5 posts tagged “gay”
Far be it from me to defend Ted Haggard or evangelical Christianity from criticism, but this Grant fellow, who is exposing another sex scandal with Ted Haggard is really working my last nerve. (More on the story here.)
Grant is portraying himself as a poor, helpless victim, who didn’t want to do anything wrong, but somehow was coerced into a lurid scene by the malicious Ted Haggard! And the news casters go right along with it in describing Grant as “the victim.” And saying that Grant claims that Haggard “sexually abused him.” Grant was 22 years old when this happened, or as Grant describes it, he was just a 22 year old kid. And this is the kid’s story:
He’d been kicked out of his Christian college for doing gay stuff. He goes to a church and on the first day he tells the pastor, Haggard, that he’s having trouble not doing gay stuff. Then Haggard’s eyes light up, and he makes Grant his special project. Soon, Haggard is telling Grant about lurid gay experiences on the road and how he loves doing meth. Grant wonders, "Why would this big guy, this big evangelical leader be taking such interest in me?" All Grant did was tell him about his struggles with homosexuality and accept thousands of text messages about gay sex and drug use. So why would Haggard be interested in him? Grant decides that Haggard’s interest in him was a message from God, a text message about blow jobs and meth ... from God.
Haggard then invites Grant to travel with him to Cripple Creek, the Las Vegas of Colorado, with its wholesome casinos like The Brass Ass. While on this trip, Haggard tries to convince Grant to engage in lurid sexual and drug related activities. Shockingly, it turned out that Haggard wanted to do the very things that he said he wanted to do in thousands of text messages! How was this mere 22 year old adult kid to know? Well, Grant tells Haggard in no uncertain terms that he does not want to do those things, and then they retire to the out of town hotel room they’re sharing for some reason. Then, (OMG!) Haggard gets naked in their hotel room! How could Grant have suspected that the meth-using gay sex addict that he was sharing his hotel room with would expose himself when all Grant had to go on were the thousands of text messages that Haggard had sent him telling him that that was what Haggard did? What was Grant to do? Leave the room? No way! He’s just a 22 year old adult toddler. Where would he go? Would they even allow a 22 year old adult baby into The Brass Ass for the free buffet? No, he had to stay there and see that naked pastor.
And how would Grant get anyone to believe him? After all, he’s just a 22 year old adult embryo with thousands of text messages detailing Haggard’s sexual and meth related travels? (BTW, don’t you love that Grant simultaneously tells Haggard that he deleted the text messages without keeping them in any form while he records the call implicating Haggard about the text messages? What a naïve 22 year old adult egg he is.) And once they did believe him, why they had to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to keep Grant quiet cover his medical bills. And when they didn't pay, he had to go public!
And good lord, what would happen if Grant kept quiet?!? Why ... umm ... that is ... er ... I know it can't be about the money, so ... umm ... Well, I’ll let him explain:
And I think that unless people come out and speak about what happened there that this man could possibly do this again.
Yes, we must speak up before Haggard is once again allowed to expose himself to a gay adult who is sharing an out of town hotel room with him. Who knows who else might be forced to take thousands of dollars to compensate for the trauma?
So my friend Duane said that he reads my blog frequently, but it makes him feel stupid. His theory is, I guess, that I’m writing at a super smart level. My theory is that I’m writing so poorly that it’s hard to get what I’m saying.
In any event, this post is for Duane, who likes music and may or may not like the piece above. It’s not Duane’s usual style of music, or at least, it’s not the usual style that he plays at the bar, but it’s interesting. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, but now I can’t stop thinking about this song, so I guess that says something. I’m not really fond of the Matt Alber’s vocal tone, which is a wee bit nasally or something, but other than that, his performance of the song is haunting and truly affecting. And lyrically, it’s super smart without my poor writing getting in the way, so Duane might like it too.
I love the simplicity of the video. It works in a goofy, romantic way while still using simple, stark imagery. I don’t think it’s the gay element that is making me like this, but I know it’s not hurting.
Give it a shot and see what you think. Matt Alber has other stuff on YouTube, but this is the strongest piece of his unless you are a big fan of Handel.
And as for Duane, he’s one of the main reasons I went from dreading my move to Nashville to really loving it. He and his cohorts were just about the first people I met in Nashville, and given the odds that I could meet people I like so much so quickly, I am tempted to rethink my commitment to atheism. Given how naughty Duane is, I should at least believe in Satan, right?
