Official portrait of President Truman by Greta Kempton, 1947. Click to enlarge.
I am so disgusted with all that is going on in our country and in the rest of the world now that I can't stomach the news anymore. A couple of times a week, I run my eye over the headlines on the news feed, ditto the headlines on Joe.My.God., but I don't want the details. I see the abyss opening wide ahead of us, and I can't bear to think of what may come. Of course, I have no crystal ball, and things may yet get better instead of worse; but having a long view of human history, and knowing how mighty states have often fallen from greatness into ruin -- well, it's best not to fill my mind with dread of things I cannot prevent or control.
The Farm Journal, May 1916
I find comfort in my faith, and in revisiting the brighter spots in history. Harry Truman was one of them, and I offer this video summary of his life in the Oval Office as a reminder of what a president can and should be. His small-town upbringing was the source of his virtues as well as his shortcomings; but by God, he had the right stuff, never waivering in his faith in American democracy and his respect for the inherent worth of the common people. That was a true man, a strong man, and a good man. One of the greats.
If you find this video refreshing, I heartily recommend the definitive biography, entitled Truman, by the late historian David McCullough. There is an audiobook version on YouTube (slow the speed down to about 75%) that makes for fascinating listening - though you can start in the middle, if you like, with Truman's sudden elevation to the presidency on the death of FDR in April, 1945, a few weeks before Germany surrendered. The job just got rougher and tougher from there on out, but Truman plowed right on, true to his lights, keeping the country and the world on course for peace and prosperity, doing an astoundingly fine job that would have broken many a lesser man. That's why ever since he left office in January 1953, he has consistently been ranked in the top ten of American presidents.
The video opens with Truman thanking his hometown neighbors for the rapturous welcome they gave him when he returned to Independence, Missouri, after leaving the White House for the last time. Enjoy.
On a personal note, it's odd to realize I am older now than FDR was when he died, and older than Truman was when he left office. Where does the time go?
King Charles III released an audio message last night commemorating the end of World War II on this day in 1945:
Here is the speech broadcast by his grandfather, King George VI, in 1945:
Earlieri that day in Washington, President Truman had announced the unconditional surrender of Japan, sparking riotous celebrations across the United States:
My dad was an Air Force mechanic stationed in Aachen, Germany, at the time. I don't know how he celebrated, but I do know that just two months later, after being shipped stateside with maybe ten thousand other G.I.'s on the Queen Elizabeth, he was back home with his parents, safe and sound. Many others never made it home, or were disabled for life. Living or dead, we owe them all an immense debt of gratitude - as it says on the monument pictured above.
Their service and sacrifice saved the whole world from depraved tyranny and unspeakable horrors. As President Roosevelt had remarked some years before, that generation had a "rendezvous with destiny." They met it with courage and righteous determination, bequeathing to us who followed three generations of general peace, progress, and unparalleled prosperity in the free world.
What destiny lies ahead for today's linked-in generation, and how will they meet it? This weary old man in his twilight years wonders -- but would rather not stick around to find out.
David McCullough, author and popular historian, died last Sunday at age 89. He was a fine writer and a fine American; his biographies of Harry Truman (1992) and of John Adams (2001) won the Pulitzer Prize, and he was the recipient of many other honors and awards during his long career. A perspicacious man of wide learning, good humor, and grace, in all his works he kept a spotlight on the American experiment in democracy: an experiment he, like the people he wrote about, always believed was worthwhile, enduring, and noble.
McCullough also had a wonderful baritone voice, which many of us even now remember from his narration of the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War, first shown on PBS in 1990, a masterpiece of filmmaking. It should be required viewing for every schoolchild, and indeed, for every American. If you haven't seen it, you should.
I also highly recommend his biography of the 33rd president, entitled simply Truman, which is a masterpiece of biography. The chapter on Truman's whistlestop campaign for re-election in 1948, leading to a surprising upset victory over Thomas Dewey, his Republican opponent, is particularly vivid and engrossing.
