Journal Archives from theDreamworld ... November 2005

November 2005

November 30, 2005

John Connor: "We're not going to make it, are we? - people I mean."

The Terminator: "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves."

- Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Yes, that's it exactly.

Posted at 12:26 AM

November 29, 2005

Massively tired. Aching muscles and joints. Mildly upset stomach. Pulsing headache. Tremendous depression and loneliness.

The combination of the start of a cold, severe depression, and the usual effects that the holidays have upon me are making me absolutely miserable. I wish I could just go to sleep and never wake up again. I've thought about this for quite a few minutes, and I can't see any reason at all that sleeping forever would be a bad thing. It would certainly be an improvement upon the life I'm currently facing. I'm certainly feeling tired enough to sleep forever. If only it could be true ...

Posted at 12:41 AM

November 28, 2005

I hate the holidays.

Posted Written at 12:41 AM

November 27, 2005

I saw Steffen's new house for the first time today. In a word - HUGE. Steffen has spent quite a bit to have this home built, and he still has a good bit of spending to do, with a basement to finish (including an extra half bath), a large room to insulate and finish over the garage, and a lot of landscaping to do. Even so, what he has completed already is gorgeous - spacious, open, warm, and very comfortable, perfect for a growing family. It's Steffen, his wife, and their two young boys, Grayson at almost four years old and Brennan at two. I largely suspect, based on various talks, that another baby will be coming soon, and I imagine a girl is hoped for, but for the moment getting the house set up and settling in is a lot.

Had you told me that the house would be so full and well decorated after just the three weeks that Steffen has been there (they just moved in, and the last details of the construction were completed literally just before they moved in), well, I would have laughed in your face. Clearly there are still some details here and there to be taken care of, and there's certainly a lack of that "lived in" feeling (although two laughing, running little boys are working hard on making the place feel "lived in"), but it's simply amazing how fully set up things are.

Steffen is proud of his new home, and rightfully so, and he was absolutely beaming as he showed me around and told me his plans for finishing things off. All the while that he was showing me around we were being shadowed by a little blond-haired flash, Grayson, as he slipped around a corner, hid, and peeked out to see what we were doing. The curious but shy game he was playing made him all the more adorable, and I quickly developed a soft spot for him. Both boys, in fact, are darlings, and they are both incredibly well-behaved. Even as the afternoon progressed, and Mark and Steve arrived for all of us to game, the boys didn't make any fusses or crawl all over anybody. They didn't stay away from us entirely either, so it wasn't just because they were shy of us. They were just great kids, plain and simple.

As for the gaming, we did a lot of that, getting a good bit into the game during the course of play, between around 4 PM and 9 PM. We haven't met together for weeks and we haven't gamed for this long in one stretch for a while, so we got a lot out of the day. Our adventuring party is deep in the heavy forest of the countryside now, heading toward a city that has been in ruins for millennia, once one of the most majestic Orcish cities on the continent until the Human-Orc wars took their toll on every living thing for leagues. Even though those battles were thousands of years ago there are still many things left over, many mysteries, many magical items, many ghosts - and we're heading straight toward what will surely be a dangerous but interesting adventure. Hopefully we'll live to tell the tale, but that risk is half the fun. For the moment we're traveling for more than a week just to get there,a nd while the characters haven't run into any creatures in the wild so far, it seems inevitable. There are tracks of Goblins, Kobolds, and even a very large dragon moving through the area, and with so many days ahead of us before we reach our destination, we must almost certainly run across something, like it or not. Again, that's part of the fun, dangerous as it may be.

Plans were made to meet again next Sunday for a good, long day of gaming again, and we should have quite an interesting time, I should think. We'll be back at Steffen's again, and that's just fine. I felt very comfortable there, and that means a lot to me. So I'm looking forward to next Sunday. That in itself is something. When exactly was the last time I looked forward to anything?

~~Posted~~ Written at 12:32 AM

November 26, 2005

Thank you, South Park. You have saved me from believing that there is nothing worth watching on TV. Now I just believe there's next-to-nothing worth watching on TV.

Posted at 11:20 PM

November 25, 2005

Well, shopping for groceries wasn't exactly the fiasco I had feared today. Certainly there were many times the number of people normally shopping at Meijer while we were there, and the two and half hours that it took us between going in and coming out was somewhat longer than our usual time spent, but the crowds weren't crushing throngs, something which I try to avoid like the plague because such pushing, crushing mobs many times give me anxiety attacks. Clearly, as we drove past the mall and various stores, the shopping mob was indeed out in full force for Black Friday, but Meijer wasn't apparently their primary destination. Which was lucky for me.

Still, with all of the appointments, errands, and traveling from place to place that had to be done today, I didn't get my grandma back to the house and get everything put away until well after 7:30 PM. Hardly a day of fun, really, but then again, I never really have any spare time left on Fridays after running my grandma around, so it's not like today was exceptional . It's just that usually I at least get to eat dinner at a regular hour.

Oh well.

Posted at 10:20 PM

November 24, 2005

"Would you care for a fine after-dinner mint? They're wafer thin."

I couldn't possibly eat another bite of anything, seriously. The Thanksgiving Buffet at Sawmill Creek Resort was as tasty as ever, and I certainly indulged myself gleefully, more than enough to cover lunch and dinner needs. We must have arrived too late this year to hear the harpist playing, and that was disappointing, but the musical performers who were there were quite talented ... and of course the food os the main issue anyhow.

So I took my grandma with me, as usual, for our Thanksgiving feast at Sawmill, but this year we were also accompanied by Steve. I've asked him to join us the past two years, but he has had a cold each year and declined. This year he has just come out of a cold, so the timing was right, I suppose. He drove in from Toledo and we were on our way to gorge ourselves. I think Steve enjoyed the food and the conversations - I know I did - so perhaps he'll join us again in the future.

Afterward, back at the house, Steve helped me get down the snow blower from its storage space, and he helped me with a troublesome light outlet, neither of which task took much time at all. Steve and I continued our conversations for quite a while. We talked politics and policy, mostly, as is usual for us, but we discussed a little bit of everything. After a few hours we even ran through a little roleplaying with my character from his Dungeons & Dragons campaign, wrapping up some loose ends. Mostly we talked, though, and by the time Steve decided to head home it was already 1 AM. With an hour drive back to Toledo that certainly made for a late day for him, particularly since he has to work tomorrow, but I certainly enjoyed our day, and hopefully he had a great time as well.

My grandmother was quite talkative during the meal and afterward as well, back at the house. Steve and I spent a fair amount of time upstairs, just talking between the two of us, but we had shared further conversations with my grandma for a while earlier in the day. By the time Steve left on his way back to Toledo my grandma had already been in bed for a little while, and I think that she had had a rather full day, all things considered. I think that she, too had a good time, and she certainly ate well, all things considered (she eats like a bird, so seeing her eat like a big bird today was good).

The day passed rather quickly, as I look back upon it. I had a good time, but it was over all too soon. I'm quite tired now, regardless of the pace of the day, and my cold is clearly taking advantage of my being tired as a chance to grab hold more (and thus I have a slightly runny nose and some congestion developing). So now is a good time for sleep. Yes, sleep sounds good. Tomorrow is Black Friday and I have to buy groceries, like it or not. So I guess I'd better hope for a sound sleep to be sure, for tomorrow could well be much less enjoyable than today.

~~Posted~~ Written at 2:16 AM

November 23, 2005

The conservatives (the Republicans, the religious right, etc.) want you to believe that gay people want "special rights", and they want you to believe that gay people are immoral. In fact gay people simply want the same rights as everyone else, and they are in fact often as moral or often more moral than their straight counterparts.

