My 5000th Post - Happy Pride!

Do you know that June 26 is a momentous day in gay rights history?  On this date in 2003, 2013, and 2015, the United States Supreme Court made three major rulings that firmly established our right to love whom we love, serve in the military, and get married.  Look those up here.

And today the Blue Truck has passed a big milestone - 5000 posts, over 9000 comments, nearly 4 million pageviews, according to my Blogger dashboard:

Click to enlarge.

So instead of the usual Friday men, here's a rerun of me and M.P. back in June of 2010, cooling off and splashing around at Chickasaw National Recreation Area, a beautiful big green park up in Oklahoma.

Now much less adventurous in our 70s, we're content just to stay home, out of the sun and under the a/c.  We well recall a time when "homosexual" was a dirty word, a mortal sin, a major crime, and a psychotic disorder, and are very grateful that we have lived to see gay couples living together openly and happily just as all other ordinary people do.

Hope all my truckbuddies are having a great weekend wherever you are.  Life is a rolling river - enjoy what you can while you can. 

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Southern Pride Chicken

We didn't think to take a picture, but it looked like this,
with an even coating of golden brown crust.
Photo by David Reber from Paschal's restaurant in Atlanta via Wikipedia.

If you're wondering what to make for Sunday dinner this coming weekend, why not treat yourself to some honest-to-God Southern fried chicken?  I learned how to cook it from my grandmother, and made it a couple of weekends ago for M.P., who raved over it.  I was proud of my chicken, M.P. was proud of me, and it's Pride Month - hence the name.  It's a simple thing, but as all us Southern boys know, the best thing in the world!  Mmm-mm.  I tell you what!

So here is the recipe as my dear Grandma made it (minus the tenderizer and hot sauce) nearly every Sunday when I was growing up.  Read everything before doing anything.  Enjoy!

SOUTHERN  PRIDE  CHICKEN

by Russ Manley, June 2026

Ingredients:

4 leg quarters, disjointed

(= 4 thighs and 4 drumsticks)

1½  to 2 cups flour

salt and pepper

celery salt

Adolph’s meat tenderizer

Louisiana Hot Sauce™ or cayenne (optional)

2 eggs, beaten to a froth

1½ to 2 cups canola oil

¾ cup milk (for gravy)

Allow 2 or 3 pieces per serving, depending on age and appetite.

Prep time, about half an hour.  Rest time for chicken, 1-2 hours.  Cooking time, about an hour.

Directions continue after the jump:

Why Pride Month?

This was my "coming out music" - reminds me of happy times, hot summer nights, and one very hot guy in particular.  Much fun.

Today's Google doodle celebrates the beginning of "Pride Month" with a spinning disco ball:

I got to wondering, just when did this Pride Month business start, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.  To my surprise, I find that Bill Clinton first recognized Pride Month in 1999.  I must have missed the memo.

I've never changed my belief that gays and lesbians make up about 3 percent of the population; that's 3 out of 100.  You can look at the whole field of statistics on this subject and debate it all you want to, but I'm not going there.  So by very simple arithmetic, that tells me there are about 10 million gays and lesbians in the United States, the population of which is 342,543,550 as I type this sentence.  

(See the  U. S. Census Bureau's Population Clock for up-to-the-second figures on the U. S. and world population.  See Statistics Canada for Canadian figures.  And here's a cheat sheet for you:  roughly speaking, the U.S. population is about 8 times bigger than Canada's, and about 3 times bigger than Mexico's or Russia's.  However, both India and China have about 4 times more people than the United States.)

Well, anyway, is a whole month of Pride really necessary?  It matters not to me, because I'm an old man who doesn't get out of the house much anymore.  I've never been to a Pride parade.  M.P. and I did go to a Pride celebration at the county fairgrounds on a June night in 2019 - we got there in the cool of the evening about 9 p.m., when it was all winding down.  

We nibbled things from the food trucks, listened to a few speakers and singers, and bought some trinkets to take home:  a friendly, pleasant, down-home crowd of all ages, very like what you'd find at a real county fair - plus a lot of rainbow flags.  There were even some straight couples there, pushing babies in strollers - why, I have no idea.  The next year, it was cancelled on account of the pandemic, and we've never heard any more about it in this vicinity.

