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Humanists often use the term ‘coming out’, a term appropriated  from the Gay Liberation movement of the late 1960’s and 70’s.  We like to think ourselves in the same tradition of taking a public stance in our moral position, in defiance of the common wisdom and tradition.  Here’s  a second look at the validity of taking that stance. And here is also a suggestion to take a cue from an unlikely source: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

I came out as a gay man in the early 1960’s and was present at the Stone Wall action (only the newspapers called it a ‘riot’ at the time), and was at the front of the first Gay Pride Parade, up Fifth Avenue in New York City. For us, it was a critical moment, a spontaneous release of  many years of self-repression, a throwing off of doubt, a surging of real pride.

We thought of ourselves as, and were, a  part of the mid-20th century era of liberation; we came right after the pinnacle of the Civil Rights movement, and presumed to be in that great tradition of civil disobedience, rebellion, and self assersion.

I had friends who had traveled on the Freedom Bus, marched in Selma, protested in Birmingham.  And they said to me, “You have some nerve, equating yourselves to our struggle.”

And they were right. Gays were never enslaved; never beaten, tortured, even killed, at the whim of a ‘master’.  We weren’t lynched, made to ride at the back of the bus, denied access to public places, given the lousiest education, the worst jobs. Black were, and still face hardships.

The gay person can easily hide.  We can vote, swim in the pool, watch the show, ride the bus, even get married, and no one will know, so long as she hides herself, doesn’t reveal her emotions, pretends to be the same as the others.  Black Liberation and Gay Liberation are NOT equivalent, nor can they be.

Today, atheists want recognition for our own unique perspective.  We need to stand up and shout out our pride in our beliefs.  Our families, our friends, need to know that good is not the sole property of the religious.  Equal treatment, equal respect, is a human right.

But our cause is not equivilant to the Gay Liberation cause.  When gays used to congregate in bars, the police felt free to storm in with force, break up the meeting, and arrest everyone present; our meetings are not broken up by those jack-booted thugs.  We haven’t been called nasty names for all our lives (pansy, queer, faggot, dyke…etc., etc.).  We haven’t known the fear of roving gangs of youths out for a fun night of fag-bashing.  No one has recently tied us to a fencepost, beat us bloody, and left us to freeze to death.

But not being ‘equivalent to’ does not mean being nothing like.  We share many of the same goals as the gay and black communities.

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In his dissenting opinion to Lawrence v Texas (2003), which ruled unconstitutional so-called sodomy laws (the justification for legal harrassment of gays), Justice Antonin Scalia refers to “…the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

He was right. Elimination of moral opprobrium was precisely one of the goals of the gay liberation movement.  And it’s also the atheist’s goal.  Because there is a moral opprobrium attached to atheism, agnosticism, and dissent from the approved orthodoxy.  It’s not equal to that attached to homosexuality, but it’s there just the same.  It’s stifling, spreading ignorance and working against equality for all the people, and we need stand up and demonstrate against it.

“Opprobrium” means ‘disapproval of shameful behavior.’  We can’t do so much about the disapproval itself–except to demonstrate the the behavior is not really ‘shameful’.  But we can and must object to the actions society takes to express its ‘disapproval.’

Employment practices that discriminate against the non-believer.  You shouldn’t have to hide your disbelief from your employer, or feel you could be fired, or passed over for promotion, if you did.

Exclusionary activities, such as public prayer, that make anyone who doesn’t participate  a pariah.  There’s nothing to prevent Tim Tebow from making a fool of himself on the football field; but when there’s a prayer on the PA system, that’s excluding anyone who doesn’t agree with the expressed religious belief.

Requirements in government, tests both legal and non-legal.  Who can run for public office without expressing belief in god?

Intrusion of religious belief into the life of civil society: e.g. banning contraception, abortion, and same-sex marriage; these are all based upon religious belief, not upon any objective criteria.

Humanists– atheists– have never had a ‘stonewall moment’.  Maybe we need to rebel at some football games.  Perhaps we should ask Pussy Riot to join us for an action at St Patricks Cathedral.  Can we bare our souls at a Humanist Pride March, as some gays bare bottoms at Gay Pride marches?

Barring the above, we can at least reveal ourselves, to our neighbors, to our families and friends.  That’s a bare, minimum first step.

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The 1960’s were a tumultuous period in our recent history.  The Stonewall Riot was a remarkable event in those roiling times.  I was there when it happened.

