I Can See Better By Candlelight

Last night was the candlelight vigil to suppot LGBT individuals and families. With all that's going on with regards to our local predominant faith, Proposition 8, and our community, it was a needed event.

Before the vigil, we broke bread with some of those who came to support us. There was my parents, my aunt, my sister, and niece (and their dates and spouses). I was specifically touched to be joined by a family of four from our boy's school. It's one thing to have inclusion and acceptance in their school; it's another thing to have active support like that. (If you saw Rob talking to a handsome guy who wasn't me, no worries; it was the dad of this family:-))

We met more friends and family at the rally. It was raining off and on and I was surporised by the significant turn out.

We were also pleased to meet a bunch of fellow blogger there. And okay, I was 5 minuets late to the meeting spot because dinner went long, but where were you, Edgy? I'm beginning to think you're an elaborate webbot or something.

It was a pleasure meeting all of those never met before and still a pleasure to see familiar faces :-). I wish we could have talked more, but I spent the evening chasing children and going between family and friends. Altogether, our kids had to go pee 5 times in that hour! I hardly got to hear any of the talks. That'll teach us about not keeping an eye on the drink consumption at dinner, right?
Still, that really wasn't the point for me; I know the issues. I know why we were all there, what the LDS church thinks, and why we disagree and want to support the LGBT community.

I really just needed to chase my children around a crowd of people who we could count on, people who want a society were families are welcome and the Golden Rule applies. I needed to see that here, in Utah. I needed to be around a crowd that was missing that terrifying ability to "lovingly" damage their neighbors and even their children for religion. I needed to see many people here aren't so willing to pick up the infinite ego by proxy of believing they are doing and know, by book or leadership, what omnipotence and omniscience say is best for another man's family.

Too often I wake too early by the notion that I can't stop those who would turn love into a weapon, ignore evidence and even their conscience, and use strong faith for their excuse--so many people in history have been powerless to stop much worse being done to them under those banners. I worry at those times that I'm not able to protect my family, because there is no good defense from "God says so"; that's why it's used. But last night I got to see hard evidence that many others will have our back, and we have theirs.

And it worked. Yesterday, thinking of the polls and the possibilities and the precedence of taking rights away from us as a group, I was becoming more and more stressed. I walked into dinner last night feeling worried, but went home from the vigil relaxed, and sure the arc will bend towards justice for our families too, some day, even if not Tuesday (VOTE!).

After the talks by the Mormon mothers who put on the event, we all walked around the block in solidarity (funny how such ritual helps so much). We walked a bit, but this is what the view of that looked like while trying to find a restroom for Brian across the street :-):

Danzig’s Dissent

A brief detour…

This was in the paper today:

LDS Church disciplines musician

Peter Danzig , A member of the orchestra at temple square, wrote a letter in support of Jeffery Nielsen. Nielsen wrote an editorial expressing his conscience regarding the LDS church’s opposition to marriage for gay couples and was subsequently let go from his job as a BYU professor (I’m honored to say I’ll probably see the man tonight, if history is a guide). Back to Danzig and his wife (from the article):

“Within a week, LDS officials contacted Danzig with concerns about the letter. They suspended him from the orchestra and for the next year, he and, ultimately his wife, defended their loyalty, faith and actions. No amount of persuasion or pleading could convince these ecclesiastical leaders they meant well. Ultimately, the Danzigs moved out of their Levan house and, in December, resigned their membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rather than face excommunication.”
…
“ Initially, Mary Danzig thought it was all a big misunderstanding. But soon, her own devotion to the church came into question. She, too, felt unwelcome in the orchestra. Her parents wrote letters to church authorities, begging for an audience or at least some understanding. They were unsuccessful. "I felt like my world had come crashing down when Peter told me he might be excommunicated," said Mary Danzig, at the time a member of the Primary Presidency in her ward. "What would happen to my family in the eternities, in our community, in our extended family? I found myself coming completely unglued every Sunday. I spent a great deal of time hiding in the bathroom crying with my little girls."

Sad, and disappointing to be sure.

