Christopher Macintosh

A friend has emailed me about the tragic suicide of yet another gay teen. It breaks my heart when I learn that a kid, trapped in a hostile environment, has felt that the hatred and intolerance he or she faces is more than they can take.

Gay teen suicide is one of the great tragedies of our time and one that is almost wholly preventable. These kids are not killing themselves because they feel they are perverted or that their “lifestyle” is empty and meaningless. They are killing themselves because they are told they are perverted; they are told their lifestyle is meaningless. They are beaten at school, attacked at home, ridiculed by family, and condemned from the pulpit. They listen to a message of hatred and intolerance disguised as love and when it is delivered over and over, when they are told enough times that they are worthless, they come to believe it.

Everytime a religious figure condenms homosexuality as unnatural and perverse, everytime a religious figure declares that gay people will burn in Hell for eternity, everytime a religious figure claims that any abuse suffered by a gay person is deserved, they have given the bashers the justification they desire to beat and often kill. They give the victims of their tyrades the message that suicide is the only answer because, for most of them, they know that heterosexuality is not the answer for them.

Every year, more and more scientific evidence points to the fact that homosexuality is NOT “curable,” that homosexuality itself, (not the behavior, but the orientation- at least among gay men) is not a choice. Research shows significant differences in the hypothalamae of gay men as opposed to straight men, that there is a correlation between orientation and the presence of the q28 gene in men, that gay men react to male phermones in the same way as straight women, that identical male twins raised in seperate environments will, in at least 95% of the time, both be gay if at least one is.

But, science is never an answer to those who seek in the Bible justification for bigotry and hatred. The Old Testament declares that adultery is a capital offence- why do those who condemn homosexuality not demand the death penalty for all those evangelists such as Richard Roberts who are divorced? Paul says in the New Testament that women should sit seperate from men in church, should never express religious opinions, and should always be subservient to their husbands. In even the most hardcore Baptist household, is this common?

We must stand up for those who are the most vulnerable and the least able to defend themselves from religious hypocrisy and cultural bigotry. We must stand up for the gay youth of America who are being beaten and murdered and driven to suicide by the ignorance and hatred of the deliberately blind.

I nearly killed myself when I was fourteen because of the verbal abuse of my stepfather. I know what our gay youth are going through. Stand up for them. Help them. Tell them they are beautiful and that the bigots and hate-mongers are wrong.

“Love In Action,” the “Christian,” “ex-gay” re-education camp to which young Zach Stark was recently consigned by his intolerant parents, has now been closed by the State of Tennessee. When even the founder of the group says that it doesn’t work and does more harm than good, I think that is a message that the bigots should listen to. But, then, when have bigots listened to anything other than that which supports their bigotry?

This is an Associated Press copyrighted article:

‘Ex-Gay Ministry’ Ordered Closed
by The Associated Press

(Nashville, Tennessee) The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities has ordered the closing of what it calls two unlicensed personal care facilities run by a Christian group that claims to counsel gays to give up homosexuality.

Love In Action’s work, particularly with teenagers, has drawn protests from gay rights advocates.

Quagmire was 0ften the term used by opponents to describe the American involvement in Vietnam; but no, this is not going to be another cliched comparison with Iraq. Rather, this is about New Orleans and the money pit that is now opening up.

President Bush has announced that we will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild the Gulf coast, (New Orleans), at a time when we are already running hundreds of billlions of dollars in the red financing his War on Iraq. We must be very careful before we send politicians down there with barrels full of cash to make certain that this is not simply flushing money down the toilet or enriching a few at the expense of the many.

New Orleans is notorious as one of the most corrupt cities in the nation. The New Orleans police department has long been known to be rife with corruption. And, the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin is beyond dispute. Good Heavens! Last summer, Nagin announced to the city’s poor that if they were ever faced with evacuation, they were on their own as the city would not be able to evacuate them. Then, when the real thing hit, he sent bus drivers home the day of the hurricane to save money and told off-duty police not to show up until the day AFTER the hurricane! This is the kind of municipal administration to which we want to hand over billions of dollars?