A quick story: a man and his infirmed father were at a local mall here in Nashville some years ago. The man was helping his father to their car so they walked arm in arm. Some local guys spotted them and assumed they were gay snuggling, so they shot them. I doubt the father and son even considered that someone would think they were gay, and never considered what might happen to them if they made it appear that they were gay.
I was reminded of that story because of this story that happened last Sunday: two Ecuadorian bothers were in New York and had been to a bar. They too were walking closely together and, as is the custom in Ecuador, they may have been walking arm in arm. Three men jumped out of a car and attacked them. One of the brothers escaped but the other had a bottle broken over his head and was beaten with a baseball bat. He died.
Now this:
The idea that Mike Huckabee seems to be expressing is that gay rights aren’t that big a deal because we homosexuals haven’t had to deal with the kind of violence that African Americans have. What Huckabee fails to recognize is that much of the reason we aren’t the victims of violence more often is that we hide that we are gay, something the families in the stories above didn't know either. But saying that we don’t deserve the same kind of civil rights movements as African Americans because we could stay in the closet to escape from violence is like saying that Anne Frank in didn’t need a civil rights movement because she could stay in the attic.
The guys in the two stories above didn’t know they had to live in fear because they’d never had to. Like Huckabee, they didn’t have an assumption that violence would follow if they stood too close to each other and appeared gay. I doubt Huckabee has thought about the threat of violence to people who could frequently seem gay because they are gay. Why should he? His life hasn’t depended on hiding.
But like those separate facilities and those issue of second class citizenry that Huckabee denounces for what they did to African Americans, the separate facilities and issues of second class citizenry that Huckabee espouses for people like me create the same permission to use violence that was used to justify hosing people and cracking open their heads in the 60s.
Huckabee brings up the “attack” on that old women, where someone brazenly slapped her Styrofoam cross out of her hand and equates that with the bias and violence used against gays ... and people suspected of being gay. He equates the very out Christian Church, the one that to which every President has proudly proclaimed his membership to, with homosexuality, to which no President and few elected leaders have been willing to admit membership to.
One has to wonder if anyone has ever been killed by strangers on the streets of America because someone mistook them for being Christian.
So I was asked to review Manly, a book of illustrated gay erotica by Dale Lazarov & Amy Colburn (and colors/inks by Dominic Cordoba) and I seriously considered writing just one sentence. Something like: Holy crap, that was the sexiest comic I’ve ever seen! But how would that make me look clever? Why should someone else’s truly extraordinary work show me up?
But before we go forward, let me warn you that this review might be a little too much information about my sexual proclivities for you so you might want to avert your eyes now!
All right now that the sissies, prudes, and haters are gone, let’s talk porn for a second. There is a shocking decline in the quality of sexually explicit material out there. Oh, there’s a lot more of it. You can’t shake a hard penis without hitting some, but most of it so pathetically amateurish that you won’t have a hard penis to start with. It seems like anyone with a laptop and lap is videotaping said lap and uploading his load onto the internet. I have nothing against Xtube and its ilk, but do that many guys really think every instance of them jerking off is an audience-worthy event? I suspect they’re stroking their egos more than they are their cocks. Which is why I was so pleased with Manly. All aspects of it are professionally done. Real thought and effort were put into every panel.
I’ve been a fan of erotic comics since the first time I saw a Tom of Finland drawing. I obsessed over those for a while and tried to get my underage hands on all of the Kake adventures with little success. No internet back then, damn it. It’s hard to say for sure because the sexual response is generated in a deep irrational section of the brain, but I believe that part of what I liked about those erotic comics was that they could exaggerate. The problem with exaggeration is that, ironically, needs to be used sparingly. Exaggerated amounts of exaggeration can push an erotic work out of the realm of sexiness and into the realm of freakishness. Generally speaking, we lust after humans, so to be sexy, the image has to look human. It can be super human, but if it goes too far beyond human, it is no longer sexy. The Washington Monument might be phallic, but it isn’t sexy. Tom uses a bit of a balancing act between nearly photorealistic images and unrealistic proportions on the bodies of his men. If the details of a Tom of Finland drawing weren’t rendered with such precision, I don’t think his overblown (and frequently blown) guys would be as erotic as they are and his art would not have had the impact that has on the entire gay community. Artists like the Hun I don’t think were as successful in part because his art is not as realistic.
