Gay N Gay: November 2011

Giving the People What They Want

(photo by Steve Rhodes via)Someone pointed me to this item about a survey which found that, contrary to the propaganda line about overtaxed, over-regulated small businesses, taxes and regulations are quite low on the list of small business owners' concerns. What's particularly intriguing is that the people who conducted the survey evidently expected to get results that fit their right-wing

Giving the People What They Want

A Kiss Is Just a Kiss

So, the Vatican threatened legal action over Benetton's photoshopped image of Pope Rat kissing Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed El-Tayeb.I wonder why. This one, genuine not faked, didn't seem to be a problem:Nor did this one:Though this one, of course, is beyond the pale:(That's the Popemobile in the background, bravely ignoring the kiss-in.)I guess there are just some mysteries man was not meant to

A Kiss Is Just a Kiss

Book by psychology professor Abbie Goldberg is most comprehensive yet on children of LGBT parents

If you want to read one book about the research on children of LGBT parents, the best choice is Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children, by Clark University psychology professor Abbie Goldberg. Dr. Goldberg is also a researcher in her own right. She presented her current research on adopted children at a session sponsored by the Williams Institute earlier this month in Washington, DC. There

A Boy Has to Have Standards!

The largest exhibit at the Nimitz, "History Walks of the Pacific War," features "three acres of World War II artifacts, tanks, guns, and large relics" in the words of its brochure. This "Walk" avoids the history of the war in favor of an obsession with the nuts and bolts of the war's machines and of obtaining and preserving these specimens." I watched as a veteran of our armed forces (but not

A Boy Has to Have Standards!

Major Suckage, Y'Know? I Am Like So Sure

So, this Kansas high school senior named Emma Sullivan went to Topeka "as part of Kansas Youth in Government, a program for students interested in politics and government." She reported on her Twitter account that she'd (via):Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.Now, this was the girl's personal Twitter account, with about 60 followers, so that

Major Suckage, Y'Know? I Am Like So Sure

Traditional Intelligence Researchers Strike Back

Glenn Greenwald recently linked to a post by Andrew Sullivan lamenting liberals' lack of love for President Obama (hey, you "conservatives" can have him, Andy!). After I'd looked it over I noticed that Sullivan had written the day before about "The Study of Intelligence." I knew he'd had some stupid things to say about that in the past, so I decided to bring myself up to date.Sure enough: The

Traditional Intelligence Researchers Strike Back

There Are Starving Children in Korea Who'd Love to Eat the Pepper Spray You're Complaining About!

Seoul police used water cannons the other night on demonstrators who objected to the passage of the Korean-US "Free Trade Agreement." (It still hasn't been signed by President Lee, but it's hard to imagine what would stop him after he's pushed it so long.) According to the Hankyoreh, this happened in sub-freezing weather:Participants struck by the cannons said the cold was such that the water

There Are Starving Children in Korea Who'd Love to Eat the Pepper Spray You're Complaining About!

Every Knee Shall Bow and Every Tongue Confess the Name of Nike

Today I'm reading China in Ten Words (Pantheon, 2011) by Yu Hua. Born in 1960, Yu grew up during the Cultural Revolution in conditions of moderate poverty (which means he was hungry most of the time, but not hungry enough to die of it), though both his parents were medical doctors. In these essays, he contrasts his memories of China's recent past with its drastically changed present, but he's

Every Knee Shall Bow and Every Tongue Confess the Name of Nike

The Shamelessness of the Powerful

From Lenin's Tomb:We understand the sheepishness about speaking of violence in social movements. It is not a comforting or politically sympathetic thought that popular violence has been productive; that without it, unjust systems would not have been overturned. Yet, aside from the fact that the automatic assumption against violence is actually an assumption against popular violence, the

The Shamelessness of the Powerful

Literally Literate

I wanted to do a post on this subject before, but I think I'll sneak around on it from the back, briefly. I'm reading Conversations with Octavia Butler, one of the University Press of Mississippi collections of interviews with a wide range of writers. It includes a transcript of a joint appearance by Butler and Samuel R. Delany at MIT in 1998 (which, happily, is also available online). The

Literally Literate

Know Your Place and Like It

Some songs give me the creeps. This one, for example.I liked Johnny Cash when I was a kid, but I never heard this song until the 70s or 80s. It didn't make me hate him, and I still like a lot of his music, but it took me aback. The little shoeshine boy is never said to be black, though he exhibits some minstrel tendencies: big wide grins and natural rhythm are a traditional part of white

Know Your Place and Like It

Mises Pieces

Paul Krugman's latest column has been getting some favorable attention, because he forecasts the failure of the Supercommittee, the Obama-Boehner chimera that was supposed to end our deficit woes. The Week cited it enthusiastically, and I quote this excerpt from their quotation:Eventually, one side or the other of that divide will get the kind of popular mandate it needs to resolve our long-run

