MUGWUMP

Posted on the Santa Monica Fire Department

I knew these existed but I'd never seen one or knew exactly where they were located.

I Heart LilyTomlin

Larry Kramer speaks

From today's L.A. Times:

Why do straights hate gays? An aging 72-year-old gay man isn't hopeful about the future. By Larry Kramer, LARRY KRAMER is the founder of the protest group ACT UP and the author of "The Tragedy of Today's Gays." March 20, 2007

DEAR STRAIGHT PEOPLE,

Why do you hate gay people so much?

Gays are hated. Prove me wrong. Your top general just called us immoral. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is in charge of an estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian troops, some fighting for our country in Iraq. A right-wing political commentator, Ann Coulter, gets away with calling a straight presidential candidate a faggot. Even Garrison Keillor, of all people, is making really tacky jokes about gay parents in his column. This, I guess, does not qualify as hate except that it is so distasteful and dumb, often a first step on the way to hate. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tried to duck the questions that Pace's bigotry raised, confirming what gay people know: that there is not one candidate running for public office anywhere who dares to come right out, unequivocally, and say decent, supportive things about us.

Gays should not vote for any of them. There is not a candidate or major public figure who would not sell gays down the river. We have seen this time after time, even from supposedly progressive politicians such as President Clinton with his "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and his support of the hideous Defense of Marriage Act. Of course, it's possible that being shunned by gays will make politicians more popular, but at least we will have our self-respect. To vote for them is to collude with them in their utter disdain for us.

Don't any of you wonder why heterosexuals treat gays so brutally year after year after year, as your people take away our manhood, our womanhood, our personhood? Why, even as we die you don't leave us alone. What we can leave our surviving lovers is taxed far more punitively than what you leave your (legal) surviving spouses. Why do you do this? My lover will be unable to afford to live in the house we have made for each other over our lifetime together. This does not happen to you. Taxation without representation is what led to the Revolutionary War. Gay people have paid all the taxes you have. But you have equality, and we don't.

And there's no sign that this situation will change anytime soon. President Bush will leave a legacy of hate for us that will take many decades to cleanse. He has packed virtually every court and every civil service position in the land with people who don't like us. So, even with the most tolerant of new presidents, gays will be unable to break free from this yoke of hate. Courts rule against gays with hateful regularity. And of course the Supreme Court is not going to give us our equality, and in the end, it is from the Supreme Court that such equality must come. If all of this is not hate, I do not know what hate is.

Our feeble gay movement confines most of its demands to marriage. But political candidates are not talking about — and we are not demanding that they talk about — equality. My lover and I don't want to get married just yet, but we sure want to be equal.

You must know that gays get beaten up all the time, all over the world. If someone beats you up because of who you are — your race or ethnic origin — that is considered a hate crime. But in most states, gays are not included in hate crime measures, and Congress has refused to include us in a federal act.

Homosexuality is a punishable crime in a zillion countries, as is any activism on behalf of it. Punishable means prison. Punishable means death. The U.S. government refused our requests that it protest after gay teenagers were hanged in Iran, but it protests many other foreign cruelties. Who cares if a faggot dies? Parts of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. are joining with the Nigerian archbishop, who believes gays should be put in prison. Episcopalians! Whoever thought we'd have to worry about Episcopalians?

Well, whoever thought we'd have to worry about Florida? A young gay man was just killed in Florida because of his sexual orientation. I get reports of gays slain in our country every week. Few of them make news. Fewer are prosecuted. Do you consider it acceptable that 20,000 Christian youths make an annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to pray for gay souls? This is not free speech. This is another version of hate. It is all one world of gay-hate. It always was.

Gays do not realize that the more we become visible, the more we come out of the closet, the more we are hated. Don't those of you straights who claim not to hate us have a responsibility to denounce the hate? Why is it socially acceptable to joke about "girlie men" or to discriminate against us legally with "constitutional" amendments banning gay marriage? Because we cannot marry, we can pass on only a fraction of our estates, we do not have equal parenting rights and we cannot live with a foreigner we love who does not have government permission to stay in this country. These are the equal protections that the Bill of Rights proclaims for all?

Why do you hate us so much that you will not permit us to legally love? I am almost 72, and I have been hated all my life, and I don't see much change coming.

I think your hate is evil.

What do we do to you that is so awful? Why do you feel compelled to come after us with such frightful energy? Does this somehow make you feel safer and legitimate? What possible harm comes to you if we marry, or are taxed just like you, or are protected from assault by laws that say it is morally wrong to assault people out of hatred? The reasons always offered are religious ones, but certainly they are not based on the love all religions proclaim.