McCullough may be the last of his breed: neither a crusader nor a revisionist, but in essence simply a good storyteller with a fine mind, profound respect for the truth, and a keen instinct for the telling detail. The American mind has been so dumbed-down in recent decades, and hamstrung by propagandists both left and right, that it is difficult to imagine there is any future in history-writing at all.
Especially when, as I have heard, there will soon be machines to write anything and everything, in any genre, any style, any viewpoint you please - what then will be the point of knowing any history - indeed, of knowing anything at all?
Here is McCullough interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes in 2013:
I've not commented recently on the whole DADT thing because it's all such a muddle, and now it's tossed salad between the courts and a lame-duck Congress and a dithering President. Who knows how or when it will ever get repealed.
I will say, and some of you may disagree, that it seems to me very improper for one District Court judge in California - who is very low on the totem pole, as federal judges go - to resolve the whole big debate by a singlehanded "worldwide" ruling. The reason being, guys, that the military is a special case for several very good reasons. And the Constitution makes the President the Commander-in-Chief, while Congress holds the purse strings. The Supreme Court, it seems to me, is the only body that can possibly have a say in the matter, so for constitutional reasons, I'm glad the appeals are headed that way.
Similarly, my love for my country requires me to sharply disagree with the notion proposed today by Adam Serwer today in the Washington Post blog The Plum Line, in an article entitled "On DADT, it's imperial presidency time," where he argues:
If Republicans continue to block DADT repeal from even coming to a vote, the president should take a page from Truman and end the policy through an executive order advising the military not to enforce the policy and cease defending it from challenges in court. The military's own empirical studies show allowing gays and lesbians to serve does not hurt military effectiveness, and the military's own policy of occasionally delaying DADT investigations of deployed troops confirms that finding. The military in Truman's time was deeply opposed to integration, and if he had waited for a favorable political climate to act desegregation might not have occurred for decades.
During the Bush years, liberals complained about his "imperial presidency," and so the idea that Obama should simply end the policy by fiat would seem hypocritical. But the use of an executive order to end a policy a majority of Americans, including conservatives, want to end, is no more undemocratic than Republicans' use of procedural maneuvers to thwart an up or down vote. Republicans holding the legislative process, and the fundamental rights of gay and lesbian servicemembers, hostage to their own homophobic prejudices, would still be the greater act of tyranny.
This is an extremely short-sighted view, and a very, very dangerous one. Guys - think about it. No matter how hurt, disappointed, or outraged we may feel at this moment over the delay in repealing DADT, you really don't want to live in a banana republic where the Congress passes laws that the President of the day simply ignores at will.
Nor do you want government-by-opinion-poll. Just think about that. Serwer's proposal would throw the entire Consitutional system of checks and balances into the toilet, and set an incredibly dangerous precedent for future presidents. Some of whom will be Republican. Or worse. We do not want a system where the President just does whatever the hell he pleases, when he pleases. Do you understand?
The glory of our nation is that we live under the rule of law, not of men. That rule was already stretched nearly to the breaking point by the last President. Let's not go backwards, fellas. You want to make rules for others to live by? Well then, knucklehead, you have to live by the rules and play by the rules yourself. Didn't you learn that on the playground in first grade?
Also, you need to understand, as I've blogged about before, that Truman did notwave a magic wand and zap! integrate the military overnight, with everybody loving up on everybody else and saying ain't it wonderful. It took more than ten years, from the first surveys of troop attitudes during World War II to the removal of all segregated facilities on military bases. If you want to be truly informed - and therefore, worth listening to on this subject - go read the timeline of military desegregation at the Truman Presidential Library website.
Also, you should understand that when Truman issued his executive order, Congress had never passed a law requiring the armed forces to be segregated; it was merely longstanding policy. The difference today is that Congress did pass a law, DADT, which makes it a different ballgame. Yes, the Supreme Court ought to rule that DADT is totally unconstitutional - but we just aren't there yet.
