From the SMU Jones Film & Video Collection, a report by KERA, the local PBS station, on some lesbians and gay men living more or less openly in the Dallas area in 1984, and the antigay officials at Southern Methodist University who had a problem with that. It may be hard for youngsters to realize how very different the world was back then, but just the fact of seeing real, live homos on TV was still shocking to many straight people.
(Just so you know, SMU is a very prestigious school, often considered part of the unofficial Southern Ivy League. It's located in the top-drawer Highland Park neighborhood of Dallas, and is home to the George W. Bush Presidential Library.)
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Disussion Question: A commenter on this video says, "You’ve gone from, 'We’re just two people that love each other and want to be accepted' to indoctrinating kids in school with drag queen story hour."
Frankly, I see a great big difference between responsible adults and impressionable little children. I'm not on board with the drag queen story hour idea. I say there's something very insidious about that. But I'm an old man with no power to control anybody, not even M.P. -- oh, certainly not M.P!
A fascinating compilation of news clips from the 1970's about those strange and scary social deviants who were popping up everywhere it seemed - the dreaded homosexuals. Really brings home to my mind how far we have come just in my lifetime.
Your Head Trucker is feeling mighty proud of our Secretary of State today, after making the historic declaration that "gay rights are human rights" before the United Nations yesterday in Geneva. Rachel gives the scoop:
And here's the entire speech, if you want to see and hear it:
Also yesterday, President Obama issued a memorandum to federal agencies about the need to use American foreign aid and diplomacy, including granting asylum to gay and lesbians. Offical text of the memorandum is here.
It warms your Head Trucker's heart to hear these breathtaking statements - I am old enough to remember when homosexual was a word only whispered in public - especially since of late it has been so dispiriting to think about the anti-gay forces at work around the world. Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out says:
The list of countries that recently declared war on sexual minorities include: Russia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Iran, and Zimbabwe. For the contemptible despots who run these underachieving nations, fomenting homophobia makes political sense. By turning homosexuals into bogeymen these rulers can conceal their corruption and appear moral through the blessings of craven clergy. . . .
But today’s actions by the administration and Clinton’s speech were different. The words were spoken with true vision and encrusted in values. There was clarity and passion, and no one was left wondering where our country stood on the rights of LGBT people.
This was one of those times where our nation demonstrated true international leadership and made me incredibly proud to be an American. It was stirring to witness our country act decisively as a force for moral good. There was no patronizing that relegated the LGBT community to the role of liberalism’s unwanted stepchild. There were no carefully crafted and focus grouped code words that sugarcoated the abuses – just the honest truth spoken from the heart. . . .
The stunning events in Geneva mark the moment Barack Obama secured a national LGBT vote for his 2012 re-election campaign. Today we felt hope – but more importantly, we witnessed monumental change.
Amen.
Of course, some buttheads still don't get it, and probably never will. But oh let's do hope history hurries up and puts them on the shelf before too long.
BTW - your Head Trucker is not old enough to remember this date as a "day that will live in infamy" - no really, I'm not - but he does vividly remember it was exactly five years ago today that the Canadian Parliament voted for the third and final time to affirm equal marriage in that country. I watched the roll-call vote live, with tears running down my face, as member after member rose to vote on that historic occasion which finally ended all debate on the matter in the True North.
Canada, perhaps even more so than the United States, is a nation of immigrants now, and I was struck by the many different ethnicities represented by various Members of Parliament, from the four corners of the globe. It seemed to me that this was like a United Nations, joining together people from all over the world to ratify the equal respect and dignity of gay people. And I will never forget that moment.
So here's to better times for all of us queer people, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and all the fabulous colors of the rainbow.
Update: Be sure to read John Aravosis's excellent post:
What kind of country has this become? What kind of country is it going to be? When, thanks to the Supreme Court, corporations can spend unlimited sums on campaigning and billionaires are already planning to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to defeat Obama next year and elect a far-right president? Check out what Rachel has dug up:
Meanwhile, bankers are already thinking about a million-dollar media campaign to smear the Occupy movement with "negative narratives" and thereby fend off any unfavorable legislation:
What does it say about this country that millions of people would vote for pigs - and I use the term advisedly, just look at them - like Karl Rove or Newt Gingrich? Huh?
