Queer Musings

Fear Mongering Right Wing's New Target - DADT

In a statement against Ellen Tauscher's (D-CA) introduction of H.R. 1283, the "Military Readiness Enhancement Act Of 2009," The Traditional Values Coalition continues the right wing the only tactic they know. From my experience of having served in the Navy, and dealing with other GLBT service-members, I can say with all certainty that the TVC's argument against DADT is flawed. It's the right wing's usual approach to an issue of trying to spread fear and ignorance. According the the TVC statement, "Her misnamed bill should be called the "Legalization Of Sodomy On The Battlefield And Barracks Act" to more accurately describe what the legislation will legalize."

The TVC's remarks is one of the most offensive things I've read in a while. With the words they use they try to paint a picture of life in the military becoming one big bacchanalian orgy rife with barebacking and a rampant increase in the spread of STDs and HIV.

This would have a devastating impact on our military readiness. The best and most patriotic of American soldiers would leave the service to individuals with sexual identity problems.

Imagine the impact that the rampant spread of STDs, including HIV would have on the military? How will the military handle the spread of these diseases in the barracks? How will the military handle sodomy in battlefield situations?

Imagine the impact that sexual favoritism would have in subverting military cohesion? A homosexual Sergeant who was in love with a member of his company, could protect his lover from battle – or send a straight soldier into harm’s way just to punish him for having the wrong attitudes about homosexuality. Straight soldiers could be denied promotion by militant gay officers. The military chain of command would be undermined.

What kind of argument is this? When I was in the Navy, STDs was already a problem among the some of my straight crew members. When I was in the Philippines there was one sailor who bragged that his trip wasn't complete if he didn't have to go see a doctor after visiting some of the prostitutes in the city. With an attitude like that, I can only imagine that HIV is also a problem for many straight service-members.

What I find really laughable in their argument is they find a way to take a cheap shot at the many fine women that have decided to serve their country.

Col. Ron D. Ray, (USMCR, retired) has written extensively on the dangers of permitting homosexuals to serve openly in the military. In his essay, "Lifting The Ban On Homosexuals In The Military: The Subversion Of A Moral Principle," he notes: "Junior officers and NCOs already fear that any and every effort made to investigate or screen [homosexuals] can and will be challenged as a ‘witch hunt’ leading to legal and public challenges and criticisms. Investigating or criticizing homosexuality will become as politically incorrect as pointing out the military significance of the many real differences between the sexes. The troops will get the message."

That is some serious old school macho thinking right there. When I served, it was often pointed out why women were not allowed to serve in some positions. After years of inequality women can now serve on classes of ships they were previously banned from serving upon.

Times are changing and these scare tactics aren't going to work forever. When my father first joined the Navy, blacks if they served with white service-members it was only in positions such as cooks. When I was in the Navy the sexes were segregated and not allowed to serve on many combat vessels. That is no longer the case in many situations. Black and white service-members proudly serve together in all areas of the military. Women, while segregated to separate berthing areas as when on land, can now serve on a wide variety of ships including the once male dominated aircraft carriers that I served upon.

DADT will eventually be repealed. Pres. Obama made that pledge during his campaign. He again made that commitment to the GLBT community by adding it the the White House's website as one of his civil rights items that he wants to see passed. I just pray that he follows through on his pledge and not allow someone's fear and ignorance of the dignity and honor GLBT service-members will bring to the armed services sway him from making that decision.

A Gay Ex-Sailor's Views on DADT

After Sunday's appearance of Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Fox New Sunday the twittersphere has been abuzz. The topic of conversation that I've been following is the military policy of "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT). The overall consensus is that the current administration has been moving to slow. Secretary Gate's appearance did nothing to alleviate the GLBT community's concern that DADT wasn't going to be erased by Pres. Obama.

After an extended discussion on Twitter with one of my friends, he suggested that had a unique point of view on GLBT service in the military. Which, of course, he's right about that.

First a little history to explain why my friend would say I have a unique perspective on DADT. I am of course gay, and from 1986 - 1989 I was a proud member of the United States Navy. Since DADT wasn't put into place until 1993, I served having to deal with being asked repeatedly if I had ever had sex with another man during the enlistment process. I did what every other gay and lesbian before me had done; I flat out lied.

For the most part after my swearing in ceremony it wasn't an issue. I met a few other gay and lesbian sailors, and even had a few straight friends that knew I was gay. For them it was never an issue. They knew I was never going to make an unwanted pass towards them.