I was living in Greenwich Village, at No. 7 Gay Street (how’s that for an address?), just around the corner from The Stonewall Inn, a bar on Christopher Street at Sheridan Square, in the heart of the Village.  That was a very busy place, brightly lit and always full of people, every night and especially on Fridays and Saturdays.  Almost any weekend evening I could walk out my front door and see flashing blue lights from the cop cars up and down Christopher, West Fourth, and Seventh Avenue.  Sheridan square is a tiny park in the Y-intersection of Christopher and West Fourth streets, right at Seventh Avenue. There was the IRT subway stop; hop on an uptown train and you’re soon at Times Square, Central Park, or Spanish Harlem, or to Queens; take the downtown train for Brooklyn, Wall Street and Staten Island.

Just as it was quick and easy to go to those places, so it was quick and easy to get from those places to Sheridan Square, and boy, did you ever, if you were young and gay and eager to find like minds and bodies.  That subway stop was a popular hangout for drag queens, and a convenient jumping off place for the other hot spots in The Village.  It was also a favorite spot for the cops, who just loved to hassle the ‘queers.’

[DDET Read more…]

As was every other gathering place for gay young men and women; raiding the gay bars was a constant, a given in New York City.  But not just in NYC: hassling gays was a fact of life throughout the country.

I spent my last two years of college in a suburb of Chicago.  Near there, was a little gay bar, a dark and lonely-looking shack, really, on the road on the western edge of O’Hare Airport.  During an election season, the Sheriff promised to “clean up” the gay bars, and raided that place.  Everyone was arrested, taken to jail and booked on ‘indecent behavior’.  There names, addresses, and places of employment were taken down, given to reporters, and duly published in the newspapers.  A few of my professors were listed there.  I was lucky: I had to study that night, so wasn’t there.

And so it went, in Chicago, in New York, in Philadelphia, in Atlanta…wherever there were gay people, there too were cops to give them grief.

Strangely, though, there were even more serious causes for protest.  The war in Vietnam.  Segregation, and the Freedom marches.  Feminism was rising.  The Black Panther movement.

And Black Panther leader Angela Davis; she had been arrested and that day incarcerated in the Women’s House of Detention on Greenwich Street, also just around the corner from Sheridan Square.  It was while standing on a street corner in solidarity with Angela Davis, that I first noticed the commotion going on down by the Stonewall.

The Stonewall was not my kind of place, too much rough trade, bears and leather.  I had no hankering to stand around in the semi-dark smoky room with a luke-warm beer in my hand among all those egos; I preferred a lighter place, with twinks like myself.  But its location in the center of The Village gave the Stonewall enough patrons to attract the attention of the cops.

For all those planning on attending the next riot, here’s a hint:  Arrive Early!  I came on the scene when there were already hundreds of people, voices were shouting, bodies were shoving, obscenities and slogans were being throw, and everything was a confusing mess–and there I was, at the back of the crowd.  Could not tell just what was going on, but could feel the excitement of the crowd, and the joy of resistance to The Man, the utter exuberance of rebellion.  People were running this way and that, spinning around, shouting at the tops of their voices, all caught up in the spirit of freedom in the air.

This went on for quite some time.  Eventually, the blue-lights left, groups went off in their own directions, and I went home to bed, hearing the calls of stragglers out my window.This was the beginning, though, not an end.  The whole community was charged up.  A new activist group, the Gay Activist Alliance came out to replace the stodgy old Matachine Society.  (And I always had thought that GAA stood for Girls’ Athletic Association.)  A real feeling of comradeship  had developed.

The first Gay Pride Day Parade, I was at the front of hundreds all the way up Fifth Avenue to Central Park.  When we got to the Park and spilled into the Sheep Meadow, reporters and cameras were on us.  My lover, his girlfriend and I were besieged by camera in face: “Who does what to whom?”  crudely demanded a reporter.

It was a beautiful day in the park, and there was a feeling, I am free, I am Me, and I can do anything!

And we could. And that feeling led to us doing everything we could. Because we could. Even before Stonewall, there was an incipient epidemic of hepatitus, but going to the baths was, “I can do it, so I will.” And then AIDS came along, and the best minds of my generation, the most beautiful minds of my generation… I hope never to have to see another quilt.

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This chart via Ezra Klein in WaPo:

From Think Progress: stunning.

And Digby over at Hullabaloo has some really interesting takes on inequality.

