Race for the Title of Stupidest: Part Two?

  
Yesterday, I wrote about the "Race for The a Title of Stupidest," which discussed the idiocy and ignorance of the Republican presidential candidates.  I had an anonymous commenter that wrote, “Too bad you can't see the idiocy within your own Democrat Party. The country would be a saner place if you learned to dissent within your own ranks. Remember--dissent is patriotic.” To which I replied, “I never said I was a Democrat. Furthermore, I think both parties are deeply flawed, but it's the Republicans who are rabidly anti-LGBT and can only come up with idiotic dribble to back up their claims. This is a gay blog and for the most part I stuck to the stupidity of their stances on LGBT issues.” But to be fair, I decided to give the Democrats their due and write a post on the stupidest things said by Democratic presidential candidates.  However, I could not limit it to LGBT issues because all of the Democrats seem to be for LGBT rights.

Several different websites have “The Five Worst Things Hillary Clinton Ever Said,” all of them pretty much have the same quotes, so here goes. Number five on the list is, “I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian.” This one is not so bad because I do not believe that Jesus would recognize many Republicans as Christians, at least not the Christianity that Christ laid out in the Sermon on the Mount or in his parables. He would more likely see them in the same way he say the Pharisees, all show but no substance. The fourth worst is “We have a lot of kids who don’t know what works means. They think work is a four-letter word.” Have these people ever met any kids? They get lazier and lazier by the year. In the five years I taught at my former school, I can count on one hand the number of those kids who had a job. I agree with Clinton 100 percent. The third worst is more dumb than anything, because Hillary said, “I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.” Bill Clinton was president, Hillary was First Lady. She should have understood that one. The second worst was “The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they’re not.” That might be a little of the pot calling the kettle black, but um…it's true, at least I am tired of it. And the number one worst thing was kind of bad. In response to who was responsible for Benghazi, Hillary said, “What difference does it make?” She was speaking of whether it was terrorists or protestors, but nearly everything about the Benghazi incident has been blown way out of proportion. Fox News uses the words “Benghazi” and “emails” to get conservatives foaming at the mouth and to boost ratings.

The next person to declare his candidacy was independent/socialist cum Democrat Bernie Sanders. The Libertarian Republic, a free market news magazine featuring the writing of prominent libertarians, conservatives, independents and sometimes democrats wrote about the top five dumbest quotes from Bernie Sanders, and here they are. Number five was “A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little…We need a tax system which asks the billionaire class to pay its fair share of taxes and which reduces the obscene degree of wealth inequality in America”. By honestly do believe that the graduated tax system in America right now is ridiculous. It puts the greatest burden on those who are the poorest, and it needs to be more equitable, so not such a dumb quote in my book. Let's look at number four, “Education should be a right, not a privilege. We need a revolution in the way that the United States funds higher education.” The current system in higher education with expenses going higher and higher will cause more students not to attend college or to be so heavily in debt when they leave that it will take years to pull out. The current system is designed for an educated elite, which many Republicans are all to happy to have because it keeps poor and middle class people dumb enough to vote Republican against their best interest. Number three quotes Sanders as saying, “Social Security is a promise that we cannot and must not break.” Why is this listed as a dumb quote, because they don't believe Social Security should have ever been established, and thus with all the money we've paid into it over the years, Libertarians and Republicans think it should be scrapped completely. The second dumbest thing was “Meanwhile, as the rich become much richer, the level of income and wealth inequality has reached obscene and unimaginable levels. In the United States, we have the most unequal level of wealth and income distribution of any major country on Earth, and it’s worse now then at any other time since the 1920s…”. Anyone who looks at world history should see a pattern here. When there is a great disparity of wealth in a nation, that nation either falls or goes through a massive political change, mostly not for the better and there needs to be some reforms. And the number one dumbest thing The Libertarian Republic quotes as the dumbest thing uttered by Sanders is “We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies.” We really do need to begin looking harder at more sustainable energy, because fossil fuels will not last forever, and we will have a major energy crisis unlike anything seen before.

