. Kunkel claimed they were only preparing for the remote chance of a mass exodus from the island. But if it were so remote, why have so many involved in the games, and why now when the U.S. is struggling to pull some kind of plan for Iraq out of its star-spangled ass?
The only answer that makes sense is that the same directors that brought us "Bombs Over Baghdad," and the "Adventure of Hurricane Katrina," are seriously preparing for another ball-buster of a hit, "Bay of Idiots: First Blood."
That's America for you, a can-do optimism that knows no bounds, neither time nor space, history, or common sense. If there's a will there's a way, always look on the sunny side.
In 2007, I will lose ten pounds on a diet of ice cream and Cheese Whiz. I will make myself smarter by watching more of the history channel, and stronger, not by getting off the subway one stop sooner, but by wrestling with my neighbors for the last available seat.
Cubans have their own cock-eyed history of optimism. What else can you call a cultural revolution, the belief you can bulldoze a nation and start again?
It happens on a smaller scale every New Year's Eve, or it used to. That day you sweep and mop the whole house. On the stroke of midnight, you toss all the filthy water out the window and start the New Year clean. (If you happen to be in the East Village Sunday night, don't look up.)
So why not an invasion?
After all, we've had success in Cuba before. Teddy took San Juan hill. Meyer Lansky conquered Havana with his craps tables and roulette wheels.
Blind faith can be enough. Of course, desperation is better.
Put the two together you get the Black civil rights moment and Martin Luther King. You don't need optimism when you're staring into a past marked with slavery, and a present of lynchings, segregated lunch counters and poverty.
The drag queens and bull dykes of the Stonewall riots weren't fighting for a bright future of equal rights and gay marriage, but against a present of beatings, raids, incarceration, death.
That's what's missing in Cuba. The desperate famine of the post-USSR "Special Period" is long gone. So is the totalitarian nature of the dictatorship that spurred the Mariel boatlift.
Sure, half a million Cubans would like to leave, but will they? Half the New Yorkers I know want out, but they don't leave their island either.
I was in Cuba a couple of years ago, and if I had to use two word to describe the place it would be "depressed" and "anxious." Forget blood in the streets, or mass migrations. Certainly, a U.S. invasion won't spur a democratic revolution.
Cubans have had their fill of trouble. They want more freedom, but won't kill to get it. The revolution is dead, and so are the revolutionaries. What Cuba has now is plenty of functionaries, mostly ones we can work with -- if we want to.
Raúl has officially extended his hand. Informally, women's groups in the U.S. are forming alliances with women there. Farmers are working on plans for Cross-Strait trade. Queers, at least Marina and I, are talking about what we can do to support our friends there.
That's a word Americans should learn in the New Year, "support," and let Cubans write their own future acts.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
Monday, December 18, 2006
For Whom the Wedding Bell Tolls
800 words
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
Before I know it, I'll have the right to get down on one knee and ask my girlfriend Marina to marry me. Across the river in New Jersey, lawmakers just gave Jersey queers a separate but unequal civil union. Here in New York, gay marriage may come via Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer who promised to support the real deal, though he'll have to slip a bill past a mostly conservative legislature that would rather burn down every chapel in the state than see two dykes get hitched there.
At least we won't face opposition from presidential hopeful New York Senator Hillary Clinton who said she'd stay out of it, which is easy since a U.S. Senator like her doesn't actually have much to say in what happens back home.
I’m not popping the question yet. Sitting at the Ikea in New Jersey a few weeks ago, I could feel marriage closing in. Or to mix my metaphors, it passed before my eyes like your life is supposed to when you're staring death in the face.
I'd finished my shopping and slouched at the little café near the exit gobbling fifty cent hotdogs and drinking coffee. It seemed like only heterosexual couples went by, the whole range from those just moving in together, to newlyweds, the parents of three, and a handful of bitter old couples sniping at each other with their dentures bared.
At one point I thought that every pregnant woman in New Jersey was there, at least the skinny kind that works out until the last minute, and just grows a bowling ball down there in front.
Each usually had a nervous looking husband in tow, who had probably been all excited at first, but now that it was getting down to brass tacks and baby cribs had started to figure out that he was not just getting a kid, but a hand-over-fist consumer that'll spend eighteen, or twenty, or thirty years devouring that whole eating out, cd-buying, movie-going lifestyle he'd enjoyed after college.
Lift your eyes, you could see one of their possible futures, exhausted looking couples with two or three kids pulling at their clothes and grabbing the Christmas ornaments from the displays. At the café, one woman waiting for her husband to come back with the cinnamon rolls had dropped off to sleep at the little table, one hand on her kid napping in the stroller.
I know there's nothing in the marriage contract that says I have to pop any babies, but in my mind all of that fecundity is tied up somehow with my sense of marriage. Not so much the idea of children, but of expansion, webs weaving, weeds growing like kudzu, and filling up the house with rights and responsibilities.
I was at City Hall once to witness a marriage ceremony, and when the functionary in his shabby best suit started pronouncing the blessings of the state on the happy couple, I felt so claustrophobic I started to cry. Moved by my tears of what he thought was joy, the jaded guy droning the ceremony started to choke up, too.
I cried. He cried. Pink noses all around.
Since then, I hadn't thought about it much, in personal terms, anyway, until last year when I had to get a colonoscopy done at the hospital and the doctor said something along the lines of, "By the way, there's a slight risk of us ripping a chunk out of your intestines. Who do we call?"
And I thought of my mother appearing by my bedside, trying to ban Marina who after thirteen years is still nothing to me under the law. So I spent a couple of hundred dollars and two days with notaries doing paperwork that could've been taken care of with a five minute marriage at City Hall.
Imagine, five minutes, hundred of legal rights -- that we deserve, mind you. We should get the name, too. If we're equal, we're equal. We get the rights and the name. Let's not even call it gay, just plain old marriage.
The thing is, I'm not sure I'll do it even if the chance presents itself.
You can't legislate love, and some of the older couples I saw at Ikea were only together from inertia, a weariness of habit tied-up with all the shackles of law.
Sure, after so many years of a common life with Marina, I wouldn't mind some protection for us. But I'm afraid of what else the law does by "legitimizing" our relationship, cement-shoeing it until death or the state steps in and awards us divorce.
Now, sans marriage, it's all in our hands. The beginning of things and the end. Each day I wake up next to Marina is like saying, "I choose you. I choose you." It means something.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
Before I know it, I'll have the right to get down on one knee and ask my girlfriend Marina to marry me. Across the river in New Jersey, lawmakers just gave Jersey queers a separate but unequal civil union. Here in New York, gay marriage may come via Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer who promised to support the real deal, though he'll have to slip a bill past a mostly conservative legislature that would rather burn down every chapel in the state than see two dykes get hitched there.
At least we won't face opposition from presidential hopeful New York Senator Hillary Clinton who said she'd stay out of it, which is easy since a U.S. Senator like her doesn't actually have much to say in what happens back home.
I’m not popping the question yet. Sitting at the Ikea in New Jersey a few weeks ago, I could feel marriage closing in. Or to mix my metaphors, it passed before my eyes like your life is supposed to when you're staring death in the face.
I'd finished my shopping and slouched at the little café near the exit gobbling fifty cent hotdogs and drinking coffee. It seemed like only heterosexual couples went by, the whole range from those just moving in together, to newlyweds, the parents of three, and a handful of bitter old couples sniping at each other with their dentures bared.
At one point I thought that every pregnant woman in New Jersey was there, at least the skinny kind that works out until the last minute, and just grows a bowling ball down there in front.
Each usually had a nervous looking husband in tow, who had probably been all excited at first, but now that it was getting down to brass tacks and baby cribs had started to figure out that he was not just getting a kid, but a hand-over-fist consumer that'll spend eighteen, or twenty, or thirty years devouring that whole eating out, cd-buying, movie-going lifestyle he'd enjoyed after college.