But meanwhile the police, who are paid out of the public purse, sworn to protect and serve the public, gaily pepper-spray non-resisting, peaceful protesters on both coasts, defending their casual brutality as being "fairly standard police procedure" necessary to protect themselves and the protesters. WTF?
84-year-old woman pepper-sprayed at Occupy Seattle, November 15th
Is this the kind of country you want? Ruled by rich, self-satisfied fascists with the jackboot heels of their thugs on the necks of the people?
If not, you better pray the Republicans don't win the next election.
Your Head Trucker agrees with Andrew Tobias, financial advisor and author of a gay classic, The Best Little Boy in the World, among other things, who said this last month:
So the Tea Party folks demonstrate to keep people from having health care, to lay off teachers and police and firefighters, bust unions, keep poor people from voting, and – most important – protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Pretty neat trick how the billionaires more or less organized and financed their movement and, by harnessing their justifiable fears and concerns, gulled them into doing it. . . . Now come the “Occupiers,” or whatever they will be called, who share many of the same fears and concerns – and a few of the same bogeymen – but seem by and large to be taking the other side of these issues.
Maybe we should put construction workers back to work rebuilding our schools and bridges. Maybe we should pass the American Jobs Act “right away” to help the middle class. Maybe it should be paid for by Warren Buffett and other wealthy folks who are paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. Maybe Paul Krugman knows more about economics – and has the average guy’s interest more sincerely at heart – than Sarah Palin.
Well, it’s about time.
Crowds make me nervous. Simple answers to complex problems make me nervous. But enough is enough.
Update, 6 p.m., 11/21: Two campus cops and the chief of police at UC Davis have been suspended pending an investigation. The president of the UC system yesterday declared himself appalled by the incident, ordering an immediate review of police procedures on all campuses.
Philip Kennicott writes in the Washington Post on the pepper-spray video:
It looks as though he’s spraying weeds in the garden or coating the oven with caustic cleanser. It’s not just the casual, dispassionate manner in which the University of California at Davis police officer pepper-sprays a line of passive students sitting on the ground. It’s the way the can becomes merely a tool, an implement that diminishes the humanity of the students and widens a terrifying gulf between the police and the people whom they are entrusted to protect.
The video, which shows the officer using the spray against Occupy protesters Friday, went viral over the weekend. On Sunday, the university placed two police officers on administrative leave while a task force investigates. The clip probably will be the defining imagery of the Occupy movement, rivaling in symbolic power, if not in actual violence, images from the Kent State shootings more than 40 years ago.
Although another controversial image, showing an elderly woman hit with pepper spray near an Occupy protest in Seattle, made this nonlethal form of crowd control an iconic part of the new protest movement, the UC-Davis video goes even further in crystallizing an important question: What does the social contract say about nonviolent protest, and what is the role of police in a democratic society?
A prof at UC Davis says what happened after the spraying incident caught on video was even worse:
Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.
What happened next?
Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.
More pictures and videos from that and other protests here.
It's been all over the news lately, but in case you haven't heard that Kodachrome film is no more:
Now, a note for posterity: Kodak made a number of varieties of film in addition to Kodachrome, which was used by people who could afford expensive cameras - the kind you can adjust the speed and aperture of - to take slides or movies or professional photos. Certainly a lot of middle-class people did, but some families, including mine, never had such fancy cameras. The Kodak film I always used to take snapshots with had a different name - and come to think of it, what was that? - Kodacolor, maybe. Not the same thing as the much-lamented Kodachrome, which was much more expensive.
In fact, my family never even used color film until the very late 60's - black and white film was cheaper, say $1.50 a roll compared to $2.50 a roll for color - so my parents stayed with that, and the black and white TV sets too, for a long time. It was what people were used to, you know, and for that matter, most magazines and books had only b&w pictures on the inside pages until the 1980's (except perhaps for colorful advertisements - and also excepting Playboy and that ilk).
So I never used Kodachrome, and its demise touches me only tangentially as a sign of the times, the inexorable flow of days and years, the unending loss of the present moment, the familiar, the expected. There's a comfort in the usual patterns of life which is always being eaten away at the edges, as the waves pull at the sands of the seashore. Everything in this mortal life is transitory, impermanent as a dream no matter how solid it may seem. Including our very selves and all that we hold dear.
Be that as it may, there are compensatory additions from time to time. Who now could do without a microwave oven? Which I recall was, forty years ago, strictly a luxury item, very expensive, which took me a couple of decades to see the use of. Now I use it all the time, practically every hour of the day when I'm at home: a most useful invention.