When you google “dumb quote by Lincoln Chafee” the main thing that comes up is this quote, “How dumb can the Republicans be to be beating up on the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country? That's one we gotta grab! a path to citizenship is not only good policy, it's good politics.” A lot of people are also criticizing his belief in the metric system, but both his stance on immigration and the metric system sound pretty reasonable to me. I guess the main thing about Chafee is that he's not terribly well known, he was a reluctant politician, and he's switched from being a liberal Republican to an Independent and is now a Democrat.

Not many quotes by Martin O'Malley can be found either which is odd considering he was Mayor of a large American city (Baltimore) and Governor of Maryland. He has stressed that 2016 should be an election focusing on new perspectives and new leadership and that the Presidency "should not be a crown that is passed between two families.” He's kind of has a point there, with Clinton and Jeb Bush running. Really the only other quote I found by O’Malley was “Sometimes in campaigns you can drive yourself crazy with the micro-targeting and the pollsters and the tea leaves and the pixie dust trying to twist yourself into triple back-flips to appeal to the three percent that are the undecideds that live in suburbs and have lawns that are less than 20 feet long and all that bullshit. Just tell the base why you’re doing what you’re doing and why you’re better than the other guy.” I wouldn't exactly call that quote dumb, but pretty common sense. 

The difference in the “stupid things” said by Democratic candidates and Republican candidates is that Republicans are cruel, insensitive, and mean-spirited. All politicians will tell you what they hate instead of what they will do, but hate speech seems to be the Republican criteria for running. I'm sure people will say that I am being far too biased with this post, but I spent quite a while yesterday trying to find quotes by Democrats to post and I came up with very little. Clinton and Sanders have the most because they've been at the forefront the longest, and let's face it, Sanders is in this race to push the debate to the left and enjoys being controversial. Hillary has always been controversial as First Lady, Senator, and as Secretary of State. It comes with being a powerful woman in politics, but neither seem to be mean-spirited in their speech. Chafed and O’Malley just haven't been in the big race long enough nor have they been on the national stage. Most of the Republicans running are in the Senate and have a ready forum for their lunacy.

By the way, I did not include Joe Biden. There are two reasons: he hasn't officially announced that he's running and there would just be too many quotes. Biden is one of the most loquacious politicians in American history and he's talked enough and put his foot in his mouth so many times that he should have the permanent taste of shoe leather in his mouth. I want to close by going back to one of Hillary’s quotes: “I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian.” The thing is, I find it hard to believe that any politician in America could or should be considered a Christian. They certainly don't act like what Jesus has told us to behave, and in my book that's just a Christian in name only.

Race for the Title of Stupidest

 

As Just a Jeep Guy used to say, "Politics can leave a bad taste in your mouth," so here's a palate cleanser before we get started.

At the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Mike Huckabee, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said in a February speech, “Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today.’"

In a Friday interview with radio host Steve Deace, Huckabee said he would "take nothing back from that speech," from the speech he gave. Huckabee told Deace he was "kind of glad" the video of his remarks made the rounds online.

“I'm kind of glad it's posted because people, if they watch the whole clip, what they're going to see is that I'm giving a commonsense answer to the insanity that's going on out there," Huckabee said. "Because I hear people, everybody wants to be politically correct, everybody wants to be loved by the media and loved by the left and loved by the elitists. But, you know, I know I'm not going to be, so let's just get it over with. I'd rather be a commonsense candidate for people who did take their brains to work today."

Huckabee tries to sound like a folksy good ol’ boy, but merely comes off as ignorant. He is just one of many Republicans on an anti-intellectual crusade pandering to the Tea Party’s dumbing down of America. Republicans, most of them anyway, do not want to court the intellectuals of America because they would see through their idiotic rhetoric. I blame the majority of this anti-intellectualism on Fox News, but the news media in general have lowered there standards because of 24-hour news channels. Some days are not newsworthy, and they invent stories to be blown out of proportion, and viewers watch with rapt attention.   

Republican, especially this crop of presidential candidates, seem to be trying to see who can reach the height of stupidity and offensiveness. Huckabee certainly doesn't hold a monopoly on stupid and insensitive.