Lift your eyes, you could see one of their possible futures, exhausted looking couples with two or three kids pulling at their clothes and grabbing the Christmas ornaments from the displays. At the café, one woman waiting for her husband to come back with the cinnamon rolls had dropped off to sleep at the little table, one hand on her kid napping in the stroller.
I know there's nothing in the marriage contract that says I have to pop any babies, but in my mind all of that fecundity is tied up somehow with my sense of marriage. Not so much the idea of children, but of expansion, webs weaving, weeds growing like kudzu, and filling up the house with rights and responsibilities.
I was at City Hall once to witness a marriage ceremony, and when the functionary in his shabby best suit started pronouncing the blessings of the state on the happy couple, I felt so claustrophobic I started to cry. Moved by my tears of what he thought was joy, the jaded guy droning the ceremony started to choke up, too.
I cried. He cried. Pink noses all around.
Since then, I hadn't thought about it much, in personal terms, anyway, until last year when I had to get a colonoscopy done at the hospital and the doctor said something along the lines of, "By the way, there's a slight risk of us ripping a chunk out of your intestines. Who do we call?"
And I thought of my mother appearing by my bedside, trying to ban Marina who after thirteen years is still nothing to me under the law. So I spent a couple of hundred dollars and two days with notaries doing paperwork that could've been taken care of with a five minute marriage at City Hall.
Imagine, five minutes, hundred of legal rights -- that we deserve, mind you. We should get the name, too. If we're equal, we're equal. We get the rights and the name. Let's not even call it gay, just plain old marriage.
The thing is, I'm not sure I'll do it even if the chance presents itself.
You can't legislate love, and some of the older couples I saw at Ikea were only together from inertia, a weariness of habit tied-up with all the shackles of law.
Sure, after so many years of a common life with Marina, I wouldn't mind some protection for us. But I'm afraid of what else the law does by "legitimizing" our relationship, cement-shoeing it until death or the state steps in and awards us divorce.
Now, sans marriage, it's all in our hands. The beginning of things and the end. Each day I wake up next to Marina is like saying, "I choose you. I choose you." It means something.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
Monday, December 11, 2006
All I Want for Christmas Is Götterdämmerung
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
798 words
The ten queers hauled off by death squads in Iraq earlier this month are presumed dead. Their murderers may be Sunni or Shiite. Who cares which? That's what religion gets you. A bullet in the back of the head -- if you're lucky. If not, torture first, then death.
Inside my heart I carry a rocket launcher and take out every church I see. Except the really pretty ones. Those, I just close off to worship.
Everybody else gets dust and rubble, an end to the spaces that sanction all those people busy interpreting, exclaiming, pointing their enlightened fingers, "I know what Jesus [Mohammad, Buddha, Wotan] really meant. It's them others over there that are wrong."
Who says so? You? A couple dozen others? A few thousand? Does God respond to majority vote? Why should you have the keys to the heavenly kingdom just because you're preaching peace and love and gay rights?
On Thursday, a council of Conservative Jews, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, were kind enough to sanction commitment ceremonies for us queers. Does that make it okay now? Were we wrong before?
Politically, I suppose it's progress, so let's all take a minute to hoot and holler. But what I really want to say to those guys is fuck you.
I'm not like Mae West, getting a kick about being talked about. What are we, a new and different species? Do you suspect I keep my third head in the closet, my wings tucked under my armpits, a tail up my ass?
I want it to be over. Decide. Are we humans or animals? Under this democratic banner, are we equal or not?
I'm not surprised when we humans act like pigs. We share a lot of the same DNA as earthworms, why not boars? I'm sure there's a defender of religion out there saying "God's not the problem, it's the rotten human race, our self-serving tendency to shape God in our image. Don't blame God for the people that will use any tool at hand for evil. What about the good religion brings? Hope, endurance, forbearance, compassion?"
To that I say one big, "Phooey." I can find plenty of other sources of good. Including reason. Go Descartes.
For me, God, especially expressed in religion, is something I would like to see compressed into a square the size of a sugar cube, and blown back into space.
I don't care whether you believe in one God über alle, or a kind of Valhalla out there, a different god for every day of the week. Either way, you're playing with dynamite.
People that believe God is on their side hold a moral nuclear warhead in their hands. Religion's capacity for evil outweighs that for good. Especially, and always, when queers are concerned.
I say this as someone raised Southern Baptist, who for a dozen years believed I would be a medical missionary. As editor of The Gully, I tried to give voice to gay Muslims, gay Christians, any gay religious person you can think of, and for that matter, gay Republicans, too, because I believe queer activists should be everywhere.
But if I had my druthers, God would play no role on earth as long as humans lived there. The same day the news broke that God likes queers, or is at least okay with gay Jewish commitment ceremonies, I got an email saying, "God hates negroes." Death squads aim for fags in Iraq. Gay kids are homeless, electro-shocked, tortured. And why? God. God. God. Even the Dalai Lama condemns us.
Don't mistake what I'm saying. I know that embedded in religion, and our search for God, is a human urge towards the divine. We want to experience some part of life as holy, to have a sense of awe. Though probably apes do, too.
I even think it is good for our collective character to feel small, to be dwarfed by God or art or nature, and to embrace smaller beauty too, and god's still, small voice.
The thing is, we humans are never content with that. Especially in packs. The closest I came was at a Quaker meeting. I almost fell in love with the sunlight streaming through the windows, all those still, quiet people sitting around contemplating God in silence. But then they had to open their mouths, blab their banal revelations. And those are some of the good guys.
The thing is, we queers, at ten percent or less of humanity, will always be vulnerable, a statistical minority, and target when things go wrong. And gods are temperamental. Even when they're on my side, I'm scared. The worm turns.
So forgive me, if at the birthday of one god, I'm praying for Götterdämmerung, the twilight of them all.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
798 words
The ten queers hauled off by death squads in Iraq earlier this month are presumed dead. Their murderers may be Sunni or Shiite. Who cares which? That's what religion gets you. A bullet in the back of the head -- if you're lucky. If not, torture first, then death.
Inside my heart I carry a rocket launcher and take out every church I see. Except the really pretty ones. Those, I just close off to worship.
Everybody else gets dust and rubble, an end to the spaces that sanction all those people busy interpreting, exclaiming, pointing their enlightened fingers, "I know what Jesus [Mohammad, Buddha, Wotan] really meant. It's them others over there that are wrong."
Who says so? You? A couple dozen others? A few thousand? Does God respond to majority vote? Why should you have the keys to the heavenly kingdom just because you're preaching peace and love and gay rights?
On Thursday, a council of Conservative Jews, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, were kind enough to sanction commitment ceremonies for us queers. Does that make it okay now? Were we wrong before?
Politically, I suppose it's progress, so let's all take a minute to hoot and holler. But what I really want to say to those guys is fuck you.
I'm not like Mae West, getting a kick about being talked about. What are we, a new and different species? Do you suspect I keep my third head in the closet, my wings tucked under my armpits, a tail up my ass?
I want it to be over. Decide. Are we humans or animals? Under this democratic banner, are we equal or not?
I'm not surprised when we humans act like pigs. We share a lot of the same DNA as earthworms, why not boars? I'm sure there's a defender of religion out there saying "God's not the problem, it's the rotten human race, our self-serving tendency to shape God in our image. Don't blame God for the people that will use any tool at hand for evil. What about the good religion brings? Hope, endurance, forbearance, compassion?"
To that I say one big, "Phooey." I can find plenty of other sources of good. Including reason. Go Descartes.
For me, God, especially expressed in religion, is something I would like to see compressed into a square the size of a sugar cube, and blown back into space.