Mises Pieces

Bold Independent Thinkers

Today there was another letter in the local paper asking rhetorically why the Occupy Wall Street protesters don't occupy Washington DC? I've seen this trope quite a bit in the past couple of weeks, by people who think they've really caught those hippies in their own hypocrisy. Another popular trope the letter-writer used was "stop whining and vote!" Why yes, we found out how well that worked

Bold Independent Thinkers

Moving On

What I noticed most about Mayor Bloomberg's defense of his cleansing of Zuccotti Park was that he mentioned only freedom of speech. "The First Amendment protects speech," he said at his press conference. "It doesn’t protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space."Let's look at the First Amendment for a moment.Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

Moving On

A Nation Built on Faith

So, when does God season open?As you can see by the headline below the caption, though, this 4 a.m. service is about something else. One hunter declares that he "will mix sacrifice with relaxing sport. He will donate whatever he kills to families needing food.""I know there are no cynics in this room," said the Rev. Martin Wright, senior pastor. "You wouldn't come here at this hour if you

A Nation Built on Faith

Cullum

I'm not sure how I heard of E. Arnot Robertson's Cullum and decided I wanted to read it. I must have found it mentioned and discussed online somewhere, but even though it was only a couple of months ago, I can't remember where. No matter; I just finished reading it, and I'm knocked out by it.Robertson (1903-1961) was a broadcaster, lecturer and film critic as well as a novelist. Cullum was her

Cullum

It Looks Pretty From Up There

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.(via)But down below, in Greece and Italy, Goldman Sachs is on the march:What is taking place is nothing less than a financial coup d’etat by the Eurozone’s rentier class. And it is one of history’s sad ironies that, at least in the case of Italy, this is all being engineered by an ex-Communist, who likely would

It Looks Pretty From Up There

Single woman may sue Michigan fertility clinic for denial of IVF services

The Michigan Court of Appeals has released for publication its September opinion in Moon v. Michigan Reproductive and IVF Center. In that case, Allison Moon sued a fertility clinic because it would not provide services to her as a single woman. Reversing the trial court, the Court of Appeals ruled that the clinic was subject to the state's anti-discrimination law and could not avoid litigation

Whose Ox Is Being Gored

The official backlash against Occupy Wall Street and its many offshoots is well under way. Last night the New York City Police went on a rampage against the people camped out in Zuccotti Park, ordered and defended by the corrupt billionaire mayor himself. It's a sign of the thuggishness of the assault that the police and "hundreds of sanitation workers" tossed protesters' belongings, including

Whose Ox Is Being Gored

Passing the Love of Women

I picked up Anthony Heacock's Jonathan Loved David: Manly Love in the Bible and the Hermeneutics of Sex (Sheffield Phoenix, 2011) at the library to see what current scholarship was saying about the subject. What I learned was that the nature of the relationship between Jonathan, the son of King Saul, and David, Saul's successor to the throne, is ambiguous and will probably never be settled for

Passing the Love of Women

Relatively Fabulous

I promised to post this last week, so here it is. I wrote it for a local gay newspaper that didn't give me much space, so it's more compact than most of my writing, but I think it says all that needed to be said about the book.The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, by Daniel HarrisNew York: Hyperion, 1997$22Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, there was a gay culture. It was made up of willowy

Relatively Fabulous

Okay, Let's Go!

As I walking home this afternoon from the public library, reading as I went, I became aware of movement on my left. I glanced up from my book and saw a man getting into the passenger side of an old van (somewhere between a panel truck and an SUV, actually). He said cheerfully, "Okay -- let's go!" I looked again and saw a very little kid, two or three years old, sitting on the driver's side with

Okay, Let's Go!

It's the Only Thing

The child-rape scandal at Penn State continues to unfold, and I confess to some relief that for once, words that are often thrown around too freely, like "pedophile" or "rape" itself, are actually the right tools for the job. "Pedophile" has been been inflated to the point where it is used any time there's a notable age-difference between partners, even if the younger partner is thirty; but this

It's the Only Thing

"Oh, Didn't You Know I'd Been Ruined?" Said He

Right after Steve Jobs died, I did a long post which touched on the human cost of economic development in other countries, though it also applies to the US. Much like Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown before he can kick it, there's a recurring pattern of excusing the inhumane treatment of workers (long hours, dangerous working conditions, low pay) by promising that things will

"Oh, Didn't You Know I'd Been Ruined?" Said He

When Cyborgs Collide

Nathan Jurgenson was back at Salon last weekend with another, even more vacuous post on the power of Teh Social Media. Though he admits that OWS "is most certainly not an Internet Revolution. Much more than a 'digital' protest, the movement has been fundamentally concerned with taking over geographic space, mobilizing bodies in an area, yelling, walking, breathing, sleeping and doing what

When Cyborgs Collide

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old ... Oops, Too Late!

The AV Club linked to this video:You can find an English translation of the lyrics here, along with some background information about the program. The blogger who put it up called it "The most bizarre cover I've ever seen," but I beg to differ. This at least gives it a run for its money (no embed, alas). Gore Vidal once said of Tennessee Williams that because he could no longer die young, he

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old ... Oops, Too Late!