Speaking to a group of pastors in Washington, another presidential candidate Rand Paul said that a moral crisis is leading people to believe that same-sex marriage is acceptable. There is a “moral crisis that allows people to think there would be some other sort of marriage,” aside from traditional marriage, Paul said. I personally think that the high rate of divorce in America is a much greater moral crisis than same-sex marriage. Furthermore, for decades, homophobes have preached about the for cation and promiscuity of gay men, yet marriage would allow for same-sex couples to be in loving legally binding relationships. And gay men are not the most promiscuous. All one needs to do is to listen to a group of teenagers or college students and you would see young people having sex with little attachment or morality. The moral crisis of America has nothing to do with same-sex marriage. In fact, same-sex marriage would solve what many critics of American sexuality have long considered a moral crisis: premarital sex.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie said that if one of his four children came out as gay, he would “grab them and hug them and tell them I love them.” He would also tell them “that Dad believes that marriage is between one man and one woman,” he said. […] “My children understand that there are going to be differences of opinion in our house and in houses all across this state and across this country,” Christie said. What an awesome guy (see my eyes roll). 

 Moving on, there is Ted Cruz, good for a laugh if nothing else. He seems to believe that same-sex marriage is a threat to our very freedom: “If the citizens of the state of Iowa or the citizens of the state of Texas want to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman … the states have the constitutional authority to do so and the federal government and unelected judges cannot set aside the democratically elected legislature’s reasonable decisions to enact and protect traditional marriage,” Cruz told radio host Jan Mickelson. The 2016 presidential candidate added, “If the courts were following the Constitution, we shouldn’t need a new amendment, but they are, as you put it quite rightly, making it up right now and it’s a real danger to our liberty.” I'm guessing that Cruz doesn't believe the Fourteenth Amendment is an actual part of the Constitution. Cruz also believes, "There is no place for gays or atheists in my America. None. Our Constitution makes that clear." Cruz just continues to spout ignorance that God approves of child molestation, but not homosexuality when he said, "While there may have been an age difference, Josh Duggar’s transgressions are far less an affront to God than what gays do to each other."

And then there’s Jeb Bush. Of late, he’s made some attempts to paint himself as supportive of LGBT rights. When running for governor of Florida, in 1994, he was sounding a rather different note. During his first and unsuccessful bid for governor in 1994, Bush argued in an editorial that LGBT people do not deserve special legal protection. “We have enough special categories, enough victims, without creating even more,” he wrote. In the editorial, published in the Miami Herald that summer, Bush drew a parallel between legal protection for gays and the question, “[Should] sodomy be elevated to the same constitutional status as race and religion? My answer is No.” “The statement that the governor must stand up for all people on all matters is just silly,” Bush wrote, arguing that government does not defend every Floridian “with equal verve and enthusiasm.” He listed a string of examples: “Polluters, pedophiles, pornographers, drunk drivers, and developers without proper permits.”

We can't leave out the Republicans “intellectual” darling, Dr. Ben Carson, who thinks being gay is a choice, "Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight -- and when they come out, they're gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question," Carson said. He mentioned LGBTQ people, pedophiles, and bestiality in the same sentence, as if they are all part of the same group and should be treated the same way. "No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association], be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition. So it’s not something that’s against gays, it’s against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definitions of pillars of society. It has significant ramifications,” he said. And when he tried to explain his comments, he made zero sense. “There is no group. I wasn’t equating those things, I don’t think they’re equal. Just, you know, if you ask me for apple and I give you an orange you would say, well that’s not an orange. And then I say, that’s a banana, that’s not an apple either. And there’s a peach, that’s not an apple, either,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m equating the banana and the orange and the peach. And in the same way I’m not equating those things. My point was that once we start changing the definitions, then where do we stop?” And in one of the statements I find most offensive, Carson thinks that people who support same-sex marriage are trying to get rid of the Bible. “Think about the implications,” he said. “When people come along and try to change the definition of marriage, they are directly attacking the relationship between God and his people,” Carson said. “And that’s the reason it’s so important for them to change the definition, because if you can get rid of that, you can get rid of everything else in the Bible too.". I think that Carson would benefit from reading my Sunday posts, but from the idiocy of the statements he's made, I doubt he could understand it.