I don't care whether you believe in one God über alle, or a kind of Valhalla out there, a different god for every day of the week. Either way, you're playing with dynamite.
People that believe God is on their side hold a moral nuclear warhead in their hands. Religion's capacity for evil outweighs that for good. Especially, and always, when queers are concerned.
I say this as someone raised Southern Baptist, who for a dozen years believed I would be a medical missionary. As editor of The Gully, I tried to give voice to gay Muslims, gay Christians, any gay religious person you can think of, and for that matter, gay Republicans, too, because I believe queer activists should be everywhere.
But if I had my druthers, God would play no role on earth as long as humans lived there. The same day the news broke that God likes queers, or is at least okay with gay Jewish commitment ceremonies, I got an email saying, "God hates negroes." Death squads aim for fags in Iraq. Gay kids are homeless, electro-shocked, tortured. And why? God. God. God. Even the Dalai Lama condemns us.
Don't mistake what I'm saying. I know that embedded in religion, and our search for God, is a human urge towards the divine. We want to experience some part of life as holy, to have a sense of awe. Though probably apes do, too.
I even think it is good for our collective character to feel small, to be dwarfed by God or art or nature, and to embrace smaller beauty too, and god's still, small voice.
The thing is, we humans are never content with that. Especially in packs. The closest I came was at a Quaker meeting. I almost fell in love with the sunlight streaming through the windows, all those still, quiet people sitting around contemplating God in silence. But then they had to open their mouths, blab their banal revelations. And those are some of the good guys.
The thing is, we queers, at ten percent or less of humanity, will always be vulnerable, a statistical minority, and target when things go wrong. And gods are temperamental. Even when they're on my side, I'm scared. The worm turns.
So forgive me, if at the birthday of one god, I'm praying for Götterdämmerung, the twilight of them all.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Information Alone Won't Stop AIDS
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
801 words
World AIDS day, walking around New York in the rain, I spent a minute thinking of people I knew who had died from it.
There were just a handful, which is strange, considering that the three gay black men I knew from the neighborhood have all died in the last two or three years, but none from AIDS, though that was supposedly their demographic fate.
The Big C got Al, and Ernesto, too. Every time I'd see him at the Laundromat, he'd lost another chunk of his guts to cancer. Then there was that choreographer with dreds that got a blood clot or something in his brain.
I was closest to Al. When he and Ernesto got together, they'd swap lies about all the men they screwed, and drugs they used to do, big lines of coke, bales of weed, and pills by the handful.
"Remember the time that guy slipped you a mickey and you fell right off the stool? I had to sling you over my shoulder and carry you home."
They should have been dead when HIV first hit the community. But they were just too mean, I guess. Pulled a nasty face and scared it off. And they were smart enough that when the news broke about how you got it, they started using condoms.
They certainly didn't cross their legs and give up sex. Al could barely walk, worn out from chemo, and his legs all messed up from diabetes, but he'd still bring home tricks. He loved men. And boys, too. He felt like their protector.
He'd been a medic in the army, and it was his thing to give health lectures. Young males, gay or straight, got buttonholed on safe sex and personal hygiene. Afterwards, he'd mutter about how ignorant the little bastards were, "Twenty years old and don't even know how to wash their own dicks. None of 'em do."
Or, "Guy came to me, thought he was gonna die because he had crabs. Never heard of that before. Whipped it out on the verge of tears. A boy like that's not gonna live long."
Young black and Latino fags got to him most, the ignorance, and often self-hate. They broke his heart. Maybe because he had his own problems in the ego department.
You had to wonder when Al, a diabetic, stuffed himself with candy and sweetened ice tea. Do you want to have another stroke, or what? He also hooked up with some neo-Nazi kid. I expected to hear any day his black ass'd been slaughtered. Even cancer was better.
My point here is that he knew what would hurt him, but he did some of it anyway. Information wasn't the main factor. Hardly ever is, not in America.
Like when TV and newspapers whine about obesity. Information is always the focus, as if poor people stuck with it didn't know big chunks of lard were bad for you.
Sitting in the Laundromat, no Club Med, half the conversations are about nutrition, chicken -- good, red meat -- bad. Gotta watch the cholesterol. There's a sale on hens at Key Foods.
Every time I open a bag of Cheese Doodles, or have a soda, while I'm waiting to put my clothes in the dryer, one skinny, older woman warns me they're bad for me -- then goes outside for another cigarette.
My aunts used to sit around and have the same kind of conversations, blood sugar this, cholesterol that. They knew plenty, but one still ended up in the hospital from diabetes, her legs cut off, hooked up to machines for weeks before she died. It was horrible.
We trust too much in information. Even gay liberation, the antidote to queer self-destruction, and the only thing that will erase the stigma of HIV for closet cases and heterosexuals so they can at least get the information through their thick skulls, isn't enough.
Our health is also tied to class and race. Organic milk is four bucks a half gallon, and who has time to cook when you're working two jobs? If you do have time, you want to do comfort food. It was pornographic the way Al and I used to moan about biscuits and sausage gravy.
Better just to drop by McDonald's and stuff yourself for five bucks. What've you got to live for, anyway, just more work, with no cushy retirement at the end?
American culture makes it worse, that self-reliant, anti-authority, individualist "don't tread on me" tradition. We even rebel against governing ourselves when it comes to Super-Sizing and condom use.
Then remember America's nice wide puritanical strain, and add guilt to the mix. Vast mountains of it. And feeling crappy for doing what we know is bad for us, what do we do? Screw if we can. If not, eat.
801 words
World AIDS day, walking around New York in the rain, I spent a minute thinking of people I knew who had died from it.
There were just a handful, which is strange, considering that the three gay black men I knew from the neighborhood have all died in the last two or three years, but none from AIDS, though that was supposedly their demographic fate.
The Big C got Al, and Ernesto, too. Every time I'd see him at the Laundromat, he'd lost another chunk of his guts to cancer. Then there was that choreographer with dreds that got a blood clot or something in his brain.
I was closest to Al. When he and Ernesto got together, they'd swap lies about all the men they screwed, and drugs they used to do, big lines of coke, bales of weed, and pills by the handful.
"Remember the time that guy slipped you a mickey and you fell right off the stool? I had to sling you over my shoulder and carry you home."
They should have been dead when HIV first hit the community. But they were just too mean, I guess. Pulled a nasty face and scared it off. And they were smart enough that when the news broke about how you got it, they started using condoms.
They certainly didn't cross their legs and give up sex. Al could barely walk, worn out from chemo, and his legs all messed up from diabetes, but he'd still bring home tricks. He loved men. And boys, too. He felt like their protector.
He'd been a medic in the army, and it was his thing to give health lectures. Young males, gay or straight, got buttonholed on safe sex and personal hygiene. Afterwards, he'd mutter about how ignorant the little bastards were, "Twenty years old and don't even know how to wash their own dicks. None of 'em do."
Or, "Guy came to me, thought he was gonna die because he had crabs. Never heard of that before. Whipped it out on the verge of tears. A boy like that's not gonna live long."
Young black and Latino fags got to him most, the ignorance, and often self-hate. They broke his heart. Maybe because he had his own problems in the ego department.
You had to wonder when Al, a diabetic, stuffed himself with candy and sweetened ice tea. Do you want to have another stroke, or what? He also hooked up with some neo-Nazi kid. I expected to hear any day his black ass'd been slaughtered. Even cancer was better.
My point here is that he knew what would hurt him, but he did some of it anyway. Information wasn't the main factor. Hardly ever is, not in America.
Like when TV and newspapers whine about obesity. Information is always the focus, as if poor people stuck with it didn't know big chunks of lard were bad for you.
Sitting in the Laundromat, no Club Med, half the conversations are about nutrition, chicken -- good, red meat -- bad. Gotta watch the cholesterol. There's a sale on hens at Key Foods.