I can’t help but contrast this with the guy I know in a similar position in the church but higher. He’s one of the wealthier men in the valley and he keeps and supports a wife, children, and a hot young boyfriend (who is also in the LDS church and has a wife and kids). Everyone who knows them knows the situation; they flaunt their affections in front of their wives (don’t care they?), and at the local gym they are all over each other for all to see. They’ve seemingly gone out of their way to make their situation clear and this has been going on for years, but have they ever been disciplined? Has he even been suspended from his position in the church? No, he’s still there, probably because he’s never outright said the words to a church leader (though he has to others), and he’s never said it in an editorial. He’s probably never expressed his conscience when his conscience said the LDS church has, like any other institution, made an occasional error. Heck, he’s probably never even thought the church could be wrong here and is just waiting for God to get rid of his "SSA" in the celestial kingdom, where his family and the family of his lover can just be good friends. I bet he’d even stay in line and stand against marriage for gay couples, and so he stays, but people like Danzig go.

Okay, I got heated :-). I began writing before I cooled down.

People like Nielsen and Danzig are rare in humanity, and they are bound to take bruises and bumps for it. Many people know what’s right, but they second guess, put things off; they don’t want to rock the boat, particularly if it’s the boat in which they float, such as their church. Most people are good cops, and, sure, that’s where I tend to fit too. But the others, like Danzig and Nielsen, these are the people who take the scrapes from clearing the path for change. Ironically, these folks in the church threatening them will likely be the guys who unintentionally encourage the rest of the congregation, those with a twitching conscience, to finally stand up and pave that same path, to eventually follow the full golden rule in equality for families such as mine.

SB267

Well the bill revoking Salt Lake City’s registry is out of committee. Read the article here.

Please, if you’re so inclined and are a citizen of Utah, call your representative and express your opposition to this bill (Bill SB267). You can find their contact info here. If you are in favor of this awful bill, your representative may be contacted telepathically. Give it a shot; it really works!

Seriously, this attack on our families is past ridiculous and has to stop. It is very damaging to many people, not merely gay people. If you want to get more involved there will be a rally tomorrow (Feb 13) at the capitol at 6 pm. If you're a regular at my blog and are going to come, let me know so we can put a face to the fonts :-).

Oy, and check out this picture.

HERE

You can just see the righteous and tough love right there in Buttar’s face, huh?

Common Fetid Ground

It seems our favorite Baptist Pastor will be protesting at the funeral of LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley.

If you’ve not steeled yourself up to such antics you should probably not read this link (and you’re probably a healthier man than I for the sensitivity :-)):

Here (I decided not to link to the worst of it, on the ghf site. I linked to an article that talks about it and links there but I don't want to directly boost his hits...)

It’s basically the same old screed that gays have faced for centuries. The LDS are going to burn in hell for all eternity with us gays, wishing we had only listened to their wisdom… But it’s not their wisdom, right? They’re not cruel, heartless, unloving, right? They love gays and the LDS and are only telling us the truth of God’s plan, one they follow in complete humility…

Sad. Hate may harden a heart, but that emotion which feels like love and isn’t will completely solidify it. Indulgence in such feelings is the sin that should send people hiding in the mountains at the thought of eternal judgment. But it won’t. Such mind games are made to please both the dark and light side of our human nature; love the sinner and treat him like an enemy. The ironic self-righteousness of the self-admitted vile sinner feels too good. The infinite ego found in submitting to your idea of God is too potent. What to do?

It just gets so old.

I suppose one could try to find a silver lining and imagine that common ground, no matter how fetid, is a place on which two groups can build. Maybe sharing such a shocking foe will go some way to making the gay community in Utah less willing to demonize their LDS opponents. Maybe it will make the LDS less willing to degrade our families and relationships or call for our legal inequality. Regardless, that’d be a thin lining on one large dark cloud of tomorrow's planned action.

I hope it snows like mad :-).

To those attending the funeral, I’d say just acknowledge the sadness in this guy and his family, let it quench your temper, and walk by silently; I’m sure a quiet prayer for them wouldn’t hurt either. And for goodness sake, don’t touch them. They’re all lawyers.

Tragedy

A local and very prominent anti-gay rights activist lost her son a while ago. Many in the gay community knew how at the time, but the official police report only came out last week. It even took up a portion of the news, but I'd rather keep this nameless and not link to a story. Plainly, he overdosed on a mixture of heroin and a couple other drugs. Those are the dry facts of an event, an unmitigated tragedy.