As a case in point, look at the treatment of Matthew Limon. Limon was caught a few years ago, at age 18, trading blow jobs with a 14 year old boy. Kansas law made such a "crime" punishable by 15-20 years for gay people (17 for Limon specifically), while the punishment for a boy and a girl, one of whom was underage, would only have been 18 months. Numerous appeals were either denied or the sentence upheld, all for four and a half years, until the case was finally heard by the Kansas Supreme Court, which made clear that the unequal sentencing for Limon or any other gay person in such a dissimilar manner from straight people was clear discrimination. While it would certainly seem to be simple common sense that anybody could have reached such a conclusion, the decision by the Kansas Supreme Court was a significant milestone in the struggle for gay rights. As this case makes clear, gay people are seeking equal rights, not special rights.

But common sense has no place among conservatives. Apparently there's not enough room in any conservative because their vindictiveness takes up two or three times the normal amount of space. Limon, finally freed thanks to the Kansas Supreme Court, was forced to endure house arrest since his release at the beginning of this month, even though he had already served three times the maximum sentence for his "crime." Now, after this two-fold travesty of justice, Limon has been charged again for the same "crime" for which he has already been excessively punished. The new attack uses a lesser charge for the same situation. Simply put, Limon is being tried again for the same "crime", simply because conservatives don't want gay people to have any rights. The actions of conservatives in their war against gay people are usually thinly veiled, but in this case the despicable attacks upon Matthew Limon are simply impossible to disguise.

The vicious, unrelenting assault upon Matthew Limon, simply because he is gay, is truly immoral. For all of the conservatives out there I have three thoughts that they should keep in mind.

1) Judge not, lest ye be judged.

2) Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

3) Love thy neighbor.

If conservatives are so concerned about following the Christian Bible then I would suggest that they focus upon their own transgressions. Clearly that will take up all of their time, leaving no time to unfairly persecute others. And one more point. The Biblical destruction of Soddom and Gomorrah, often cited by conservatives as God's retributive response to homosexuality in those cities, is more often cited by Biblical scholars as being God's angry rebuke for a lack of hospitality and compassion by the residents of those cities for guests and strangers. Conservatives should try to learn hospitality and compassion for their fellow man, be he gay or straight. I wonder, however, if conservatives even know what those words mean.

[As a side note, I never inject religion or religious beliefs into this Journal, partly because I am an incredibly non-religious person but also because I don't want to cast any bias for or against any faith. However, I am more than willing, as is the case today, to point out the hypocrisy of any "religious" person who claims justification from the documents of their faith for their immoral actions, particularly when they are only using selected passages out of context or using twisted interpretations of other passages, all to support their agenda.]

Here's the article about Matthew Limon.

Matthew Limon Back in Court on Lesser Charges

A man central to a case heralded as a major victory for the gay community in Kansas last month is back in court to face a lesser charge.

Originally, Matthew Limon was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for violating Kansas' anti-sodomy law. Back in 2000, the then-18-year-old Limon was convicted for having sex with a 14-year-old boy.

The two were residents at a group home for the developmentally disabled in Paola, Kansas. Limon's lawyers introduced evidence to court that the defendant had the mental capabilities of a sixth-grade student.

Limon earned the harsh multi-year prison sentence because he had two similar offenses on his juvenile record. Had the person he had sex with been a girl, he could have faced a lesser offense that carried a sentence of just a year and a half behind bars.

ACLU attorneys appealed the original sentence. But an appeals court upheld the harsher punishment, saying the state was justified in punishing underage sex more severely between members of the same gender if the ruling's intention was to "strengthen traditional values in the state."

Last month, the Kansas State Supreme Court reversed the homophobic ruling. In the unanimous opinion, Justice Marta Luckert wrote, "Moral disapproval of a group cannot be legitimate government interest."

Limon was released from prison November 5 and kept under the equivalent of house arrest. He is allowed to go to and from work and lives with an aunt and uncle.

On November 18, the Miami County prosecutor's office charged Limon with the lesser offense, unlawful voluntary sexual relations. Limon's attorneys say they expect him to plead not guilty.

A spokesperson for the ACLU says what the prosecutor is doing "isn't right," as Limon has already served four and a half years in prison already.

The prosecutor says he will probably ask the judge to put Limon put on five years' probation. He could also ask the state to add Limon to their sex offender registry.

Posted at 11:27 PM

November 22, 2005

Spending most of the afternoon outside working in the yard, amid thirty degree temperatures and dark clouds that occasionally sent out little sprinkles of snow, was probably not the best way to continue keeping my cold at bay. I'm a bit more tired and a bit more achy than yesterday after all of this, and my nose is slightly runny, something I haven't had to deal with until now, but otherwise my cold symptoms are minimal. Hopefully a good sleep will rest me and refresh me, but sadly I think that my efforts outside today, necessary as they were, were probably the tipping point that gives this cold a foothold.

Posted at 12:05 AM

November 21, 2005

I'm fighting a cold (that adds to my continuing fight against depression and my all-too-frequent fights with my patience as my grandmother's increasing "difficulty" makes it difficult to keep my cool). Basically I have some sinus stuff going on, and the drainage is irritating my throat (and tonsils) a bit - mostly just so that they're tender, but when I wake up in the morning there's actually a bit of swelling, mild as it is, that's annoying. I've been keeping things at bay, holding back what would surely otherwise be a full-blown cold with a runny nose, raw throat, and a nasty cough, and I've been doing it with Cold-Eeze, something I was introduced to last winter and which, if you use it as soon as you detect any cold symptoms, does as promised and keeps your cold from developing. Of course that sadly doesn't mean that it goes away - it just doesn't develop into a real cold. My hope is that after a few more days, hopefully no more than a week, that I'll be fully healthy again, but this whole thing is annoying, even without the cold really messing up my nose and throat.

The big problem from the semi-cold I have is that I'm tired and achy. As it so happens, I've had those same symptoms from my depression, too, so it's hard to differentiate things, but it does seem to me that I'm more tired and achy than even before. Of course the fact that I still can't stay asleep for more than four or five hours at a time is a huge part of the problem, and I have come to no useful conclusions as to how to remedy this situation. So for now I just do my best to sleep as much as possible, but I generally am lucky to get even seven hours of sleep a night, and I the only times I even get seven or eight hours of sleep is by staying in bed until 11 AM (because once I wake up in the middle of the night it takes me anywhere from a half hour to three hours to go back to sleep (and I'm really trying to relax and lay quietly! I just can't get back to sleep!).

Anyhow, that's my fun life for the past four days or so. Hopefully this sort of fun just can't last. I should be so lucky.

Posted Written at 12:50 AM

November 20, 2005

Unbelievable.The Poseidon Adventure, first made in 1975 and followed up by a sequel in 1979, has been remade as a made-for-TV movie. While some people for some reason consider the original to be a "disaster movie classic", I remember the movie from my childhood and clearly remember how campy and stupid most of the movie was. It was full of actors who at one time were respected actors but who had fallen to the low levels of, at best, guest appearances on The Love Boat. Honestly the movie was very 'B' quality, and it deserved no rave reviews from anyone, even if they'd just spent twenty years in a cave without any form of entertainment.

The new version seems, from the reviews I've read and the bits and pieces I've seen when changing channels during the ads of the Simpsons and the regular FOX lineup, is at best as bad as the original movie for all of the same reasons and at worse even more horrible because it drags on forever. This is a movie that will always be, in any incarnation, on any budget, and with any cast, just plain bad.

