Thoughts on Being Gay

I’m pretty sure I’ve been gay my entire life. I remember at the age of six gazing at a picture of a boy in one of my books and thinking to myself that he was very cute. I can remember looking at handsome men and wanting to be around them, wanting them to hug me and show me attention. I never felt this way about women, though I can see how some of my behavior at a young age could be considered effeminate.

I don’t believe I was “turned” gay, though I was sexualized by an older family member from the time I was six until I was twelve. I remember my “gay behavior” and gay feelings happening before the sexual contact started. I don’t remember any trauma or shame from the man masturbating me. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed it and was enthusiastic whenever we did it. I can certainly understand how other boys might be traumatized–and quite severely. In my case, however, it wasn’t emotionally painful, except when it was revealed to be occurring to a brother of mine and everyone seemed to be more upset about that than about it happening to me. I couldn’t understand why it was considered worse in his case than in mine, though I didn’t consider it a bad thing. I just felt that he was loved more than me if people were going to get more upset about that than about my situation.

This is not to say, however, that sexual abuse can be excused. I think there are varying degrees and anything that causes pain, physical or emotional, to the child is inexcusable. However, a great deal of that emotional pain is the result of the reaction of adults to what happened, not necessarily because of what happened. There are and have been cultures where this sort of thing happens to be part of society and is or was never considered harmful in an of itself. However, one should not take the chance of causing emotional pain, recognizing how our society thinks and reacts.

I have occasionally had feelings about females, not often, but enough that I see that sexuality is a continuum, that everyone is heterosexual or homosexual in varying degrees. I don’t think it’s correct to say “I can’t help it!” Of course, we can. It’s a continuum. I think it’s a cop-out to say “I can’t help it.” It’s accepting the morality of the homophobes to do so. I don’t think homosexuality is a sin. I could probably live a hetero life, though it would be very difficult and unpleasant. I choose not to put myself through that because I like men. I like sex with men and I reject the morality of the superstitious, as well as the basis of that morality, the belief in the supernatural.

I’m about 90% gay and maybe 10% hetero and I like the gay 90%. I won’t accept someone else telling me that I am less of a person because I choose to follow the 90% of my desires and ignore the 10%. Now, it is true that I can’t help the feelings and desire I have for males. That is something that won’t change. I can, however, choose to acknowledge that part of me, though, and not give credence to the “morality” that says I am wicked for feeling that way or for preferring sex with males over sex with females.

Did You Like the Bush II Recession? Then Get Ready for Bush III

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced on Facebook Tuesday that he wants to have a conversation with US, which means the big money donors in the Republican Party who are desperate to find a “moderate” who can win the White House in 2016. As I wrote yesterday, if you love the financial meltdown Kansas is experiencing now that the radical wing of the GOP has taken over there, you will love 2016 if the GOP takes the White House. Jeb is a moderate, but he won’t be able to fight off the crazy wing of the party after he is elected. The crazies have forced the GOP leadership in the House–specifically the neutered John Boehner–and the Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell–who’s never met a lobbyist he hasn’t gone down on–to cave and scuttle almost all possible compromises with President Obama. The more the crazies win primaries for House and Senate seats, the more they will be able to pressure the GOP leadership to accept their irresponsible fiscal mismanagement-ala Kansas.

My primary issue with the “Wall Street” Wing of the GOP is the same I have with Hillary and the Wall Street Wing of the Democratic Party. In 1999, the Republican Congress repealed the Glass- Steagall Act, the law that regulated the banking industry and erected a firewall between commercial banking and investment banking. The result of that repeal was that banks were free to speculate with depositors’ money in areas far removed from the traditional loans they had always made. They drifted into mortgage-backed securities with the knowledge they were taking no risk. The mortgages that backed these securities were made with no accountability for the mistakes made in issuing them to people who could not pay them back. As a result, when the mortgages failed, the mortgage-backed securities failed and bank after bank failed. But only the small banks. The big Wall Street banks were saved by the Feds and allowed to gobble up the failed smaller banks, which the Feds ignored. Thus the people who created the mess, the big banks dealing with these fraudulent securities, got off with hardly a hand-slapping while enjoying huge profits and even more enormous increases in their assets as they absorbed the small community and regional banks who weren’t “too big to fail.”

These are the people behind the prospective candidacies of Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Jeb was with the failed Lehman Brothers and is now on the board of a private-equity fund– remember Mitt Romney and Bail Capital and how they bought small companies, liquidated them and then pocketed their employees retirement and pension funds? The Republicans never learn, but then perhaps they think the American people will ignore the evidence before them and resort to wishful thinking, as they usually do.