Louisiana has a long and sordid history of corrupt politics. This is the state that continued to re-elect Edwin Edwards when he was under indictment, the man who said he would never lose an election unless he was found in bed with a dead woman or a live boy. He was eventually convicted of corruption, but it took years to do so.

However, let’s not focus our fears of corruption and incompetence just on New Orleans and Louisiana. Friends of the Bush Administration are already lining up at the trough. Joe Allbaugh ran George W’s 2000 election campaign, for which experience it was deamed he was qualified to run FEMA. After leaving FEMA and suggesting a political crony from Oklahoma to be his successor, (the infamous and incompetent Mike Brown), he became a lobbyist and, guess what? After the first major disaster, two companies he represents, Shaw Group and Halliburton, (yes, the same Halliburton Dick Cheney ran and which received billions in no-bid contracts in Iraq), have received no-bid contracts for initial relief work. People connected to both companies were also significant contributors to the Bush campaigns.

The record defecits we are now running, after years of surpluses under President Clinton, are primarily being financed by Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Communist China. We are spending tens of billions of dollars in interest on those loans. Do the American people want to give away billions of dollars to China every year?

The rebuilding of the Gulf Coast is going to be a financial quagmire and if someone isn’t careful, it’s mostly going to be wasted.

It has become quite popular for many GLBT people to describe themselves, and to presume to refer to anyone GLBT, as “queer.” We have the gay minstrel show on Bravo now called Queer Eye. Universities and colleges across America have instituted “Queer Studies” programs. Queer seems to be the accepted term now for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered.

I’m sorry, but I detest the term.

I am not queer. I am gay, I am homosexual, and not straight. But, I am not queer and I don’t like anyone, “queer” or not, calling me “queer.”

I find the term offensive and a reminder of the descrimination and violence we have suffered for too long. I have written of my stepfather calling me queer when I was a boy. I was beaten almost every day during junior high school. A young man was murdered in my city when I was a teen and the word “queer” written with his blood on the wall beside him.

“Queer” is symbolic of all the pain and degradation we have endured. I find it as offensive as “nigger,” “kike,” “spic,” or “wop.” No university would institute a “Nigger Studies” program or offer classes in “Kike-history.” Why should “queer” be acceptable to us?

For that matter, why should a program such as “Queer Eye,” regardless of the title, be acceptable? “Queer Eye” is nothing more than the gay 21st-Century equivalent of “Amos and Andy.”

I know that some say that by embracing “queer,” we take the pain and hate from the word. No we don’t. Ask any African-American if they would tolerate ‘nigger” or if they embraced “niggger, would it take away the pain of centuries of slavery, lynchings, and descrimination. Ask a Jew if they would embrace “kike” as a way of alleviating the pain of the Holocaust and the Dyaspora.

For some, it is an “in-your-face,” “fuck-you” way of declaring independence from the descrimination and hate and I can understand the anger behind such feelings. Like every other middle-aged gay man, I have my copy of La Cage aux Folles and know all the words to “I Am What I Am.” But, I think there is a bit of exhibitionism in it, as well; a bit of wanting to shock. It’s similar to the tacky and tasteless exhibitionism often seen in Pride parades that negate any positive image that may be created. Wagging your penis at shocked straight people along the parade route is not going to influence them to be more receptive to gay marraige. All it does is declare that you care not for their feeings. If that’s all you want, then fine. However, some of us want more.

I am who I am and I am comfortable with who I am. I don’t need to walk up to a complete stranger on the street, slap his face, and scream, “I’m a cocksucker!” And, it’s not internalized homophobia to say so.

When you allow one aspect of your character or life to be the definition of who you are, you are pathetically mono-dimensional. And, the use of the word “queer” is an insulting and demeaning way of defining a group and often embraced by those for whom being gay is the over-riding quality of their being.

