Month: June 2018

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What is the Real Spirit of Stonewall? by Pat Gourley

     
[Editor’s Note: This story was posted on this blog five years ago. It is showing up now as a reminder that Pridefest Denver is this weekend.]
“Despite his enduring commitment to gay rights and lifelong
dedication to queer scholarship, Duberman is deeply disappointed in the
contemporary LGBT movement, noting that for the last 20 years it has been
focused on marriage equality and repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. In
Duberman’s view, the gay agenda is grossly myopic and its goals of assimilation
counter the spirit of Stonewall and Gay Liberation, which sought to affirm,
rather than obscure gay differences.”
http://slanthere.com

The above quote referenced from the online entity, The Slant, is from an
interview done recently with Martin Duberman. Duberman for those perhaps
unfamiliar with the name is a queer, radical activist with a very long and
impressive academic background and the author of numerous books and countless
articles. He is on faculty as a professor of history emeritus at the City
University of New York. The interview was published online June 5th, 2013 and is
commemorating the 44th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. His most recent book
is titled The Marin Duberman Reader.

In reading the Duberman interview I found myself hearing similar ideas I was
frequently exposed to in the late 1970’s as a result of my budding relationship
with Harry Hay, life long gay activist and founder of the Mattachine Society in
1950 and very instrumental in birthing the Radical Fairie movement. It was
through contacts at the Gay Community Center of Colorado in 1978 that I was
able to connect with Harry and his partner John Burnside who were living in
northern New Mexico at that time.

An activity I was involved in during the spring of 1979, through The Center for
the week of activities commemorating the Stonewall Riots, was the 3rd annual
Lesbian/ Gay Symposium held the Saturday before the Sunday March. We were still
marching back then rather than having a pride parade or at least still hotly
debating whether it should be a “March or a Parade”.

The symposiums were part of Pride Week activities starting in 1977 and
continuing into the early 1980’s working with the support of the Center. They
consisted of a single daylong program of workshops. Presentations and
discussions were of topical interest to the LGBT community and often fairly
broad in scope. Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell was of course not even on the distant
horizon yet and marriage equality not even a figment of anyone’s imagination.
For many early LGBT activists participation in the military was not consider a
desirable pursuit for anyone gay or straight, and marriage was thought to be a
rather unsuccessful heterosexual construct meant to primarily control women and
property, definitely not something to strive to emulate.

Since I had gotten to know Hay and his loving companion John Burnside in the
previous year the awareness of his rich queer activist history led me to pursue
him as a keynote speaker at the 1979 Symposium. They were at that time both
heavily involved in the planning for the first Radical Fairie gathering that
was to take place in the Arizona desert outside Tucson later in the summer. In
personal correspondence dated 6-11-79 in typical Hay fashion he agreed to come
up for the event. Written letters in 1979 were a viable and frequently used
manner of communication and Harry was a master at writing long letters.
Regarding my request that he and John be keynote speakers he wrote: “…being
‘keynote people’ scares us. We love to rap with people but we don’t take kindly
to the old hetero-imitating formalisms of speeches or addresses.”

Though I have many pages of personal correspondence with Harry in particular I
unfortunately never saved my responses back to him. I apparently responded that
that would be fine and they came to Denver for that Lesbian and Gay Pride
weekend of 1979 and participated in several workshops at the Symposium. He
spoke briefly at the rally at the end of the Pride march that Sunday in Civic Center.
Harry with bullhorn graces the cover of the July 6, 1979 issue (Vol. IV, #7) Of
Out Front Magazine. I do not remember any of his remarks at the rally but the
theme of the march that year was “We Are Family” so I suspect he spoke to that.

Much of Hay’s thought on queers at the time focused on the three questions
originally raised by the Mattachine society; who are we, where do we come from
and what are we for? If we were to be pursuing these questions in earnest at
the time, and they are still quite relevant today, assimilation into the larger
hetero society with marriage equality and open military service were unlikely
to facilitate that exploration.

In the Duberman piece referenced earlier he describes the current “gay agenda”
focus on marriage and the military as very myopic and Hay would certainly
agree. In fact I heard Harry dismiss both as sadly hetero-imitative and nothing
we should be serious about pursuing if we were intent on getting to the root of
our difference and bringing our unique gifts and contributions to the larger
human banquet.

When Duberman was asked specifically about the influence of queer culture on
mainstream America he responded in part: “So far, I don’t think the effect of
mainstream culture has been significant, and I think that’s the fault of both
the gay movement and the mainstream, which is willing to accept and tolerate us
to the extent that we act like good middle class white people”.

If I can be so bold I would say that both Hay and Duberman firmly believe that
our real strength comes from being “outsiders”. Perhaps the potential for at
least some of the change humanity desperately needs at this juncture can come
from queer folk and that will only come about if we relish and explore our
differences as possible keys to viable solutions to our immense problems today.
Not to throw too much of a burden on us but we really do need to be in the
vanguard of a radical restructuring of the entire social order or we are pretty
much screwed both as a species and a viable planet.