Dr. Gregory Herek, psychology professor at UC-Davis, has an excellent web site with many valuable links pertaining to DADT. Also, after noting the somewhat reluctant use of black troops from the Revolutionary War to World War I, Herek explains (emphasis mine):
At the beginning of World War II, as in the past, personnel needs dictated that Black recruits be accepted for military service. Once again, Black enlisted personnel were segregated from Whites – usually led by Black officers – and placed in support roles. As the war effort progressed, however, the Navy experimented with integration of enlisted personnel, which was less expensive than maintaining combat-ready segregated units. By the War’s end, more than one million African-Americans served efficiently in various service branches. Inter-racial conflict did not appear to be a problem in combat zones, although some tensions were reported in rear areas. As Stouffer and his colleagues concluded in their social scientific study of the American soldier, events in World War II demonstrated that Blacks were effective fighters and that racial integration in the military would not compromise unit effectiveness.
Nevertheless, racial segregation remained official government policy until President Harry Truman's historic Executive Order 9981, issued a few months before the 1948 election, which "declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." Following this order, the armed forces began to institute a policy of racial desegregation. Desegregation proceeded slowly, however, and met with resistance.
Most civilians and military personnel opposed racial integration. One month before President Truman's Executive Order, a Gallup poll showed that 63% of American adults endorsed the separation of Blacks and Whites in the military; only 26% supported integration. A 1949 survey of white Army personnel revealed that 32% completely opposed racial integration in any form, and 61% opposed integration if it meant that Whites and Blacks would share sleeping quarters and mess halls. However, 68% of white soldiers were willing to have Blacks and Whites work together, provided they didn't share barracks or mess facilities.
As the 1993 RAND report noted,
"Many white Americans (especially Southerners) responded with visceral revulsion to the idea of close physical contact with blacks. Many also perceived racial integration as a profound affront to their sense of social order. Blacks, for their part, often harbored deep mistrust of whites and great sensitivity to any language or actions that might be construed as racial discrimination" (National Defense Research Institute, 1993, p. 160).
As in past wars, the Korean conflict created a shortage of personnel and Black Americans helped to fill this need. Because of troop shortages and the high costs of maintaining racially segregated facilities, integration rapidly became a reality. In 1951, integration of the Army was boosted by the findings from a study of the impact of desegregation on unit effectiveness of troops deployed in Korea. The researchers concluded that racial integration had not impaired task performance or unit effectiveness, that cooperation in integrated units was equal or superior to that of all-White units, and that serving with Blacks appeared to make White soldiers more accepting of integration. By the end of the Korean conflict [1953], the Department of Defense (DOD) had eliminated all racially segregated units and living quarters.
Igor Volsky at the Wonk Room has transcribed some surveys done by the American military from 1942 to 1945, which reveal how widespread and unpopular the idea of racial integration was among enlisted men and officers:
These surveys show that the same attitude pervaded the military: 3/4 Air Force men favored separate training schools, combat, and ground crews and 85% of white soldiers thought it was a good idea to have separate service clubs in army camps . . .
While smaller, these racial polls share some common questions with the DADT survey. In fact, in some instances one can even replace “negro” for “gay” and end up with today’s questionnaire. Both polls ask servicemembers if they objected to working alongside minorities, how they felt serving with minorities, how effective minorities are in combat and if their feelings have changed about the minority after serving with them. (Interestingly, 77% of respondents said they had more favorable opinion).
Truman integrated the forces despite the objections of the troops and it remains to be seen if Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and President Obama (who have to sign off on the DOD study) are willing to do the same for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
The surveys make interesting reading; good stuff to know if you get into a conversation about DADT. Here's the transcript of what Volsky found:
Bottom line: Fight hard, fight fair, but it's important to play by the rules, and to expect a period of adjustment even after DADT is repealed - which it will be one day, please God. But nobody and nothing is going to make it all happen peachy-keen overnight.
And you absolutely do not want a fucking dictatorship where that could happen. Think it over, guys. The rule of law, checks and balances, constitutional government: gay or straight, white or black, male or female, our first allegiance must be to all those those things that make our country what it is, and will in time make it what it should be.
Without them, America would not be worth living in. Without them, we would be the Evil Empire of the world. I don't want to go there, do you?