Hillary, the foreign policy hawk who supported Bush II’s illegal war in Iraq and the hideously misnamed Patriot Act and who’s husband threw liberals under the bus when he signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, is just a Democratic version of Jeb. She has spent her time since leaving the White House in 2001 courting the Wall Street donors who keep the “moderate” wing of the Democratic Party going. What does Hillary stand for? Can someone please tell me an issue that she has recently actually taken a stand on? No.

It wouldn’t really matter much which candidate won in a Hillary-Jeb matchup. Oh, I suppose Hillary would be marginally less dangerous that Jeb, but would it really matter? The Republicans will nominate the establishment candidate because the money interests in the GOP always win over the radical conservatives in Presidential nominations, but increasingly not in Senate and House primaries. The Ted Cruz- Rand Paul crazies will throw a fit and piss and moan and then they will vote for Jeb in the general election.

The one chance the people have for someone who could really shake up the election and political process would be Elizabeth Warren.  The articles, a column by David Brooks in the New York Times and an opinion piece in the New Yorker by John Cassidy explain why she could actually win and why she should.

It doesn’t really matter if Jeb is the GOP nominee or one of the crazies. The result will be the same if they are elected President. Hillary will simply throw any liberal or moderately liberal positions she may pretend to hold under the bus. The only way to end the control of Wall Street over Main Street is to elect a progressive fighter, as the conservative David Brooks acknowledges Elizabeth Warren to be.

Please Elizabeth, when the time comes, PLEASE don’t let Hillary be inevitable. She was inevitable in 2008 and look what happened.

Is Kansas the future?

There was a time when Kansas wasn’t batshit crazy. Yes, it’s always been a tad Republican, though they used to occasionally elect Democrats to be Governor. However, Bloody Kansas was strongly ANTI-slavery, when to be a Republican meant you believed in the dignity of human beings. Kansas was a home for runaway slaves from the repellent and repugnant South. Kansas was once the home of a strong populist movement that fought against the control of politics by corporations. Not so much anymore.

For awhile, creationists on the state Board of Education had dictated that the religious doctrine of “scientific” creationism be taught in Science classes. Conservatives have harassed and, in some cases murdered, doctors who helped women with their reproductive freedom, with the help of the state Attorney General, But, it doesn’t stop there.

Since the Koch Brothers in Wichita have purchased the Kansas Republican Party–thanks in part to corporate shills on the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case, the Tea Party in Kansas managed to kick almost every moderate Republican from the state legislature and to elect the most radically conservative Governor– Sam Brownback– in recent times. Brownback has succeeded in passing the sweeping tax cuts that have left his state’s school system painfully underfunded and has threatened the economic stability of the state at a time when the rest of the country– well, the Blue States, at least– are enjoying an economic recovery.

This article in the December 15, 2014 New York Times describes what may happen in Kansas over the next couple of years because of the irresponsibility and short-sighted leadership of the state’s Republicans.

WARNING! If you vote for a Republican for President in 2016, even a supposed “moderate” such a Jeb Bush, and you give him a Republican Congress, THIS is what America will look like.

Blue?

America often seems to be the opposite of the rest of the word. One way in which this is obvious is in the colors we choose to designate the left and right wings of our political system. In every other civilized country of the world, blue is the color for conservatives and red the color for progressives. Not so in the USA. Why is this?

In 1976, back before computer graphics became ubiquitous in television news, the American television network NBC created a giant electronic map to hang behind their anchormen on the night of the 1976 Presidential election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. They chose red to designate the states that went to the Republican, Ford, and blue to designate the Democratic states for Carter. I believe they did this because during the most virulent of the anti-communist years in America, “red” was a derogatory term for a communist or socialist- or anyone who didn’t conform to the conservative mainstream in America. Rather than associate the Democrats with the hated communists, NBC designated red for the conservative or Republican states and those designations have held ever since.

Thus, I am trapped in one of the most Republican states in the US– one of the reddest of the red. And, so, I am blue, as in a Democrat, as if unhappy to be living in a red state. I am The Blue Boy, a name stolen from the famous Gainsborough painting that currently hangs in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California– a most definitely BLUE state.

I am a progressive. I believe that PEOPLE should be protected by government when they can’t protect themselves, and not corporations. I am gay. I have always been gay. I remember being five years old and finding other males attractive. I am a humanist and a rationalist. I believe in logic and empirical data and not wishful thinking to explain the universe and reality. I am The Blue Boy.