wwwelcoming change
April 2000
At the center of life is change. The new replaces the old which in time becomes the old and is itself replaced by another new. This cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death is the inescapable framework in which we work out the pattern of our lives. Human creativity is predicated on the possibility of change, and at the same time mocked by its inevitability. We build knowing that our structures, no matter how magnificent they may appear to us, will pass away.
No doubt it is our awareness of the temporariness of our lives' specifics that… Continue reading
Drag Queen as Prophet
March 2000
From political organizing in San Francisco in the 1950s, to New York's 1969 Stonewall riots, drag queens have been at the forefront of the modern gay liberation movement. Yet, like other prophets without honor in their own country, drag queens continue to be treated with condescension and discrimination by many in the gay and lesbian community.
Injustices experienced by drag queens range from being denied admittance to some gay bars to physical attacks. And every June, gay papers will predictably be full of letters bemoaning how drag queens "embarrass us all" at pride parades.
Such scorn… Continue reading
America’s Criminal Policy
February 2000
As the millennium turns, the United States has surpassed Russia and now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.
One out of every 150 Americans, over 2 million people, are in prison or jail. Over two-thirds of all those entering prison today have been convicted of non-violent offenses, predominantly drug charges. A majority of those imprisoned for drug offenses are serving time for simple possession convictions. And many among the rapidly growing prison population of so-called sex offenders (considered violent criminals) are incarcerated for sex "crimes" that involved no violence or force whatsoever.
But… Continue reading
Gay Is Fundamental
January 2000
What do we mean when we say that someone is gay or that someone is straight?
The popular model of sexuality contends that sexuality is A) generally binary (either one is straight or gay, with few truly indeterminate "bisexuals"), B) determined early in life (perhaps even genetically coded), and C) immutable. Most modern scientists, jurists, and even philosophers embrace a view of sexuality wherein the population can be divided into heterosexuals and homosexuals (and a very few bisexuals). While the relative sizes of these categories might be debated, the prevailing model holds that individuals end up either… Continue reading
Wyoming: Inequality State
December 1999
Matthew Shepard's murder, we are told by many gay spokespeople, underscores the need for hate crime laws to deter and condemn violence motivated by bigotry. And Aaron McKinney's trial for that murder illustrates that victims of violence– not prosecutors– now call the shots in criminal proceedings. By judging crimes differently based on the political status of the victim, both hate crime laws and so-called victims' rights provisions do pernicious damage to the gay movement's legitimate goal: equality under the law. Misled into pursuing an agenda of victimhood, many of our organizations have traded demands for liberation with a… Continue reading
The Sex Offender Majority
November 1999
All fifty states now have sex of fenders registries (SORs), agencies with multi-million dollar budgets mandated to track every move of "sexually dangerous persons" and "sexual predators." Though created only in the last few years, SORs have been retroactively registering those convicted of sex crimes decades earlier, people who had served their time and thought they were now free. And the US Supreme has okayed SOR legislation permitting lifetime incarceration of people who aren't serving time for any conviction, but who are deemed to have a "personality abnormality" that makes them likely to become a "sex offender."