But I guess there has to be a Pride Month, because you just know that 10 million screaming queens could never agree on a single week, let alone a single day!

P. S. -- M.P. is offended by the disco ball.  He says it only represents the little twinkly barflies, and leaves out the butch gays and the lesbians.  I guess he's right.  We are thinking of suing Google now, and we will certainly file a discrimination complaint with the Grand Gay Cabal.  Stay tuned for further updates.

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Todd and Rob Fly the Flag!

Pride comes to the North Georgia mountains:

These boys have big ideas that your Head Trucker wouldn't dream of attempting even if he was able to do it.  And obviously, they have Money.To.Burn.  But it's sweet to see a gay couple living out their idea of domestic bliss.  More power to 'em.

Here in Texas, M.P. has been working like a Trojan the last few weeks on clearing brush, mowing the lawn, trimming the bushes, and replanting some herbs and flowers.  I hope to get a few pics to post soon.

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UK Gay Pride 1979

This BBC documentary from 1979 shows what progress had been made in the ten years since Stonewall, and what yet remained to do.  It provides an interesting perspective, slightly different in details but essentially similar to the American gay rights movement at that time. 

A PBS show from about the same year called Word Is Out was a must-see event for me, still closeted at the time, but the full program is strangely missing from YouTube. I wonder if any of my truckbuddies remember watching it. Here is a trailer:

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Pride of Ukraine

A month of war in Ukraine, who knows when it will end?  I've not blogged much this week because I've about reached my emotional limit - one can only stand to watch so much horror before one has to look away.  I haven't stopped caring and praying for those poor people over there, but I'll leave the news reporting to the folks who are paid to do it.

Gay rights in Ukraine are far behind those in the West.  I recently came across this documentary about the Ukrainian gay pride movement in 2012-2014; as such, it's an unfinished story.  It's partly in English and partly in Ukrainian with English subtitles, and has some over-long interviews that I right-arrowed through, but it gives an interesting look into Ukrainian society at that time.  See what you think.

---------------

Some reports on the general situation in Ukraine at this point:

 

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Happy Pride 2020

Imagine if there was a President who celebrated Gay Pride . . .




A few dates to remember in the progress of gay rights over the last half-century:

June 28 - July 3, 1969: Stonewall Riots, New York City

June 28, 1970: First Gay Pride marches, NYC and other cities

May 20, 1996:  Romer v. Evans

June 26, 2003: Lawrence v. Texas

December 22, 2010: Don't Ask, Don't Tell repealed

September 20, 2011: DADT repeal implemented

June 26, 2013: United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry

June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

June 15, 2020: Bostock v. Clayton County


Today's quote:

I do have things I would like to see adopted on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people:  they include the right to marry the individual of our choice; the right to serve in the military to defend our country; and the right to a job based solely on our own qualifications.

I acknowledge that this is an agenda, but I do not think any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people’s rights to get married, join the army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.

--Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), 2008

Bonus: The Night Michelle Escaped from the White House

Supreme Court Rules: You Can't Be Fired for Being Gay

Wow!  Oh my, what a happy, happy day - the Civil Rights Act protects the gays and trans folk too:

Sometimes small gestures can have unexpected consequences. Major initiatives practically guarantee them. In our time, few pieces of federal legislation rank in significance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There, in Title VII, Congress outlawed discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.

Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit. 

Hooray!  Read the Court's 6-3 ruling (172 pages, PDF) here.


NBC News reports today's stunning decision:




And your Head Trucker is ashamed to report that he did not really get the whole trans thing until he learned about Aimee Stephens - who, sadly, died last month of kidney failure:



According to the ACLU, this is the first trans civil rights case ever heard by the Supreme Court.