How wonderful if every June we could renew out commitment to being “other” and
recommit to using our unique worldviews to tackling some of the greatest issues
we will face in the coming year.

© 30 June 2013
 About the Author 


I was born in La Porte
Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of
my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse,
gardener and gay/AIDS activist.  I
have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San
Francisco, California.

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Gay Pride, by Phillip Hoyle

[Editor’s note: This is from our past but published today to remind readers Pridefest Denver is this weekend! Hope to see you there.]

Kalo sat cross legged watching the Gay Pride Parade on East Colfax as GLBT floats, dancers, marchers, banners, balloons, and bands made their way from Cheesman Park to the Civic Center. It was his third Gay Pride Parade, the event his dad claimed to be the best parade he’d ever seen, combining the intimacy of small-town acquaintance with the glitz of big-city resources. This time Kalo was alone with his grandpa and a few of his grandpa’s friends. It was a new adventure, the capstone to a week of art experiences in the big city. While making plans for the week I, his grandfather, told his mother we could include the gay parade. She said that was just fine. Kalo agreed, so he and I joined the crowd to see the spectacle and to visit the festival on the mall below the Colorado State Capitol building.

Ten-year-old-cool-man Kalo experienced a day of surprises that he watched with fascination, yet without alarm. His perfect visual memory recorded events and impressions that he seemed to treasure. When Kalo returned to Missouri, he told his parents a number of the highlights—the diverse crowd, the gathering of punk-rock lesbians, the woman who wasn’t wearing a shirt, the body painting, the drag queens, and more—but when his dad asked about the parade, Kalo said it wasn’t as good as the other ones he had seen.

“Why?” his dad asked.

“There were too many beer ads.”

Beer was there—everywhere—in the parade, along the route, and at the festival; everywhere folk slurping, swigging, sloshing, and spilling beer. Whether or not the kid saw all the full and quickly emptying cups I don’t know. He did notice the floats with fifteen-foot-high pitchers, enthusiastic dancers, beer banners, and loud music.

When my son relayed his son’s evaluation, I laughed and said, “He’s right. One of the main sponsors of the event is CoorsLight! They had several floats.” Of course, Coors looks at Gay Pride as effective advertising. They know how many gay bars, if not individuals, purchase their products across the West and value the important gay market. So they cooperate in order to stimulate corporate profits. They can also claim a liberal and open attitude.

I’m not proud of the alliance although I have no real objection to beer drinking. Archaeology clearly demonstrates that humans were brewing and drinking it thousands of years ago in the Middle East. They probably did so everywhere farmers raised grain. They still do, both where they have little advertising and where the market is hyped with the latest media technology combining pro-suds and pro-sports.

Yuck. I just spilled beer on my leg. The kid was right, at least to my sensibility; the Parade does have too many beer ads and way too much beer. Perhaps I am just not that much into the Dionysian revels, being too much Apollonian to simply laugh it off and lap it up. Of course, I too can down my beer even if I prefer another brand. But I don’t feel any pride over it; nor do I feel shame, guilt, or degradation.

Pride and lack of pride stem from a popularized psychology of minority concerns. I’m not into the slogans, but I do value gay pride. By contrast, I know many gay men and lesbians and others who are pleased as punch to be who and what they are but who want no identification with the rollicking groups of dancers, drag queens, leathermen, Dykes on Bikes, and such. But they do benefit from the hard work at The GLBT Community Service Center of Colorado where the festivities are planned, from the public profile of PFLAG members who proudly march for their kids and friends in this public display, and from the quiet work of lobbies for human rights within American law. We can be proud of that. I am. I’m happy to be at the festival drinking a beer or two, eating a sandwich, looking at the booths, watching performances, hearing music, and laughing with friends and acquaintances at this annual family reunion of sorts. It’s nice. I like it.

I’m proud to be here because I know at base it’s political. This mass of proud folk has a voice. Legislators and administrators admit it although sometimes with great reluctance due to their fears of not being reelected. Businesses recognize it with big buck grins. I’m not proud of the shenanigans of some of the revelers here, but I recognize the power Gay Pride represents and its balancing effects in Denver, in Colorado, and in the good ol’ USA. Show your colors, Denver; wave your rainbow flag, Colorado. Be proud enough, USA, to change a few more policies, even some in the military.

Dance, shout, celebrate. Okay, drink a few; even a few too many if you must. Take the bus home or stay over at the close-by apartment of a friend on Capitol Hill. I like our Gay Pride Festival and just hope all of us proud gays will get home safely, meaning without STDs, DUIs, ODs, or DTs.

© Denver, 2010

About the Author


Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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One Summer Afternoon, by Ray S

[Editor’s Note. This story was previously published in this blog. It is a reminder that this weekend is Pridefest Denver!]

“What are you doing, father?” It isn’t quite summer, but almost. And this afternoon the question was voiced by one of a couple of gay revelers passing by as I waited for the next #10 bus.