Every time I open a bag of Cheese Doodles, or have a soda, while I'm waiting to put my clothes in the dryer, one skinny, older woman warns me they're bad for me -- then goes outside for another cigarette.
My aunts used to sit around and have the same kind of conversations, blood sugar this, cholesterol that. They knew plenty, but one still ended up in the hospital from diabetes, her legs cut off, hooked up to machines for weeks before she died. It was horrible.
We trust too much in information. Even gay liberation, the antidote to queer self-destruction, and the only thing that will erase the stigma of HIV for closet cases and heterosexuals so they can at least get the information through their thick skulls, isn't enough.
Our health is also tied to class and race. Organic milk is four bucks a half gallon, and who has time to cook when you're working two jobs? If you do have time, you want to do comfort food. It was pornographic the way Al and I used to moan about biscuits and sausage gravy.
Better just to drop by McDonald's and stuff yourself for five bucks. What've you got to live for, anyway, just more work, with no cushy retirement at the end?
American culture makes it worse, that self-reliant, anti-authority, individualist "don't tread on me" tradition. We even rebel against governing ourselves when it comes to Super-Sizing and condom use.
Then remember America's nice wide puritanical strain, and add guilt to the mix. Vast mountains of it. And feeling crappy for doing what we know is bad for us, what do we do? Screw if we can. If not, eat.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Engaging America One Thigh At a Time
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
799 words
It was Claudio's fault. He called to wish us an early Happy Thanksgiving, and afterwards, standing by the phone, I picked up the receiver and without premeditation or Wild Turkey, dialed my mom in Kentucky.
We didn't talk long. After thirteen years, my Bush-loving, Southern Baptist mother still flinches every time I say the lesbian "we." "We" planted clematis and a dogwood. We're having Marina's mom and brother here for the holiday.
She did her best for a change, though, when she said, "You all have a nice Thanksgiving." Note the plural. She didn't even promise to pray for me.
One sister's still in Louisville, too, transformed from a teenaged Kiss listening tramp, to a Sunday School teacher making presents at Christmas for us godless barbarians in New York.
I think of her every time I hear that Southern twang in Alphabet City where there's a Baptist mission. God, I'm glad I'm not her.
Three rotten marriages three kids. The boy from her first marriage is nothing but trouble. Factoring in the genetics, it's no surprise, but it didn't help the time he was trapped in the bathroom with his mom while dad number two threatened to cut everybody up, including the family dog.
When I called, and asked how Kurt was, she said he was in the army. Shape up or ship out, she told him. Now he's in Germany, a heartbeat from Iraq, still a discipline problem. I wonder if he's on his meds. He was taking heavy duty stuff for a while.
I didn't say anything to her at the time, didn't even think it. We've always had relatives in the military. When they came home to visit from Korea and Germany, my cousins were more worldly than the rest of us hayseeds. They were the most decent even, when I came out.
Their kids followed them into the family business when they were grown. My sister said one went back to Iraq this month for his second tour. He's in charge of one of those teams that goes door to door, shooting and getting shot at. He was a good kid, now who knows.
I remember that when I see all the burnt up army trucks on TV, the bombed out markets, or grieving Iraqis showing how U.S. soldiers smashed down the door then opened fire. It could be me there. It IS me. I'm an American.
Bush started it, but all our hands are dirty. So now what? Just split and leave the Sunnis and Shiites to slaughter each other when we put the knives in their hands?
What was my sister thinking to send her messed up kid over there? Better dead than, what, in jail, a nuisance, a reminder of failure?
If he survives it, he'll be destroyed. Smart thinking to put a gun in his hand, and wipe away eighteen years worth of telling him violence is wrong. Probably he'll come back, buy an AK-47, climb a tower, and pick off college students. Or queers. If he has enough limbs left to get upstairs.
I got off the phone, baked a cake, then made a paste of cumin and garlic and bitter orange, and slathered it on our Thanksgiving pork roast before shoving it in a Ziploc bag to rest overnight.
Later, smearing lotion on my chunky little legs after my bath, it was déjà vu all over again. I was marinating myself for the oven, like the pernil which still had a smooth pink skin covering the meat.
The biggest difference was that the pork was leaner (better get to the gym) and probably worth more per pound considering what I made last year. I see it as a cautionary tale, that brief sensation of my hands on my own leg imagining it carved up at the butchers, just flesh and blood.
How many Iraqis are dead now? 54,000? Three thousand Americans are kaput, and a hundred thousand wounded.
If anything, my pork roast, my thighs can help us understand Iraq. And America, too, as a vision of unity. The Us and Them thing's okay for pamphlets. It's not so good for shaping policy, or having a life with other humans in it. We need to think in different, generous terms.
The truth is, I'm a Hummel collection away from being my Mom. If I hadn't been a dyke, maybe I'd be like my sister. We all have the same streak of cold hard morality that kicks in out of the blue setting its sights on injustice, or sin.
I haven't been to Kentucky in a decade, but it's as near as my ribs. America starts right about at my thighs. Not as close as the heart, but all I have to do is take a step and I'm there.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com
799 words
It was Claudio's fault. He called to wish us an early Happy Thanksgiving, and afterwards, standing by the phone, I picked up the receiver and without premeditation or Wild Turkey, dialed my mom in Kentucky.
We didn't talk long. After thirteen years, my Bush-loving, Southern Baptist mother still flinches every time I say the lesbian "we." "We" planted clematis and a dogwood. We're having Marina's mom and brother here for the holiday.
She did her best for a change, though, when she said, "You all have a nice Thanksgiving." Note the plural. She didn't even promise to pray for me.
One sister's still in Louisville, too, transformed from a teenaged Kiss listening tramp, to a Sunday School teacher making presents at Christmas for us godless barbarians in New York.
I think of her every time I hear that Southern twang in Alphabet City where there's a Baptist mission. God, I'm glad I'm not her.
Three rotten marriages three kids. The boy from her first marriage is nothing but trouble. Factoring in the genetics, it's no surprise, but it didn't help the time he was trapped in the bathroom with his mom while dad number two threatened to cut everybody up, including the family dog.
When I called, and asked how Kurt was, she said he was in the army. Shape up or ship out, she told him. Now he's in Germany, a heartbeat from Iraq, still a discipline problem. I wonder if he's on his meds. He was taking heavy duty stuff for a while.
I didn't say anything to her at the time, didn't even think it. We've always had relatives in the military. When they came home to visit from Korea and Germany, my cousins were more worldly than the rest of us hayseeds. They were the most decent even, when I came out.
Their kids followed them into the family business when they were grown. My sister said one went back to Iraq this month for his second tour. He's in charge of one of those teams that goes door to door, shooting and getting shot at. He was a good kid, now who knows.
I remember that when I see all the burnt up army trucks on TV, the bombed out markets, or grieving Iraqis showing how U.S. soldiers smashed down the door then opened fire. It could be me there. It IS me. I'm an American.
Bush started it, but all our hands are dirty. So now what? Just split and leave the Sunnis and Shiites to slaughter each other when we put the knives in their hands?
What was my sister thinking to send her messed up kid over there? Better dead than, what, in jail, a nuisance, a reminder of failure?
If he survives it, he'll be destroyed. Smart thinking to put a gun in his hand, and wipe away eighteen years worth of telling him violence is wrong. Probably he'll come back, buy an AK-47, climb a tower, and pick off college students. Or queers. If he has enough limbs left to get upstairs.
I got off the phone, baked a cake, then made a paste of cumin and garlic and bitter orange, and slathered it on our Thanksgiving pork roast before shoving it in a Ziploc bag to rest overnight.
Later, smearing lotion on my chunky little legs after my bath, it was déjà vu all over again. I was marinating myself for the oven, like the pernil which still had a smooth pink skin covering the meat.