Last, but not the least idiotic, we come back to good old Mike Huckabee. To his credit, he’s never tried terribly hard to conceal how wretched he is when it comes to LGBT matters. Huckabee says that expecting Christians to accept same-sex marriage is “like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.” He also called homosexuality part of a lifestyle, like drinking and swearing. . . .”I don’t drink alcohol, but gosh — a lot of my friends, maybe most of them, do. You know, I don’t use profanity, but believe me, I’ve got a lot of friends who do. Some people really like classical music and ballet and opera — it’s not my cup of tea,” Huckabee said. Oh, and just let me say, I've always believed what my granny taught when she said that if you use a word to replace another, it's just as bad. So Mr. Huckabee, saying gosh, by granny's interpretation, is taking the Lord’s name in vain. That's pretty pitiful for a Baptist preacher.

Six potential candidates, and not a single intelligent nor accepting statement among them. When it comes to LGBT issues, as with most issues, the Republican candidates are happy to take the retrograde position. That doing so tramples the rights of the LGBT community seems of little importance. Once again, they have combined political expedience and cheap moralizing to arrive at a stance of cruelty and divisiveness. Nice job guys, and it's only going to get worse as the campaign heats up over the next year. 

Langston Blue

 

Langston Blue
By Jericho Brown

 “O Blood of the River of songs,
O songs of the River of Blood,”
       Let me lie down. Let my words

Lie sound in the mouths of men
Repeating invocations pure
       And perfect as a moan

That mounts in the mouth of Bessie Smith.
Blues for the angels kicked out
       Of heaven. Blues for the angels

Who miss them still. Blues
For my people and what water
       They know. O weary drinkers

Drinking from the bloody river,
Why go to heaven with Harlem
       So close? Why sing of rivers

With fathers of our own to miss?
I remember mine and taste a stain
       Like blood coursing the body

Of a man chased by a mob. I write
His running, his sweat: here,
       He climbs a poplar for the sky,

But it is only sky. The river?
Follow me. You’ll see. We tried
       To fly and learned we couldn’t

Swim. Dear singing river full
Of my blood, are we as loud under
       Water? Is it blood that binds

Brothers? Or is it the Mississippi
Running through the fattest vein
       Of America? When I say home,

I mean I wanted to write some
Lines. I wanted to hear the blues,
       But here I am swimming in the river

Again. What flows through the fat
Veins of a drowned body? What
       America can a body call

Home? When I say Congo, I mean
Blood. When I say Nile, I mean blood.
       When I say Euphrates, I mean,

If only you knew what blood We have in common. So much,        In Louisiana, they call a man like me

Red. And red was too dark
For my daddy. And my daddy was
       Too dark for America. He ran

Like a man from my mother
And me. And my mother’s sobs
       Are the songs of Bessie Smith

Who wears more feathers than
Death. O the death my people refuse
       To die. When I was 18, I wrote down

The river though I couldn’t win
A race, climbed a tree that winter, then
       Fell, flat on my wet, red face. Line

After line, I read all the time,
But “there was nothing I could do
       About race.”

In Terrance Hayes’ “A Small Novel” (one of the under-discussed poems from Wind in a Box) Hayes writes: “On its blank last page I write the poem // ‘The Blue Langston’ which begins: ‘O Blood of the River songs, O song of the River of Blood,’ / and ends: ‘There was nothing I could do about Race.’”

After reading the poem, Brown said that he guesses that he got a little frustrated by the fact that the book had all these exciting personas, like “The Blue Baraka” and “The Blue Seuss,” yet it only gives us the beginning and ending of what would be “The Blue Langston.”

Brown wanted that poem to exist in full because of his love for Langston Hughes. Hughes is a figure so many people refer to as “Langston,” not because we ever knew him and not because we mean any disrespect by using his first name. We say, “Langston,” and each of us thinks, “my Langston.”

Jericho Brown said there's a diversity of viewpoints and experiences among black poets that defies any single narrative. But there are cultural influences, like Missouri-born Langston Hughes' use of the rhythms of jazz and blues in his poetry, he said.