... and yet millions of dollars were spent to remake a thirty year old movie. Why? There are millions of novels that have never been filmed, hundreds upon hundreds that are incredible and very adaptable to the big screen. Many contemporary novels would be amazing and would fascinate people, even get people talking intelligently about them around the water cooler, even possibly inspire people to read the original book. But instead Hollywood and the networks keep rehashing old stories that have be done before, many times not too memorably, and ***SURPRISE*** end up having a low viewership and harsh reviews. Why is it any wonder that box office sales are down? Get a clue people! I don't have a clue about movie making, but at least I have the basic common sense to know that the public wants new stories, not old stuff rehashed and revised for the new millennium. Geesh! How much brainpower is required to figure this out?

Posted at 10:50 PM

November 19, 2005

I wish I could shake this rabbi's hand. I can't tell you how much I needed to hear something like this today.

Jewish Leader Blasts 'Religious Right'

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said "religious right" leaders believe "unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text you cannot be a moral person."

"What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?" he said during the movement's national assembly in Houston, which runs through Sunday.

The audience of 5,000 responded to the speech with enthusiastic applause.

Yoffie did not mention evangelical Christians directly, using the term "religious right" instead. In a separate interview, he said the phrase encompassed conservative activists of all faiths, including within the Jewish community.

He used particularly strong language to condemn conservative attitudes toward homosexuals. He said he understood that traditionalists have concluded gay marriage violates Scripture, but he said that did not justify denying legal protections to same-sex partners and their children.

"We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations," Yoffie said. "Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."

The Union for Reform Judaism represents about 900 synagogues in North America with an estimated membership of 1.5 million people. Of the three major streams of U.S. Judaism — Orthodox and Conservative are the others — it is the only one that sanctions gay ordination and supports civil marriage for same-gender couples.

Yoffie said liberals and conservatives share some concerns, such as the potential damage to children from violent or highly sexual TV shows and other popular media. But he said, overall, conservatives too narrowly define family values, making a "frozen embryo in a fertility clinic" more important than a child, and ignoring poverty and other social ills.

One attendee, Judy Weinman of Troy, N.Y., said she thought Yoffie was "right on target."

"He reminded us of where we have things in common and where we're different," she said.

Yoffie also urged lawmakers to model themselves on presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who famously told a Houston clergy group in 1960 that a president should not make policy based on his religion.

On other topics, Yoffie asked Reform synagogues to do more to hold onto members, who often leave after their children go to college. He also said the Reform movement, which is among the most accepting of non-Jewish spouses, should make a greater effort to invite spouses to convert.

Posted at 10:14 PM

November 18, 2005

I'm no legal scholar, but this whole Robert Blake thing today seems like Double Jeopardy. I mean, the man was put on trial for murder and was acquitted. Right or wrong, that's the end of the story ... until a civil suit is filed, which apparently doesn't give a damn about the criminal proceedings. Believe me, the idea of having separate criminal and civil courts makes sense to me on a lot of levels, but having a criminal acquittal disregarded in the same case, even though its through the civil court, just seems outrageous.

Civil jury says Blake behind wife’s slaying

BURBANK, Calif. — Eight months after Robert Blake was acquitted at a criminal trial of murdering his wife, a civil jury decided today the tough-guy actor was behind the slaying, and ordered him to pay her children $30 million in damages.

The jury decided that Blake’s handyman, Earle Caldwell, did not collaborate with Blake to kill Bonny Lee Bakley.

After eight days of deliberations, the jury determined by a vote of 10-2 that the former “Baretta” star “intentionally caused the death” of Bakley, who was gunned down in 2001 in the actor’s car outside a restaurant where the couple had just dined.

Blake, dressed in a black suit and tie, looked down as the verdicts were read.

The plaintiffs had argued that Blake either killed Bakley himself or hired someone to do so. The jury was not asked to decide which theory it believed.

Blake was acquitted at his murder trial last March. But Bakley’s four children sued the 72-year-old actor in 2002, claiming he should be held responsible for their mother’s death and forced to pay damages.

Similarly, O.J. Simpson was acquitted at a criminal trial in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife and a friend of hers, but two years later the former football star was found responsible for the slayings in a civil case and was ordered to pay $33.5 million.

Unlike Blake’s criminal trial, where 12 jurors had to decide guilt unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, the civil wrongful-death case required only that nine of 12 jurors believe by a “preponderance” of the evidence that Blake was responsible for the crime.

Eric Dubin, an attorney for the children, contended that Blake despised Bakley, believing she trapped him into marriage by getting pregnant, and that he decided to get rid of her so he could raise the daughter he adored, Rosie, by himself.

Blake did not testify in the criminal trial but took the stand in the civil case and denied the allegations.

He said that on the night of the killing, he left the 44-year-old Bakley in the car while he went back inside the restaurant to retrieve a gun he carried for protection but had accidentally left in their booth. Blake said he found Bakley wounded when he went back out to the car.

]Blake’s lawyer, Peter Ezzell, argued there were many people who wanted Bakley dead. He portrayed her as a grifter who preyed on lonely men, selling them nude pictures of herself and extracting money with promises of sex and marriage. She was on probation for fraud when Blake married her.

Ezell also suggested that Christian Brando, Marlon Brando’s son, killed Bakley. Bakley at one time claimed Christian Brando had fathered her child, and the jury listened to a taped telephone conversation in which Brando told Bakley she was lucky someone didn’t put a bullet in her head.

The younger Brando took the stand and refused to testify, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Also, a criminalist testified for Blake that there were only scant traces of gunshot residue on the actor’s clothing.

Prosecutors at the criminal trial relied heavily on two stuntmen who claimed Blake tried to get them to kill his wife. But their credibility was undermined by testimony about their extensive drug use.

Dubin used testimony from the criminal trial from one of the stuntmen and called the other as a witness. The attorney also used depositions from Blake, an investigator for the actor and others to claim that Blake had a plan to kidnap Rosie and get Bakley arrested and jailed, and if that failed, to have Bakley killed.

Blake got his start as sad-eyed Mickey in the “Our Gang” movie shorts and gained critical acclaim for his role as a murderer in the 1967 movie “In Cold Blood.” He starred as a street-wise detective in TV’s “Baretta” during the 1970s.

By the time the civil trial began, Blake, once a wealthy man, said he was broke, his money having gone to a long succession of lawyers.

The civil trial, which lasted two months, was by turns comical and combative. During Blake’s eight days on the stand, the tough-talking actor lashed out at Dubin and elicited laughter from the jurors, lodging his own objections and calling the lawyer “chief,” “junior” or “sonny.”

“My fervent hope and prayers,” he said on his last day of testimony, “are that when this is over that everyone get on with their lives.”

Posted at 10:17 PM

November 17, 2005

Why is the Pillsbury Dough Boy always so happy, smiling and giggling, even while in every one of his commercials other dough products are being baked and eaten? Shouldn't he be fearing for his life from the men, women, and children who are like giants compared to him, all apparently hungry and anxious to scarf up some food?

And is the Pillsbury Dough Boy related to Dunkin Doughnut? And why are so few kids named Duncan anymore? Is there some connection here?

And why is money sometimes known as dough? Where the hell does that come from?

These and other mysteries of the universe will be revealed when we no longer care about the answers.

Posted at 12:46 AM

November 16, 2005

Well this certainly explains why I've always been so deeply affected by any kind of rejection.

The Pain Of It All

There's nothing worse than that sinking feeling in the pit of your gut when you're dumped. But, is it pain, or just a bruised ego?

That's what scientists at UCLA set out to find.

Researcher Naomi I. Eisenberger and her colleagues created a computer game in which test subjects were led to believe they were playing ball with two other players. At some point, the other players seemed to exclude the test subject from the game - making it appear the test subject had been suddenly rejected and blocked from playing with the group.