I’ve been wondering if there’s anything to say about this and how or if one should. I held off to see how it would settle. Anything I can write will balance precariously near misusing someone’s tragedy to try to mitigate another’s and I don’t want that. Nevertheless, it’s too clear that there is something to say here. There are a lot of emotions and conflicting feelings, and maybe a moral for all parents.

I was on a panel with this lady at one point. I was very much a novice at politics, but she is a professional. The whole time I talked she took notes. When it was her turn she was brutal, to my perspective, calling our love for our children selfish and debasing our family. She made all sorts of dire predictions for our handicapped children, in their non-ideal home, based on research that was either unpublishable in any reputable journal or focused on children in single-parents homes.

One of the things she claimed was that our children were likely to become sexually promiscuous and drug addicts. The daughter of one of our lesbian friends in the audience began to cry at her assault. I’ll not forget the look on that girl's face when she finally got up in tears and tried to defend herself and her family from this lady. But this anti-gay rights activist was unmoved; she just kept that serene look on her face, so seemingly self-assured that what she was doing was right, giving us and our families her “tough love.” It’s difficult for me to understand how, but she felt good keeping us away from the rights she enjoyed in her family; she was fine taking our tax dollars under such circumstances and you could see it on her face. It all made me angry.

One charge she leveled against us was how horrible it was that our children may get teased in school, apparently never making the connection that whether that happens or not is in her hands, and in the hands of parents like herself. She also complained that we were using our children for politics, by merely speaking up in public! We were instead supposed to keep hidden and quiet and let the insults and lies about our families go unchallenged. That was the lesson we should, I guess, teach our children in her mind (though she was in the press all the time). How couldn’t she understand, as a parent herself, that we had to speak up? We were never even involved in politics until we became parents and then it became very important, but, to her mind, gays are such people that she couldn’t comprehend that it wasn’t dastardly political hopes spurring gays into having children.

Why? I suspect it's because she had, in her mind, dehumanized our families through the lense of her religious beliefs. But many in the gay community, myself included, have made the a similar mistake in response.

Okay, clearly, I think she has a warped outlook, and maybe working off old steam from that day at this point is wrong. I don’t know. I can’t help, though, but feel something profound is in this waiting to be unearthed for both this lady and the gay community for which she has long been the bogyman. I can so clearly see the distressed face of that 14-year-old girl of our lesbian friends, a great girl (class president at her school at the time). I can clearly hear her sob “I am not a drug addict,” and speak of her love for her family bravely in the face of such opposition. I can also so clearly see this lady’s serene face at the time, and hear her confident pronouncements about her idea of “ideal families.”

But now I know, at that very moment, she already knew her son was, sadly, an addict; that serenity and look of “I know what’s best for you and your children, and what God wants” was merely a thin veneer. In fact, now the whole memory has been turned upside down. It's one of those plot twists that can reach back and change even the past, what you thought you saw. That memory of her serene, self-assured face once triggered anger; in a blink of new information it's become a portrait of indescribable human sadness, one I’m terrified to ever know.

There must be a lesson in this tragedy for both sides. For my side, I hope the gay community pauses before we take her harsh attitude and allow it to anger us again; we should look deeper at what might be beyond the political persona. Sure, we must counter her attacks, but the demonizing should end. Eventually we'll have to find some common ground, and, while we wait, it will do us all some good to focus on the people behind those veneers. I personally don’t imagine her slings and arrows will ever sting like they once did, even if she starts it all up again; there is a place now where what we share in our humanity is too apparent, disarming. It's unfortunate that tragedy brought it to mind.

I wish that I could personally give my condolences without the baggage of history and politics trailing behind them, but I’m pretty sure that’s too much to hope for. This will have to do.

Though I know it’s long dead…

…I should get this off my chest.

Let me be clear. I am not a US Senator. I have never been a US Senator.

Sure, I was arrested for and pled guilty to attempted caucus with an undercover officer, but I didn’t do it. I just wanted the accusation to go away and thought saying I did it would help.