How the Mighty Have Fallen

According to an editorial in the Hankyoreh, when South Korean President Lee Myoung-bak visited the US last month, he "relied heavily on a U.S. speechwriting firm for the text of his major speeches and statements ... The Korean Embassy in the United States reportedly paid $46,500 (around 51 million won) to the Washington-based company West Wing Writers, primarily for draft writing and revisions

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Word Salad with Oil, Vinegar, and May I Grind Your Pepper?

So, Friday night I began reading Richard Canning's second volume of interviews with gay (male) novelists, Hear Us Out (Columbia, 2003). I love reading interviews with writers, and these promised to be meaty and substantial.Unfortunately Canning allows himself to chatter away in the introduction, and at one point he writes this (xi-xii):Too many academics in our field have preferred to write

Word Salad with Oil, Vinegar, and May I Grind Your Pepper?

T-T-T-Talking 'Bout Your Generation

Actually, not quite: Stickman's problem with the MTV Generation is probably himself. Especially since I can't help wondering how he can measure the length of someone else's attention span with a glance, and how he knows that attention spans in general have shrunk.I liked this New York Times Magazine piece.And speaking of sitting silently without fidgeting: that’s essentially what we want of

T-T-T-Talking 'Bout Your Generation

The Protection Racket

This isn't exactly news -- even at the time, there were skeptics about it -- but it's always good to be reminded. At his blog A Tiny Revolution Jon Schwarz quoted "this description of Obama's March 27, 2009 meeting with the heads of thirteen major banks" from Ron Suskind's controversial new book Confidence Men :The discussion moved swiftly across topics, such as the general soundness of the

The Protection Racket

This Woman Was a Prophet

Ellen Willis's writings are trickling onto a Tumblr run by her daughter, though the links keep breaking almost as soon as they are linked. But it gives me the chance to see some of her articles I hadn't seen before, like this New York Press piece on the Elian Gonzalez controversy. For those who've forgotten the case, five-year-old Elian was rescued from the waters off Florida after his mother

This Woman Was a Prophet

A Television Don in Newsweek

RWA1 linked on Facebook tonight to this article by the economic (?) historian (?) Niall Ferguson, with the endorsement "Ferguson is a good historian, and the analysis rings true." I'd heard Ferguson's name before, thanks probably to his infotainment PBS and BBC tie-ins, but till now I hadn't read anything he'd written and knew nothing about him.The Daily Beast piece doesn't inspire much

A Television Don in Newsweek

When lesbian mothers split up -- latest results from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study

The December 2011 peer-reviewed journal Family Relations reports the latest findings from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) on the well-being of children whose mothers split up before they were 17. The NLLFS has been following 85 children of lesbians born through donor insemination beginnning in the 1980's. Information about the study and its earlier published research is

Super-Omma: The Guilt Museum, Korean Style

Just a quickie for now: the latest book I've read is Kyung-sook Shin's Please Look After Mom (Knopf, 2011), very well translated from the 2008 Korean original by Chi-young Kim. It's the story of an old woman who goes missing one day in Seoul Station, while visiting her grown children with her husband. Anyone who's struggled their way through rush-hour subway crowds will understand how someone

Super-Omma: The Guilt Museum, Korean Style

All the News That Fits

There are times when I vaguely regret not having cable or satellite for my TV, if only to be able to check on what the networks are not covering. The BBC news feed shows nothing -- oh, I take that back, this just appeared:Thousands of anti-corporate greed demonstrators have closed one of America's busiest ports. A spokesman for the Port of Oakland in California said maritime operations

All the News That Fits

South Carolina appeals court reverses custody award to father that was based in part on mother's abortion

Since the mid 1970's, gay rights advocates, and advocates for children, have argued that a judge's view of the morality of a gay or lesbian parent should not influence the judge's decision on custody or visitation. Gay and lesbian parents do continue to lose custody or face vistitation restrictions in some counties and states, but rulings explicitly based on morality are rare. Of course some

The Mark of Cain

Herman Cain has been attacking Planned Parenthood, claiming that its sole purpose is to prevent the birth of black babies, and accusing both the organization and its founder, Margaret Sanger, of racism. First, who would believe anything Herman Cain says? Second, such a claim would most plausibly have the result of causing the Republican base to make large donations to Planned Parenthood.Today

The Mark of Cain

The Redistribution of Blessings

Those who read this blog regularly may have wondered what my first Right Wing Acquaintance, RWA1, has had to say about the Occupy Wall Street protests. Not all that much, and it's predictable enough. Early on he was critical of their anti-Wall Street, anti-corporate stance; I pointed out that they had that in common with the Tea Party, which he'd defended. They're both guilty, he replied, but

The Redistribution of Blessings

I'll Have One with Sparkles

Anne Rice continues her long downward slide with this comment (via/via) on Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series:Lestat and Louie feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun. They would never hurt immortals who choose to spend eternity going to high school over and over again in a small town ---- anymore than they would hurt the physically disabled or the mentally challenged. My vampires

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