The shock and distress of this rejection registered in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex...the ACC. It is the same part that responds to physical pain.

"The ACC is the same part of the brain that has been found to be associated with the unpleasantness of physical pain, the part of pain that really bothers us," Eisenberger said.

"These findings show how deeply rooted our need is for social connection," she said. "There's something about exclusion from others that is perceived as being as harmful to our survival as something that can physically hurt us, and our body automatically knows this."

Eisenberger said the study suggests that social exclusion of any sort -- divorce, not being invited to a party, being turned down for a date -- would cause distress in the ACC.

"You can imagine that this part of the brain is active any time we are separated from our close companions," she said. "It would definitely be active when we experience a loss," such as a death or the end of a love affair.

The results of the study appear in the November issue of Science.

In an accompanying commentary in Science, Jaak Panksepp of the department of psychology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said earlier studies have shown that the anterior cingulate cortex is linked to physical pain.

He said the new study by Eisenberger and her co-authors demonstrates that the ACC is also activated by the distress of social exclusion.

"Throughout history poets have written about the pain of a broken heart," Panksepp said in his commentary. "It seems that such poetic insights into the human condition are now supported by neurophysiological findings."

The tendency to feel rejection as an acute pain may have developed in humans as a defensive mechanism for the species, said Eisenberger.

"Because we have such a long time as infants and need to be taken care of, it is really important that we stay close to the social group. If we don't we're not going to survive," said Eisenberger. "The hypothesis is that the social attachment system that makes sure we don't stray too far from the group piggybacked onto the pain system to help our species survive."

This suggests that the need to be accepted as part of a social group is as important to humans as avoiding other types of pain, she said.

~~Posted~~ Written at 12:23 AM

November 15, 2005

Everything is stupid.

Posted at 10:52 PM

November 14, 2005

My friend Steve and I talk often about the ills of society - the stupidity of society and their blindness to the things they do are major topics as well - and while much of what we discuss is the problem of two-party politics in America and a focus of Americans upon what services they can get rather than what Constitutional liberties they need to maintain, even though we talk mostly about those things, we also talk quite a bit about the problems of class in America.

There is a class war in America. Few people are willing to see it, at least until it's too late, but it's there, stripping away gains made by the average person over the last two hundred years. A small, powerful group of the wealthy are gaining more and more wealth and power at the expense of everyone else, and the middle class, which for most of the past century was growing and prospering, is struggling to make ends meet and is shrinking as many Americans fall into poverty. The gains made ages ago during the Industrial Revolution are being rolled back and the laws protecting workers from unsafe work environments or from excessive hours are being rolled back. Congressional guarantees of protection for worker pensions have been dropped. Meanwhile tax breaks for the wealthy, already extensive, are being increased. And corporate fraud, now common practice, is punished with barely a slap on the wrist, leaving CEOs with multi-million dollar exit packages as the employees and investors are left holding the bag, screwed out of their life savings.

This recent article from the Washington Post adds some notable statistics to show how the chasm between the classes is growing. This is no small issue, and all should take note. These are troubling times.

Class Matters
by Sebastian Mallaby

Two months ago, in his prime-time address from New Orleans, President Bush called upon the nation to "rise above the legacy of inequality." He was joking, obviously. The president's congressional allies now propose to cut Medicaid, food stamps, free school lunches and child-care subsides. They do not propose to save money by undoing the tax cuts that have handed an average of $103,000 a year to people making over $1 million.

This is a scandal, and not because every liberal spending program deserves protection. It's a scandal because, whether you support this program or that, inequality is growing poisonous. The meritocratic premise of this country, essential to both its political consensus and its economic success, is starting to ring hollow.

I wish that statement could be dismissed as irresponsible class warfare. But in 1980, the top fifth of families earned 7.7 times as much as the bottom fifth; by 2001, that ratio had risen to 11.4. So even though the bottom fifth of households made modest gains, the inequality ratio jumped by almost 50 percent. If you measure inequality by wealth rather than earnings, the results are even more preposterous.

Inequality in the United States is now more pronounced than in any other advanced country. Comparing the top 10 percent of households with the bottom 10 percent, the United States during the 1990s was nearly twice as unequal as Sweden and about a third more unequal than France.

Why does this matter? Inequality is socially acceptable and even economically desirable to the extent that it reflects differences in talent, risk-taking and hard work. But if it reflects the circumstances of birth, it is immoral and wasteful. The problem with the 50 percent jump in the inequality ratio is that it gives the offspring of the rich such fundamentally different education, health care and social horizons that it's hard for the rest to catch up. Sharper class differences mean more rigid class differences as well. Talent is squandered.

It's not as though rags-to-riches stories were common in the first place. A classic study of children born between 1942 and 1972 found that fully 42 percent of those born into the poorest quintile ended up there also. But this immobility has grown worse: One Federal Reserve study found that in the 1970s, 36 percent of families remained in the same income bracket throughout the decade; in the 1990s, 40 percent were static. At the most selective private universities in 2003, more freshmen had fathers who were doctors than the combined total whose fathers were hourly workers, teachers, clergy or members of the military.

If this is morally intolerable and economically wasteful, what is government doing about it? Shockingly little, is the answer. According to data compiled by the Century Foundation, the U.S. poverty rate before accounting for the effect of government programs is fairly typical for an advanced country. But U.S. government interventions reduce the final poverty rate by just over a third, whereas Canada's cut it by nearly two-thirds, and those of Britain, Sweden and Holland cut it by about three-quarters.

The growth of inequality underlines the absurdity of the Bush tax cuts. Last time America threatened to become a class-bound society, in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, Teddy Roosevelt advocated an estate tax to reduce concentrations of wealth. In the new gilded age, Bush has repealed the estate tax. Go figure.

But liberals also deserve blame, albeit of a more subtle kind. They muddle their attacks on inequality by defending all government programs -- irrespective of whether these programs are focused on the poor or on the middle classes. Thus they proudly said no to Social Security reform, even though Republicans such as Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah were offering fixes that allowed benefits for the poor to keep growing. Thus they stand equally ready to fight cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, even though Medicaid is a genuinely essential program for the poor whereas Medicare funnels money to seniors, including a lot of rich ones.

Gene Sperling, Bill Clinton's national economic adviser, has just published the book of the moment in Democratic wonkland. Sperling makes a case for endless programs that government would probably screw up: empowerment zones (there's little academic evidence that these ever work), retraining grants (ditto), insurance against the risk that your mortgage becomes unpayable (why can't the market provide that?). The wishful proposals threaten to obscure Sperling's great ones: a more progressive tax system with expanded topping-up of wages for the lowest earners; revamped savings incentives that don't just line the pockets of the rich; and a big push on Head Start-type preschool programs, a proven formula for promoting class mobility.

So here's a plea to Democrats. I know you're better on inequality than the other guys. I know you don't like to be accused of class warfare, so you shy away from attacking inequality head-on and prefer to dream up trendy policies that address middle-class concerns in an era of globalization. But this trendy stuff is a mistake. Let individuals navigate the shift from sunset industries to sunrise ones, which they can do mainly on their own. The core problem is class, which increasingly is destiny.

Posted Written at 1:23 AM

November 13, 2005

So ... like ... when Usher has a concert, does he check people's tickets and show them to their seats?

Posted at 8:26 PM

November 12, 2005

"Ugh! It burns!" - Otto

Unlike Otto, the stoner bus driver in the Simpsons, I did not accidentally squirt grapefruit juice into my eye. That burning feeling is there, though, and it's not any fun at all.