See, I just naturally have a wide political stance. I was not, in any way, attempting to create law with the cop. In fact, he approached me saying something like, “Hey dude, you wanna take a look at my school voucher proposal.” I refused and merely then reached down to pick up a piece of legal pad, which I thought was trash, and the guy claimed he saw me write statute on it. It was clearly entrapment, or something.

Anyway, I have been asked by gay command to resign my place as a gay man, and am seriously intending to do so, next month. Really. I just hope the rumors that I may be a closeted member of the legislative branch have not caused anguish in my community, or mortally wounded my reputation.

I mean, I’ve seen the polls; I know how the public feels about those kind of people (11% approval, ouch).

There, I feel better :-)… So another anti gay rights figure was found soliciting hot gay sex, allegedly (for both the “soliciting” and the “hot” part of that sentence… especially allegedly for the “hot” part).

Days after the story broke, a talk show host here was saying how nasty and hypocritical liberals were for claiming to be for gay rights, but then complaining about a Republican’s soliciting anonymous public sex in a place where families were travelling, allegedly. To him, the gays and their rights, they are all about the anonymous bathroom sex.

To be misunderstood in the minds of those out to legally harm your family can both discourage and encourage. I mean, unlike most political arguments, where there’s some nuance and complexity on both sides, you directly know the other side is up in the night, and there’s hope in the idea they may notice. They could take a second look if they found out that people like me--admitted, avowed, and confirmed--learned all about toe tapping and stall wall palming right along with the rest of the country.

Simply, such secret protocol wasn’t developed for or by my gay culture; we’ve no use or want for it. It was developed for and by your culture, Mr. talk show host, to help manage some of the more unfortunate folks hiding in your culture, not mine. We rarely even see these folks, unless they’re attacking us or until they stop treating their attraction as an addiction, but they are your religious leaders, business partners, and politicians, and they are making these sad compromises based on your rules.

(This same host once insulted my family and called me, personally, on air, a fruitcake during the Amendment 3 debate; so, sure, maybe I’m more heated than I should be here :-))

Anyway, it’s no wonder a man like Senator Larry Craig, who’s alleged actions would’ve only confirmed the most bigoted views of gay people, is also against equal rights. Sad that, and all too common in my state. Allegedly.

SLC Pride 2007

I’ve enough time to just post some pictures from pride, right? I deserve a break, right? :-)

I sure do.

SLC’s pride festival was the largest I’ve ever seen (eh, “pride,” if only I was powerful enough in the gay cabal, I’d task a queer committee to come up with a better name. Alas, my gay powers are too weak.). It’s really become a fun event and I can see why they’ve grown from 1 to 3 days. I must say I also very much appreciate how they’ve made it much more inclusive of families; we got a whole big kid's section this time and our boys loved the magic show and face painting.

Here we are:

Damnable seagulls! They covered up Rob and the boy’s faces, not to mention my parents. They missed my aunt there though :-).

Anyway, in the parade we had many churches:

Many politicians:

Many advocacy groups:

The people were from all walks of life, cheering them on:

But what’s get’s the most attention?

That’s right:
Oh well. It’s certainly their day too :-).

Lastly, of course, there’s the part I worry I’ve gotten too numb to:

You can’t see it in this resolution but “Mormons” are on that man'snaughty list too (the guy with the middle sign). Or is it “Sex Addicts Mormons”? Here, I’ll blow it up; it’s kind of funny in a gallows humor sort of way.

No matter, they’re an expected part of the event, and they almost make the loving and jubilant feeling of the crowd even larger by the contrast. People just march right on.

I want to give one anecdote that really got to me, though (I’ve already spent more time here than I should have :-)).

We weren’t going to walk in the parade, but Alan insisted on it once he saw some people he knew (He likes the waving and cheers of others I guess :-)). So Alan and I walked on with a bunch of other families and Brian, more shy, stayed back with Rob and the rest of our family.