The biggest difference was that the pork was leaner (better get to the gym) and probably worth more per pound considering what I made last year. I see it as a cautionary tale, that brief sensation of my hands on my own leg imagining it carved up at the butchers, just flesh and blood.
How many Iraqis are dead now? 54,000? Three thousand Americans are kaput, and a hundred thousand wounded.
If anything, my pork roast, my thighs can help us understand Iraq. And America, too, as a vision of unity. The Us and Them thing's okay for pamphlets. It's not so good for shaping policy, or having a life with other humans in it. We need to think in different, generous terms.
The truth is, I'm a Hummel collection away from being my Mom. If I hadn't been a dyke, maybe I'd be like my sister. We all have the same streak of cold hard morality that kicks in out of the blue setting its sights on injustice, or sin.
I haven't been to Kentucky in a decade, but it's as near as my ribs. America starts right about at my thighs. Not as close as the heart, but all I have to do is take a step and I'm there.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com
Monday, November 20, 2006
Giving Thanks for Ugly Betty
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
803 words
Thursday nights I join my girlfriend's Mom in front of the tube, and we watch plain jane Betty Suarez outwit the beautiful people with her arsenal of orange braces, goofy grin, and immigrant optimism as perpetually startling as her blinding wardrobe that combines psychedelic pinks and oranges with high style secretary couture circa 1982.
I never got into the Colombian original. So what if making Betty the butt of jokes was supposed to uncover the stupidity of other characters, or that she was revealed as the swan at the very end? It was torture. All that degradation.
If I want humiliation, I can go home for Thanksgiving and have a double helping served up with cranberry sauce.
Sure, some of the other characters at Betty's Mode magazine job still try their best to bring her down, but in America, she just rolls her eyes at their stupidity and moves on. It's New York, Baby.
Part of Betty's strength is her family in Queens. She lives at home in one of those little semi-detached houses in Archie Bunker territory with her father Ignacio, sister Hilda, and nephew Justin who is a glorious twelve-year old queen that would have had old Archie sneering in his armchair. What's the neighborhood coming to?
It was him that won me over to the show. What queer wouldn't rejoice to see Justin twirl across the screen?
I caught him in that episode where he lied about a school project so he could bask in Betty's high fashion job. Hilda, his mom, was furious when she found out. Which is par for the matronly course. In general, she's upset, distressed, annoyed when Justin wants to sing show tunes instead of doing his homework.
I think it's okay Hilda struggles with having an artsy, effeminate son. You can see she still loves him. The whole family does. Even the macho, ex-boxer Ignacio who's been known to watch a telenovela or two.
Ambivalence would be an improvement for a lot of us. I was home from college once, and having a cup of coffee with my own mother when she suddenly screamed, "You're holding the cup like a man." She went berserk, like I'd deflowered her coffee cup.
Imagine when I finally came out. She decided not to have anything to do with me until I was the girl God wanted me to be. We talk on the phone once a year, but she hasn't stopped praying since.
I get the idea that executive producer Salma Hayek knows very well what happens to queers, especially young ones, the torrents of verbal abuse, beatings, sexual attacks, homelessness.
That first episode I watched, when Justin was hanging out at Mode magazine, he had a tete-a-tete with the out adult character, Marc, who took a few minutes out from his attacks on Betty to admire Justin's suit and ask if the other kids at school gave him a hard time for it.
When Justin said, yes, Marc didn't go into a whole gay solidarity thing, just advised him not to question his own fashion sense, and learn how to run fast. It's not politically correct, but as advice to a kid it works for me. Avoid the closet. But do what you must to survive.
I was glad Marc didn't ask twelve-year old Justin if he was gay, and was surprised to see the Advocate had an article focusing on that, and hinting that the network was somehow keeping Justin in the closet by refusing to say.
Does everything really have to be spelled out?
Silence only bothers me when there's a lie at the center of it. Like this guy I know who embraces words like "man" and "Hispanic," but when it comes to who he sleeps with suddenly hates labels and clams right up.
Justin is fine as he is, a great role model even. And Hayak uses his joyful femininity to send up macho pigs like his mostly absent father, the quintessential masculine homeboy that hangs out on the street corner all tough in his buzzed head as he plays the numbers and ignores the fact that he has a son.
When the man actually turns up for Thanksgiving, bringing Justin a gift-wrapped present of a football, helmet, and athletic cup, the joke was on him. Justin stuck the white plastic thing on his face, swirled off and declared himself the Phantom of the Opera.
Hayak has assembled a diverse cast, but she seems to believe that if you get the details right, characters and situations can speak for themselves, and be funny, too, without self-conscious Hispanic jokes about the Suarez family, or constant queer jokes about Marc. There certainly are no black jokes about Mode diva Wilhelmina Slater played formidably by Vanessa Williams. Nobody would dare.
For that, I give thanks.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com
803 words
Thursday nights I join my girlfriend's Mom in front of the tube, and we watch plain jane Betty Suarez outwit the beautiful people with her arsenal of orange braces, goofy grin, and immigrant optimism as perpetually startling as her blinding wardrobe that combines psychedelic pinks and oranges with high style secretary couture circa 1982.
I never got into the Colombian original. So what if making Betty the butt of jokes was supposed to uncover the stupidity of other characters, or that she was revealed as the swan at the very end? It was torture. All that degradation.
If I want humiliation, I can go home for Thanksgiving and have a double helping served up with cranberry sauce.
Sure, some of the other characters at Betty's Mode magazine job still try their best to bring her down, but in America, she just rolls her eyes at their stupidity and moves on. It's New York, Baby.
Part of Betty's strength is her family in Queens. She lives at home in one of those little semi-detached houses in Archie Bunker territory with her father Ignacio, sister Hilda, and nephew Justin who is a glorious twelve-year old queen that would have had old Archie sneering in his armchair. What's the neighborhood coming to?
It was him that won me over to the show. What queer wouldn't rejoice to see Justin twirl across the screen?
I caught him in that episode where he lied about a school project so he could bask in Betty's high fashion job. Hilda, his mom, was furious when she found out. Which is par for the matronly course. In general, she's upset, distressed, annoyed when Justin wants to sing show tunes instead of doing his homework.
I think it's okay Hilda struggles with having an artsy, effeminate son. You can see she still loves him. The whole family does. Even the macho, ex-boxer Ignacio who's been known to watch a telenovela or two.
Ambivalence would be an improvement for a lot of us. I was home from college once, and having a cup of coffee with my own mother when she suddenly screamed, "You're holding the cup like a man." She went berserk, like I'd deflowered her coffee cup.
Imagine when I finally came out. She decided not to have anything to do with me until I was the girl God wanted me to be. We talk on the phone once a year, but she hasn't stopped praying since.
I get the idea that executive producer Salma Hayek knows very well what happens to queers, especially young ones, the torrents of verbal abuse, beatings, sexual attacks, homelessness.
That first episode I watched, when Justin was hanging out at Mode magazine, he had a tete-a-tete with the out adult character, Marc, who took a few minutes out from his attacks on Betty to admire Justin's suit and ask if the other kids at school gave him a hard time for it.
When Justin said, yes, Marc didn't go into a whole gay solidarity thing, just advised him not to question his own fashion sense, and learn how to run fast. It's not politically correct, but as advice to a kid it works for me. Avoid the closet. But do what you must to survive.
I was glad Marc didn't ask twelve-year old Justin if he was gay, and was surprised to see the Advocate had an article focusing on that, and hinting that the network was somehow keeping Justin in the closet by refusing to say.
Does everything really have to be spelled out?
Silence only bothers me when there's a lie at the center of it. Like this guy I know who embraces words like "man" and "Hispanic," but when it comes to who he sleeps with suddenly hates labels and clams right up.
