Boing Boing » homosexuality

Growing Up Gay in 2013: Joe Schwartz, the teen in "Oddly Normal"

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:53:25 +0000

My friend John Schwartz at the New York Times wrote "Oddly Normal," a wonderful book about how he and his wife Jeanne worked through challenges to learn how best to support their son Joe, who is gay.

In the Atlantic today, Alice Dreger interviews Joe, who is now 17 years old, "to expand on some of the themes explored in the book and answer some questions raised by people who have commented on it."

Joe is a really interesting person, and the interview is terrific. Go have a read.

(Photo: John and Joe, shot by Ethan Hill for the NYT)

Last wish of married lesbian soldier dying of breast cancer: "Let DOMA die before I do"

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 18:42:35 +0000

Charlie Morgan, a 47-year-old career soldier in the late stages of metastatic breast cancer, says she hopes to live long enough to see the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) overturned, so that her wife will receive the benefits that a widow in a hetero couple would receive. “I’m praying that they take it up soon,” Morgan told the Washington Post in a phone interview from her home in New Durham, NH “It’s my motivation for staying alive. I really need to be alive when they actually do overturn DOMA, otherwise Karen is not guaranteed anything.” Read the rest here.

Gentleman is possessed by gay demons

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:21:39 +0000

Come out in the name of Jesus, indeed! Televangelist and tele-exorcist Bob Larson (web, Wikipedia, Amazon) spiritually cleanses a man who is possessed by "a filthy stinking sex demon" of homosexuality and pornography. FYI, UFOs have an agenda, and it is to impregnate us with gay demon alien seed. io9 has written about Larson before.

(thanks, Joe Sabia, via Reddit)

BBC radio documentary on same-sex couple coping with cancer and mortality

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:24:14 +0000

BB reader Jane Lowers sends along this beautiful BBC Radio documentary about two men in California who have been together for decades, now facing one's terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. "I know both of them; Eric was a columnist at a radiology magazine I used to work for," says Jane. "Their house is every inch as insane as described. But the story -- trying to decide how to deal with a diagnosis, how to use the time you have, and how it can affect relationships -- was very well-described, I thought."

The Decent People: LGBT pride in the former Yugoslavia

Jasmina Tesanovic — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 22:12:36 +0000

Years ago during the reign of Milosevic in Serbia I wrote an essay called "Decent people". It was about that 80 percent of Serbian people, the classic silent majority, who lived in denial of the genocide in Srebrenica, the snipers in Sarajevo, the shelling in Dubrovnik.

These so called decent people who could not grasp cruel political and military reality. Eventually the damage to daily life became impossible; the decent people could not go through with their charade of normality as postmen, engineers and dentists. On October 5th 2000 a million people took to the streets in Belgrade and physically deposed the tyrant.

However, time stopped then in Serbia. An October 6th never dawned for a bewildered Serbia, not even 12 years later, on the anniversary. Milosevic died behind the bars in the Hague, my Yugoslav-era parents are deceased, my postman is on pension but the inhabitants of the Serbian parliament today are the next generation of those decent people. No painful truths were admitted and confronted; there was a rebellion of the decent, but not a thorough change in the society.

Typically, a few days ago the new elected premiere of Serbia forbade the Gay Pride annual parade. He claimed that 80 percent of the Serbian population is against gay manifestations, and warned against the risky and inevitable gay-bashing that would follow in the streets. This new premiere is an old member from the deposed Milosevic' s party. Crushing the aspirations of Serbian gays has become routine, and he has already handled the trouble successfully before.

There's only been one actual, public, blatant Gay Pride Parade, in 2010, held with heavy police escort and, yes, violent incidents from right-wing hooligans. These populists are well-rehearsed agitators, whose extremism is easy to predict, but the decent people are in many ways worse. In 2001 we held a street event for gays, and everyday citizens yelled obscenities, spat on us and pushed us around. I vividly remember a middle aged man, his face was distorted by hate and righteous anger, trailing our pro-gay banners and yelling insults. I thought he was a deranged stalker, but next day I met him in the local green market, along with his wife and a small kid. He was polite, neighborly, saying hello. He was a respectable patriarch of a small family, shopping in public as all decent people do on Sundays, except when society fails so utterly that there's no money left and nothing in the shops. As for spitting on me: he was proud of it and considered it a civic duty.

The Serbian gay pride parade was held indoors this year, more a protest than a parade. There was still a lot of fuss made by the police, who treated the press center as if it were a besieged fortress, ghastly emptying Belgrade downtown and isolating the gays. The activists inside four walls were promising one another a better future, but many avoided the farcical non-parade.