One of my barrack mates and I actually went to San Francisco to visit his family on leave one month. We would go to a gay bar one night and then he would drag me to a strip club the next.

I was enjoying life, and seeing the world thanks to the Navy.

Trying a New Commenting System

While I don't have a dedicated and loyal enough group of readers that comment very often, I have decided I wanted to try a new comment system for Queer Musings. I am now using IntenseDebate to take over the comment system.

I saw that it was being used over at The New Civil Rights Movement, and thought thought it was a great social commenting system.

IntenseDebate looks to be the best commenting system around. With micro-social networks like Twitter taking off, I really wanted a system that allowed people to share what they've been doing on Twitter. Also I didn't like that the current comment system didn't allow for people to receive e-mail notification of other comments.

I've just barely seen the tip of the IntenseDebate system. It looks like there's a lot of settings and plug-ins that I have yet to explore. All of the posts previous to this one will be using the original commenting system. I set it up that way so the older comments will still be visible.

For right now the only comments that are going to be moderated are those that have certain spam like keywords, or those that contain two or more links.

One other thing.

We're all adults here, so I didn't set the profanity filter. Lord knows I'm not opposed to the occasional swear word, I was in the Navy after all so I do know how to swear with the best of them. I would, however, ask that any profanity be kept to a minimum.

UPDATE!

I'm having problems getting IntenseDebate to work at the moment, so we're back to the old TypePad Connect system. It's a little to late at night for me to try and figure out what's wrong.

Where are the Gay Singer-Songwriters?

I got to thinking about this today when I saw that Jason Dottley, star of Logo's Sordid Lives, had a single streaming online. I realize I'm older than the age demographic for dance music that uses a vocoder with a heavy hand. It's not a bad song. I can actually see it doing very well in the gay dance bars. I just don't think it's something that I will buy.

After listening to Jason's single, I started wondering where are all the gay musicians not recording dance or pop music? Sure I enjoy the occasional track by Will Young and Rufus Wainwright, but they are little to commercial for my taste. I even own Cazwell's first album, but even his rapping isn't always what I'm in the mood to listen to.

Lately when I'm not listening to my old 80's life soundtrack I've been drawn to music that's a lot simpler in its stylings. I've been listening to Jay Brannan on and off and just discovered through Twitter a similar musician Lee Waters. Both of them are more the singer-songwriter musicians that I've been drawn to when I want to relax. The fact that they are both gay is a bonus. Now I just wish that more gay musicians would realize that there's more than just pop/dance.

Anyone know of any other good gay singer-songwriter types? For those that are interested, Lee is slowly working on getting an album put together. If you check out his page for Low Adventerus in Nu-Fi you can download all of his available tracks from Last.fm for free. You can also check out my user profile on Last.fm.

Marriage Battle Fought on a new Front

Since November's passing of Prop 8 in California marriage and any celebrations related to it is a sensitive subject among the GLBT community. It's become so much so that some gay bars in the Chicago area are no longer allowing bachelorettes to hold their parties in their establishments.

"The women are a hoot, and some can be just delightful," said Geno Zaharakis, the owner of Cocktail, a gay bar on North Halsted Street. "But because not everybody can get married, watching them celebrate, it's such a slap in the face. Prop 8 just reopened the wound."

Zaharakis told me that Cocktail stopped hosting bachelorette parties a couple of years ago when he noticed his gay patrons weren't just complaining about the women being minor irritants but about them "flaunting" their right to marry. So Zaharakis hung a sign on the front door of his establishment that says, "Bachelorette Parties Are Not Allowed."

Many of the bachelorettes attending parties in gay bars are doing so to avoid possibly having too much to drink and waking up with Mr. Wrong the next morning. Having witnessed some of these parties I can see where that can be a concern for the bride. The problem from some of the ones I've seen is the bride and her party get so drunk that it's hard to tell them from the polite women who entered the bar; or the men they are seemingly trying to avoid when partying.

At one such party, I saw the bride throwing herself at any gay man that walked within arm's reach. To top it off she was being disgustingly rude telling each man she got her hands on that he just hadn't had the right woman, and she could take care of that for him. She was one of the sloppiest drunks I had ever seen. The bar management only asked them to leave after the gay and lesbian crowd complained and left to go to other bars.

I haven't been out to a bar since the passing of Prop 8. I can see where a bride acting like a sex starved animal can add to the injury GLBT patrons feel since California passed Prop 8. Even when the majority of bachelorette parties are respectful of the other customers, I don't doubt that there is still a feeling of unfairness among the GLBT customers.