Update:Kevin Drum at Mother Jones via Andrew Sullivan:
Let's face it: if you pick your jurisdiction right you can probably find a district court judge to rule just about anything unconstitutional. It would be easy, for example, to find a district court judge somewhere to say that the healthcare reform law was unconstitutional. If this happened in 2013 and President Palin decided not to appeal the ruling, thus overturning the law, what would we think of this? Not much, and rightfully so. A district court judgment is just flatly not sufficient reason to overturn an act of Congress.
President Truman has always been a great favorite of mine for several reasons, not the least of which are his great common sense and his clearsighted understanding of human nature. I just happened to come across this remark by him from his 1947 diary, at a time when the world was much exercised over events in the Middle East - and isn't it always. Nevertheless, this particular remark, I think, has much wider application.
Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.
Now insert the word Gay into Truman's list, and you'll have something to think about.
African-American and white soldiers at a base in Italy during World War II.
Today there's supposed to be some further news from the Defense Department on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Some blogs and news sources are already reporting what they think will or won't be said.
Whatever the case may be, don't expect anything to change overnight. It always takes time. To illustrate the point, look at this timeline from the Truman Library, which shows how long it took from Truman's 1948 executive order until the military was fully integrated.
And note also the many committees, reports, studies, and recommendations the military put itself through along the way . . . as well as the foot-dragging and bellyaching and protestations that the military was "not an instrument for social evolution" (Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall, 1949). Notice also the fulminating reaction in Congress:
[T]his proposed program would adversely affect the rights, privileges, and freedom of the people of all sections and of all walks of life in this country. It stabs at the very heart of the rights and freedom of all races, colors, and sections of our great country. For, if the Federal Government can repeal the poll tax in Mississippi and several other Southern States, regulate employment under the FEPC, punish innocent taxpayers under the Anti-Lynch Bill, and abolish segregation in the several States by usurpation of the sovereign rights of the several States of the Union, then we have indeed witnessed an end of constitutional government as conceived by the founding fathers. . . .
Is it any wonder then, Mr. Speaker, that a revolt has arisen all over our country, from Mississippi on the shores of the Gulf-kissed coast in the South to the stony crags of Maine in the North, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, by southern Democrats and those freedom-loving Americans everywhere, at this attempt to destroy the true civil rights of the citizens of our great and common country? . . .
But now, for the first time in the history of the country, and the loyalty of my section to the Democratic Party, a President of the United States has asked the Congress to enact such a devastating, obnoxious, and repugnant program to the people of that section and their Jeffersonian conception of democracy as this so-called civil-rights program. No President, either Democrat or Republican, has ever seen fit heretofore to make such recommendations. . . .
"Freedom-loving Americans." Right. Doesn't the tone of those remarks sound awfully familiar? Can you say teabagger?
So you see, the decades roll on, but some attitudes just stay the same - only the names are changed.
One more thing I want to mention: some people who want to keep gays out of the military talk about their disgust at the idea of straight boys having to take showers with gay ones, and all such as that; as if that's the most repellent idea ever, something no decent (heterosexual) male should ever have to be subjected to.
What some of my Yankee truckbuddies may or may not understand - something that is practically forgotten nowadays - is that white Southerners felt an equally strong aversion to fraternizing with blacks. Speaking from my own personal knowledge and experience growing up in that legally segregated world, a great many white Southerners had an inward feeling - completely irrational, of course, but a strong one - that "Negroes" were somehow simply dirty, if not diseased, and therefore close contact was to be avoided - for example, eating together, or riding public transportation together. Whites in that time and place felt contaminated by that kind of contact - physically so.
Which is utterly ridiculous - no, asinine - when you realize that they had not a shadow of hesitation about eating anything dished up by black cooks in the kitchen - either at home, or in a restaurant - and served to them by black waiters. No, that never troubled anyone's mind for a second, not a bit.
You see how people are?
But to have a black person sitting at your elbow, eating off a plate next to your own - that was a horrifying thing, as much so as socializing with a typhoid carrier. Plenty of people - including my own dear, kind, intelligent, college-graduate parents, I'm sorry to say - believed that "all black people have syphillis" or some such nonsense. But even if you didn't think about veneral disease, still, as an ordinary Southerner, you usually felt the need to keep your distance from black people in certain public activities.