I am not queer, but I am proud that I have loved men and I was proud to march around the White House in protest against anti-gay descrimination. I was proud to work in the HIV community. I was proud to volunteer with The Quilt. I am proud to drive a car with a rainbow flag sticker. I am proud to write gay love stories. I am proud to speak to legislators and politicians about gay issues. I am proud to write letters to the newspaper regarding gay issues. I am proud to march in the Pride parade and to publicly declare my homosexuality.

But, I am not queer and don’t presume to call me queer.

The next Presidential election in the US will not occur for more than three years, but speculation is already growing on whom the parties will choose for their nominees. Organization for all the prospective candidates is well underway and each has already been making the obligatory trips to Iowa and New Hampshire to guarantee consideration in the first of the caucuses and primaries. Pundits and bloggers are already wasting airtime and bandwidth on their ideas and theories and so, not to be left behind, am I.

I would like to throw out a name that is not getting the attention and thought I believe it deserves: Albert Gore, Jr.

Several months ago, I was watching a speech on C-SPAN that the former Vice-President delivered to Move-On. For over an hour and a half, Al Gore spoke eloquently and knowledgably on a myriad of subjects without once looking at notes. Can anyone, anyone imagine the current defiler of the Oval Office speaking eloquently and knowledgably about ANYTHING for more than a few seconds, even with notes and pictures before him?

Gore won the popular vote in 2000. I do not refer to Florida. Even giving Mr. Bush the vote count he claims in Florida, Gore STILL won the popular vote, with more than 51 million votes to just over 50 million for Bush. More Americans voted for Al Gore in 2000 than George Bush, a fact that even Republican defenders of Bush admit.

It is not unthinkable that a defeated candidate for President should come back eight years later and win the prize. In 1960, Vice-President Richard Nixon narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy, some would say because of vote-rigging in Chicago. He then lost the Governor’s race in California two years later. Yet, in the middle of a divisive and deeply unpopular war, he came back in 1968 to take the White House. Are the situations in this election, that different?

When we look at the alternatives, Al Gore stands head and shoulders above all others. Among the Democrats, the front-runner seems to be Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has masterfully moved herself to the center, as her husband did fourteen years ago. Yet, if there is anyone in the Democratic Party beside Ted Kennedy who could get Republican testosterone flowing more freely than Hillary Clinton, I can’t imagine who it might be. The Swift Boat Veterans’ attacks on John Kerry would be child’s play compared to the venom that would be spewed by Headrush Limbaugh and the GOP Chairman, “Larry Bud” Mehlman and their ilk. Kerry’s inept campaign in 2004 cannot be overcome and there are only dwarfs among the many others who covet the Democratic nomination.

Among the Republicans, neither John McCain nor Rudy Guilliani, the only candidates of gravitas that people in the center could consider, can realistic expect the theocratic right that controls the GOP to allow them the nomination. For one, Guilliani is pro-choice and pro-gay. McCain is one of the “Gang of 14” who have thrarted the venomous right’s plans for all-out war in the Senate over judicial nominations. No. The Republican nomination will go to Bill Frist, George Allen, Rick Santorum, Condi Rice, or, in the absence of an early consensus, Dick Cheney. Frist, Allen, and Santorum are fundamentalist theocrats. Rice is one of the architects of the failed wars on terror and Iraq, and Dick Cheney will have already had eight years as President, with the disastrous results we now see.

Let us look at Al Gore and see a man of vision and courage who could be a President we would actually be proud of. How often have you watched The West Wing and asked yourself, why can’t Josiah Bartlet be the real President? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an intelligent President for a change, one who has principles, one who has vision, one who has integrity?

Please consider Al Gore. He’s won once. He can win again.

In the early days following the chaos and devastation of Lousisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, I was disinclined to place any blame on President Bush or his administration, despite my utter contempt and loathing for the man and his underlings. My disgust and crisiticism were reserved for the local officials, the Governors who did not mobilize the National Guard BEFORE the storm hit, the local officials who did not anticipate that thousands would be unable to evacuate, and others whose incompetence and ineptitude are coming back to haunt them.

After Ted Koppel’s scathing interview with FEMA Director Mike Brown, however, I have come to see that the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina is just as incompetent and medacious as is it’s approach to the illusory War on Terror, the illegal War on Iraq, its loyalty to the energy industry, and it’s head-in-the-sand approach to Global Warming.

I do not come to these positions with the demogogic self-promotion of an opportunistic Jesse Jackson. Indeed, I am a recovering Republican. In 2000, George W. Bush was the first Republican for President for whom I did NOT vote, and I daily see reasons that justify my vote, first for Gore, and, then, for Kerry. Energy policy in the White House is written by former lobbyists for the oil industry. FDA drug approvals are decided by administrators who are former employees of the pharmaceutical companies which they now regulate. The President who once declared that man did not “evolute” now endorses teaching religious doctrine in Biology class. The Administration entered office in 2001, eight months before the 9/11 attacks, devising plans and strategy for a war in Iraq and only after 9/11 began to imply non-existent connections between the admittedly evil Saddam and the attackers. Paul Wolfowitz, then Assistant Secretary of Defense ADMITTED that WMD was the only excuse they could sell to the American people for going to war. Colin Powell was quoted by Newsweek as stating that the evidence of WMD he was asked by the President to present to the UN was, (his word), “bullshit.” A memo by the alleged felon and traitor Karl Rove, who is believed responsible for the leaking of Valery Plame’s identity to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson, for pointing out the errors in the Pesident’s speech declaring that Iraq had sought nuclear material from Niger, a memo by Rove in August 2002 discussed the political advantages to the Republican Party in the the 2002 and 2004 election campaigns. And, the President continues to lie to us as President Johnson did in 1968 about Vietnam, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that things are working out in Iraq, (tell that to the women of Iraq who will now be relagated to a status below farm animals under the rather strange and perverse form of Islamic law that is about to be imposed on them). I am not at all certain the parents of those brave and courageous American soldiers who have sacrificed their lives are proud that the result of their sacrifice is that a good portion of Iraq is about to become a suburb of Iran.

The current example of the Bush Administration’s incompetence is the evidence of Mike Brown, the FEMA Director whom the President declared, during one of his many “take-charge” photo-ops, was doing a “helluva” job.

The list of Mr. Brown’s mistakes are well documented by many news sources, with the notable exceptions of Fox News Channel and the Republican Washington Times, owned by the “Rev.” Sun-Myung Moon. What, however, should have been the tip-off that Brown had no business running the nation’s emergency response agency is that he was a crony of Joe Allbaugh, an Oklahoman who ran President Bush’s 2000 campaign. Brown was a friend of Allbaugh when he, Brown, was a minor city official in a small suburb of Oklahoma City. That seems to have been the his principal qualification for talking over the emergency operations of the entire United States of America, a minor official in a suburb of Oklahoma City; oh, and friendship with the President’s campaign manager.

Welcome to America in the 21st Century.

It may be unseemly and disrespectful less than forty-eight hours after his passing to begin speculation on a successor to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, but there are a number of issues which Senators and the public must consider in the weeks to come as the President chooses and the Senate confirms the new leader of the Supreme Court.

As Rehnquist was a conservative and his replacement will, most likely, reflect his conservative temperment, the Supreme Court is unlikely to change its balance due to his absence. However, as Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Conner was often a swing vote between the conservatives and the moderates and liberals, her replacement will matter a great deal. Judge John Roberts has been nominated to replace her and I believe that many liberal groups have rushed to judgment on him and prematurely announced opposition to his nomination. I don’t believe Roberts will be as dangerous to gay people and other minorities as some fear, primarily because of his strong respect for the concept of stare decisis, of legal precedent, (see this article on Stare Decisis in Wikipedia). Roberts strongly believes in upholding legal precedents and if the court has ruled, as it did in Lawrence v Texas that anti-sodomy laws are a violation of the right of privacy, he is unlikely to reverse that. He is unlikely to reverse Roe v Wade, either. Much as I dislike George W. Bush, and my dislike of the man is immense and intense, I believe the early opposition to the Roberts nomination is simply knee-jerk and opportunistic. It is my hope, actually, as some have suggested on the Sunday morning talk-shows, that Bush switches Roberts’ nomination to fill Rehnquist’s seat and chooses someone else for O’Connor’s.

All of this, however, must be viewed in the light of what I believe is the great issue facing America during the next few decades. Eloquently stated during an episode of The West Wing a few years ago, an aide to the character of President Bartlet states that the great issue facing America in the Twenty-first Century will be privacy. It is true. As surveillance of computers and communications becomes not only easier but more common, as legislation such as the “Patriot” Act becomes more acceptable, as the people of the United States become ever more compliant and less concerned about the growing encroachments on their civil liberties and place the illusion of security before the right of freedom, privacy will be the great issue before the Supreme Court during the upcoming decades. And, it is this issue on which Judge Roberts and any other Court nominees should be questioned in the most intense and direct of terms.

Privacy is a right and we should demand it.

It is hard to believe that the scenes of chaos, crime, and devastation emerging from what was once New Orleans are originating in the United States. How can something like this happen in America?

However, there are far more important questions to ask. For decades, indeed, for centuries, the authorities have known that, eventually, the Big Hurricane was going to hit New Orleans, just as the authorities in Los Angeles and San Francisco know that, eventually, the Big Earthquake is going to hit their cities, and the authorities of Washington and New York city know that, eventually, the Big Terrorist Attack is going to hit their cities. Everytime a hurricane enters the Gulf of Mexico, there is talk of what might happen if New Orleans is hit, or sideswiped. What happens if the storm-surge flows over the dikes and levees? What happens if one or more of the levees should rupture? Every single time there is a hurricane in the Gulf, these questions are discussed in the media.

It was known when Katrina hit Miami as a Category One hurricane that it was going into the Gulf. This was a week before it hit New Orleans, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Mobile. It was known the Tuesday before it hit that New Orleans would be, at the very least, on the western side of the storm. It was suspected Wednesday and Thursday that New Orleans would receive a direct hit. It was understood Saturday night that IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

Were there no contingency plans in place for this kind of disaster? Did the authorities know that a mandatory evacuation would not result in the entire city leaving? Was there no thought to the hundred thousand or so people who were simple too poor, too infirm, to leave? Was there no consideration given to the possibility that the levees might actually break?

When it became certain late last week that New Orleans WOULD suffer some kind of hit, why wasn’t the National Guard mobilized BEFORE the storm hit? Why wasn’t the Army mobilized to bring trucks, buses, supplies, food, and medicine in anticipation of the human misery that THEY KNEW was about to occur?

To this day, why hasn’t the Federal Government comandeered every Greyhound bus it can find and move these people out of the city? Why aren’t there fifty thousand troops patrolling the streets of New Orleans? Why is this happening in the greatest nation on earth?

Perhaps, the planning for this was left to those in the Pentagon who planned for Iraq AFTER the “end of major combat operations.”

It is telling that the Swiss newspaper Le Temps reports that funds had been appropriated to strengthen the levees around New Orleans, but the funds were deverted to help fund Bush’s War on Iraq. Why?

More questions:

Why is the primary port for oil tankers bringing petroleum into the United States located in the most hurricane prone port in America?

Why are refineries located in the most hurricane prone part of the country? Why is the unrefined petroleum not sent to more reliable areas of the nation?

And, finally…

If this is what we can expect after a hurricane hits New Orleans, what will happen when Al-Quaeda releases Ebola in Washington or explodes a dirty bomb in the port of Long Beach or sabotages a chemical plant outside Philadelphia or a nuclear plant in Illinois?

I certainly feel confident. I’m sure glad that the President decided to cut short his vacation two days AFTER the devastation.

Welcome to America in the Twenty-first Century.