Justin is fine as he is, a great role model even. And Hayak uses his joyful femininity to send up macho pigs like his mostly absent father, the quintessential masculine homeboy that hangs out on the street corner all tough in his buzzed head as he plays the numbers and ignores the fact that he has a son.
When the man actually turns up for Thanksgiving, bringing Justin a gift-wrapped present of a football, helmet, and athletic cup, the joke was on him. Justin stuck the white plastic thing on his face, swirled off and declared himself the Phantom of the Opera.
Hayak has assembled a diverse cast, but she seems to believe that if you get the details right, characters and situations can speak for themselves, and be funny, too, without self-conscious Hispanic jokes about the Suarez family, or constant queer jokes about Marc. There certainly are no black jokes about Mode diva Wilhelmina Slater played formidably by Vanessa Williams. Nobody would dare.
For that, I give thanks.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com
Monday, November 13, 2006
Post-Election Blues
796 words
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
I used to go to vote in a grade school where the hallways were all brightly colored, and the water fountains all cute and midget-sized. This time of year they'd paste up those Thanksgiving turkeys you make by drawing your hand. Seeing that at the door leant a veneer of hope to the whole project of democracy.
But they kicked us voters out a couple years ago, probably afraid we're all pedophiles, and that sooner or later we'd run amuck and create lawsuits.
The new place is stuck in the ground floor of this enormous low-income housing project where retirees hang out in a shabby pigeon filled park in good weather, and huddle inside when it's cold. To vote, I had to run the gauntlet of canes and walkers. The grey hallway smelled of bleach and piss. The inmates I saw under the flickering fluorescent light only had a half dozen teeth between them, arranged like a kind of sideshow, momento mori, or exemplar of social policy's endgame.
Maybe we were supposed to run out and demand Medicare reform, and services for the aging, make a fat donation to the Association of American Retirees, or like all ye who enter here, just Abandon Hope.
The older lady that usually guards the rolls is one of them. She can't hear, and you have to shout your address three or four times. She sometimes argues, bellowing "You don't live on First Street," until one of the young ones comes along and grabs the voting rolls out her hands.
During the primaries, even the middle-aged woman couldn't find me. They looked on all the rolls in all the nearby districts, but I'd been bumped off completely, and I had to fill out a paper ballot which they probably wiped their asses with.
I got the idea I wasn't wanted. Even though the Democrats won this time, swept completely, I think they'd prefer to get along without me.
I can hear you out there, saying, for Pete's sake, the Democrats retook the House with glorious excess and even got their props in the Senate. Down with the devil Bush. Quit your beefing.
God, how I'd like to.
I stayed up half election night watching the yellow squares turn blue in the New York Times interactive map, but even when it was clear we had the House I never felt relief, much less anything like elation. I was numb when Allen conceded in Virginia giving us the Senate, too.
Part of it was the winning message. "Vote for us. We're not Republicans." In New Jersey, the anti-Kean ads in the Senate race showed the fresh-faced Republican challenger with burning images of Iraq, and of course, his best buddy George. That was enough to undo him, even though Democrat Menendez faces charges of corruption. What's a little pork for the blue states, when the red have been getting the whole hog?
The real problem is that the whole election seems to mean nothing beyond a condemnation of Bush's losing tactics in Iraq and a general repugnance for Republican corruption. The newsflash is, most of us queers are still considered under that heading. Can you say Foley, Foley, Foley?
He was the last straw. Not Iraq. Or Halliburton. Not how our Constitution is lying in shreds at the bottom of some Washington birdcage. But that some middle-aged guy made passes at some young Congressional pages. That they were all male broke the elephant's back.
Screw the Republicans and Democrats both. It was queers that got their asses kicked at the polls. Anti-gay marriage amendments passed in seven out of the eight states at issue even when the Democrats won. That brings the total up to what? Twenty-seven? Now marriage between us is now expressly forbidden in more than half the country.
Should I bust open the champagne for that? Or faint promises from Mr. Spitzer?
If Arizona backed away from an anti-gay amendment along with a couple of incredibly vicious anti-immigrant candidates it's less because they've suddenly opened their hearts to diversity, than because the racist politicians were so excessive in their zeal they conjured images of little pointed white caps and cross-burnings.
Moderation for Americans in all things, including bigotry. Ban gay marriage, but don't beat the crap out of the faggots. Put up walls at our borders, but don't actually mount machine guns on top of them.
Equality's a nice idea, and Americans are nice above all, but no need to over do it.
Even Mr. Foley was forgiven, somewhat, when he announced he'd been abused by a priest. That made his being "gay" okay. Not like us unapologetically, no excuse, "out and proud" Americans. We're still hung out to dry. And my neighbors, vote how they want, still hate me.
Frankly, it's too early for hope.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
I used to go to vote in a grade school where the hallways were all brightly colored, and the water fountains all cute and midget-sized. This time of year they'd paste up those Thanksgiving turkeys you make by drawing your hand. Seeing that at the door leant a veneer of hope to the whole project of democracy.
But they kicked us voters out a couple years ago, probably afraid we're all pedophiles, and that sooner or later we'd run amuck and create lawsuits.
The new place is stuck in the ground floor of this enormous low-income housing project where retirees hang out in a shabby pigeon filled park in good weather, and huddle inside when it's cold. To vote, I had to run the gauntlet of canes and walkers. The grey hallway smelled of bleach and piss. The inmates I saw under the flickering fluorescent light only had a half dozen teeth between them, arranged like a kind of sideshow, momento mori, or exemplar of social policy's endgame.
Maybe we were supposed to run out and demand Medicare reform, and services for the aging, make a fat donation to the Association of American Retirees, or like all ye who enter here, just Abandon Hope.
The older lady that usually guards the rolls is one of them. She can't hear, and you have to shout your address three or four times. She sometimes argues, bellowing "You don't live on First Street," until one of the young ones comes along and grabs the voting rolls out her hands.
During the primaries, even the middle-aged woman couldn't find me. They looked on all the rolls in all the nearby districts, but I'd been bumped off completely, and I had to fill out a paper ballot which they probably wiped their asses with.
I got the idea I wasn't wanted. Even though the Democrats won this time, swept completely, I think they'd prefer to get along without me.
I can hear you out there, saying, for Pete's sake, the Democrats retook the House with glorious excess and even got their props in the Senate. Down with the devil Bush. Quit your beefing.
God, how I'd like to.
I stayed up half election night watching the yellow squares turn blue in the New York Times interactive map, but even when it was clear we had the House I never felt relief, much less anything like elation. I was numb when Allen conceded in Virginia giving us the Senate, too.
Part of it was the winning message. "Vote for us. We're not Republicans." In New Jersey, the anti-Kean ads in the Senate race showed the fresh-faced Republican challenger with burning images of Iraq, and of course, his best buddy George. That was enough to undo him, even though Democrat Menendez faces charges of corruption. What's a little pork for the blue states, when the red have been getting the whole hog?
The real problem is that the whole election seems to mean nothing beyond a condemnation of Bush's losing tactics in Iraq and a general repugnance for Republican corruption. The newsflash is, most of us queers are still considered under that heading. Can you say Foley, Foley, Foley?
He was the last straw. Not Iraq. Or Halliburton. Not how our Constitution is lying in shreds at the bottom of some Washington birdcage. But that some middle-aged guy made passes at some young Congressional pages. That they were all male broke the elephant's back.
Screw the Republicans and Democrats both. It was queers that got their asses kicked at the polls. Anti-gay marriage amendments passed in seven out of the eight states at issue even when the Democrats won. That brings the total up to what? Twenty-seven? Now marriage between us is now expressly forbidden in more than half the country.
Should I bust open the champagne for that? Or faint promises from Mr. Spitzer?