Cell phones are another great convenience - even though your Head Trucker still hasn't figured out how to take a picture with his, and doesn't much care. I marvel now that we used to take long road trips to see family and friends perhaps a thousand or more miles away - and embarked merrily on the journey, trusting only to God and Chevrolet against the chance of being broken down and stranded on some lonesome stretch of highway, far from any help. I don't even go to the grocery store now without my phone, but we were braver in those days.
Your Head Trucker has, however, gotten the hang of using a digital camera, and boy howdy, what a treat it is. I've had my little Kodak C-330 for five years now, and I dearly love it. In my teens and young adult years, I used to have a vague hankering to learn photography - at one time there was a PBS how-to show on the subject that I used to watch sometimes. But it required a really good single-reflex camera to start with, which was beyond my pocketbook for many years. Then too, it seemed to be de rigeur that to be a real photographer, you had to have your own darkroom and know how to use it - which required more expense, and space that I never had anywhere I lived. So that was a little daydream that never went anywhere.
But the digital camera was a revelation. Suddenly, for only $150 or so, I found I could take endless pictures from all angles in all kinds of light, and actually produce a few that were worth keeping - all quite easily and cheaply. You can even see the picture on your camera screen as soon as you take it, and know whether to try again. And no counting frames, or worrying about how much it would cost to develop all the photos you took - very liberating, and a new creative outlet that I've enjoyed immensely. A very good change, despite all the laments over the passing of film: the expense of film and equipment made it a hobby only for the affluent.
And then, of course, there's the internet, which is quite frankly a godsend to anyone who lives in the sticks as I do. And for people who live in town, too: an unending source of entertainment, communication, and creative endeavor that as far as I'm concerned is an unquestioned necessity now. In recent weeks, for unrelated reasons, both the ex-roommate and I have each experienced a few days without internet service. And we both agree, it was nearly unbearable - just as much as if the water were turned off.
Which is odd, when I stop and think about it. I perfectly recall life before home computers - I used them at work a long time before I got one of my own, in 1999 - and how I was quite content to come home and in my leisure time read a book, call a friend, or simply flop in front of the TV. But now times have changed, and I've changed. Life is that way; the tide is always tugging at you, pulling you on, whether you will or no.
So we must always be balancing the losses against the gains, and adjusting to the shifts and turns of life. And always, human life is a mixed bag of blessings and curses, advances and retreats. Just yesterday, for example, surfing through Wikipedia with no particular goal in mind, as I am wont to do, I stumbled across this paragraph in an article about a British politician most Americans have probably never heard of, Roy Jenkins:
As Home Secretary from 1965–1967, he sought to build what he described as "a civilised society", with measures such as the effective abolition in Britain of capital punishment and theatre censorship, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, relaxing of divorce law, suspension of birching and the legalisation of abortion.
Perhaps all that is well and good - but it did give me pause. More than four decades later, is our Western civilization really a more "civilized society" than it was before the 1960's?
PRR ad, 1948
Or merely different? Human nature never changes, merely the outward forms and fashions. All our scheming, inventing, and rearranging may make the world more comfortable in some ways - but convenience is not quite the same as progress - is it?
Only one thing is certain: you can't go home again.
So were we just dumbshits to get all upset over that ginormous oil spill in the Gulf? Did the BP fairy godmother wave her magic wand and poof! make it all disappear like a big, greasy pumpkin? Have we all just been big, screaming drama queens about this trifling little incident?
Your Head Trucker is no oceanographer or marine biologist, so he can't answer those questions. But here's an excerpt from an article by the folks at Nature who quote some experts in those areas, so read and judge for yourself, fellas:
More scientists have come forward to criticize a US government report on the fate of the oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico during the recent Deepwater Horizon debacle.
Earlier this month the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated that only 26% of the 4.9 million barrels that spewed from the BP well was “residual” in the Gulf. A number of scientists interviewed by Nature (see: Upbeat oil report questioned) and Science questioned the positive spin put on this report .
Now researchers from the respected Georgia Sea Grant programme have joined the fray. In their report they say that up to 79% of the oil from the spill remains.
“One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless,” says Charles Hopkinson, director of Georgia Sea Grant a researcher at thee University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences (press release).