As I was walking a kid came up behind me yelling Brian’s name. At first I thought that my blog had found me ;-), but it was Brian’s real name. I turned and didn’t recognize the kid but he kept on and finally it was clear he was trying to get my attention, though he’d mixed my kids up. I felt bad I didn’t recognize him and was a bit leery (Being away from Rob I didn’t want to be seen talking to a handsome young man I didn’t know :-)). He quickly reminded me that we met over a year ago. He was a cousin of a niece (outside my direct family), and, at that point in his life, was having a very hard time with his parents, his faith, and his view of his future. When my niece told me his story, we offered to help and he and his partner had dinner at our home. I had forgotten it; it had been so long ago (or maybe it's my memory? :-)).

I’ll not go into the whole of what he told me there, walking in the parade route, but he basically made me feel like I’d made a positive and lasting difference. It’s funny that I didn't even know it, and that such a forgotten gesture of a dinner could come back to you like that. Walking in any parade is just fun for the community and people-watching aspects of it alone, but that made it feel a bit important too. I walked the remaining blocks with much more purpose.

Anyway, I'm still officially on blog "break". Now back to non-blog work :-).

Poisons

As most probably know, Jerry Falwell has died. He was someone’s father, grandfather, husband, and friend, and I hope those in my community will remember that, though I have already read some nasty things on the topic from the left in general.

I just went over how I view love and hate in this debate, here. Referring to the terms in that post, I don’t know if I can say Falwell felt tough love for gays, or something more akin to hate, and I don’t think anyone could say for sure. One could, again, look at actions. I remember just after 9/11, he blamed gays, in part, for the tragedy. It’s such an old tactic with regards to gays, and it struck me as threatening and, sure, it felt hateful to twist such a horror and aim it at my home. I also remember when he warned parents that the purple teletubby was a gay propagandist (Everyone in gay command knows it's the red one). In short, he was no friend of the gay community. He did a lot to harm our families in his activism. But he had his reasons for those actions, and none of that matters now, tough love or hate. The actions can be the same for both and they are done, and a man, one who many did love, is gone.

While, it’s too easy to feel the good feelings of love for gays when you're hurting them, it’s also too easy, in our position, to let anger get a barbed hook into us. It’s too easy to create a demonic caricature of those who’ve done the same to us. It feels good, like you’re gaining some ground, tit-for-tat. I know. There’s a good couple years in my late teens and early twenties when I was quite an angry young man. But it’s not healthy, it’s not helpful, and it’s not honest when any human is dehumanized. If there is time more wasted in my life than the time I spent in the closet, putting off my orientation, it was the time I spent angry at those who encouraged me to waste time in the first place.

Sure, I still get angry at the circumstance, as I did a couple days ago, but I make sure none of it lasts--I can’t take it home--and I can’t keep such emotion up for a person anymore, even when I want to. It just takes a pause to think about why they do what they do. Everybody has their nurture and nature behind them, and most try their best to do what’s right even when they’re doing a lot of harm. As I’ve said before, and as something I take as a way of living in this struggle: to be angry at another person is almost as useful as being angry at the weather, the main difference being that anger at the weather isn’t likely to make the weather worse.

Even after the first stone is cast, I believe we’ll do better for ourselves, our health, and those we love if we don’t decide to throw anything back in anger. And if you feel anger for a man past his death, or joy at the end of his life, you should stop and wonder if you’ve not begun doing to yourself the same sort of damage that was the impetus of your anger in the first place. Simply, wherever the young gay men on the brink of choosing their life end up, I’d simply have to hope they'd not take that common anger with them. You won’t acclimate to that poison, and wouldn’t want to.

[Edit: I see now, a handful of gays in the Castro district have set up an anti-Falwell "memorial", story here. Sad, if I had to split the world into us-vs-them, I’d put such gays right there in the other camp with the anti-gay activists.]

TAL, GAYPA, and APA

A heads-up: Next weekend, This American Life will be spending its hour looking at the decision of the American Psychiatric Association to take us gay folks off the crazy list, at least for being gay ;-). It sounds like it’ll be an interesting tale:

“Part one of Alix's story details the activities of a closeted group of gay psychiatrists within the APA who met in secret and called themselves the GAYPA ... and another, even more secret group of gay psychiatrists among the political echelons of the APA.”

“Alix Spiegel's story continues, with a man dressed in a Nixon mask called Dr. Anonymous, and a pivotal encounter in a Hawaiian bar.”

Should make for some lively discussion.

If you miss it, they usually come up on podcast by the following Monday, if not sooner. Again, one could find it here.