If Arizona backed away from an anti-gay amendment along with a couple of incredibly vicious anti-immigrant candidates it's less because they've suddenly opened their hearts to diversity, than because the racist politicians were so excessive in their zeal they conjured images of little pointed white caps and cross-burnings.
Moderation for Americans in all things, including bigotry. Ban gay marriage, but don't beat the crap out of the faggots. Put up walls at our borders, but don't actually mount machine guns on top of them.
Equality's a nice idea, and Americans are nice above all, but no need to over do it.
Even Mr. Foley was forgiven, somewhat, when he announced he'd been abused by a priest. That made his being "gay" okay. Not like us unapologetically, no excuse, "out and proud" Americans. We're still hung out to dry. And my neighbors, vote how they want, still hate me.
Frankly, it's too early for hope.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Ségolène Royal: Busting Socialist Balls in France
801 words
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
Ségolène Royal's way ahead of the other Socialist candidates in France, at least according to the polls. I don't know why more of my French friends don't like her. The most approving thing I've heard so far was from this gay guy I know who thought it would be good for the country to have a woman President, but as far as enthusiasm went, I didn't detect any.
Maybe it's because her enemies have been pretty successful styling her as a bourgeois provincial and mother of four aiming to hijack her Party and drag it to the right. Or because the whole stiletto heel thing doesn't go over with dykes -- which is mostly who I know there.
As to a conservative underbelly, Ségo did grow up in a strange right-wing Catholic family with a father that kept his sons in military buzz cuts and under an excessive discipline. But I grew up Southern Baptist in Kentucky, and ended up a Lesbian Avenger in New York. So pooh pooh to families. Nurture isn't everything.
The most conservative thing Ségo's said so far was that it was time to quit talking about adolescent crime and do something about it, even if it meant sending teenagers to boot camp type programs rather than give them a slap on the hand and sending them home to watch TV. (No, jail wasn't an option.)
But regarding race and national identity, she's gone further left than most of her party in her recent declaration that French politicians should not distinguish between those who have "roots" in France, and those who don't, code language for those of immigrant descent. To Ségo, born to a colonial family in Senegal, if you're French, you're French.
To my surprise, she's also come out in support of gay marriage, which is more than most of her brethren can say. She's also supported campaigns against homophobia in schools. So as far as I'm concerned, vive Ségolène.
I think the real problem with Ségo is not that she strays too far from her ideologically unfocused party, but that she's going outside the party hierarchy, using American-style campaigning to deal with supporters directly, listening, thinking, responding through her interactive chat focused website Hopes for the Future and her "town hall" style meetings.
For the last couple of decades, the Socialists have been more the party of leftist academics and theoreticians than labor or "the people." As to the Socialist alliance with unions, the syndicates have tons of demos in France, but hardly anybody's unionized so who do they really represent? A very small minority, an elite, really. The average worker's out in the cold.
They don't even have a voice. It's the usual overeducated Socialist leader that studies the problems, gets up on a soapbox, pontificates a while, maybe even legislates something, then leaves the stage, equating action with words.
For instance, they've passed plenty of rules about gender parity, but do they put up women candidates for election? No! They'd rather fine themselves. And they're so far out of touch on questions of racism that even though the heads were gathered together in a national conference when banlieu riots erupted last fall, they didn't even issue a relevant press release. How could they as long as there was some punctuation that needed fixing, a semi-colon out of place?
The most "populist" thing they've done in recent times is oppose a ban on smoking, puffing themselves up as defenders of individual liberties. Screw all those people excluded from a public life because they need to breathe.
Ségo at least listens rather than talks. Her interactive website announces right up front, "I've become convinced that citizens -- because the problems are near to them, or because they're the ones hoping for progress -- are the only real legitimate "experts" on any of the questions facing us." Them's fighting words in France.
And as far as action goes, she was also one of the few Socialists that actually campaigned in 2005 for a "yes" vote to the European Constitution, which her party supposedly supported, but most bigwigs fled from.
In their primary on November 16, we'll know if the French Socialists have any credibility left at all. Will they pick the only candidate that can beat the leading conservative candidate, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, even if she strays from their orthodoxies? Or will they go for the loyal party man who'll get stomped at the polls, but has been anointed by the party bosses? It's hard to call.
When former PM Lionel Jospin, party hack extraordinaire, withdrew from the race a couple of weeks ago, he said he'd support anybody but "la candidate," the female candidate. What a lot of balls the old bastard has. But like the other candidates, he's short on almost everything else.
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
Ségolène Royal's way ahead of the other Socialist candidates in France, at least according to the polls. I don't know why more of my French friends don't like her. The most approving thing I've heard so far was from this gay guy I know who thought it would be good for the country to have a woman President, but as far as enthusiasm went, I didn't detect any.
Maybe it's because her enemies have been pretty successful styling her as a bourgeois provincial and mother of four aiming to hijack her Party and drag it to the right. Or because the whole stiletto heel thing doesn't go over with dykes -- which is mostly who I know there.
As to a conservative underbelly, Ségo did grow up in a strange right-wing Catholic family with a father that kept his sons in military buzz cuts and under an excessive discipline. But I grew up Southern Baptist in Kentucky, and ended up a Lesbian Avenger in New York. So pooh pooh to families. Nurture isn't everything.
The most conservative thing Ségo's said so far was that it was time to quit talking about adolescent crime and do something about it, even if it meant sending teenagers to boot camp type programs rather than give them a slap on the hand and sending them home to watch TV. (No, jail wasn't an option.)
But regarding race and national identity, she's gone further left than most of her party in her recent declaration that French politicians should not distinguish between those who have "roots" in France, and those who don't, code language for those of immigrant descent. To Ségo, born to a colonial family in Senegal, if you're French, you're French.
To my surprise, she's also come out in support of gay marriage, which is more than most of her brethren can say. She's also supported campaigns against homophobia in schools. So as far as I'm concerned, vive Ségolène.
I think the real problem with Ségo is not that she strays too far from her ideologically unfocused party, but that she's going outside the party hierarchy, using American-style campaigning to deal with supporters directly, listening, thinking, responding through her interactive chat focused website Hopes for the Future and her "town hall" style meetings.
For the last couple of decades, the Socialists have been more the party of leftist academics and theoreticians than labor or "the people." As to the Socialist alliance with unions, the syndicates have tons of demos in France, but hardly anybody's unionized so who do they really represent? A very small minority, an elite, really. The average worker's out in the cold.
They don't even have a voice. It's the usual overeducated Socialist leader that studies the problems, gets up on a soapbox, pontificates a while, maybe even legislates something, then leaves the stage, equating action with words.
For instance, they've passed plenty of rules about gender parity, but do they put up women candidates for election? No! They'd rather fine themselves. And they're so far out of touch on questions of racism that even though the heads were gathered together in a national conference when banlieu riots erupted last fall, they didn't even issue a relevant press release. How could they as long as there was some punctuation that needed fixing, a semi-colon out of place?
The most "populist" thing they've done in recent times is oppose a ban on smoking, puffing themselves up as defenders of individual liberties. Screw all those people excluded from a public life because they need to breathe.
Ségo at least listens rather than talks. Her interactive website announces right up front, "I've become convinced that citizens -- because the problems are near to them, or because they're the ones hoping for progress -- are the only real legitimate "experts" on any of the questions facing us." Them's fighting words in France.
And as far as action goes, she was also one of the few Socialists that actually campaigned in 2005 for a "yes" vote to the European Constitution, which her party supposedly supported, but most bigwigs fled from.
In their primary on November 16, we'll know if the French Socialists have any credibility left at all. Will they pick the only candidate that can beat the leading conservative candidate, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, even if she strays from their orthodoxies? Or will they go for the loyal party man who'll get stomped at the polls, but has been anointed by the party bosses? It's hard to call.