I’m struck by the parallels of today’s ‘American Exceptionalism’ advocates and the ‘reform’ movement in the southern Democratic party at the turn of the 20th century.  Back then, the rule of dark-skinned peoples in the Philipines, ‘the white man’s burden,’  was used to bolster the  justification for white rule in the South, suppressing black voting and bolstering Jim Crow. Today, American Exceptionalism is the raison d’etre for American interference (so-called ‘leadership’) in the Mid-East.

The original idea behind American exceptionalism was that America was founded upon principles that were not found in other nations: democracy and  egalitarianism. This idea has been completely distorted so that today it means that America ‘knows better’ than those ignorant, backward Others, i.e., darker-skinned peoples.

As found in Ezra Klein’s WonkBlog:

 

In Wapo Greg Sargent says in his blog today

Republicans are contrasting this with an interview Obama gave early in his term, in which he said: “If I don’t have this done in three years, then this is gonna be a one-term proposition.” And no question — that contrast is a rough one politically for Obama.

Why Oh Why keep repeating this mis-quote?  Obama was referring to the TARP, not the deficit, nor the debt, nor the economy.  It’s just another Republican take-it-out-of-context lies that they repeat over and over and over–and here’s a ‘liberal’ columnist repeating the same distortion.

 

When we  first moved to Greenville, South Carolina, whenever we met new people almost the first thing they would say is, “Have you found your church yet?”  NO, I wanted to say back, and here’s why:

I went to church and sang in the choir all my childhood.  In high school years I was active in the youth group (Pilgim Fellowship); I was the Faith Leader, which means I prepared a service each week and gave a little homily.  The summer before I left for college, I thought I had a Call, and set out to study for the ministry.

In college, in 1960, it took me a little over a year to get rid of that minister idea, and I totally left the church.   After graduating, I moved to New York City and lived in Greenwich village with a series of lovers.  It was there I first dropped LSD.

Acid totally changed my life.   The LSD experience was completely life-changing.  It was the experience of God; no, of being god.[DDET Read on…]

After a while, I realized that the experience of one-with-the-universe was obtainable, but that I would never achieve it completely, while taking drugs.  So I stopped the drugs completely, and became macrobiotic.

I moved to Boston to study macrobiotics with Michio Kushi, lived in a study house there while studying his theory of the Oder of the Universe and eating a restricted diet revolving around brown rice.  After two years, I met Guru Maharaj Ji.

I was new to the practice of Eastern meditation, and took it up with a vengeance.  I folled Guru Maharaj Ji to India, to his ashram in Hardwar, by the Ganges. Coming back to the US, I was offered the chance to edit the organization’s newspaper; so I moved to the national headquarters in Denver and edited The Divine Times.

Like in any big organization, wierd things started to go on; there was a lot of money happening, and other things not mentioned.  After two years, I got disillusioned, and began to leave the ashram. That was when I met Avis, who was also leaving the ashram.  We fell in love, and moved in together.  We got married on June 8, 1975.

After a few years, we moved to Vermont, where my parents had retired and where we could be closer to Avis’s family in Rhode Island.   We were still searching for a more spiritual life.  We attended meetings at the Tibetan Buddhist center in Burlington, Vermont, and at other meditation places.  Then we found Guru Mayi Chitvilasananda and the Siddha Yoga path.  Soon we had a meditation center meeting twice a week at our house in the mountains.

Organizations are always disillusioning, I guess, because after 10 years of Siddha Yoga, we started seeing flaws in the path, and eventually drifted away.

But that awakening that happened when I first dropped acid is still with me, and the deep understanding I’ve gained through meditation will never leave.

So now, the answer to  “Have you found your church yet?” is, That has nothing to do with it!  The question is meaningless.  That’s not what life is about.
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There’s a hole in my underwear.

It all  started when I came back from a month in Italy.  I’d felt tired that whole month. I complained to my doctor:

“I’m feeling tired.  Maybe some sort of low-grade infection?”

“Tired?” he responded, “We’d better check on that.”

So he listened to my heart with his stethoscopes.

“Hmmm,” said the good Doctor.  “Let’s just take a reading…”

And in comes the nurse with the EKG machine.  She hooks me up with the cold little electrode patches, punches up some numbers and up comes a readout on her monitor.  Doctor comes in, looks at it.

“Anything wrong?” I ask.

“Hmm,” he replies.  “I can’t see anything here; but I think we’d better send you off for a a stress test.”
[DDET Read more…]

So two weeks later, I’m on a treadmill, shot up with thallium radioisotope, and the monitors are running.  “See anything?” I pant.

“The cardiologist will look it over; we’ll call you.”

