srparedon – editorials (archive)

October 2002

Open the pages of many gay newspapers and you’ll find ads from therapists offering help to those afflicted with “sexual compulsivity.” Guys are told that seeking out multiple, anonymous sexual encounters signals the inability to form rewarding, intimate relationships. Working with a sex-as-addiction model, such therapists laud their clients’ efforts to avoid the parks and toilets and rest stops where they’d previously gone for their “fix.” Getting guys into courtship-before-sex, one-partner-at-a-time behavior is seen as success, a move towards more “mature” relationships.

Undoubtedly, some guys who cruise anonymous sex venues do feel shameful. Throughout their… Continue reading →

September 2002

Baz Luhrmann’s delightful film Strictly Ballroom teaches the lesson of the Spanish proverb vivir con miedo es como vivir en medias: “a life lived in fear is a life half lived.” The movie’s hero learns that slavish conformity to the safe, “strictly ballroom” repertoire robs dancing of its vitality. His father’s failed example teaches him that dancing only becomes worthwhile when one finds the courage to dance ones own steps.

Luhrmann’s film is popular among gay people because many of us spent years in the closet, terrified of doing anything not “strictly ballroom.” Only by… Continue reading →

August 2002

Do a web search for the terms “pedophile priest” and “tip of the iceberg” and you will get hundreds of hits. In story after story, press and prosecutors routinely employ the iceberg cliché, warning that for each case of abuse so-far reported, hundreds more wait to be discovered. According to some estimates, half-a-million Americans have been raped by their priests.

Such high numbers reflect, in part, wishful thinking by attorneys and therapists eager to cash in as hundreds sue the deep-pocketed Catholic Church. But given that sexual shenanigans with the local priest are routine in… Continue reading →

July 2002

You do not have the right to remain silent. Anything you say– and anything we imagine you are thinking– can and will be used against you. If you can’t afford a lawyer, it doesn’t matter since you do not have the right to speak to an attorney.

Thus says a five-to-four majority of the US Supreme Court in McCune v. Lile.

In earlier decisions, the same court majority has sanctioned incarcerating people not charged with any crime (thus voiding habeas corpus protections), has authorized further punishment for those who’ve served all their time… Continue reading →

June 2002

One of the earliest gay pride slogans was “Gay is Good.” This catch phrase was meant as an antidote to ubiquitous, vitriolic anti-gay sentiment.

Before Stonewall and the sexual revolution, homosexuality was almost uniformly denounced as unspeakably bad: doctors labeled it a sickness, the law branded it a crime, and clerics pronounced it a sin. Few individuals were brave enough to announce their own homosexual feelings or experiences. Even to suggest that perhaps homosexuality could be thought of differently, as something other than monstrous perversion, was to risk being ostracized and deemed suspect. There was… Continue reading →

May 2002

Students of history are sometimes left wondering why victims of horrific pogroms and persecutions did not “see it coming.” Of course, hindsight is famed for its clarity, but often oppressive measures seem so clear, so calculated, that it is hard to imagine how victims ever tolerated the build-up to more final solutions.

Folklore tells us that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, he’ll hop out­ but that if you place him in cold water and only slowly turn up the heat, he’ll stay complacently in the pot, oblivious to his… Continue reading →