"Being black affords you the opportunity to see things that others might not be able to see, to give you experiences that others may not have," Brown said.

Jericho Brown grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans and graduated with a BA from Dillard University in 1998.

He was a teaching fellow in the English department at the University of Houston from 2002-2007, a visiting professor at San Diego State University’s MFA program in spring 2009, and an assistant professor of English at the University of San Diego. He has also taught at numerous conferences and workshops, including the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa. He is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Since June is LGBT Pride month, Jericho Brown is the first of three LGBT poets that I will be featuring on Tuesdays for the rest of the month.

Taking It Easy

I think that I'm mostly going to just take it easy today.  Have you ever taken one of those very fun vacations where you did a lot of sightseeing and had a great time, but when you got home you were pretty tired?  Well, that is me right now.  I had an absolutely wonderful vacation in Louisiana, but I'm exhausted. So, I'm going to take it easy.  I will fill out a few job applications and take care of a few things that I couldn't do while on vacation.  Mostly, though I'm going to rest and relax with my little girls.  

Several people have asked how my kittens are doing, so here's a quick update.  The girls are great.  They've grown so much, and they will be a year old next month.  They are incredibly sweet but very opposite one another. Lucy is very shy, and Edith has yet to meet a stranger.  Lucy is more subdued, whereas Edith is rambunctious.

The Ethiopian Eunuch

  

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and join this chariot." So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this:
     "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter
          and like a lamb before its shearer is silent,
          so he opens not his mouth.
     In his humiliation justice was denied him.
          Who can describe his generation?
          For his life is taken away from the earth."  
And the eunuch said to Philip, "About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?" And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

Acts 8:26-39

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 is a marvelous depiction of God’s role in evangelism. There are many elements of God’s providence and intervention in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. The account reveals the importance of these three things: the Word of God, the Holy Spirit’s leading, and a human evangelist. In order for a person to accept the truth, he must first hear the truth preached (Romans 10:14). It is God’s desire that the truth be preached everywhere (Acts 1:8). The Spirit of the Lord had been preparing the eunuch’s heart to receive the gospel. As the eunuch read Isaiah, he began to ask questions, and at just the right moment the Lord brought Philip across his path. The field was “ripe for harvest” (John 4:35), and Philip was God’s laborer in the field. This was no coincidence. It was God’s plan from the very beginning, and Philip was obedient to that plan.

The Ethiopian eunuch’s conversion illustrates Jesus’ promise to take the initiative to draw all kinds of people to himself (Jn.12:32). We might expect that Philip, who was a working-class Jew from a family with a biblical heritage, would become a follower of Jesus. But a black, sexually-altered treasury secretary for the royal family of a distant and totally pagan country? Yet the story emphasizes the lengths to which Jesus will go to draw people to himself. The passage narrates the culmination of Jesus’ drawing—but it also provides hints at how Jesus had been drawing him long before this time.

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch is a wonderful conversion story, but it takes on a much more significant story for LGBT Christians. The term eunuch in the ancient world was often synonymous with what we call today homosexuality, but was understood differently in ancient society. In Matthew 19:12, Jesus says “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.". Though, in this is trance, Jesus is teaching about divorce, but he clearly acknowledges that some men are born in a way that does not allow them to have children. These men that Jesus speaks of are men who did not marry in order to devote their lives to God, but also could, and I think it does, mean that some men are not mean to be with women, some of those men are asexual, others are homosexual.

Commentators generally suggest that the combination of "eunuch" together with the title "court official" indicates a literal eunuch, who would have been excluded from the Temple by the restriction in Deuteronomy 23:1. Some scholars point out that eunuchs were excluded from Jewish worship and extend the New Testament's inclusion of these men to other sexual minorities. John J. McNeill, ordained as a Jesuit priest and a major figure in Queer Theology, cites the non-literal uses of "eunuch" in other New Testament passages such as Matthew 19:12, suggesting that this eunuch was "the first baptized gay Christian," while Jack Rogers, a Presbyterian minister and author, writes that "the fact that the first Gentile convert to Christianity is from a sexual minority and a different race, ethnicity and nationality together" calls Christians to be radically inclusive and welcoming.