And even if your objections to gays are religious, why do you have to legislate them so hatefully? Make no mistake: Forbidding gay people to love or marry is based on hate, pure and simple.

You may say you don't hate us, but the people you vote for do, so what's the difference? Our own country's democratic process declares us to be unequal. Which means, in a democracy, that our enemy is you. You treat us like crumbs. You hate us. And sadly, we let you.

Now what??

So my last day of work at Craig Anderson Productions was on Wednesday of last week. I slept in on Thursday and Friday, but somehow managed to get my butt out of bed this morning and now I'm going to try to get some writing done to see how it goes.

I've been not really blog-present over the past couple of weeks... and not that there wasn't anything to write about (although I intentionally avoided that Ann Coulter/"faggot" stuff because she's not really worth the effort).

It seems to me, more and more everyday, that the country is in snap-back mode. George W. was playing with America like he might a Stretch Armstrong doll; twisting it out of shape, bending it over on itself, tying it into knots and contorting it so that it didn't at all resemble what he'd started with. But then he overstretched... and when he wasn't paying attention it slipped out of his control (right around Katrina).

Finally we're starting to remember what we're supposed to be... and the misshapen blob that W. had been toying around with is slowly moving back into form. (America is great that way).

When I was a kid, we had a couple of "well-off" neighbor kids that would come over to play with me and my brother and our well-kept toys. At some point after the 2nd or 3rd play-date, my mother stopped allowing them to come over and play. It wasn't a class thing or that they had more money than us ... it was simply that they would always break our toys and she couldn't afford to replace them... whereas, I suppose, their family had the money to keep buying play-things that they could break on a whim.

I get the feeling that when little Georgie would play, he'd break a lot of things.

On a completely unrelated note, I saw this story on the local news last night, about a guy who was one of that street-corner advertising sign holders who got shot randomly and it horrified-pissed me off.

Remainder

Remainder by Tom McCarthy is one of the best books I've read in years. Loved it.

A trip to the East Coast

I've been traveling recently so that's good excuse as any as to why I haven't posted a lot lately. I was in New York end of last week through this one and had a fabulous time staying with my friend Erik.

On Friday night we went to see a play called Still Life by Emily Mann that my friend Heather Cunningham was producing and was one of the three actors in it. We were still in our seats after the play was over waiting to say hello and it turned out that Emily Mann had been in attendance that night. She'd hung around to tell the actors that she had stopped going to productions of this play 20 years ago because it seemed to her that the directors never understood it and she couldn't believe it, but this production actually "got it". It was very cool to hear the writer and original director of the play gush like this.

Afterwards we met up with my friend Arsen at this bar called The Ritz... and if ever a name of a bar was misleading... well, that's all I'll say.

On Saturday night, Erik and I had dinner at The Palm in the theatre district and our waiter made no attempt to cover up his assumption that Erik was my rent-boy for the night. I overtipped him and then Erik and I proceeded to the Schoenfeld Theatre to see A Chorus Line.

Afterwards we met up with friends to go out drinking and we proceeded to make complete spectacles of ourselves. I'm still amazed that we weren't escorted out of the place. There was one moment that I'm still somewhat cringing over and that was early on, right after we'd entered the place. This intoxicated, nebbishy guy sidled up behind me at the bar and proceeded to violate me with his hands and so we fled upstairs to get away from him. We were in the clear for a few minutes but he managed to locate us and he came over to me and introduced himself and I said, "uhhhh. Hi. I'm Kerry." and then he leaned in towards me to go in for a kiss but I blocked him (and HONESTLY... I really don't know where this came from) and said, "I'm not that drunk yet." He slunk off to find his next victim and we drank ourselves silly.

Sunday was spent in recovery mode and then we got invited to this penthouse Oscar viewing party down in the financial district. GREAT time. It began snowing about 20 minutes after the show began.... and I gotta say. There's nothing like watching a snowfall in New York City from the glass encased penthouse suite on Wall Street. It was so pretty it was unreal. Erik and Arsen and Jimmy and I went outside and had a snowball fight on the roof-deck. After the oscar show was over we went out dancing.

Was able to get back to L.A. on Monday evening. I spent way too much money but it was a really great trip.

In other news, I've given my notice at my job. Not sure exactly what my last day will be... but it's coming up soon. I have a need to get out of this office and get some more creative type things under my belt. Keep your fingers crossed for me.