Personally I'm having a hard time reconciling my feelings about this. I understand that bar owners have a some say over who they serve this is, however, a discriminatory act.   

Living in a state where GLBT citizens have very few protections under the law makes me sensitive to this issue. For example, a what reportedly was a simple misunderstanding lead to many gays being denied entry into a Houston straight bar. While this was resolved, it brought to light for me that discrimination is still alive and well in Texas.

I feel that a blanket denial of bachelorette parties is just wrong. It makes me feel that we are no better than the people who would deny us the right to marry.

On the other hand, do we have to allow such a blatant reminder of what we are denied taking place in our establishments?

Feel free to leave any comments to help me understand if this is a good policy or not. Also check out my poll.

Happy π Day

Sure it's almost over, but I just wanted to wish everyone a happy pi day. You know that simple little number that we all learned in school, 3.14. How many people remember what it's for and what we're supposed to do with it? All I remember is that it is used to figure out something with circles. FAIL!

For those that do remember what you're supposed to do with pi, and want to carry it out further than 3.14, I saw a cute memory tool that can help. I saw it on Brink last night.

How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.

The number of letters in each word represents one number in π. So what you end up with is 3.14159265358979. Probably not very useful in your every day life. It's still interesting nonetheless.

Also today...

Alles gute zum Geburtstag, Albert Einstein!

Head of the GOP Says Gay is not a Choice

We should all be prepared for the news that Rush Limbaugh has been admitted to hospital because his head has exploded. The new leader of the Republican party, Michael Steele is now saying that homosexuality is not a choice.

Do you think homosexuality is a choice?
Oh, no. I don't think I've ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there's a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can't simply say, oh, like, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay." It's like saying, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black."

I have no doubt that this is the end of his GOP leadership. This is so contrary to his party's belief. Especially when just late last month he followed party lines in saying that there should be no conversation on civil unions.

Well Mr. Steele in light of your recent words on homosexuality I have to agree on one point there should be no conversation about civil unions. We should instead be holding a conversation about 100% equal marriage for the GLBT community.

As Mr. Steele points out, one can not stop being black. Well there once was a time when blacks and whites could not marry in some states. A black person could only marry another person that was black. That was until Loving v. Virginia was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967. Being black or white is something that can not be changed, and yet it used to be okay to deny them equal protection under the law.

If, as Mr. Steele says, I can't stop being gay there should be no reason to deny me the right to marry. GLBT couples that decide they want to marry should have the same equal protection under the law as mixed raced colour. By stating being gay is non-changeable all arguments denying us the right to marriage becomes invalid.

You can read his entire interview on the GQ Blog.

Why Protect Twitter Posts?

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Twitter. Case and point, look at the sidebar at my Twitter feed. Odds are my last post was within the last few minutes.

If I'm not sleeping then I'm tweeting. I use twhirl to tweet from my computer, and twidroid on my G1. When I'm out and about I use TwitPic to share photos with the twitterverse. When I blog here, twitterfeed makes sure that within 30 minutes a link is posted to Twitter. Heck, I even have FriendFeed set up to post some of the things I share there to Twitter.

Sure my daily life isn't that exciting, but as you can see I use it for more than just tweeting about my life. It's a great tool for sharing information in general. So here's the thing, why do some people set their Twitter profiles to a "protected" state? To me that takes away from the purpose of the service.

Currently I'm following the tweets of 86 people. Some of them are prolific twitterers, some not so much. Out of those 86 people, only two of them have their tweets set to protected.

I had actually started following @jessejames27 before he protected his profile. When he did it one of the reasons he stated was to prevent having tons of spammers following him. That can be a bit of a problem. About three or four times a week I get someone following me that has make money fast in their profile. I just block them and occasionally report them as spam to Twitter. Then I just move on. I don't fault @jessejames27 for not wanting to jump through hoops to prevent spammers from following him, so I continue to follow him.

The only other person that I follow with protected tweets is @patireland. I actually found him through a service called Twubble that looks at who you follow matches you up to people they follow. A few of the gay twitterers that I follow were following him. I also noticed that he was in Ireland. All of this piqued my curiosity so I decided what the hell, I'll send a request to follow him. @patireland was kind enough to accept my request, and I have to say that I'm glad he did. I enjoy following his tweets.

In general, however, if someone has their tweets protected I'm less likely to want to follow you. Especially when the profile is basically blank. A perfect example is the person that just started following me. I got the usual e-mail telling me that someone, @Eagleshadow in this case, started following me.