Two weeks later, the cardioligist in his office: “We see some minor discrepancies in your cardiac diagnostic,” he says.  “This could indicate a blockage.  With these figures, there’s a seventy percent chance of a blockage.”

“So what does that mean?”

“I recommend we do a cardial catheterization.  We can schedule it next month.  The earlier, the better.”

“But I’m not feeling tired anymore.  Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Better be sure than sorry.”

The general practitioner recommends I go ahead with it; my wife thinks I should go ahead with it.  “You never know.  And, seventy percent…”

So in I go to the hospital.  Before they stick the thing into myveins, they have to prep me.

So I’m lying there, doped up on don’t know what, and nurse comes along with her razor.  Now, I’ve already insisted that the catheter go into a vein on my wrist, not through the groin.  But she pulls my robe up above my waist.

“Hey, we’re doing this thing through the wrist!”

“Well, we have to be prepared,” she smirks, “incase we can’t go in there.”

And she gets out this razor thing, looks like a Bic disposable razor, but it’s electric, and buzz, buzz, the hair’s gone from the right side of my crotch, and then from my right wrist.

Soon I’m rolled on my gurney into the operating room, doped up some more, and wake up in a recovery room.

“Did I get a stent put in?” I ask, as I come to.

“No, doctor didn’t find any blockage.  You’re good to go.”

And that was that.  Charge for stress test: $5,000.  Charge for catheterization: $15,000. Insurance covers all but $1200.

So what does this have to do with the hole in my underwear?

It’s the rash that develops a week after the catheterization.  The doctor says it’s jock itch, and prescribes a salve.  The salve doesn’t help, after using it for five weeks.  He prescribes a pill, which has no effect.

“You’d better see a dermitologist,” he says.  So I go to the specialist: “Jock Itch,” he pronounces.  Another salve.

Still the rash persists.  I suggest to my doctor that it’s something I picked up from the razor.  “Nonsense,” he responds, “those things are sealed in sterile…” and sort of fades out, because he hadn’t seen it, he wasn’t there.  But I was, and I never saw a sterile wrapping come off.

“Try wearing boxer shorts,” he suggest.  “Let air get at it.”  I t ry that; it just makes my balls rub up against my thigh, making things worse.

After a year of this back-and-forth of trhying this and that, my wife suggests I try the ointment she uses when she has a rash: zinc oxide ointment.

I try the zinc oxide: it seems to work.  But there’s the problem of rubbing of balls against thigh.  Boxer briefs work somewhat, but not great.

My solution: bikini briefs, with a hole cut in front for my penis to stick through.  I don’t usually like bikini briefs, with everything scrunched up, but I do like the ball support.  So with mylittle scissors, I make a slit in the briefs in just the right spot (being careful not to nick myself!).

That combination has almost entirely cleared up the rash! Zinc oxide ointment, just a dab, and the ball support (no rugging on thighs) has done the trick.
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I’ll do anything to avoid hitting the keyboard.  Anything.  Eat:stuff myself, gain back the weight I lost (did I mention I’ve lost 25 pounds in 6 months?).  Google for pornography. Check out the latest magazine update to arrive on my Kindle (New Yorker, Nation, Atlantic, Harper’s)-. Do my laundry-. Check out what Avis is watching on the TV. Roam outside, water the shrubberies. ANYTHING to avoid doing: this.  Typing.  Typing new things.  Thoughts, random thoughts, much less in any wise directed thoughts;

Like for instance, what’s up with that Kindle, and hasn’t Amazon learned anything with its directed avertising? [DDET Read more…] Amazon knows just about everything there is to know about me; I’m one of their most loyal customers.  But it never uses the data it gathers on me from my orders, from my browsing, to direct advertising to me on the Kindle.  Email, yes: emails all the time about things I’ve ordered, things I browsed…but never on the Kindle.  And the Kindle shows an ad just about every time I pick it up:–it turns itself off after about one minute, at which point an ad is displayed. But never for anything that I might find enticing.

I order from Amazon books; I’m interested in US history of the late 19th and early 20th century–I’ve got two shelf-loads of books from Amazon on that subject.  And what does Kindle offer?  Werewolves.

From Amazon I’ve oredered salt-cured olives; Kindle offers me steaks.  From Amazon I buy computers; Kindle offers me whiter teeth.  At Amazon I’ve searched for solar panels. Kindle tries to entice me with organic tea (okay, getting warmer, but come on!).

Come on, Amazon.  You know how to reach me (you  know it’s my Kindle those ads are going to; why not use some of those terabytes of data on me you’re storing?[/DDET]