Today was my "fun" day outdoors, spending hours pruning back plants, getting ripped apart by rose bushes, and <shudder> raking up trillions of leaves of all varieties. While the effort itself was tiring (showing how out of shape I truly am), my five hours of work were horrible largely because my eyes became a burning fiery mess, visibly red and quite bothersome. Some of the problem could be attributed to the dust-like mini-flakes of broken up leaves floating in the breeze and messing up my eyes; some of the problem is surely attributable to the sweat leaking into my eyes from my dripping forehead, even though it was, temperature-wise, a decent day to work in the yard; but mostly my problem was the ever-invisible mildew that's always there this time of year. I have an allergy to mold and mildew, something that affects me specifically during spring and fall, when the fallen leaves are semi-dry and semi-wet, encouraging mildew in the cold, damp weather, invisible spores just coating those leaves - nothing problematic or dangerous for most people, but a big annoyance for me. The big effect in spring and fall is that I have a mildly runny nose just about constantly if I'm outside much. On rare occasions, like today, yard work is just not pleasant at all because the mildewed leaves crumble and the mildew spores float through the air and all over me, into my nose and sinuses, into my eyes, onto my skin. So I itch the tiniest bit, and my nose is runny, but my eyes are as dry as can be and really quite irritated. That's my payback for my hard work in the yard. Oh joy.

The worst of it all is that while I got a lot done, there is still a whole lot more to do tomorrow. And heck, there's still all sorts of leaves yet to fall, so I'll be doing this crap for weeks. Hopefully it won't be as bad as it was today. It's been a long time since I've had this bad of a reaction, and I have no desire to go through this again any time soon. Hell, I don't even want to go out tomorrow to finish what's left. Too bad for me, though, as usual. It has to be done, like it or not, so there it is. If my eyes still work after being in the yard tomorrow (which one wonders considering how they feel now) and if my arms will move (which is also debatable considering how stiff I am right now) then I'll write something tomorrow.

Posted at 10:06 PM

November 11, 2005

You know, there are days like this that I just wonder if the world is this crappy to everyone or just me. Do some people just deal with it better, or is it that some people don't have a problem with the way things are, or is it a preference thing, like some people having a taste for squash and some people (such as me) who find squash to be disgusting and completely unpalatable?

So is this all a perception thing or does the world treat people differently? I tend to believe that it's a case of people being treated differently - not because of some grand design and not because of karma or some such thing - just because of that "being in the right place at the right time" thing. Some people are in the right place at the right time a lot, others almost never, and lots of people have a mixed bag.

It all boils down to luck, as I see it, and yes, I believe in luck. If it were just a matter of random probability then you would have very few people who have good things happen to them just about all of the time. If it were a matter of probability then people would have more or less an equal share of good and bad, opportunity and hard luck. That's not how it works, though, and my belief is that people have varying degrees of luck and that's how things work. You can try to add spirituality into that, too, I suppose, but I don't think it makes a difference. There are certainly very religious people who have great lives, ostensibly because they have lived righteously, but there are also very religious people who suffer terribly from one thing after another. And it's not just random - some people honestly just face one problem or trial or defeat or attack after another, and that's just the way it is.

So today, as with the last few days, I'm feeling very, very unlucky. I've never really felt that I've ever been lucky at all, or at least not for long, but my lucklessness seems much more powerful lately, and that's just really a drag.

Good luck to you, though, whoever you may be. Just because my life sucks doesn't mean yours should, and hopefully you're enjoying some wonderful times as a result of some good luck. Heck, somebody should be.

~~Posted~~ Written at 1:02 AM

November 10, 2005

... and I continue to spiral down the Teflon funnel (life's unfairness only speeds things up, really).

~~Posted~~ Written at 1:00 AM

November 9, 2005

Doom, doom, doom.

Grrr definitely has it right.

Posted at 11:53 PM

November 8, 2005

Please, kill me now - or at least get me the hell out of this country.

Nobody who reads my Journal here will be surprised at my frustration. My disillusionment in American political leaders at all levels, my disgust at America's War on the Rest of the World, and my ire at the ignorant, self-righteous, and bigoted masses all have been leading me to hating a country I once revered. Add to that my residence in hick-town hell, a small burg in a state where culture is crawling backwards in time, and you might understand why the early results of today's elections are the final straw to break my back.

Today has seen Ohioans turn down not just one or two but all four election reform issues, guaranteeing that the criminal Republican majority in this state can continue to gerrymander and illegally finance their dominance while driving the entire economy and populace into abject poverty. Worse still, although not surprising, three-quarters of Texans have voted to add a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Possibly the most telling vote of all today, beyond all of these others, was the 6-4 decision of the Kansas School Board to give Intelligent Design an equal (or stronger) footing with the long-standing and much-proven Theory of Evolution. More than any other issue, this decision points to the heart of America's problems, namely that:

1) The bulk of Americans are ignorant or ill-informed and have no interest in finding out what is factually true.

2) Religious belief has become not only more important than political belief but also more important that truth, fact, and reality.

3) The Republican majorities that dominate much of American government at all levels will unrepentantly use half-truths and out-right lies to win their way, all while covering up their massive financial, criminal, and moral crimes.

4) Bigotry and hatred are alive and well in America, and anyone who is different will most surely be abused and demeaned, particularly by the Conservatives, the Republicans, and the so-called "Christians" (not that there are really any differences among those three groups).

This country and its populace have lost the last ounces of my respect. America deserves whatever evils befall it in the future, I am sad to say, and the government as well as the people will surely pay dearly for the very anti-American things they have been doing. I just wish I could be far from here when, someday soon, justice is served.

Posted at 12:48 AM

November 7, 2005

I always enjoy The Daily Show because it's funny, topical, and usually points out underlying truths in politics and ideologies. As a case in point, this segment (on the ramifications of the one year anniversary of gay marriage becoming legal in Massachusetts) is very revealing, but also is fucking hilarious!

Posted at 11:59 PM

November 6, 2005

For a change of pace, I drove my grandma to a play at the Firelands College campus, the Huron branch community campus for my own college, Bowling Green State University. The play, Dark of the Moon, was presented by the Firelands College Theatre group, although many of the cast of over two dozen people clearly were community members and not college students.

The performances of the various players were okay but lackluster. Above all else my biggest complaint is that none of the players could speak a believable Appalachian accent, even though the dialogue is written with the dialect built in. It was as though none of these people had ever been below the Mason-Dixon line in their lives. Beyond that would blame almost all of the other problems on the play itself and not on the cast.

The play revolves around a witch-boy who lives in the mountains but wants to be magically turned human because he has fallen in love with a human girl. His wish is granted but with a catch - the girl has to marry him and remain true to him for a year or he will turn back into a witch and have to leave her. He struggles to figure out how to live as a human but never gives up trying, and all looks well up to the last night of the required year. On that night the local preacher holds a revival where the townspeople have the girl raped so that John, the former witch-boy, will revert to being a witch and leave their community for good. The idea behind this play is supposed to be a way to show the negative effects of intolerance and not accepting people who are different. It sort of does that, although it does so poorly. Moreover the play casts stereotypes of Appalachian hill-people, paints Christians as quite ignorant and self-righteous (which is fairly close to the truth, but in this case overly exaggerated), and it makes a mockery of "the other" by making the witches in the play a weird amalgam of good, evil, naivety, wickedness, acceptance and bigotry. In the end the whole thing just falls rather flat, particularly to someone as sensitive to equality issues as I am.

On the plus side, my grandma claimed to like the play, although she admitted that it was "weird" (although I'm sure her reasons were different than mine). She thought everyone acted and sang perfectly, which I would deny, but clearly she liked that much of it.