Similarly, Manly uses a fairly realistic style. A bit cartoony in its simplicity of line, but it keeps exaggeration to a minimum. There is no doubt that you are looking at a drawing, but the proportions of the bodies are pretty much realistic. Everyone is perfect, or at least, a perfect example of his type, it is still a human perfection. All the guys are remarkably hung, but none of them has a dick as big at that guy you saw on that video where you feared for the life of the bottom guy. You know, the one where you spent most of the time gasping and cringing instead of coming. None of the Manly guys are nearly as hung as Tom’s guys. And I think that makes the guys in Manly sexier than the guys in the works of Tom or even that dangerously hung guy you saw in video. Sure, we’re all pretty much size queens, but there is point where sexy ends and mere novelty begins. Manly is well aware of that border.
In the final analysis, what really makes Manly sexy is the sex. And it’s as hot as anything I’ve seen. As you might expect from the title, the guys in it are mainly masculine archetypes. There’s a cop, a pair of boxers (as in two fighters, not underpants), and some leathermen, but where you could predict exactly where the story was going with a Tom of Finland comic, Manly plays with your expectations with plots driven by the characters’ personalies, personalities that are more complex than being simply horny. There are interesting moments of shyness and back stories of lust.
And all this is done without dialogue or captions. It is really astonishing. Manly is both as hot as anything you've seen and still a work of art. I highly recommend it.
“Scott, community benefits, roads, fire department, etc. is why we pay taxes.”
Yes, but you also aren’t allowed to put up signs that are too large, make too much noise, put a business in a place zone for residence, etc. Community is more than paying taxes. There are rules that are created to make the community more pleasant and more successful. If you want those rules that benefit you, you have to follow rules that you may not like.
“Furthermore to claim that the autonomy of the individual, even the freedom to
be a hating idiot, threatens, "the economy" or "creates a permanent underclass:
is specious.”
“Even during the 50's at the height of segregation, employers who refused to
hire blacks were hurting themselves more than their prospective employees.”
And yet they still did it and created an underclass of poor blacks.
“The economy is simply too damn competitive to stay competitive if your reduce
your hiring pool in such a way.”
“More to the point, these ideas violate all our rights. Should you be forced to
hire a man who believes all gay men should be killed outright? Of course not.”
No one should be forced to hire any particular person. But that is not the same as refusing to hire an entire protected class of people. If there was the threat of creating an underclass of homophobes, perhaps they -- as a class -- should be protected. I don’t see that being necessary right now, but maybe in the future. The courts have defined particular classes of people who are prone to become underclasses by prevailing bias. If there is not a prevailing bias that can create an underclass, the group of people is not protected and can be discriminated against for whatever attribute one might care to discriminate against them. Right now, homophobes are not a protected class, but religious affiliation is a protected class. In most cases, I should not be allowed to consider religion, even anti-gay religions, in my hiring because religious groups have been subjected to collective discrimination by communities, which has created underclasses. If you don’t believe me, ask any Jew. Catholics could tell you something too.
”So long as you do that, you deserve the benefits of being an American.”
I’m sorry, but weren’t you the one suggesting that gays should be excluded from one of the biggest employers in America, the military? If I follow the rules and pay my taxes, shouldn’t that benefit be available to me? Are governments allowed to discriminate in hiring? They are collectively the biggest employer in the US.
"The single best way for gays, or women, to be treated with respect, is for more
of them to achieve success.”
Agreed. But it’s not the only way and it becomes far more difficult to become successful if the culture suggests that they shouldn’t be hired, shouldn’t live in good neighborhoods, and shouldn’t be seen in public roles. You really don’t know what it’s like to be a minority. I can be fired if it is discovered that something having nothing whatsoever to do with my job is found out about me. That means that I not only loose my income, I loose my house because I can’t pay for it and I loose my insurance, which means that there is fair chance that I could loose my life because I have an odd genetic disease that I couldn’t afford to treat. I work for the state in a job that they could hire any number of other people to do so the idea of competition is kind of silly. I already was prevented for getting my dream job because a recruiter found out I was gay. She was a in your face Christian who loved me and even offered to hire me herself if the company she sent me to didn’t hire me. Then she found out I was gay and I never heard from her again. Not only did I not get that job, but I didn’t get any of the opportunities that job would have opened for me. So when you say that hiring bias won’t create an underclass, I have to tell you that you are full of shit. It does happen. We are hindered in our advancement.
“even the world’s biggest homophobe, if he’s a swimming fan, had to respect mark
spitz. But attempting to run to mommy gov and crying that the "straight white
boys" wont play nice, is the act of a child, not of a man. I know your better
than that scott.”
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