In short:  If you don't have time to read the whole decision, Amy Howe at Scotusblog offers an overview of the ruling, written by Justice Gorsuch - remember how everybody feared he would be such a conservative jurist? - as well as the dissenting opinions.  Among other things, she notes:

Gorsuch addressed some of the broader concerns that the employers had raised in the three cases, about the effect of the court’s ruling on issues like bathrooms in the workplace, locker rooms and dress codes. None of those issues, Gorsuch reiterated, were before the court in these cases. Instead, he stressed, the court is ruling only that an “employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.” Whether sex-segregated bathrooms or locker rooms or dress codes might violate Title VII “are questions for future cases,” Gorsuch wrote.

The same is true, Gorsuch added, for questions involving the relationship between Title VII and federal laws and constitutional provisions protecting religious freedom. Although “other employers in other cases may raise free exercise arguments that merit careful consideration, none of the employers before us today represent in this Court that compliance with Title VII will infringe their own religious liberties in any way.”

Caution:  It appears from a quick glance at the Wikipedia article on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the law applies only to an employer "who has fifteen (15) or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year"; however, your Head Trucker is no lawyer, and you should consult an attorney if you have any questions about the law.

Silver lining:  Michelle Goldberg opines in the New York Times on the irony of this decision in the era of Trump:

[T]he thrilling 6-3 decision the Supreme Court just issued upholding L.G.B.T. equality wouldn’t be as devastating to the religious right if it had happened under a President Clinton.

Before Monday, you could legally be fired for being gay, bisexual or transgender in 26 states. Now the court has ruled that gay and transgender people are protected by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex. The decision has extra cultural force because it was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, and joined by the conservative chief justice John Roberts. . . .

The phrase “But Gorsuch” is shorthand for how conservatives justify all the moral compromises they’ve made in supporting Trump; controlling the Supreme Court makes it all worth it. So there’s a special sweetness in Gorsuch spearheading the most important L.G.B.T. rights decision since the 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

This isn’t simply Schadenfreude. The fact that this momentous ruling was written by a right-wing judge sends a message that progress on L.G.B.T. rights will be very hard to reverse.

More is needed:  Justice Kavanaugh's dissent is well-written, well-reasoned, and well worth reading in full, going as it does to the very heart of constitutional government in these United States.  Susan Howe summarizes:

He began by acknowledging that the arguments for “amending” Title VII “are very weighty.” He also observed that the Supreme Court “has previously stated, and I fully agree, that gay and lesbian Americans ‘cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.’” But, he continued, the job of judges is “not to make or amend the law,” and, as it currently stands, “Title VII does not prohibit employment discrimination because of sexual orientation.” . . .

Kavanaugh contended (and appeared to agree with his colleagues in the majority) that courts should follow the ordinary meaning of the words in a statute, because that is how both members of Congress and the public would understand the law. . . .  And here, in Kavanaugh’s view, the ordinary meaning of the phrase “discriminate because of sex” does not extend to discrimination based on sexual orientation. . . .

Kavanaugh concluded by acknowledging “the important victory achieved today by gay and lesbian Americans. Millions of gay and lesbian Americans have worked hard for many decades to achieve equal treatment in fact and in law. They have exhibited extraordinary vision, tenacity, and grit—battling often steep odds in the legislative and judicial arenas, not to mention in their daily lives. They have advanced powerful policy arguments and can take pride in today’s result.” But Kavanaugh reiterated his belief that Congress, rather the Supreme Court, should have been the source of that result.

Frankly, your Head Trucker is inclined to agree with Justice Kavanaugh on the simple basis of plain English.  In all honesty, it does seem like doublespeak for Justice Gorsuch to say on the one hand that the Court must be bound by the plain text of the law; and on the other hand, to define the word sex with a meaning that is not part of the plain English meaning.  To say that cat means all four-legged creatures is not to state the meaning of the word, but to add meaning to the word.

However, if a law were to forbid, let us say, cruelty to cats, and you interpret it to mean that cruelty to all four-legged animals is forbidden, then that is good morality, but bad English and bad interpretation, and highly liable to be contradicted by another interpreter.  Because it is good morality, we will accept what the Court has so graciously given us; but can we count on it to be a lasting gift as years go by?  Or merely a cupful of smoke?

It's also important to note that the Court's ruling does not rest on any constitutional right; the justices based their decision solely on the Civil Rights Act, which is merely a federal law, not the Constitution itself.