When evangelicals and fundamentalists share the gospel with gay men and lesbians, it is standard practice to tell the new believer he or she must stop being gay, but they forget that Jesus does not discriminate. He welcomed all people, even the Ethiopian eunuch, a high court official, who was probably perceived as a homosexual. Yet, Philip did not shun the man for his sexuality, whatever it may have been, but embraced him, taught him the gospel, baptized him, and sent him back to Ethiopia to spread the Good News. Whenever churches exclude LGBT Christians, they are not following the teachings of God, but the prejudices of man. We must remind them that turning someone away from God, as they often do, that it is the practice of Satan, because God welcomes all.

Moment of Zen: New Orleans

Louisiana: A Fun Place to Be

  

We are having a great time here in Louisiana.  We spent two nights in New Orleans, and now we are spending two nights in Cajun country.  Tomorrow morning (the pic above is obviously not of a swamp tour, but isn't he cute?), we are going on a swamp tour and possibly to see a plantation tomorrow afternoon.

  

There isn't a lot to say in this post, but here are two suggestions for when you go to New Orleans: eat at the Court of Two Sisters (entrance on Royal or Bourbon) for their fabulous jazz brunch and visit the five Louisiana State Museums.  Also, I highly suggest that you head down Bourbon past St Ann, where Oz and Bourbon Pub is and venture just over a block to a small store called Bourbon Pride.  Josh Duffy owns it and I'm a big fan of his music. Bourbon Prode has all the things a gay boy needs, and the staff was super nice and very helpful.  I'll definitely be returning to Bourbon Pride next time I'm in New Orleans.

  

NOLA: A Rich Gay Heritage

 

During the New Orleans’ early history, gay people were largely invisible, although same-gender communities existed throughout the culture. Although not self-identified, some prominent figures such as multi-millionaire John McDonogh – a life-long bachelor – might be recognized today as a gay man.

As the nineteenth century ended and a wild new music was being birthed in the saloons and bordellos of Storyville, Tony Jackson was crowned the “unrivaled king” of the early jazz pianists. Described as “an epileptic, alcoholic, homosexual Negro genius,” he composed countless songs, including “Pretty Baby,” inspired by a lover.

By the time writer Lyle Saxon arrived in 1919, the French Quarter was little more than a run-down slum. Saxon championed its preservation and promoted the Quarter as a welcoming home for artists. Among them was Truman Capote, who was born here and returned as a nineteen-year-old to write his first novel in a slave quarter apartment on Royal Street.

Tennessee Williams arrived in 1938 and knew immediately he had found his spiritual home. “A Streetcar Named Desire” would become the most famous New Orleans work of literature. Pioneering photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston retired to New Orleans in 1940, living in her Bourbon Street townhouse until her death in 1952.

A lively gay social world had long existed, but after Prohibition ended in 1933, it became more public. In 1936, a bar opened at the Lafitte Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon Street. Although its clientele was a varied group, gay men and women knew they were welcome. But in 1953, the owners lost their lease. They moved to the next corner and reopened as Café Lafitte in Exile – now one of the oldest gay bars in the country.

Private gay socializing flourished in mid-century New Orleans. The oldest continuing gay event, the Fat Monday Luncheon, began in 1949, and the oldest gay social organization, the Steamboat Club, was launched in 1953. The Krewe of Yuga was the first gay Carnival club in 1958, followed by the Krewe of Petronius in 1961.

 

The Gay Liberation movement was slower to develop in New Orleans than in many other cities. This was due in part to local politics. In 1967, District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested Clay Shaw, a prominent gay business and civic leader, and charged him with conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Although Shaw was eventually acquitted, the affair had a chilling effect on political organizing.

Nevertheless, a small group of activists founded the Gay Liberation Front of New Orleans in late 1970. Although the group dissolved within a year, participants subsequently organized a Metropolitan Community Church congregation and a chapter of the national lesbian organization, Daughters of Bilitis.