The bigger plus for me was some prime eye candy. The lead guy, the witch-boy character, had a great body with no clothes covering his upper body and only sheer tights covering his pelvis and legs. Not bad. There were also a couple of other guys in the cast who were wonderful to look at. One guy was very handsome and reminded me immensely of Tom Welling. The other guy was attractive in an unusual manner. I could describe him in detail, with the raven-black hair swept to the side and the slender nose and thin, succulent lips - but he really had to be seen to understand what was so striking about him. The best looking guy in the theatre, however, was not on stage but in the audience. I swear there was a teenager there who looked almost exactly like Kevin Zegers, and he was really just a flawless beauty.

So my grandma and I each enjoyed our trip to the theatre, albeit for very different reasons. I won't complain. I've missed the theatre immensely, and sadly this did not make up at all for the years since I last saw anything on the stage. That aside, however, I enjoyed the show in my own way, and I was certainly entertained. And heck, that's what's important anyhow, right?

Posted at 11:07 PM

November 5, 2005

What a sad statement about our country that South Park is a more realistic depiction of America than the Simpsons.

Posted at 11:42 PM

November 4, 2005

I'm hating that I still don't have commenting on these daily Journal entries. Heck, every blogger out there has them now, it seems. When I first wanted to add commenting, about three years ago when I made this second incarnation of theDreamworld, it was actually not very common. I just thought that it was a fantastic feature, and I knew that more and more people would eventually use it. Of course I never really expected that I'd go this long on version 2 of the website, either. I was sure that I'd at least change the main images a number of times by now, and I really expected that I'd totally revise the layout in its entirety by now.

I've been intent on making a full overhaul for the last year now, and the big stalling point has been that I haven't had the time or patience to learn PHP, something that seems essential to using Moveable Type for blogging and also an essential for all of the better types of forums now in use. So I've kept stalling, even while my friends are all using Blogger or LiveJournal or TypePad or something. Heck, my webhost, Dreamhost, has even added their own PHP-based blogging option as a one-click set-up option, and their blog basis is WordPress, a very decent blogging software. So with all of these somewhat simple options, what is my problem? well, I've been very determined to have a customized layout that has all of the benefits of the best blogging software but which also has some great design attributes, and sadly I haven't seen a template yet that doesn't seem really simplistic and just plain boring.

So yesterday and today I did some shopping around for different blog software and templates available for each. I'm more impressed with what's available now than what I remember ever seeing in the past, but still I find nothing that really appeals to me. The problem is that I have pretty much decided that I have to just make the switch to a new form for this Journal or I may never get anything done to it at all.

So now I have to decide what to do. Should I just change this index page to be a semi--standard blog template and just have links that go to the branch-off points for stories, poetry, links, etc.? Or should the main page just be a menu, with the daily blog just one menu item among many? Or (and this seems more radical, but would be more uniform) should I remake the whole website using the same blog template for everything (it could work well, actually, but I'd be stuck with that whole problem of the templates being plain and boring ...)?

I'll be thinking about things. I'm leaning toward throwing everything into a template that I can stand, maybe even something I like a bit, even if it's not anything exceptional. If I do that I can have commenting for Journal entries as well as a search for within the site. I'd even have better indexing of each entry. The boring template issue would be likely to bother me for a while, but with some effort I might be able to teach myself to make my own template,something I can really be proud of. That's probably the best plan, really. But for now I'll think about the whole thing just a little bit longer. I'll let you know my plans as I make any practical decisions.

Posted at 11:51 PM

November 3, 2005

I would argue that some of these people are mean and malicious, but otherwise I think this is a great article. Above all else, this article points to the new strategy of not only ex-gay ministries but of the religious right in general - rather than outright bashing gays and looking like extremists, they are learning that they have to look compassionate and helpful. That, unfortunately, is going to make their oppositions to homosexuality even more dangerous.

My Day with the Ex-Gays
They aren't mean or malicious, just dangerously misinformed

Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus International, the world's largest ex-gay resource and referral organization, believes that Satan is plotting to turn people gay from deep within the bowels of Hell. He said as much in Exodus's October newsletter, telling people that the work of the ex-gay movement was literally a battle against evil. He wrote, "One of the many evils this world has to offer is homosexuality. Satan, the enemy, is using people to further his agenda to destroy the Kingdom of God and as many souls as he can. Our job is simple: wage war against the Kingdom of Darkness and save souls."

Not that he talks this way in mixed company. When I referenced the Exodus newsletter at a press conference for Love Won Out, an ex-gay conference held at Boston's Tremont Temple Baptist Church Oct. 29 and asked Chambers if he believed homosexuality, gay marriage and the gay movement were Satanic, the last thing he wanted to discuss was Satan.

"I don't know if my words were exactly that, but I believe that homosexuality is not what God intended for his creations," said Chambers. "The ministry of Exodus for 30 years has been helping men and women come out of homosexuality. Gay marriage, all the things we have spoken of today, are things that I believe are counterfeits, as was mentioned, to the relationships that God intended for his creations, so I would see those things as what we are here to talk about today."

That sounded far too moderate from a man who believed himself engaged in a holy war. I pressed on, again referencing his newsletter and asking him what role Satan and the Kingdom of Darkness played in the debate over homosexuality. And again, he refused to discuss the devil in polite company.

"I believe that in our society, we are a society that is beset by both good and evil. There is a lot of evil in our society, and so I imagine that's what I was mentioning, with regards to the topic I was speaking on," he answered.

When I asked him if he thought homosexuality was one of those evils, he answered, "I believe homosexuality is a sin, like so many other types of sins, and something that's contrary to what God intended for his creation of people."

Chambers's responses captured the mood of the conference in a nutshell. The vast majority of attendees at Love Won Out were not right-wing homophobes but deeply religious people who were there to learn how to reach out to the LGBT people in their lives. Many were concerned that the church's approach to LGBT issues had alienated the LGBT community, and the conference addressed those concerns head-on, as speaker after speaker criticized the evangelical movement for driving away the gay community with its rhetoric.

The conference, which drew in about 800 attendees from 19 different states, was marketed as an evangelical Christian resource for families, friends and churches to learn how to reach out to the LGBT community with the message that people can "come out" of homosexuality. Throughout the day, LGBT people were presented as victims who had been driven into homosexuality by a combination of distant fathers, overbearing mothers, and sexual abuse. As ex-gay speakers like Mike Haley and Melissa Fryrear told their stories of heterosexual transformation the message of the day was one of hope. Yet at the core of those stories was the message that homosexuality was a sin, and it was clear that despite the compassionate sheen placed on the conference, the speakers were indeed fighting a holy war.

Day of atonement

For months prior to Love Won Out, LGBT activists warned the community that a virulently homophobic event was about to descend on Boston, and I was prepared for the worst. What I was not prepared for was the amount of criticism leveled by the conference speakers back at the Christian right for demonizing the gay community and driving them away from the church. There were several moments when I had to keep reminding myself that I was at an ex-gay conference, not a rally for the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry.

Among the most surreal moments was when Haley told the crowd that Christians had to ditch the well-worn phrase "Love the sinner, hate the sin" when dealing with the gay community, saying that from our perspective it is deeply offensive. "So we have got to lose that phrase out of our vocabulary when dealing with the gay and lesbian community," said Haley. "It does not translate. What do we do instead? We show them that we love them. Actions speak louder than words."

Chambers went further, asking members of the audience who were so moved to stand up in repentance for the church's failure to effectively reach out in love to the gay community. Nearly everyone in the church stood.

But these efforts paled next to the words of Joe Dallas, the ex-gay speaker who closed out the conference. I was nearly moved to give a standing ovation myself listening to Dallas describe his experience as a gay man during the early days of the AIDS crisis.