I bring this up just to make the point: no matter how the straight boys and girls foam on now about how awful it would be to shower with teh gayz, et cetera - and how amusing that attitude is, because it's a fact they've been showering with us all these years anyway, without knowing, right? - no matter how they carry on right now, it is a reaction that they can and will get over.
No one in the South now thinks anything about eating in a restaurant with blacks, or riding the bus with them, or sleeping in a motel bed a black person might have slept in the night before - or all the hundred-and-one other things that would have completely horrified white people down here, fifty years ago and more. It's simply not an issue now, even if some other racist attitudes still linger.
And the homophobes of today will get over it too. Once the laws are changed and enforced, attitudes will follow. Just realize that, as with desegregation of the services, the process of dismantling DADT will probably take a few years, no matter what the President and the military chiefs say or do this week. And just like with the Dixiecrats of 1948, there will be thunder and lightning in Congress too, no doubt - but it will all work itself out eventually, I'm sure. Just not overnight.
Do not frickin' believe anybody who yells about a "rush" to reform healthcare in this country. The struggle, continually defeated by the medical profession (can you say AMA?), the insurance industry, and scaremongering "anti-communist" demagogues, has been going on for nearly a century now, people. Yup. And the opposition is still using the very same tactics and the very same overwrought end-of-the-world rhetoric they browbeat our grandfathers with.
I like this quote from the first source (it's in the footnotes):
One Canadian lesson — the movement toward universal health care in Canada started in 1916 (depending on when you start counting), and took until 1962 for passage of both hospital and doctor care in a single province. It took another decade for the rest of the country to catch on. That is about 50 years all together. It wasn’t like we sat down over afternoon tea and crumpets and said please pass the health care bill so we can sign it and get on with the day. We fought, we threatened, the doctors went on strike, refused patients, people held rallies and signed petitions for and against it, burned effigies of government leaders, hissed, jeered, and booed at the doctors or the Premier depending on whose side they were on. In a nutshell, we weren’t the sterotypical nice polite Canadians. Although there was plenty of resistance, now you could more easily take away Christmas than health care, despite the rhetoric that you may hear to the contrary.
OMG, I almost wish the can't-see-you-now, country-club-loving, cocaine-snorting doctors would go on strike in this country. Can you think of anything that would get healthcare reform passed any quicker? People would be so flamin' outraged at them . . . .
N.B. - Ex-president Teddy Roosevelt - yup, ol' T.R. himself - first brought the idea of national health insurance to Presidential politics when he ran for election on the Progressive ticket in 1912. Yes, 19-fucking-12, people. At the time, he argued that America should not lag behind Imperial Germany, which had instituted national health insurance under Bismarck in 1883, with other European countries soon following suit.
And the first sitting President to fight for national healthcare reform was Harry Truman, who sent an extensive legislative package on this subject to Congress in 1945. (FDR had briefly considered such a proposal when he brought in Social Security and workmen's comp, back in 1934, but pragmatically allowed it to wither so he could get the other proposals passed.)
And still, after all these many years, half the country thinks like this - and they aren't all living south of the Mason-Dixon line, either:
The fact of the matter is that other democracies, in fact everyother industrialized, developed nation in the Western world has had some kind of national healthcare plan for the last fifty to a hundred years or even longer.
So can we ple-e-e-e-e-a-se drop the stupid-ass, backwoods-Baptist idea that the world will come to a thundering, crashing halt if America has it, too?
I thank you.
Propaganda posters from the national creepsite Free Republic. I'm going to go scrub my computer with Lysol now.
As John Berry forecast in his Advocate interview at Gay Pride in D.C. on Sunday, Obama is going to sign an order tomorrow extending healthcare and other benefits to partners of federal employees.
That's great news for all those who are eligible, and I'm happy for them.
But that doesn't make everything all right now between Obama and the LGBT community. There's millions of us who won't be affected in any way by his signature tomorrow.
We deserve ALL the rights and benefits that anybody else does, in or out of Washington, D.C. We are Americans, we are citizens, we are human beings too.
Nothing less than the equal protection of the laws everywhere in the land will satisfy us; because that's simply our due as the equals of everybody else in this country.