Therefore, to remove all possible doubts and objections in future, it is imperative that Congress itself amend the Civil Rights Act to specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Do keep that in mind, fellas, as we move forward - always remember that the Supreme Court can change its collective mind, and often has, down through the years. The protections we received today must be cemented into federal law at the first opportunity.

The same goes for for the right to same-sex marriage declared by the Court five years ago in Obergefell v. Hodges - which Chief Justice Roberts angrily dissented from at the time as another example of "legislating from the bench."

Of course, Congress can change its mind, too, and laws can be repealed; even provisions of the Constitution can be changed or removed by amendment.  Nothing in this life is ever entirely sure and certain forever; but a law enacted by vote of the People or their representatives is somewhat harder to overturn than a court decision, especially if it reflects the popular will of the time.  And according to the polls, it seems that equal rights for gays and trans folk is indeed the popular will in America at this time, by about 2 to 1.  So let's be sure to nail this ruling down in law.

Meanwhile, again I say: Hooray! The gays are people too. We have a right to exist. And work and live and love, just like everybody else on this planet. Hooray!  Hooray!  God bless America!

And I have lived to see this day.


Bonus:  Former President Obama tweeted out this message today:

Sunday Drive: What Mattered Most

It has only recently come to your Head Trucker's attention that country star Ty Herndon - who came out in 2014 - re-recorded his 1995 hit  "What Mattered Most" for Pride 2019, but with changed pronouns.

It happens that Ty was one of my favorite singers back in the 90's, though this was not my favorite of his songs.  Still, I sure do admire what he has done with it - haven't we all mentally transposed the pronouns in countless songs over the years?  See what you think.



For you non-country fans, here's one of his hits that really shows off his smooth, sexy baritone:

Sunday Drive: Eva Cassidy, Over the Rainbow

A belated offering for Stonewall 50.  Nobody can touch Judy Garland's immortal rendering of this song; but Eva takes a completely different approach and creates a spiritual anthem of hope and longing, love and loss, that reaches into the deep waters of the soul.

Thoughts on Stonewall 50, Part 2

This is not a picture of us - but it shows the way we felt.

Some continuing physical ailments have kept me feeling tired and listless, but I don't want to leave my truckbuddies in suspense, so I'll say a little more now to make a proper conclusion of what I started last week.

Minor afflictions have been assailing me for a couple of months now, as if the encroachments of age all got a big hurry-up push for some reason.  I still have hope that things will return to normal soon, especially some very annoying difficulties with locomotion - but I have come to realize that at this age, there is no guarantee.  Makes a fellow rather pensive, when he recalls that only a few years ago, something as simple as rising from a chair and strolling into the kitchen for a cup of coffee was so easy as to be an entirely spontaneous, practically unconscious action.  But time marches on, even if we can't - like it or not.

Last Friday afternoon, M.P. and I discovered by chance that a Gay Pride Festival was taking place not a mile from where we live - imagine that.  He had been to a couple of Pride things down in Dallas, years ago, but I had never been to any Pride event in my life.  So we decided to go join the party, after we had taken care of some tasks here at home and run some necessary errands.

We arrived just as night fell, about 9 p.m., when the festival was in its last hour, and it seemed most of the crowd had already started leaving.  It was not a very big festival, being contained within about the area of a single city block.  From the parking area, we strolled through the gates and down a short midway of souvenir stands and food trucks before we reached the music area - a smallish, brightly lit stage hung with rainbow streamers, and a happy crowd of perhaps a couple hundred people, mostly 20-something, standing in front of it.

Fortunately, a small section of metal bleachers had been thoughtfully provided at one side for the old folks to sit on, and we did.  I noticed there were several young hetero couples (I almost wrote hippie couples) milling about with babes in arms or tykes in strollers - something I had never seen at any gay-themed function before.  My, how times have changed.

There had been a crowning or two or three before we got there - not sure what exactly that was for - and one fetching young man was walking around in ordinary clothes but with a beautiful crown of  rainbow-colored jewels on his head.  Everyone seemed pleasant, relaxed, and smiling.  A couple of folks brought their dogs on leashes - one was a lovely brown and white collie mix, it seemed, and the other was a gorgeous great big "Saint Pyrenees," which I never heard of before.  We walked along, enjoying the unaccustomed liberty of holding hands - M.P.'s strong arm was keeping me from stumbling over the uneven ground - how nice it was to realize that no one cared a bit what we did.