So I dutifully checked out his Twitter page and saw that it was protected. So I looked at the profile box, and as you can see it's a little lacking in information. Just their initials, the state, and this person is a retired engineer. Why on earth would this person want to follow my queer slanted tweets? To top it all off @Eagleshadow is only allowing one person to follow their tweets. This kind of puts me in an awkward position. Do I allow this person to continue seeing my tweets, or do I just block them?

For me, Twitter is a social tool. I've had interaction with almost everyone on my list, including a couple of replies from celebrities that I follow. Most of the conversations I have on there are with @leewaters and @MapleLime. I also have a good bit of interaction with @iMoose, @davidbadash, and @iCab. All of which I enjoy. I've learned a few things from all of them that I didn't know, and I hope in return they've learned a few things from me. I don't think if I had my tweets protected or if the people mentioned had, that we would be following each other. So I again ask, why protect your Twitter posts?

If you want to follow me, or just see more of what I've had to say on Twitter you can find me at @qmuser.

Urban Outfitters Mocks Closeted Gays

Maybe I'm being a little overly sensitive about Urban Outfitters selling joke envelopes making fun of GLBT people still in the closet.

I find this offensive to all of our GLBT brothers and sisters that are in situations where they can't come out of the closet. Especially coming from a company who's chairman is a staunch conservative. Urban Outfitters chairman Richard Hayne has donated thousands of dollars to right-wing causes. He even donated to the campaigns of homophobic former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. That right there makes this a slap in the face to the GLBT community. It wouldn't surprise me if Hayne was the reason the "I Support Same-Sex Marriage" shirts got pulled from the store shelves. According to The Advocate:

Following that controversy, gays and lesbians may take offense that the retailer is selling a collection of cards that seems to put homosexuals on a par with "Sheep Lovers" and "Lowlife Rat Bastards" -- other "companies" represented in the package of six envelopes.

These prank envelopes really aren't any different. Not when you take this one envelope and look at it in context of the other ones in the pack, it just becomes that much more offensive. The other ones include "www.PORNPHOTOS.COM," "Back Hair Removal System," and "The Compulsive Masturbation Assistance Group."

Now before anyone starts thinking that I'm anti-gay humor, the opposite is in fact true. I've laughed at some of the highly inappropriate things in South Park. I love watching The Big Gay Sketch Show. And while I'm not a huge fan of Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, I've chuckled occasionally at some things it did. I even like equal opportunity offender Carlos Mencia.

Okay, so a couple of my examples are produced by gays and lesbians, but the other two aren't. I think the difference, at least for me, is that South Park and Carlos Mencia temper their comedy with more support for the GLBT community than what's been offered by Urban Outfitters.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Am I being too sensitive about this, or am I right?

Pixelpipe for Android

I've decided to give the Pixelpipe for Android application a try. There's a few things that don't work the way I think they should, but overall I'm happy with it.

Pixelpipe's goal is to make distribution of you media to multiple sites easier. So far I've added Flickr, Twitpic, Facebook, and this blog to my "pipes". I'm actually trying out the blog posting tool for this post.

The big complaint that I have is it is not inuitive. The media tab presents all the photos (and probably video on future Android devices) that are on your SD card. To the right of the picture is an icon with a blue arrow. I first thought that you would touch the screen on the picture to add a title, caption, and any tags. it turns out that puts it in your upload queue, and the default is to upload immediately. The blue arrow that I thought would queue the photos happens to activate the dialogue window to add the title and other info. This is something that can easily be corrected with a future update.

Another thing that needs a quick update, is the autocorrection when typing. My G1 doesn't have a full spell check like the iPhone (so please excuse any mistakes today), but it does auto correct i to I or cant to can't. just little things that make typing on the G1's keyboard easier. it does not (as you can see on this sentence) autocorrect the capitalization after a period. I've grown accustommed to that when typing an email or sending a tweet in Twidroid. This is just a minor thing that will probably get fixed in an update.

Finally, I do have an issue with how it formats a blog post with a photo. If you look at the previos post on here you'll see what I'm talking about. When it posts the picture it centers it, which is fine. It also, however, wraps the caption in the center tags resulting in the text looking a bit odd. I'm going to check Pixelpipe's web site to see if there are any options for formatting blog posts. My fingers are crossed that the text of this post doesn't end up looking funky.

I think this app will be great when I'm out and about and want to send a picture to multiple places with ease. I don't think I'll be using it for long blog posts, but I can see myself using it for those times when the 140 character limit impossed by Twitter is too limiting. The app is off to a great start, with a few minor updates it could become a spectacular app.

Posted via Pixelpipe.