"In those early awful days when ambulances wouldn't pick them up and families were throwing them out and landlords would evict them and there was no medical coverage for them, my gosh, what a time for God's visible representatives... what an opportunity to say, we're here, what can we do," said Dallas. He continued, "It is assumed that when our most visible representatives speak they're speaking for all of us, and I can tell you as someone who was a gay activist at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, over the airwaves we did not hear from Christian representatives a message of concern. We heard glee as one after another was saying, 'Ah hah, the judgment of God's finally fallen down on those sodomites. They're getting what they deserve.' And that is a message the gay community will never forget."

Attendees seemed to hear Dallas's message loud and clear. "I think my reaction is, if you listen to what's actually being said, it's not said at all in any way of malice and hatred," said Kellie, a 35-year-old attendee from New Jersey who declined to give her last name. "It's said in a way of understanding. It's not hate-filled at all if you listen to it."

Weird science

Love Won Out had more on its agenda than Christian right self-flagellation. The core mission of the conference is to show that gay and lesbian people can change their sexual orientation, and conference speakers marshaled scientific arguments, or at least something that looked like science, to prove their point.

Most researchers will tell you that the jury's still out as far as what makes a person homosexual, but Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, president of the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), believes he has the answer. Addressing the approximately 800 attendees in Tremont Temple's sanctuary Nicolosi explained that when boys grow up with distant or unloving fathers, they fail to completely embrace their male identity and become effeminate boys. They feel alienated from other men, and their homosexuality is an attempt to form connections with men through sexual intimacy.

He summarized his theories by saying, "We advise fathers, if you do not hug your sons, some other man will."

He also said one of the major factors that cause boys to grow up gay is sexual abuse, and he claimed there was a high correlation between childhood sexual abuse and gay adulthood.

Nicolosi's surefire cure for queer longings? Form friendships with straight men. "When they make an emotional connection with a straight man, the homosexuality disappears," said Nicolosi.

From my vantage point in the audience Nicolosi sounded like a snake oil salesman, but I was clearly in the minority. The crowd listened in rapt attention to his theories and laughed at all of his jokes, which unlike much of the event, sometimes crossed the line into outright homophobia.

One such joke came at the end of a discussion about what he sees as an essential lesson that fathers teach sons: that danger can be fun. He said fathers begin to teach that lesson by tossing their infant sons into the air and catching them, to help build up their courage (never mind that plenty of mothers play this game as well, and plenty of parents play it with their daughters). He followed this discussion by saying, "Even if the father drops his kid and cracks his head a little bit, at least he'll be straight," a line that generated thunderous laughter from the audience.

He followed up by saying, "That's why straight guys are a little dull, you know what I mean?"

To someone without firsthand knowledge of the gay community Nicolosi's theories made a certain kind of sense, since they drew upon some of the most common stereotypes about gay men: that as children we're all effeminate, unathletic, "mama's boys."

Melissa Fryrear, a bubbly, gregarious ex-lesbian with a thick Southern drawl, took the stage to explain the origins of lesbianism. Fryrear has no medical degree, but she spoke as if an authority on the developmental processes that lead to women becoming lesbians, using pseudo-scientific jargon like "same-sex love deficit" to explain how a communication breakdown between mothers and daughters can drive young girls into the arms of other women. What she lacked in scientific accuracy she made up for in self-effacing charm, and she easily won over the crowd.

More so than Nicolosi she played up the molestation angle, citing a survey by ex-gay activist Anne Paulk of 265 lesbians that showed that 60 percent had suffered sexual abuse, and she backed up her claims with a heartfelt account of her own experiences as a victim of sexual abuse. She explained how that experience prompted her to assume a butch identity.

"I looked mannish because it was a liability to be a woman," she said.

Again, her theories made a certain intuitive sense, and like Nicolosi's theories, they made gay and lesbian people seem like helpless victims, which likely appealed to the benevolent intentions of the attendees. Yet there didn't seem to be much science behind them. Paulk's survey was published in one of her books, not a peer-reviewed journal. At the press conference I asked Fryrear if there was any published evidence in peer-reviewed journals to support the idea that sexual abuse is a major factor in lesbian identity. She could not name them.

"In our experience in talking with women, hundreds of women overcoming lesbianism, and drawing from the experience of Exodus member ministries, again, a strong disproportionate number of women with same-gender issues have been sexually violated or abused in addition to other issues in their lives," she answered. "We have seen it so often that it is not something that we can so easily dismiss."

(On Wednesday, I received a follow-up e-mail from Bill Maier, vice president of Focus on the Family, describing two studies published in peer reviewed journals that allegedly show a link between sexual abuse and homosexuality. Maier did not include the names of the journals in which these studies were published, although he did name the authors, and I was unable to verify the information in either of these studies before Bay Windows went to press.)

It was unclear whether the organizers of the conference themselves believed the science. At its core Love Won Out was an evangelical Christian event, and all of the ex-gay speakers gave as much weight, if not more, to the power of Jesus in converting them to heterosexuality as they did to reparative therapy.

Chambers summed it up best when talking about so-called "gay gene" debate. While he said there was no conclusive evidence that homosexuality was genetic, he said even if a gay gene was found tomorrow it would not make a shred of difference.

"Well, I came to the conclusion that it means homosexuality may someday be proven to be genetic, but science will never trump the word of God," said Chambers "I may have been born gay, but I have sufficiently proven over the last 15 years... that God can change my life."

One attendee, a 28-year-old New Yorker in reparative therapy with a program called Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH), said he felt that with the exception of Nicolosi, few of the speakers gave much weight to the so-called science behind reparative therapy.

"The tone I've been getting from a lot of the Christians here is it's just a lot of surrendering to God," said the attendee, who declined to give his name.

Christians and the lions

The anti-war protest threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the plans for Love Won Out. The march was expected to wind its way down Tremont Street at around noon, just when conference attendees were due to go on their lunch break. To shelter the attendees from the protestors Focus on the Family decided to bring in boxed lunches for everyone so no one would have to leave the building. The impression given by conference organizers was that the church would be under siege from rabid LGBT activists and their allies. And they were right.

The anti-war march arrived late, but at 2 p.m., just as the day's freak snow storm was picking up, the marchers could be seen, and heard, in the distance. Before they arrived the street was filled with cops, some on bikes, some on foot, who moved the 30 or so protestors from that morning out of the street to make way for the march. The nearly 2000 marchers began to pour down the street, and towards the front was a small flat-bed truck. In the back of that truck stood Mark Snyder, founder of the activist group QueerToday.com, which arranged for the anti-war march to join the ex-gay protest. Snyder shouted into a megaphone, "Focus on the Family! Shut it down! James Dobson! Shut it down! Homophobia! Shut it down! Karl Rove! Shut it down!" Many in the crowd joined the chant, and the sound was nearly deafening.

When the truck had positioned itself squarely in front of the church, the entire 2000-person march stopped in place. The chanting continued, and up near the church entrance another group of marchers began chanting, "Get the fuck out of Boston!" The protestors got louder and louder with every passing second.

A phalanx of cops lined up in front of the door, and others worked to keep the marchers in the streets. From my own perspective, sandwiched between the thousands of protestors and the police in riot gear, I was more than a little scared, and these were supposedly my people protesting. Most of the conference attendees were inside listening to Fryrear's personal testimony, but the few who were at the door looked on in horror. The prevailing mood of the protest was hatred, and whether that hatred was mostly aimed at Love Won Out or the war in Iraq made little difference. To the evangelical Christians watching the fiasco, the protestors looked an awful lot like lions, and it was feeding time.