We arrived at the music area just as the emcee was preparing to introduce the last acts of the day.  He or she (I never caught the name) was in appearance a very pretty blonde with a perfect figure, wearing a sparkly white party dress, circa 1960 - giving the impression of being Marilyn Monroe's younger, more modest sister.  And she was telling the crowd that early that morning, when she was posting signs around the park advertising the festival, someone drove by and flipped her a bird.  "That," she said, "is why we are here tonight, and why we need to keep celebrating Pride, in the face of whatever condemnation we might get.  We're here, we're queer, and we have a right to celebrate who we are" - or something like that.  The crowd, of course, roared approval, and so did M.P. and I, or at least I waved my hand and did a plausible imitation of roaring.

She then introduced a tanned, smiling, muscular, good-looking young man with curly hair, who was wearing only a denim vest, cut-off shorts, and cowboy boots.  Most appealing, I must say.  And he likewise gave the crowd some inspiring thoughts from his personal experience, ending with, "So if you were raised in a church that condemned you, and some preacher or youth pastor told you that you were not good enough for God to love you, you just look around here at all your brothers and sisters celebrating Pride with you today, and don't ever doubt that you are fearsomely and fabulously made!"  This also got a big roar from the audience.

The he very creditably sang what seemed like a medley of a modern song with an old disco song, but as the music was so loudly amplified, and I was sticking my fingers in my ears to keep them from exploding, I couldn't quite catch the lyrics.  At length, after giving the crowd a good work-out, he and another singer, a young black or Latina woman, got several people from the crowd to come up on stage and do a group song-and-dance, which looked like great fun, though once again - too loud for my old ears to appreciate.  About halfway through that, we got up and decided to go hunt for food, since the closing hour was fast approaching.

On our way back down the little midway, I suddenly realized that what I wanted very much and had never actually had was a rainbow flag.  So we stopped at the first tent that sold such things and I got a medium-sized one on a stick, for only five bucks.  For his part, M.P. suddenly discovered a passion for a black silk folding fan with rainbow-colored sequins all over it - eight bucks.  Then we had a very short debate on what kind of food to get, and quickly decided on fried catfish and cheese fries, served from a great big food truck by a very friendly black lady, who I think gave us old geezers a larger-than-usual portion - no doubt she could tell we enjoy eating good food.  So we took that home with us and had a scrumptious little supper on the breakfast bar, listening to our favorite divas on the radio, and didn't have to cook or even wash up.  A tasty end to a happy outing.

Well now, fellas, I'm sure you are thinking this little story sounds like a whole lot of nothing, and maybe you are right.  But you young bucks and big-city folks have to understand that M.P. and I never go anywhere - certainly can't afford any night life, even if we wanted it, and don't even eat out at restaurants.  And we have no gay friends anywhere near to visit with.  So it really was quite a treat to spend an hour with our "tribe" and for once in a long, long time, feel free to just be ourselves in public.  That happy, relaxed feeling that I haven't felt in ages.  It put a smile on both our faces - just to feel that rare kind of peace again, of belonging, of acceptance.

And I thought, now this really is what it is all about - live and let live - and why is that so hard?  For the rest of the world, I mean.  Here we were at this little festival in a park deep in the heart of Texas, and everybody was nice, nobody was ugly, everybody was happy and peaceful, all ages, races, genders, and colors - nobody was cussing or fighting or showing their nakedness - nobody drunk or stoned or out of line - just a little space of light and sound, laughter and glitter, and what is so damn wrong with that?

Now that, fellas, is what Pride means to me, and I'm so glad we got the chance to go.  Because isolated here in the middle of deep-red Texas, listening via internet to all the angry voices and dreary news of hate and violence and ugliness, it's too easy to forget that we are not alone.  And that's the main lesson of Stonewall, isn't it?  That we are not alone, not powerless, and have just as much right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as anyone else.  That we can live freely, and love whom we love.  And fifty years on from Stonewall, we still have to believe that in the long run, love will win out over hate, as long as we don't allow the hate into our own hearts.

