srparedon – editorials (archive)

June 2006

June means gay pride celebrations in big cities throughout the world. Marches, parades, rallies, festivals, and parties will commemorate the events of June 1969 wherein patrons of New York City’s Stonewall Bar stood up to police harassment. When the bar was raided that historic night, gay men, drag queens, and street riffraff– instead of climbing meekly into the back of police wagons– fought back. What the cops had thought would be a routine shakedown turned into a riot.

Out of that act of resistance was born the modern gay liberation movement. Central to the spirit… Continue reading →

May 2006

Those hostile to gay expression often raise the specter of a lonely and loveless old age for any man who adopts “the gay lifestyle” thereby straying from the narrow heterosexual path. As they age, gay men– some warn– will be abandoned by a youth-obsessed narcissistic gay culture that cares only for the young and beautiful.

And a few gay men have learned to echo such complaints and fears. Some older gay men lament being left out of the youth-oriented nightlife scene, while young gay men can be found who cannot imagine a worthwhile life after… Continue reading →

April 2006

This month the US government’s sentencing case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged “twentieth hijacker” in the 9/11 disaster, was rocked by revelations of gross prosecutorial abuse. A government lawyer working with the prosecution gave witnesses transcripts of other witnesses’ testimony and coached them on what they needed to say and what they should not say. (Since Moussaoui has already been judged guilty­ thus never to be free­ the government’s effort to script the testimony against him is now solely in pursuit of his execution.) Upon learning of the misconduct, the judge in the case called it… Continue reading →

March 2006

Last month school officials in Brockton, Massachusetts, suspended a six-year-old first grader for “sexually harassing” a classmate. Allegedly, he put two fingers inside the waistband of a female first-grader during class. No further contact was alleged.

The case generated national attention with most commentary suggesting that it was absurd to charge a toddler with sexual harassment. Editorials, psychologists, and educators parroted the same line: six-year-olds don’t have an understanding of sexuality and thus it’s unfair to punish them for sexual harassment.

While such challenges to the school’s absurd policy are welcome, they are terribly… Continue reading →

February 2006

Last December, the New York Times ran a long story “Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid World Online.” It detailed how Justin Berry ran a gay-for-pay website starring himself for five years, from ages 13 to 18. Berry outlines how, after being offered $50 to take off his shirt shortly after going online with his first webcam, he learned to entice men to send more and more money, processed as online credit card transactions. Soon he was making, by his estimates, up to $900 an hour for masturbating for his online subscribers, and was… Continue reading →

January 2006

Joseph Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict XVI, has directed that gay men, or any men with “homosexual tendencies,” are unfit to provide pastoral care to Catholic parishioners. They are, according to the new Pope, “objectively disordered”; therefore, he has ordered that seminaries scrutinize men studying to become priests and throw out those tainted with homosexuality.

Many Roman Catholics have reacted with horror. “If [this] is not a witch hunt,” Rev. Richard Prendergast, pastor of Josaphat Church in Chicago, told the New York Times, “I don’t know what is.”

Of course, Ratzinger should… Continue reading →