Conference

It’s conference time. Spring is in the… Ah, Ah, Ahh-Choo! Excuse me. Air. And it’s the season for the sleepy anti-LDS groups to leave their dens, and, in an ostensibly earnest display of concern for another’s eternal fate, treat the Mormons like they were some sort of deceived sinners trapped in a deviant lifestyle. Conference goers will pass by their signs, politely refuse their tracks, and, one would hope, keep from engaging them in debate. I’m just glad the gay community only has to walk past those folks merely once a year :-), at “pride”, though I've not yet been able to convince grandpa from engaging them in debate.

Anyway, conference, the protesters... I just want to again bring up my favorite conference memory: here.

The take-away conference advice: Don’t accept flags from lesbians you don’t know, and be kind to those who, by all reasonable judgment, look to be “militant queers” protesting your sacred event.

South Park

For those who aren’t so willing to observe the crasser side of media, South Park took on conversion therapy last night. I’m not going to put the youtube video up here (it is offensive, dealing with suicide offensive). But you can go there and search for “Cartman sucks” if you like.

Butter’s speech at the end gives the moral of their story (as South Park tends to do). Butters is a straight kid who gets tricked in to seeming “bi-curious” and is thus sent by his dad to “Pray the Gay Out” at a camp, and the counselors keep telling him he’s confused. Mind you, he has no idea what bi-curious means. While Butters is trying to talk his “account-a-bill-i-buddy” down from a bridge, one of the counselors calls him “confused” again:

“All right, all right that does it!

I am sick and tired of everyone telling me I’m confused. I wasn’t confused until other people started telling me I was. You know what I think? I think maybe you’re the
ones who are confused. I’m not going to be confused anymore just because you say I should be.

My name is Butters, I’m eight years old, I’m blood type O, and I’m Bi-Curious. And even that’s okay, because if I’m bi-curious and I’m somehow made from God. Then I figure God must be a little bi-curious himself.”

At that, the gay kid on the bridge says “I think, I think I’d like to come down now.”

Again, it is offensive, but, if you want to see how popular culture is looking at this issue, there it is. South Park is pervasive.

And I still need help with Easter :-)

Three Weeks

Reports are still a bit sparse, but it seems the disgraced Reverend Ted Haggard is now a heterosexual, and not just any heterosexual but “completely heterosexual”… after merely three weeks of therapy. From here:

"He is completely heterosexual," Ralph [one of the men in charge of Rev. Haggard] said. "That is something he discovered. It was the acting- out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.

So if you’ve been trying for years to stop "acting out", what’s taking you so long? Seems simple enough.

I tried but I just can’t bear to put the “humor” tag on this story.

South Africa

South Africa’s Parliament Approves Gay Marriage

"When we attained our democracy, we sought to distinguish ourselves from an unjust painful past, by declaring that never again shall it be that any South African will be discriminated against on the basis of color, creed culture and sex," Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa- Nqakula told the National Assembly.

This has been a while coming as their young constitution expressly forbids discrimination on sex, and their high court ruled that meant couples could marry regardless of their sex. Regardless, it passed 230 to 41 votes.

I think of the South Africa of my youth and I think of apartheid… What a change. Who would have thought, two decades ago, they’d offer equal rights to citizens and their families regardless of their sex before the United States of America would?

Obligatory Halloween Post

On my own, I don’t like this holiday; in fact the only time I can remember my mom every really upset at me was over a dispute we had with regards to my unwillingness participate in Halloween (It’s a long story…). It seemed decadent, absurd, and more than a little pagan to my young Christian mind, somehow in a way my favorite holiday, which consists of finding candy-filled eggs concealed by a giant bunny, didn’t.

Today, I enjoy it a good deal more, through the eyes of my children. The first year they were pumpkins, then a monkey and a lion, adorable. The year after that they were cows, and we were cowboys, a year ahead of the fad :-), and twice as adorable as the year before. I’d show you the pictures if I didn’t fear you’d seize up, over-dosed in some epileptic fit of cuteness.

Last year they began choosing for themselves, a bubble bee and a puppy. This year we have one scientist; B said he wanted to dress up as me (Yes, I’m choked up at that). Our other boy chose to be a pirate, but, sadly, R is not a pirate by profession. Anyway, I’m looking forward to tonight.