The emerging community suffered a great tragedy in June 1973, when a deliberately set fire in the Upstairs Lounge killed 32 people. 

But the indomitable New Orleans spirit prevailed. Southern Decadence started as a small party in 1972, the same year as the Tulane University Gay Students Union. The 1970s also saw the arrival of IMPACT newspaper, the Faubourg Marigny Bookstore and the first gay pride events.

The Gertrude Stein Society, which began in 1975, brought together a group of men and women who were instrumental in developing an active community infrastructure in the 1980s: the Louisiana Gay Political Action Caucus (1980), the State Gay Conference (1981), the New Orleans Gay Men’s Chorus and a local chapter of P-FLAG (both in 1982), and the NO/AIDS Task Force (1983).

The 1990s were a decade of political accomplishment. In 1991, the New Orleans City Council passed a gay non-discrimination ordinance. Shortly afterwards, Gov. Edwin W. Edwards issued a far-reaching executive order, prohibiting discrimination in state employment and services. In 1997, Louisiana earned the distinction of being the first state in the Deep South to pass a hate crimes law that covered sexual orientation, and New Orleans Mayor Marc H. Morial extended domestic partner benefits to city employees. And, in 1998, New Orleans became one of the earliest cities to add gender identity to its list of groups protected from discrimination.

As the century closed and the new millennium dawned, GLBT people in New Orleans could look with pride at a community that had achieved much in its political movement, while continuing to develop its vibrant social life.

  

I also want to add one more thing about New Orleans. Of the many times I've been here, I've stayed at the Holiday Inn-French Quarter, the Fairmont (now The Roosevelt Waldorf Astoria), and the Hilton. Each are very nice hotels (The Fairmont is probably the finest hotel I've ever stayed in, with the Peachtree Westin in Atlanta a close second), but on this trip, I stayed at the Prince Conti Hotel which is less than a block from Bourbon Street. It is by far my favorite hotel in New Orleans, and I highly recommend it to anyone coming to New Orleans. It has an exceptional price, has the best wi-if I've ever experienced in the city (or any hotel from that matter), and the staff could not be any friendlier. The front desk staff was so wonderful and friendly, remembering us each time we walked into the hotel and asking us how our day was and wishing us a good nights sleep and sweet dreams. It's been a special experience. The hotel room was luxurious with high ceilings and an old southern feel. I will admit that the view from our room was not spectacular and the hallways smell a bit musty, but let's face it, if you want a spectacular view, you will pay for it and everything else made up for the view. As for the musty smell, it is only noticeable when leaving your room, when coming back to your room from the odiferous city streets of New Orleans, the smell is quite refreshing (that is not even noticeable). So if you are heading to New Orleans, I suggest a stay at the Prince Conti Hotel. When I read reviews, the main thing was how expensive parking is at the hotel, but even when combined with the the hotel rate, it's still less expensive than most hotels in the city, especially hotels in the heart of the French Quarter. 

Satchmo

  
                                     Satchmo
                           By Melvin B. Tolson
 
                     King Oliver of New Orleans
         has kicked the bucket, but he left behind
              old Satchmo with his red-hot horn
                to syncopate the heart and mind.
                  The honky-tonks in Storyville
       have turned to ashes, have turned to dust,
                 but old Satchmo is still around
         like Uncle Sam’s IN GOD WE TRUST.

               Where, oh, where is Bessie Smith,
       with her heart as big as the blues of truth?
           Where, oh, where is Mister Jelly Roll,
           with his Cadillac and diamond tooth?
              Where, oh, where is Papa Handy
  With his blue notes a-dragging from bar to bar?
       Where, oh where is bulletproof Leadbelly
          with his tall tales and 12-string guitar?

                                Old Hip Cats,
              when you sang and played the blues
                    the night Satchmo was born,
       did you know hypodermic needles in Rome
         couldn’t hoodoo him away from his horn?
          Wyatt Earp’s legend, John Henry’s, too,
              is a dare and a bet to old Satchmo
  when his groovy blues put headlines in the news
            from the Gold Coast to cold Moscow.