I had a good time.

Thoughts on Stonewall 50, Part 1

While making my coffee this morning, I looked out the window at the cars zooming by on the busy boulevard - from a distance, they are not so much different from those of fifty years ago.  Traffic lights still wink red and yellow and green, just as they did then.  Little birds flit among the trees, and nimble squirrels jog along the fence top just as their long-ago ancestors were wont to do.  The sun shines just as brightly now as in the past, the sky is just as blue, and puffy white clouds still float along in their insouciant way.  The grass and the trees are just as green, the cheerful zinnias and flaming crepe myrtles still as delightful to the eye as ever they were.

Inside our humble bungalow, long since remodeled countless times by who knows how many previous tenants, the potted plants in the windows, the plastered walls, the simple furniture, the striped blue-green-gold tablecloth and old-fashioned china, the kitchen shelves full of pots and pans and dishes and canned goods, are none of them very different from what might have been here fifty years ago.  It doesn't look at all like the Jetsons' home.  A time traveler suddenly popping in from a half-century ago would no doubt be quite unimpressed - apart from the microwave, the computers, and the big flat-screen TV, he would surely think there was really nothing to write home about. How disappointing!

And yet despite the seeming similitude, all is changed, and changed utterly.

The other day, M. P. told me at breakfast that he had just seen an online ad by Michael's, the nationwide arts-and-crafts chain, announcing their Pride Month sales.  And we were both struck for a moment with awe and wonder at how very much things have changed for gay people just in our lifetimes.  Now, at least with some retailers, gayness has joined the pantheon of other commercialized holidays, in the good old American tradition, along with Mother's Day, Father's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  What a breathtaking development.

I understand that certain weenie-whiny children of the snowflake generation decry the evils of "corporate sponsorship," but it cannot be doubted that when Wal-Mart decks its shelves with all sorts of rainbow merchandise, gayness has arrived, it is part of the mainstream of American life, along with apple pie, baseball, Budweiser, and Twitter, like it or not.  (And some don't like it a bit, but I'll get to that presently.)

The petulant Eloi of the modern world, college age and younger, have no memory of the 20th century - they have no real idea of what it was like to live before Stonewall, before gay bars, before AIDS, before gay books and newspapers and magazines and soccer clubs and churches and websites (and free porn 24/7), and all the social media hookups anyone could want, and even marriage - all those out-and-proud things that were simply unimaginable fifty years ago.  Unimaginable, do you hear me, children?  Pure fantasy - things that if we thought of them, we would immediately also think, "Oh, that will never happen."

But it did, every bit of it.  And it's still happening, as each successive generation takes things a bit further.  Now there is even - will wonders never cease? - a gay presidential candidate who is taken quite seriously, at least by the Democratic Party.  Utterly unimaginable in 1969 - and for quite a long time afterwards, too.

Because, of course, it usually takes time for big changes to seep from the culture-churns of the Blue Coasts down into all the hills and valleys, nooks and crannies of the Big Red Middle.  In some ways, I think it is still as true today as it was fifty years ago that people in New York and Los Angeles are living in a future that will not arrive in the far provinces until five or ten years from now - though the ubiquity of television, internet, and smart phones certainly hastens the process, especially among the young hipsters in every part of the country.

But then, impatient youth in every era, in every century, has always yearned for the limpid, dreamy future to arrive as quickly as possible, while age, weary and wizened, yearns for the comforts and certainties of a vanished past.  It's human nature.  We want what we don't have.  And all too often, we don't miss what we do have until we lose it.

This fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots brings up a number of reflections I will share with my truckbuddies over the next few days.  Having been under the weather with one little ailment or another the last couple of months, I just don't have the oomph to type it all out in one sitting.  And of course I would enjoy hearing your comments on this momentous anniversary, too.

Just to jog your memory of prehistoric times, you can watch The Boys in the Band, written just before Stonewall - when "gay rights" were as yet completely unthought-of by most people.  When I saw it again a year or so ago, I was startled to realize which character I most identified with, from the fuller perspective of maturity.  What about you?