“The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade.”
I have to include Rob Tisinai's parody from a few weeks ago, very apropos:
Also, Andrew Sullivan once again quotes Hannah Arendt:
The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which "the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race" are minor indeed.
Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs.
Two cases in point: first, the mayor of Yuma, Arizona - figures - uses a Memorial Day speech to condemn the worthless "lacey-drawered, limp-wristed" fags who would ruin our military:
Yesterday, in a telephone interview with the local newspaper, the mayor said: "As mayor I must respect the lifestyle choices of others, no matter how disagreeable they are with my personal beliefs or my personal moral standards. I apologize for my comments at the Memorial Day service at Desert Lawn cemetery on Memorial Day."
Notice that the translation into plain English is: It's a choice, a filthy nasty perverted choice, and I ain't changed my mind one bit. So bite me, faggots.
The Yuma Sun article, picking up on the mayor's reference to George Washington, correctly notes that Washington's chief of staff in the Revolutionary War was Baron von Steuben - who brought his French lover with him to the battlefields. And did a helluva great job of warfare too.
Oh, you didn't hear about that in history class? Really? No wonder - teh gayz have always been erased from history - wiped off the page. Repeatedly. Deliberately.
Why? For this simple reason: you are just too shocking to explain to a 7-year-old. As Congressdouche Ike Skelton, R-MO, House Armed Services Committee Chairman, makes so clear:
Don't even mention the gays - the kids might ask questions!
Okay, so now do you get the picture: not only are you a worthless fag that everybody, including God, hates with a passion - but also your very existence is unmentionable in front of children. In fact, you have no right to exist, period, you disgusting creep.
NASA satellite imagery confirms the slick reached the edge of the Loop Current of the Gulf Stream a week ago, May 18; this is the latest satellite view I've been able to find today.
Oil-coated egret on Grand Isle, Louisiana, May 20.
I have to say I have struggled with how to blog about this. In many ways, it seems to me to be the biggest story of the year, a gaping, unstanched wound in the planet, emitting death. And yet the prospect of going without drilling seems remote, the possibility of any political will to jump-start alternatives with the impact we need seems just as elusive, and the helplessness of government and industry to stop this nightmare is the most obvious fact (I just assume that BP is doing all it can as of now): all of it makes this story as huge as it is simply despair-inducing.
If we cannot stop this, what else can we not stop?
Your Head Trucker does not believe the government needs to own and run everything; and certainly no one planned for this disaster to happen. The free-market capitalists at BP are working day and night to stop the spill, to be sure - but to protect the environment, or to save their own butts? Oh and no volunteers, please: we will handle everything with our own contractors, so get the fuck away from the coast!
The President takes note of the long-standing "cozy relationship" between the oil industry and the government in his weekly video address:
Transcript and info on the new commission here. The White House overview of the federal response is here.
What I Say: I don't believe any of these commentators have yet foreseen the full, longterm ramifications of the oil spill on the environment or on the economy of this nation and all the others that surround the Gulf, and beyond. Having lived on the Gulf Coast, my intuition tells me that much worse is to come, which will make the Exxon Valdez spill look like a dropped teacup. This is not Obama's Katrina; it's Katrina and 9/11 and Pearl Harbor all rolled into one and multiplied times ten. It's the Hiroshima of the Gulf of Mexico, boys.
Your Head Trucker predicts that Obama's response to this single event will be the make-or-break issue of his Presidency, all else aside. I don't know how he can or should meet all the challenges involved in this horror, but I feel certain that if he does not meet them all effectively - and is not seen to meet them effectively by the public - well fellas, just call him one-term-Jimmy and prepare yourselves for another twenty years of god-fearing, business-loving, flag-waving Republican rule, count on it.
In fact, I wouldn't doubt that before year's end, the head-up-their-ass Republicans will be claiming that Obama engineered the oil spill as an excuse to take over the oil industry and extend his Communist domination of the government. Which of course is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Remember, you heard it here first.
Tragedy and comedy, all at the same time. Away with the federal government - but keep my Social Security because that's not government. And lower taxes for the rich, who shouldn't have to pay more than anybody else.
Cover your keyboard before viewing.
Note that most of these people at this particular protest are not Southerners. I can tell.
And BTW, who the fuck is this Lord Monckton, and what the hell business does he have sticking his British nose into our politics?