After a couple minutes the march resumed, and things went back to normal. But for the rest of the day several speakers made reference to the protest, and it helped feed into the persecution complex that has been one of the fixtures of the ex-gay movement. Ex-gays have long argued that the gay community has been intolerant of Christians, and the march only helped them buttress their argument. Dallas, during his speech at the end of the conference, described the hatred he saw from the marchers, and he said they represent a "powerful small minority" of the gay and lesbian community that wants to normalize homosexuality and silence religious opposition. Referring to Snyder's "Shut it down" chants, Dallas said, "That is the dark side of the gay rights movement."

Gay Nazis

Love Won Out had its own dark side. The stated goal of the conference may have been to learn how to balance truth and love, but there were telling moments when both were lacking.

At the start of the conference Haley invited Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, to read what was billed as a proclamation by the Mass. House of Representatives welcoming the conference to Boston. The document purported to represent the sentiment of "the entire membership" of the House, and it wished Focus on the Family "future good fortune and continued success in all endeavors," which presumably included the organization's most high-profile endeavor of ending any legal recognition or benefits for same-sex couples. It was no surprise to hear that the document had been proposed by Rep. Phil Travis (D-Rehoboth), an ardent opponent of same-sex marriage, but what was shocking was that it was signed by Speaker Sal DiMasi, a longtime supporter of LGBT rights.

A call to DiMasi's office revealed that the document was not a proclamation but a citation, essentially a blank document given to all lawmakers to mark special events in the lives of their constituents, usually on the order of retirement or winning a spelling bee rather than of saving someone from homosexuality. Kim Haberlin, DiMasi's spokeswoman, said all House members are given a stack of blank citations, complete with DiMasi's Xeroxed signature and the seal of the Commonwealth, and lawmakers can fill them out and distribute them as they wish. They never pass through DiMasi's office, they never come up for a vote, and they are never entered into the record.

Mineau may have presented the citation as a welcome from the House, but it was really only a welcome from Travis. Like much of the "science" on display, there was little to no substance, but for attendees in the audience there was no way to know that.

Beyond deception there were a few flashes of genuine fire and brimstone to disrupt the overall mood of compassion. By mid-afternoon Chambers had finally gotten up the courage to talk about Satan, during a speech where he was discussing the need for evangelical Christians to reach the youth with their message.

"Ninety-six percent of today's youth, of this generation of youth, Generation Y as they call it, and beyond that, will go to Hell," he said, provoking murmurs from some of the younger members of the audience. "Four percent are averaged, estimated to find Christ in their lifetime. Ninety-six percent. They are growing up learning everything about sexuality, learning everything about spirituality, learning everything about our culture and our lives, from the television, from their peers, and from the school. It's high time the church and the people of the church start speaking about important issues."

Haley agreed that evangelicals need to take a hard line with their kids. During the noon press conference he emphasized that reparative therapy was purely voluntary. I asked him if that applied to the gay minor children whose parents want them to be straight. I was shocked to hear him say that it was bad parenting not to commit your kid into ex-gay therapy.

"I would not be opposed as a parent to putting my underage child through a place that would educate him about the potential causes, about the potential ramifications [of homosexuality]," he replied. "I think as a parent it would be frankly very unloving to do otherwise. I have a real problem with parents that, their children are showing gender non-conformity, some of the warning signs that even the APA [American Psychological Association] points out to, that if they're left untreated they will lead to bisexual behavior, homosexual behavior, and transgendered behavior, and so I believe as a loving parent I would want to educate my child."

And while Dallas nearly won me over with his remarks about the AIDS crisis, he soon lost me when he dragged up the tired old comparison of gay activists to Nazis. Once again beating the drum of religious persecution by the gays, he compared the legislation in Sweden and Canada criminalizing anti-gay hate speech and a court ruling in support of gay activists protesting at the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. to Nazi aggression in Holland. He spoke of the dangers of trying to appease gay activists, comparing it to British Parliament trying to appease Hitler.

But perhaps some of the most egregious deception was used at a presentation by Dr. Dick Carpenter, a public policy analyst, entitled "Why is What They're Teaching so Dangerous?" He led off with a rant against the media, describing the rise in new gay-related television programs as part of a secret conspiracy to corrupt America. As he ticked off the list of shows, including Queer Eye, Queer As Folk, The L-Word, Six Feet Under, and Will & Grace, sexy promo images for each of those shows appeared on the projection screen behind him. Then he moved on to the insidious influence of music, citing George Michael, Melissa Etheridge, fake Russian lesbians t.A.T.u., and the Britney/Madonna kiss at the MTV Video Music Awards. As with the T.V. shows, splashy promo photos appeared behind him on screen. Sitting in the audience, I felt like I was watching the Bizarro World GLAAD Media Awards, but instead of cheers for the best and brightest in LGBT television and music I heard silence mixed with a few disapproving murmurs.

Carpenter segued from television to the insidious influence of LGBT activists on schools. Playing selected clips from the documentary "It's Elementary," which shows how to integrate LGBT issues into elementary school curricula, Carpenter argued that the gay agenda had taken hold of the schools. He showed a clip of a faculty meeting at the Cambridge Friends School where one teacher was telling another that it was their job to teach kids that there was nothing wrong with homosexuality.

Yet this "evidence" was grossly misleading. Carpenter never mentioned to attendees that the Friends School is a private school that markets itself to parents by promoting its diversity curriculum. Parents choose to send their children to the school because it is gay affirmative, just as some parents send their children to Christian schools because they want their children taught their traditional beliefs, including that homosexuality is wrong.

Many of the conference attendees came to get informed about LGBT issues. Carmen Stechschultz, a 21-year-old college student from Northwest Ohio, said she is not quite sure how she feels about homosexuality, but she wanted to get a different perspective from the conference.

"I'm a social worker student right now, and how my liberal college is telling me to deal with it is not how my faith is telling me to deal with it, and so I came to get a different perspective in how to handle homosexuality."

After spending the day at Love Won Out, it's clear to me that the view of homosexuality presented at the conference is grossly distorted.

Posted at 10:00 PM

November 2, 2005

I need a date - really, really I do. Oh boy, do I need a date. Heh-heh, heh-heh, heh.

Posted at 1:52 AM

November 1, 2005

Here I thought that maybe it was just me that liked foreign-made cars and good gas mileage, but apparently polls show that gay people are good for the environment.

Gay Cars: Expensive & Efficient

(New York City) Gays like expensive foreign produced vehicles and are more likely to consider a hybrid when buying a car according to a new marketing study.

The report, prepared by Harris Interactive, shows that LGBT consumers favor luxury brands versus non-luxury brands, though balancing image with affordability is a high priority.

LGBT consumers (51%) also are significantly more interested in hybrid electric vehicles than their non-gay counterparts (34%) and feel that they are worth paying more money for.

"Gay and lesbian consumers are becoming an important target market for U.S. vehicle manufacturers, especially luxury brands," said Bryan Krulikowski, senior director of research, Harris Interactive.

LGBT consumers represent over $600 billion in buying power.

"Nearly three-quarters of LGBT consumers indicated they are more likely to consider purchasing a vehicle from a manufacturer that has specifically targeted automotive advertising to the LGBT community," said Krulikowski, adding that "Volkswagen, Subaru, Volvo and BMW are perceived as the top brands that extend the greatest outreach to the LGBT community through their marketing."

The survey also found that 62 percent of gays used the internet to help make a decision about which car to buy.

The AutoGLBT Study was conducted online in the United States by Harris Interactive between July 21 and August 1 among 2,818 self-identified gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender adults (aged 18 and over) and 2,121 heterosexual adults (aged 18 and over).

Posted at 11:42 PM