It's become an opportunity for foreign friends and supporters to write mails of support. The western countries are perfectly aware that the Serbian right has made gay existence a wedge-issue, so for their part the West makes it a litmus test for their own attitudes toward the new reign in Serbia. The big picture is grimmer. In Russia and Ukraine there are serious attempts for re-criminalizing gays and the Serbian is quite encouraged by these Slavic examples of a weird new KGB-Orthodox-fundamentalist autocratic alliance.

My friends in Italy recently successfully performed gay parades, plus a gay marriage in public with all the witty joy of commedia dell'arte, in the land of Pope! However, in Italy too the decent people shy away en masse from the specter of gay marriages and legalized gay couples. The Italians were trying to console me with the universality of homophobia.

But Italian society, raddled with the sexual decadence of priestly abuse and Berlusconi's harems, can't possibly be so densely solid in denialist ignorance as the Serbian decent people. The Serbs have been defending their heretical, unorthodox Orthodoxy for centuries, from attacks from east, west, north, south and center. The rigor and the pressure had a fossilizing effect.

In Italy you will be casually ripped off as a tourist -- everyday Italian decent people will cheerfully defraud foreigners, disgracefully cheating and chiselling for a couple of euros. In Serbia the hospitable decent people would feed a guest with their last crumbs of bread and salt, but then put the guest's severed head on a pike if he offended their code of honor. The very strong Orthodox church which dictates aggressively the new-old codes of Christian fundamentalist expansion, is in open alliance with the new/old political regime, the government which was heavily involved in wars and war profiteering.

However, there are fits of disturbance as well. During the gay pride week in Belgrade, a show appeard by a Swedish artist Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin , titled "Ecce Homo." It deliberately and rather hilariously depicted Christ and his disciples as gay leather-boys. This rampantly blasphemous show was protected by two thousand policemen while a rally of so called family people seized the opportunity to push the right wing agenda around the corner. Belgrade, which is after all the home-town of Marina Abramovic ( even though it never acknowledged the work of the world famous artist), attracted some activists and art fans to enjoy and appreciate the show.

Homophobia, nationalism, racism, clericalism, fundamentalism all have the same root: the fear of Other, and the same aim, the homogenization of all differences. If you're gay you at least have the joy of knowing that your struggle is shared world-wide, but the planet's decent people, wrapped in political deceit and faith-based superstition, seem to be shutting themselves into a planetary series of ever-narrower, ever more stifling closets.

When Same-Sex Marriage Was a Christian Rite

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:35:12 +0000

Gwinna at anthropologist.livejournal.com writes: "Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual. Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the 'Office of Same-Sex Union' (10th and 11th century), and the 'Order for Uniting Two Men' (11th and 12th century)." (via @joshuahol)

TOM THE DANCING BUG: Definitely-Not-Gay-Man Meets His Arch Nemesis!!

Ruben Bolling — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:23:21 +0000

My Princess Boy

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:05:40 +0000

Five-year-old Dyson Kilodavis is a little boy who loves sparkly things: princess gowns, hot pink socks, glittery jewelry. Deal with it.

Richard Metzger over at Dangerous Minds points to a lovely children's book by Dyson's mom, titled My Princess Boy, and shares a surprisingly non-exploitative television interview with the boy's mom, dad, and older brother.

Richard says:

This child, I think it's clear, is going to be who and what he'll be. But unlike many kids like him, he's not going to grow up thinking there is anything wrong with who he is. This kid is FABULOUS and nothing less! With all of the gay bullying, suicides and the general anti-gay bigotry going on in rightwing circles, Cheryl, Dean and their older song Dkobe, deserve admiration and gratitude from the rest of us, for being such an amazing, wise examples for other people in their situation, with their loving parenting of their "Princess Boy."

You have to watch the video. Have some kleenex handy. I sure cried. It's right here: My Princess Boy: Meet the most awesome family in America
(Dangerous Minds, thanks Tara McGinley)

Amazon Link for the book.

How Buttsecks Works, by gay marriage opponent Rep. Nancy Elliott (R-NH)

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:07:36 +0000

Rep. Nancy Elliott (R-NH), in the video embedded above, explains why she opposes marriage between partners of the same sex. Snip:

I started thinking, and We're talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man, and wiggling it around in excrement, and you have to think.... hmmm, not sure, would I allow that to happen to me?
All of us: that could happen to you! Would you let that happen to you? Is that normal?

Video link (thanks, Antinous!)

Rachel Maddow eviscerates "Coming Out Straight" author embraced by Uganda's "kill the gays" squad

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:55:41 +0000

Rachel Maddow tears "Coming Out Straight" author Richard Cohen a new one. Cohen's work is cited as inspirational by authorities in Uganda who propose killing gay people. "You have blood on your hands," she says. Can I get an amen? Related: Rick Warren, silent enabler.