Lt. Dan Choi, Capt. Jim Pietrangelo, Petty Officer Larry Whitt, Cadet Mara Boyd, Airman Victor Price, and Petty Officer Autumn Sandeen - a transgender woman who regularly blogs on Pam's House Blend - were arrested at the White House today after chaining themselves to the fence. Newsweek's Human Condition blog has short profiles on the group here. Choi and Pietrangello, you remember, were already arrested for doing the same thing just last month. Raw video of today's arrests from CBS:
And in an unprecedented move, White House Police cleared reporters from the area and barred them from covering the story: this from "the most transparent Administration in history":
The President was heckled during a speech yesterday by protesters demanding an end to DADT, to which the President responded, "I agree"; both this and the White House protest were organized by GetEqual:
An apt quote from Rep. Barney Frank, speaking over the weekend to the Victory Fund about the passage of ENDA:
Here's my radical homosexual agenda: Let us get married, join the military and hold down a job. Very few radicals in history would have thought much of that.
"It's time to get rid of Republicans entirely" from public office. Damn straight.
Which of course won't happen. But it is a lovely thought that perhaps one day the GOP might be replaced by a party of decent conservatives - rather than the circus parade of fools, fascists, and fundamentalists that are the current Republican party and are patently unfit to govern.
Keep Grayson in Congress: contribute to his "money bomb" website here.
Well now that the BFD of healthcare reform is finally almost sorta kinda over - the Senate had to do some last-minute tweaks on the bill and sent it back to the House today for final approval, which makes me wonder how the President could sign something on Tuesday that wasn't absolutely final, but - well, here are a few other stories that have caught my eye in the last few days that I haven't had time to comment on, thought I'd post them for your information.
--Pentagon Relaxes DADT - making it a little harder for the military to boot people out based on third-party outings.
--Pope Should Resign - so says Andrew Sullivan, a devout Catholic, in light of the deepening crisis over Benedict's role in covering up sexual abuse scandals in Germany and the United States, including a case where one priest allegedly molested 200 deaf boys at a Wisconsin school.
--National party identification, registered voters and likely voters only, at this point in time:
All adults:
State of the Country, all adults:
--Legal Pot? Come November, California voters will get a chance to legalize marijuana in that state, and not just for medical purposes - no doubt while still looking down their noses at us lowly but perfectly legal tobacco smokers. Marijuana, of course, is as harmless as sugar candy, and doesn't rot your teeth. Right . . . .
--Ten Democrats Attacked - Capitol Hill police are dealing with reports of bricks and bullets through office windows, vandalism, and in one case, a cut propane gas line. CS Monitor:
Complicating matters for Republicans is the rhetoric of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), a favorite of tea partyers. On a Twitter feed Tuesday, Ms. Palin called on conservatives not to retreat, but to “RELOAD!” On her Facebook page, she posted a US map with cross-hair targets on the states where she plans to campaign against Democrats who voted for healthcare reform.
In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona defended Palin, his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign, saying that such “battleground” language is typical for political campaigns.
Palin, BTW, has just signed a deal for her new reality TV show on TLC, asking $1+ million per episode. Ah, no wonder she gave up that crappy little lowlife job as, um, what was it? Oh yeah, Governor of Alaska. Sales of her book, Going Rogue, are already up to $7 million, and she signed a multi-million-dollar deal with Fox News a while back too.
And here I worked my ass off all these years, slaving away through college and dead-end jobs and poverty and all sorts of difficulties, and still have very damn little to show for all that honest work - and may still be a homeless man in retirement. I don't care what you say, boys - brazen, busty, and dumb always wins the pot hands down, always has, always will.
--And finally: Texas Christians outraged over "Gay Jesus" play - big-ass uproar in Stephenville at the Tarleton State campus over a student workshop production of Terrence McNally's 1998 passion play, CorpusChristi, depicting Jesus and the apostles as gay men living in modern-day Texas. Local Bible-thumpers say it demeans Christianity to portray Jesus as a gay man. Video report here.
I never heard of the play before, but I sure would like to see it now. From the 1998 production:
Honks to Andrew Sullivan and Joe.My.God. for some of these stories/images.
Update: 9:08 p.m., Texas time: the House just passed the reconciliation bill, 220-207, so now the healthcare reform fight is really over. And with this week's victory, the President's balls are starting to clank a little - good for him:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