Cheat sheet - the cast and characters

Kenneth Nelson as Michael (the host)
Frederick Combs as Donald (Michael's best friend)
Leonard Frey as Harold (the guest of honor)
Cliff Gorman as Emory (Oh Mary, don't ask!)
Laurence Luckinbill as Hank (divorced guy)
Keith Prentice as Larry (Hank's lover)
Robert La Tourneaux as Cowboy Tex
Reuben Greene as Bernard (black guy)
Peter White as Alan McCarthy (straight guy - ?)

Pride in Oklahoma

A very nice story, worth your time.

Sunday Drive: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Embed from Getty Images

Do dreams ever really come true?  The other day, my truckbuddy Frank posted a video of gay people of a certain age--ahem--reading aloud the letters they would write to their 18-year-old selves, if they could.  Which is all very nice, full of uplifting, inspiring Reader's-Digest-happy-ending thoughts.  Lovely.

But I can't write that kind of letter.  What I would have to tell my 18-year-old self would only scare the hell out of him.  And nobody else wants to hear that kind of truth.  It's practically un-American.

It's true that some things for gay people have gotten much better.  Others, not so much.  Plus ca change, you know?  And then there's just the implacable force of circumstance here and there in the course of my particular life, which no advice would change: boulders in the stream.  Too many boulders make a dam and block the flow of things:  an insuperable obstacle.

In many cases, it's just best that you don't know what's coming to pass.  The only advice I could possibly give anyone is to hope for the best, plan for the worst, ride out the storms when they come as best you can - for they will come, and they will be fierce.  Nevertheless, be kind, very kind, always, though it's often easier said than done.  Play the hand you're dealt.  Don't whine.  Could always be worse.  Bloom where you are planted.  Better to fail at something than to never even try.

So what if other people have lives in glorious technicolor, and you have only one not-so-brilliant hue?  All those colors come at a high price:  from those to whom much is given, much is expected.  Be content with what you do have and enjoy it.  Nobody has a perfect life, though many pretend otherwise, and nobody has The Answer to anything, so trust your own experience and common sense.  You are your own best moral compass, so stick to your guns.

And then there are those I've loved and lost--as someone, sometime has said, "Grief is the price you pay for love."  Well, that's exactly right, isn't it?  The hibiscus blossoms in the bright sunshine outside my window last only a day - one must treasure their blazing beauty, glory in them, while they last, and be content with that.  If they wither and fade, is that failure--or simply what is meant to be?  What has to be.  Quien sabe?

The cycles of day and night, the passing seasons of the year, the flowers, the leaves, the rippling brook, the fleeting clouds in the sky, sun and moon and scintillating stars all proclaim with one accord a certain sad but lovely truth to the eye of wisdom.  What that message is, I leave to my truckbuddies to decide.

But here I am, somehow in the autumn of my years, but blessed to live another shining summer of life.  In place of a letter, here is my salute to the always hopeful, ever-festive, gaily flourishing, fearless midsummer month of June--exquisitely sung by the late Eva Cassidy, whose life was much too short:

Trudeau Marches in Toronto Pride Parade

Earlier today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marched in Toronto's Gay Pride Parade, waving a rainbow flag and exchanging waves and cheers with onlookers.  This is the first time that a sitting PM has marched in the parade.




Earlier in the week, Trudeau recorded this message to his fellow Canadians for Canada Day, July 1:

Which Way Do You Sway?

Via Joe.My.God., handed out at Philly Pride:

Proud Whopper

Sold only at one BK in San Francisco, ending today. What's so special about it? You'll have to watch the vid to find out:

Sunday Drive: Over the Rainbow

For this Pride weekend, the 45th since Stonewall - for all who hope the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

Pride 2014

As usual, the Empire State Building is lit up with the colors of the rainbow for three nights this weekend during NYC Pride. This year is the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that mark the beginning of the modern gay-rights era.  I'm sure nobody at the time ever thought they would see such a fabulous sight as this.

Proud to Play

A spotlighted video on YouTube in honor of Pride month: