Guerrilla Warfare

Are the breeders trying to take over?

A note from a columnist of Out Magazine, in its latest April edition, struck me as funny. The writer Jesse Archer nearly snapped his neck with whiplash when he entered a gay bar and saw a man and a woman kissing. He went on to fret about how straights, perhaps out of curiosity or a sense of rebelliousness, are invading our gay spots. According to Archer, the straights’ “insistent, increasing appearance on the gay scene is cause for global concern.”

With a nod to interesting timing, Metro Weekly’s latest cover features the trio behind the Guerrilla Queer Bar. The group organizes outings where a bunch of gay men and women descend on a straight bar or restaurant unannounced, kind of a triangle invasion on the breeders’ territory. The whole idea is to promote social integration between the orientations, as it were.

Well, Jesse, there is no homosexual apocalypse on the horizon. In fact, your fears are unwarranted and your thinking is perpetuating a segregation philosophy we don’t need.

First, after bar and club hopping at numerous cities over my lifetime, I can safely say the percentage of straights present – minus the requisite fag hags – has always been very small. It’s more likely that Canada will take over China than straights will take over a gay hangout.

Anyway, I thought Archer’s response, though partly tongue-in-cheek, failed to look at the other side of the coin. How would he respond if a gay couple showed some sign of affection in a place mainly populated by straights, and a few of them gave the couple the stink eye. Surely, he would be appalled at such a negative reaction. We get in trouble often when we have an attitude of someone “not belonging.” Where do we draw the line? Class? Race? Gender?

I get feeling territorial about our hangouts. In sheer numbers, there are more bars and clubs dedicated for straights. So we feel like any perceived encroachment is war. It’s ludicrous to think straights can take us over socially. Besides, our culture often sets trends so it’s no wonder curiosity is sparked.

But I side more with the attitude of the Guerrilla Queer Bar. Groups have their own needs and desires to get together with their own. But people will, and need to, mix sometimes. It’s healthy. Besides, how can we hope to spread tolerance of gays when we steadfastly remove ourselves from the wider world and straights don’t get to know all of who we are?

Sadly, Guerrilla’s current trio of coordinators is stepping down so there’s a big question mark of it will continue. Even if the group becomes no more, I hope the sentiment remains.

It's A Wrap

Next time you reach for that pack of Trojans, just remember the pope is somewhere shaking his head at you in disapproval.

You may have heard Pope Benedict XVI, on a recent trip to Cameroon, told reporters on his plane that when it came to the AIDS crisis, "You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem."

That statement was rather ironic, considering he was making a goodwill trip to sub-Saharan Africa, where three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide in 2007 occurred. The region is also where some 22 million people are infected with HIV — accounting for two-thirds of the world's infections, according to UNAIDS.

At the risk of not being invited to the next party thrown by one of my Catholic friends, I think the pope’s message is downright dangerous and he deserves all the condemnation he’s been getting and will get. France and the United Nations are only two entities that have been critical of the pope’s statement over the past week.

And I side with them. How does using something that has been proven to reduce transmission of the HIV virus increase the problem? It appears His Not-So-Excellency is using his ideology as a blunt force instrument. I get that as a strict Catholic, he frowns on premarital sex, birth control, and such. But when you have a health crisis, pragmatism — not religious dogma — needs to be in the driver’s seat.

Senior Vatican officials have advocated fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as key weapons in the fight against AIDS. Fine. But don’t also exclude and condemn something that is a proven measure to prevent HIV infections. If the pope is serious about HIV, he should focus on promoting wide access to condoms and spreading information on how to use them. Like with any major dilemma, there needs to be a multi-faceted approach.

The pope’s message reminds me of the Bush administration officials and conservative forces who pushed for abstinence-only sex education in schools. In their world, everything would be perfect if we were all heterosexual, got married at 25, and only then proceeded to have sex. Well, the world isn’t – and never really has been – like that. Even those who go to mass and church service regularly have sex outside of marriage regularly. Are we going to let a religious ideal be the guiding light in getting through this?

The facts don’t support the abstinence-only supporters. Study after study has found abstinence-only efforts are not effective in fully educating young adults, reducing teen birth rates, or slowing the spread of STDs. In fact, a news article I read found that polls suggest a vast majority of parents want comprehensive sex education, which would include an abstinence component.

Even some priests and nuns working with those infected with the AIDS virus question the church's opposition to condoms amid the pandemic ravaging Africa. So do ordinary Africans.

My fear is that regardless of what some may feel about the pope and the Vatican as a whole, the words of Pope Benedict XVI carry a lot of weight and influence. Africa, for example, is the fastest-growing region for the Catholic Church. It’s not ridiculous to assume that some followers will take the pope’s words at face values and not use condoms, to the detriment of their health and others.

The pope also said last week he intends to make an appeal for "international solidarity" for Africa in the face of the global economic downturn. He said while the church does not propose specific economic solutions, it can give "spiritual and moral" suggestions.

Well, the condom thing is one suggestion that needs to be shelved. Forever.

Solitary Man

Do you remember that screechy treacle of a song from the 1970s “All By Myself” that Celine Dion had the misjudgment to remake in the 90s? That song made me laugh when director Gus Van Sant used it in his satire “To Die For.” Nicole Kidman’s character, at the funeral of her husband, turned on a boom box to play it during the service and telegraph her sadness.

The song, or really the mere title, popped into my head when I chatted with a friend and asked him if he was dating someone. He merely shook his head. Then he added very calmly that he no longer plans his life assuming it will be shared by a significant other. He said not everyone’s lot in life is to have a partner into your twilight years.

It made total sense. Yet that idea is scary to a lot of us. Being alone. Straight or gay, friends and relatives needle single people about their status. “When are you going to settle down?” “When are you going to get partnered, or married?” “Everyone needs someone.” “I’m worried about you.” “What if you get old and there’s no one to take care of you?”

It’s like a reflex with people. I heard some of that in my single periods in between relationships, and I got sick and tired of the supposedly sympathetic gestures. I was never scared of being unattached. Let’s face it. Independence, freedom, and variety can be fun and good. I had to convince people I was fine with singledom, and even then, some thought I was just saying something out of pride.

Yet, I can be a culprit too. When I talk to my single friends, one of the first few questions will likely be if they are dating someone. It’s almost an inborn reaction. I don’t react negatively if they say no, but yet why is it such a priority when there are a thousand other things to talk about?

It may be something innate within us that sees being single as unnatural and even tragic. Look at the Metro Weekly “Coverboy Confidential” section. Over half of the responses to the question of greatest fear are being alone. If a man or woman has friends, family, and financial stability, is not having a boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse a really big void to fill? Ideally, you are a happy person without a relationship, and the other person only adds to your blessings.

It’s rather silly a lot of us are troubled by singledom when all of us have been through it and will face it. After all, unless you’re Jennifer Lopez, you have had space – weeks, months, or even years – between relationships. Who hasn’t had a break-up for a divorce? And even if you are partnered now and it lasts 30, 40 years, one of you will die eventually, and you or the other will be alone. Everyone experiences singledom. So why do we insist on making it scary and daunting?

And isn’t it funny that “alone” is used only in context of a romantic relationship? Is an unpartnered man or woman with a good job, friends and loving family really alone? No, he or she is single or unmarried. Perhaps someone with a fervent goal of a partner and perhaps a family does see being single as an unhappy state because it represents an important goal that’s unfulfilled. That’s fair. Hopefully, that person is not seen as a failure of an ideal.

But people like my friend shouldn’t be pitied in the least. He’s made peace that happiness comes in various ways and if he’s meant to have a mister, it will happen eventually. Until then, he’ll be a happy bachelor and we will talk about a lot more than dating.

Abuse of Power

Well, it seems Rihanna has reconciled with Chris Brown. Pause to let my eyes finish rolling.

Unless you’ve read so much about Octomom that you forgot the original story, Brown allegedly battered Rihanna last month, sparking so much chatter some of us forgot we were in a recession. Well, Rihanna took him back, perhaps giving up her self-respect in the process.

Almost everyone I talked to about it just couldn’t believe a young, pretty, talented, and wealthy woman would go back to someone who physically abused her, no matter if the man is a heartthrob. Okay, forgiveness is a good thing. So is atonement if it’s sincere. But is their reconciliation sending a bad message that physical abuse can be tolerated?

As straights are debating this, it makes me wonder how big of a problem abuse is in the LGBT community. I suspect it’s largely a silent problem. It’s funny that reflecting on anecdotal evidence, I only can think of two LGBT people who were in physically abusive relationships. One was an ex and one was a friend of a friend. Both stayed with the significant other for awhile afterward.

Reliable statistics about domestic violence among same-sex couples are hard to come by, experts say. According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, there were 3,534 reported incidents of domestic violence against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender persons in 2006, the most recent statistics available. The data, however, is taken from major cities where anti-violence programs are found, such as Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Houston. Imagine if rural and outer areas were included.

The Campus Violence Prevent Project, affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, assembled some statistics in 2006 from national surveys done a few years earlier. They concluded:

· The prevalence of domestic violence among Gay and Lesbian couples is approximately 25 - 33%.
· Each year, between 50,000 and 100,000 Lesbian women and as many as 500,000 Gay men are battered.
· While same-sex battering mirrors heterosexual battering both in type and prevalence, its victims receive fewer protections.
· Seven states define domestic violence in a way that excludes same-sex victims; 21 states have sodomy laws that may require same-sex victims to confess to a crime in order to prove they are in a domestic relationship.

So it seems we can neither get married legally (in most places) nor get fair legal protection for domestic violence. Great. If we don’t feel the law gives us a fair shake, I imagine some LGBT abuse victims would never seek help in the first place.

Also I suspect there are many silent sufferers of abuse. And having a same-sex dynamic complicates things. I imagine some men and women are too ashamed to go to anybody if they’ve ever been abused by someone of the same gender, primarily because society gives us a snicker instead of sympathy. People think a man should be able to protect himself from another man, and so on. Traditional gender roles can interfere with abuse being taken seriously and being dealt with swiftly.

I hope no LGBT friend or family member has been an abuse victim and is remaining quiet. If the Rihanna situation at least has brought domestic violence to the forefront – at least for a moment – let’s hope the questions of how we need to deal with this linger long after the next tabloid fixation.

Morals Clause

When does a gay event involving sex warrant a protest? Or warrant a warrant?

Last month during Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend (which kinda got overshadowed by the inauguration that same weekend), a religious group that believes homosexuality is “evil” tried to keep a leather S&M party from happening at the Doubletree Hotel in Arlington.

The head of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, a group “dedicated to exposing the homosexual activist agenda,” tried to stop a “play party” because such an event in a hotel conference room is “illegal and a public health concern.” Oh, and it’s also immoral.

From what I’ve been able to gather, the party went on as scheduled. It seems Truth wanted to protect our sense of morals, but it’s a very selective set of morals.

First, think about just how wrong the president’s statement was. What exactly is illegal? Unless money exchanged hands, there’s no prostitution. And the last time I checked, people were allowed to have consensual sex in a private room. (Perhaps there’s a whip-brandishing prohibition in the state legislature that we overlooked). And the hotel allowed a private suite for this. At midnight. Impressionable youngsters would hardly be ambling into the room for the shock of their lives.

As far as a health concern, I don’t see an added risk different than straight couple or groups getting together (and don’t for a second think that doesn’t happen). Maybe Truth assumed everyone at the party would be doing it raw, but somehow I don’t think the group was fixated on condoms and safe sex.

The real reason is the “moral” issue, but it seems to be more about finding gay sexuality threatening and trying to shut it down. This is a city full of gentleman’s clubs and little flyers tucked under windshield wipers with pictures of half-naked women for clubs, parties, or whatever. And since when is S&M a strictly gay concept?

I would have more respect for this Truth organization if they flew to Los Angels and showed up at the Playboy Mansion to protest Hugh Hefner and beseech him to close down his bunny den of iniquity. After all, people don’t go there just for the champagne. Hell, some of Hefner’s playmates have their own reality show on VH1 – indicative of a kind of middle-America acceptance.

But something that advertises “pig sex” seems to be the final straw for some moralists. The already grim view they hold on gays becomes stretched to the breaking point. They may not be crazy about the Playboy Mansion, but because heterosexuality is their idea of the only “normal” orientation, Hugh and Co. are relatively forgivable. But men in leather who dare to fly their freak flag are sick bastards.

I think people like Truth members don’t pick up on the inequity of their moral focus. It reminds me of straights I have met who castigate homosexuality but have sex and/or live together outside of marriage. The virtue of being straight makes something seem not as bad as, you know, the other people.

Perhaps Truth needs to ask itself who and what it is fighting for, and to what end. It’s almost funny to have moral saviors try to rescue people who don’t need to be saved.

Going for the Gold

The Oscars are Sunday and curiously few of my gay friends are mentioning any parties for the night. I thought we were supposed to flock to the TV like texting teens do to American Idol.

Anyway, I could end up watching Sean Penn stroll to the podium to take the Academy Award as Best Actor for Milk. I would be pleased as I thought he did a phenomenal job and it would be kind of a rebuke to a post-Prop. 8 country. A Penn victory would also make me wonder how far we’ve really come in the LGBT community as a whole.

Sounds strange but give me a minute. Penn would be the latest line of straight actors getting Oscar gold for playing gay. Think about Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, and Charlize Theron in Monster, for example. And remember Sunday’s lock for a win – the dearly departed Heath Ledger aka “The Joker”, who was Oscar-nominated for his turn as a closeted cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.

I don’t want to take anything away from these great performances, but they reveal a double standard that plays into how we’re still viewed in society. Straights playing gay even now are lauded for being “brave” and “daring.” Wow, look at how they fiercely portray a gay man or lesbian, risking their image and the rumors that are sure to circulate.

What the hell? They are just playing other human beings. Hollywood is quantifying their celluloid leap as controversial and giving them unbridled praise because, in part, they are playing “the other.” That’s what we still are in many minds, even in Hollywood, even in 2009.

Why is it that few out gay actors are given gay roles in major movies? Is it a fear of typecasting on the actors’ part? Will the audience assume a gay man playing a gay role is not acting? And will Hollywood not cast openly gay actors in straight roles because they assume the audience will never believe them in those roles? Hardly seems fair it never goes the other way around.

When we see major gay portrayals on screen, it’s largely as the comic relief and/or the trusted fag hag to Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, Anne Hathaway, etc. Those roles are broad and non-threatening. They don’t penetrate the surface and get under the skin of movie goers. They don’t illuminate the gay experience so much as pick a few superficial traits to flaunt. So we can be Jack on Will and Grace, but not Harvey Milk. We can’t tell our own stories in the studio films.

Are we still in a space to where an entertainer who comes out has to worry about his or her career? It seems so. Think about major figures whose sexual orientation has long been questioned: Anderson Cooper, Kenny Chesney, Tom Cruise, Kevin Spacey, and the list goes on.

As Hollywood (and other big media) embraces gay portrayals, why do some of its native gay sons still feel the need to stay in the closet? In my above list, I’d bet my life at least two of them are 100% gay, and I’m sure there are many others.

I hear people sympathize with celebrities with double lives because they still think coming out is a career killer. Is that just paranoia or are we just feeding off the vibes we get from larger society, many of whose members still experience a discomfort of gayness? Will we be in 2039 and having gay actors still afraid to come out and having plum gay parts going to straight actors who can make it clear that it’s just a role and they’re not really…you know? Will we still be imagining ourselves as a more tolerant society despite evidence to the contrary?

I just read that Jim Carrey will star in a new movie called I Love You, Phillip Morris and play a gay character, based on a real-life conman who falls in love with his cellmate in prison. The movie played at Sundance and already it’s getting raves, and some are praising Carrey “for daring” to play gay.

Carrey doesn’t help matters as he freely admitted it was “scary” to have to kiss his co-star Ewan McGregor. (But darnit, someone has to do it!) This feeds into the ass-backward Hollywood double-standard of praising our stories (portrayed by straights) while tacitly following the common thinking of being gay as “shocking” or some other life form altogether.

By the way, isn’t it funny that no one ever asked Anthony Hopkins if playing a cannibal in Silence of the Lambs would ruin his career? Well, I guess it’s just a role, right?

Haggard Faces

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out who’s been making the biggest media tour of self-promotion under the guise of justice and truth-telling – Ted Haggard or Rod Blagojevich?

Since Blago is a pompous windbag who was impeached and is really yesterday’s news, let’s go to the Colorado pastor who famously was evicted from his flock after revelations of gay affairs that he insist do not make him gay. See, isn’t that more fun?

In case you don’t own a television, Haggard has been on Oprah, Larry King, and other news outlets on the heels of an HBO documentary on his life directed by Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. The married evangelical is openly calling himself a liar and a hypocrite for anti-gay declarations and fighting gay marriage when it turns out he had sex with men.

In 2006, Haggard confessed to a money-for-sex relationship with former escort Mike Jones, from whom he also purchased crystal meth. Haggard was forced out of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the National Association of Evangelicals. Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that Haggard was sexually involved with former church member Grant Haas.

It’s interesting that Haggard’s self-flagellation doesn’t extend to his admitting that he’s anything near gay. Instead, he has gone one to say that he is “heterosexual with homosexual attachments” or “heterosexual with complications.” Coy? Oy!

Haggard reminds me of presumably straight men who sleep with men but don’t see themselves as gay. For them, dalliances with men are just sex and not any point of identity. The irony is that they almost totally define gay men by their sexuality.

Gay critics (deservedly) have scorched Haggard with fire-breathing criticisms. I despise his character too, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say I feel sorry for him.

I don’t mean sorry as in I would give him a hug and say everything will be alright. I mean pity that he’s in deep denial and contorting his true nature to where his insides are more of a puzzle than his replies to interviewers’ questions. He’s creating his own Dante’s inferno without the Dante.

Even while Haggard praises his wife and makes pains to say he has a happy marriage and still wants his wife sexually, he still admits he’ s attracted to men – but he is no longer acting on it or trying not to, anyway. Perhaps the years in a religious environment that is virulently anti-gay, he morphed into a homophobic crusader even as the elephant in the room grew louder. Or maybe he thought any life without wife and kids seemed not normal and unspeakable.

However free he may sound, I know he in anguish. Those “feelings” won’t go away because they are a part of who he is. Haggard is just one soldier in an army of men who lead double lives and for whatever reason, can’t bring themselves to acknowledge and embrace gayness they have. For them, sexuality is never free because it’s bound by doubt and shame. He’s not overcoming anything so much as supplanting everything.

Some people are angry that the documentary seems to paint him in a sympathetic light. It does to a large degree. But it also gives us the picture of a man perpetually in conflict, trying in vain to convince people – maybe more so himself – that he’s not “really gay.”

So he can get a six-figure book deal, a talk show, and maybe a new church. But he doesn’t really win. As long as he tries to cocoon himself in a façade of heterosexuality, he will continue to break his own heart every day.