But enough about adorable us ;-), I want to post some advice for them impressionable teens out there; too late for this year, but for the next.

I never liked Halloween in my youth, save for one year. Three of my buddies and I got jobs (paying nothing really) at a haunted house. I loved it; it was weeks of some of the most fun I had as a teen.

We had all secured positions in the Mad Scientist Room. It was filled with Jacob’s ladders, plasma spheres, and so on; it reeked of ozone, sweat, and artificial fog. The guy we worked for “experimented” with two of my friends in the center of the room, and another friend and I directly worked the crowd, who were segregated from all the equipment by a railing.

I was some nondescript monster mask in a pitch-black robe, but frightening enough. Girls smelling of hairspray shoved their boyfriends into my path at my approach; their boyfriends sometimes acted like even younger girls for the same reason :-). It was great humor therapy for a just-coming-out-to-himself gay.

By the last night, I had it all figured out for optimum results. I kept in my favorite location most of the time, with my face in a dark corner of the room, my hood up; I was practically invisible. The customers would all have to file past me, the center of the room cordoned off. They’d come in their groups, typically in the following order: 1. Those posing bravely for a date up front, 2. the most vulnerable in the center (not coincidentally the folks who have the most fun), and 3. the kids who think they’re witty with their detached observations in back (my position when I was a customer :-)).

In our room, though, they’d all be focused on the gruesome/cheesy scene of plastic body parts, electric arcs, and bad acting playing out in the center of the room. No one would notice me as they passed unless they touched me.

About halfway into my last night, it was packed. A group of apparent collage students entered the room, and all set into making fun of the scene. I let the first couples brush by me and once I was in the center of their huddle I turned and roared. They all screamed and turned to meet my hideous, bloody “face”.

Most the guys were visibly terrified, and the all girls ducked behind them. I had surprised them perfectly; some even had their backs up to me, barely touching. One guy--I’ll not forget his face--threw both hands up, fingers spread, and let out the most high-pitched squeal I’d yet heard from a guy. It was one of the funniest things I’ve seen. But then, still with the terrified 1950’s-horror-film-actress look on his face, he clenched his fist and swung wildly, hitting me right below the hole meant for my eye.

He clocked me good, and I was stunned, but the humor of it won out.

Once sense returned to the guy (“Oh yes, I’m in a haunted house, that was a mask, I just hit a kid, and there are no such things as monsters…”), he started repeating apologies, intermixed with “Dude, are you okay?” I was fine, just trying to catch my breath from laughing through pain.

But that one bruised cheek was well worth the price of those weeks working in a haunted house. I’d recommend it. Heck, the look on just that one guy’s face was worth it, and getting punched in the face now seems like an added bonus :-).

Other, Larger Animals

"This is a horrendous, horrific incident for the Amish community. They're solid citizens in the community. They're good people. They don't deserve ... no one deserves this,"

"The U.S. extreme threat of a nuclear war and sanctions and pressure compel the DPRK to conduct a nuclear test, an essential process for bolstering nuclear deterrent, as a corresponding measure for defense,"

"I would drive a few miles for a hot stud like you,"

Where do I turn in my resignation?

It’s news weeks like this that make a cabin in the wilds of Alaska seem alluring. We'd be just like the pioneers... Well...

McGreevey

A change of pace… McGreevey’s promotion of his book happened while I was posting my reasons for equal marriage rights. Here’s his interview on NPR (The “Listen” button is just under the title).

Here

Don’t you hate it when you listen to a person and that alone makes you less willing to judge them harshly? Well, as harshly ;-).

A gay man cheating on his wife with many anonymous gay trysts, using political power to help "lovers", and advocating to keep committed monogamous gay couples from equal rights was not someone I was happy to hear say “I am a gay American”. He caused a lot of harm and sorrow. But, I must admit, he doesn’t seem that difficult to understand after hearing him out (assuming he’s innocent of the nastier claims about him which he denies). The way he puts it, treating your homosexuality like an addiction and being anti gay rights seem like reasonable bedfellows.

Anyway, I think some around here might find some of what he has to say interesting.