                                 Old Satchmo’s
    gravelly voice and tapping foot and crazy notes
                             set my soul on fire.
                                   If I climbed
           the seventy-seven steps of the Seventh
  Heaven, Satchmo’s high C would carry me higher!
         Are you hip to this, Harlem? Are you hip?
              On Judgment Day, Gabriel will say
                       after he blows his horn:
   “I’d be the greatest trumpeter in the Universe

          if old Satchmo had never been born!”

If  you are not familiar with the name Satchmo, it was the nickname for Louis Armstrong.  Louis had many nicknames as a child, all of which referred to the size of his mouth: “Gatemouth,” “Dippermouth,” and “Satchelmouth.” During a visit to Great Britain, Louis was met by Percy Brooks, the editor of Melody Maker magazine, who greeted him by saying, “Hello, Satchmo!” (He inadvertently contracted “Satchelmouth” into “Satchmo.”) Louis loved the new name and adopted it for his own. It provides the title to Louis’s second autobiography, is inscribed on at least two of Louis's trumpets, and is on Louis’s stationery. 

Armstrong has always been a New Orleans legend and the airport is named Louis Armstrong International Airport.  Since I am heading there with my boyfriend today, I thought this made an appropriate poem.

P.S. I have a job interview this morning before we leave.  Hopefully, it will go well.  It's not an ideal job, but it would be something until I find something better.

A Valedictory Address Censored

As a teacher and someone who has dealt with graduation speeches before, I'm not sure what to think about the story of a Colorado charter school who refused to let a class valedictorian, Evan Young, deliver a graduation speech in which he planned to come out as gay.  I read the the statement of the school, but yet, I also know firsthand that school’s do lie.  However, I have not read the students speech and therefore cannot compare the two.

Twin Peaks Charter Academy High School in Longmont claims that the speech would have been disruptive and  the first draft also included ridiculing comments about faculty and students and was condescending toward the school. School attorney Barry Arrington said in the statement that a graduation speech is not the time for a student to "push his personal agenda on a captive audience.". They also claim that he didn't follow the dress code for the ceremony by removing the sleeves of his graduation gown.  Evan, who is 18, said he agreed to make suggested changes to the speech he planned to deliver on May 16 at the commencement ceremony for Twin Peaks. But he refused to remove the disclosure about his sexuality.

"My main theme is that you're supposed to be respectful of people, even if you don't agree with them. I figured my gayness would be a very good way to address that," he said.  He and his father, Don Young, said they weren't notified until just a few minutes before the ceremony that Evan wouldn't be allowed to speak or be recognized as valedictorian.  This is where I think the school made a misstep.  Whether they allowed Evan to give his speech or not, it is inappropriate not to recognize the valedictorian, especially if they continued to recognize the achievements of other students.  Evan Young said he previously emailed a speech with other suggested changes to school officials, but they contend that he didn't submit a revised version.

Before the ceremony, Don Young said school principal PJ Buchmann called and said the speech was a problem because his son had mentioned another student's name and planned to come out as gay.  If this is the case, then the school is making excuses beyond Evan’s disclosure of his sexuality, but are really only bothered by him coming out in his speech.  They could have simply told the Evan that the entire theme of the speech was inappropriate and that he could not mention another student by name. I've known quite a number of valedictorians in my lifetime, I was one myself, and all of the ones I have known made speeches of encouragement.  If the theme is what Evan said it was, then it was an appropriate theme, and his disclosure of his sexuality should not have been an issue.

In my opinion (and Evan is probably a little at fault, but he's also young), the school handled this situation in the worst way possible.  The speech should have been prepared weeks in advance and Evan and the faculty should have had plenty of time to revise it.  However, it appears that the school chose to wait until the last minute, so that they would not receive negative publicity that might have forced their hand in allowing Evan to give his speech.  Don Young said he and his wife didn't know their son was gay. They were initially sympathetic to Buchman's objections to the speech, considering there would be young children at the event, but did not like how Buchman handled the matter.

I have to agree with the Young’s.  No matter the school's reservations about he speech, they handled this in an underhanded way that deprived a young man of the honors that he no doubt worked very hard to achieve.