When former PM Lionel Jospin, party hack extraordinaire, withdrew from the race a couple of weeks ago, he said he'd support anybody but "la candidate," the female candidate. What a lot of balls the old bastard has. But like the other candidates, he's short on almost everything else.
Anti-Bush Demo Bombs
803 words
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
So you build a wooden platform, rent some loudspeakers, line up a few orators, maybe even gather a couple hundred people in the park and denounce all the gazillion crappy things Bush has done, what then? Pat yourselves on the back and do it again next week? Sit and wait for change to spring up like an oil well and pour forth a multitude of blessings upon the people?
I went to a "World Can't Wait" demo the other day, and that seemed to be the general idea, hold enough of those things and we'll have a movement on our hands. Ha.
A couple of the speakers were okay, but the whole congratulatory thing had the stench of failure to it from the brass band that was supposed to liven up the lunchtime crowd with a pseudo-salsa ditty of "Sí, se puede," to the Irish guy singing about poor dead Johnny in a tenor he was obviously proud of.
Maybe I'd have had lower expectations if the organizers hadn't taken out an enormous ad in the New York Times whose extravagance seemed to promise thousands of participants, instead of a couple hundred artists types, an equal number of cops to monitor them, and a whole lot of insidious retirees with grey hair and not a few lethal canes and walkers.
To be fair, it got bigger later. Some high schoolers and college students came, a lot of the boys parading around with handkerchiefs over their faces like anarchists in Seattle, or Zapatistas, or cowboys. Like they were playing dress up.
The real problem was the speakers. There were some with family members in the armed services, some still serving, some dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, talking about the unjust war. They were okay. But there were far too many of the usual New York hetero lefty firebrands.
Instead of gearing their speeches towards the International Day Against Torture, the old gasbags dragged in their pet issues until there was a whole zoo arranged on the podium. I heard denunciations of low-income housing, national economic policy, hurricane Katrina, the stolen election, relations with Venezuela, American reliance on oil, the Iraqi dead, the American dead, and yes, a little something about torture. About the anti-gay marriage amendment, nothing.
One old time lefty speaker even held up Cuba as a model for resistance to American tyranny as if getting slapped in jail and tortured for your political beliefs were somehow more tolerable under a left-wing dictator than Bush and Co.
I left as depressed as before. Worse, really. A bad demo is more demoralizing than staying at home. One size doesn't fit all and half of the activists out there only have one model, and that's good old Martin Luther King, Jr., up there on a podium in front of a mobbed Washington mall declaring, "I have a dream."
Which is a powerful image, sure. Hell, it's good to be the King. The problem is activists get the form right: podium, loudspeaker, crowd, but ignore the rest. Like all those small churches the King preached in first, all the cups of bad coffee he drank strategizing, the many smaller actions. In other words, they forget there was groundwork done that both mobilized people, and boiled the issues down to the bone.
Imagine if King had stood up there going down an amorphous laundry list of racist atrocities in America, instead of offering the simple urgent proactive message of Equality, a call to stand for something, and not just against.
Effective demos -- and movements -- need simple messages. The anti-Bush crew could learn plenty from queer history. "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." "Silence Equals Death." The Lesbian Avengers stuck to lesbian visibility and survival.
Simplicity isn't enough, though. Activists could seize on one issue like torture, or the War in Iraq, and still fail. Because they don't see beyond Bush. His face is on every sign, his name in every speaker's mouth. What about when he's gone?
There's no proactive dream to rouse us, and what we're faced with at bottom is not Bush, but an America that elected him -- kinda -- twice. And now those idiots just sit at home waiting for him to go away and expecting the problems to follow him offstage. They won't. Call it a strategic failure on our part.
Coming home from the demo, I noticed the slogan on the back of my metro card, "SI VES ALGO, DI ALGO" "If you see something, say something," which is supposed to prevent terrorism, but mostly causes alarm over old tuna fish sandwiches and social studies homework.
The phrase works better as a political imperative. If you see something, say something. Though maybe think a little first, plan even. Then say it quick and to the point.
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
So you build a wooden platform, rent some loudspeakers, line up a few orators, maybe even gather a couple hundred people in the park and denounce all the gazillion crappy things Bush has done, what then? Pat yourselves on the back and do it again next week? Sit and wait for change to spring up like an oil well and pour forth a multitude of blessings upon the people?
I went to a "World Can't Wait" demo the other day, and that seemed to be the general idea, hold enough of those things and we'll have a movement on our hands. Ha.
A couple of the speakers were okay, but the whole congratulatory thing had the stench of failure to it from the brass band that was supposed to liven up the lunchtime crowd with a pseudo-salsa ditty of "Sí, se puede," to the Irish guy singing about poor dead Johnny in a tenor he was obviously proud of.
Maybe I'd have had lower expectations if the organizers hadn't taken out an enormous ad in the New York Times whose extravagance seemed to promise thousands of participants, instead of a couple hundred artists types, an equal number of cops to monitor them, and a whole lot of insidious retirees with grey hair and not a few lethal canes and walkers.
To be fair, it got bigger later. Some high schoolers and college students came, a lot of the boys parading around with handkerchiefs over their faces like anarchists in Seattle, or Zapatistas, or cowboys. Like they were playing dress up.
The real problem was the speakers. There were some with family members in the armed services, some still serving, some dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, talking about the unjust war. They were okay. But there were far too many of the usual New York hetero lefty firebrands.
Instead of gearing their speeches towards the International Day Against Torture, the old gasbags dragged in their pet issues until there was a whole zoo arranged on the podium. I heard denunciations of low-income housing, national economic policy, hurricane Katrina, the stolen election, relations with Venezuela, American reliance on oil, the Iraqi dead, the American dead, and yes, a little something about torture. About the anti-gay marriage amendment, nothing.
One old time lefty speaker even held up Cuba as a model for resistance to American tyranny as if getting slapped in jail and tortured for your political beliefs were somehow more tolerable under a left-wing dictator than Bush and Co.
I left as depressed as before. Worse, really. A bad demo is more demoralizing than staying at home. One size doesn't fit all and half of the activists out there only have one model, and that's good old Martin Luther King, Jr., up there on a podium in front of a mobbed Washington mall declaring, "I have a dream."
Which is a powerful image, sure. Hell, it's good to be the King. The problem is activists get the form right: podium, loudspeaker, crowd, but ignore the rest. Like all those small churches the King preached in first, all the cups of bad coffee he drank strategizing, the many smaller actions. In other words, they forget there was groundwork done that both mobilized people, and boiled the issues down to the bone.
Imagine if King had stood up there going down an amorphous laundry list of racist atrocities in America, instead of offering the simple urgent proactive message of Equality, a call to stand for something, and not just against.
Effective demos -- and movements -- need simple messages. The anti-Bush crew could learn plenty from queer history. "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." "Silence Equals Death." The Lesbian Avengers stuck to lesbian visibility and survival.
Simplicity isn't enough, though. Activists could seize on one issue like torture, or the War in Iraq, and still fail. Because they don't see beyond Bush. His face is on every sign, his name in every speaker's mouth. What about when he's gone?
There's no proactive dream to rouse us, and what we're faced with at bottom is not Bush, but an America that elected him -- kinda -- twice. And now those idiots just sit at home waiting for him to go away and expecting the problems to follow him offstage. They won't. Call it a strategic failure on our part.
Coming home from the demo, I noticed the slogan on the back of my metro card, "SI VES ALGO, DI ALGO" "If you see something, say something," which is supposed to prevent terrorism, but mostly causes alarm over old tuna fish sandwiches and social studies homework.
The phrase works better as a political imperative. If you see something, say something. Though maybe think a little first, plan even. Then say it quick and to the point.
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