Mr. Obama does not yet see it that way, folks. He is doing this for political reasons to take the heat off. Understand: He is a straight man who still does not get it.
Update: It's not even a bone he's throwing us, it's just a little piece of gristle, John Aravosis opines:
As you may have heard, President Obama tomorrow will be signing a presidential directive, not an executive order, providing "some" benefits to gay and lesbian employees. Well, the details, murky that they are, are coming. And they aren't great.
First off, Chuck Todd on MSNBC that because this is only a "memorandum," as he called it, it will expire when Obama leaves office. Lovely. Second, health benefits for federal employees won't be covered. Why? Because of DOMA, so says the Advocate.
Just which benefits will gay federal employees be getting? The White House is refusing to say. But it's unlikely it's anything involving money, like Social Security, or, as we now know, health care. Which is ironic, since health care is Obama's number one issue (but not for us). Also ironic, which I wrote about earlier, is that health care reform likely won't cover us either, since they'd have to include us as "families" and "dependents" - and let's face it, they just compared us to incest and pedophilia, does anyone think this administration or this congress is going to define us as "family" in their health care package? (It's also not clearly that DOMA would let health care reform provide us any benefits anyway.) In any case, Obama's inaction on DOMA, and outright defense of DOMA, is now undercutting his other efforts, meager that they are, to help us. It's all tied together.
Furthermore, John says about tomorrow's memo signing in the Oval Office:
It's also awfully convenient that the event is being held at 5:45pm, just a tad too late for the evening news to pick it up. Gosh, how did that happen?
Unfortunately, federal benefits for gay federal employees is not even one of the eight campaign promises Obama made to our community (there are only seven now on the White House Web site - the DOMA promise went down the memory hole about two months ago). . . .
Today, after having been compared to incest and pedophiles by our own Democratic president, it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what this president needs to do to win back our trust. Not to mention, we have to beat the bejeesus out of you for five days to even get your attention, and this is all we get?
What is he going to do on DOMA, DADT and ENDA? Is the President going to apologize for comparing us to incest and pedophilia last week? Is he going to support us in the next DOMA lawsuit, whose brief is due on the 29th, or he is yet again going to support a bigoted law that he has called "abhorrent," even though he is fully in his power as president to oppose an existing law IF HE CARES ENOUGH TO DO SO.
When you figure that one out, get back to us. Until then, spare us the cute photo opps that give the president an opportunity to stand around a bunch of gay people and show how loved he is by the gays. when everyone is really pissed off at him. This isn't North Korea.
Update 2: The NYT quotes Administration sources who confirm that tomorrow's Presidential doggie treat is indeed a political ploy for damage control:
Mr. Obama will be weighing in for the first time on one of the most delicate social and political issues of the day: whether the government must provide benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. While he will announce a list of benefits, officials said, they are not expected to include broad health insurance coverage, which could require legislation to achieve. . . .
But administration officials said the timing of the announcement was intended to help contain the growing furor among gay rights groups. Several gay donors withdrew their sponsorship of a Democratic National Committee fund-raising event next week, where Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to speak.
And remember I told you the other day there is no fucking plan? Pam Spaulding says:
The more I think about how this stuff seems slapped together, the more I believe that there was no "plan" for our issues and legislation. But that can't be true, can it? John mulls the same thing.
Honestly, really I don't want to believe that It was all about placating and delay and deny -- and then laying the blame the lack of votes on the Hill for inaction. Harry Reid finally caught on to this asshattery. The question, then, is how could this well-oiled political machine that we saw during the campaign, turn into a crew that is so ham-handed on our issues that they thought tossing out an inflammatory DOMA brief wasn't going to be like dropping an A-bomb on the community?
Given some unnamed source in the administration actually admitted to the NYT that this partner benefit announcement was crafted to stop the benefit from tanking, the WH is clearly off balance and off message. It's amateur hour at our expense.
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.
Note, 9/15/26: For the past week, Blogger has not updated most of the posts in this sidebar. I don't know what to do about it. You can still access the websites below by clicking on the titles of each one.