“Waiting,” I replied and then quickly added, “for the next bus.” Then it struck me, the title by which I had been addressed and then my prompt reply.

First, I am a father and today is the national holiday honoring fathers. Just coincidently Denver’s Gay Pride Sunday. There certainly are statistics establishing how many gay fathers there are. Guess this is our special day as well. One never knows who will turn up a father; do you?

Second, I thought after the boys passed by that the word “waiting” looms either ominously or in joyful anticipation for all of us, and in my case—for what or whatever the future may hold.

Besides the initial carnival character of the setting at Civic Center and then the Pride Parade, I was aware of the general ages of the celebrants. Don’t gay men grow beyond downy-faced Peter Pans that will never grow up or full-blown bronzed Adonises with such an abundance of self confidence and arrogance? This question was haunting and even more so after countless hours of observing the beautiful, bizarre, minimally-attired populous. Was this whole charade dedicated to the Fountain of Youth and the exciting discovery of carnality? Here is a parody of the song. “Old Soldiers never die,” etc. that goes “Old Trolls never die, they just fly away.” Is there nothing to look forward to besides a good book, getting fat from countless dinner parties, recounting lost opportunities with other disappointed brethren, indulging in the occasional gay porn DVD in the lone comfort of your bed, and on and on, so be it?

Then like the first blush of the sunrise my eyes were opened wonderfully to the real world of beautiful, crazy, happy, gay attendees of this huge street party celebrating many other positive aspects of the right to be who we are and equal to all the rest of the seemingly God’s chosen.

The exterior physicality has a way of transforming. The ultimate result is the chance for a real inner beauty to emerge, if it hasn’t been there already. The value of friendship, companionship and love beyond the flesh core. The truly life-sustaining elements of all GLBT relationships. And of course human nature will see to the sometimes overarching flesh thing.

Waiting one summer afternoon. Well just relax, breathe deeply, look around you, see the beauty and love in all of us, and eventually that bus will come.

© June 2013

About the Author



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Losing Touch, by Pat Gourley

I suspect when it comes to losing touch sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes not. Facebook for example seems to be a very powerful tool for reconnecting and staying in touch with folks and not just old school friends but often extended family members. I have used social media to reconnect with long lost friends and relatives and I would probably not remember even my own birthday without a Facebook notification.

For me this reconnecting with especially cousins I have lost touch with has at times been very interesting. I soon realized based on some of their posts that a few of them are bat-shit crazy. In part this seems very possibly related to the fact that they never got the hell out of rural Indiana. Though I rarely post anything to Facebook it has been for the most part fun to reconnect with relatives even the ones who I deeply suspect are Trump supporters. What is the old saying? “Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.” I am not saying any of my relatives are enemies but a few of them are I am sure not on any gay wedding guest lists.

Actually not wanting to offend any of my more conservative friends and relatives does act as good censoring barrier as to what little I do post on Facebook. For example I thought better of posting one of the better signs from the recent Women’s March here in Denver. It was a photo of a sign that read: “I am more pissed off than a Russian hooker.” That is a sentiment I am totally in agreement with but one that would not have gone over too well with my southern Indiana cousins I suspect.

The Internet, Facebook and Instagram all seem to be conspiring to keep us from losing touch whether we want that to be the case or not. Think for a minute about what Facebook knows about you simply based on their lists of “suggested” friends or ‘tagging” someone you may know and suggesting you should really become friends with all their friends ASAP. Remember when it might have taken years of getting to know someone before calling him or her a friend and now that status in your life is simply a click of your index finger away.

A recent example of various unsolicited entities being aware of my business in a rather eerie way was my online search for a new garbage disposal. I had searched through Google for a particular brand of disposal and in a matter of hours an ad for this same item had appeared in my Facebook feed.

It probably does not come as a surprise to many of you that when cleaning house or doing dishes I will go to You Tube for a music video by the Grateful Dead or the current incarnation Dead and Company. This has resulted in my Facebook feed again being clogged with many ads for the latest Dead merchandise and trust me it is endless. And just because of clicking or liking one article about one band I really don’t need to know what every jam band on the face of the earth is up to.

Though I think there are many reasons we should be concerned about the deep state, i.e. FBI, NSA and CIA being the ones we know most about, it really is corporate America that is in our business a thousand ways to hell every single minute of every hour of the day. It would be nice to research garbage disposals or listen on line to the umpteenth version of Dark Star without it resulting in an obnoxious marketing barrage.

So this rant on how everyone on earth is really always in touch these days, and I haven’t even gotten to our cell phones, could go on much longer but let me close with a concern I have. Are we really just lowering the bar as to what constitutes staying in touch in a meaningful manner and debasing many of our relationships with just the latest emoji?

© February 2018

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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You Don’t Want to Go There, by Louis Brown

You don’t want to go there: The Dominican Republic

Though it is true Dominican men are in general very appealing to look at, so are Sicilian and Italian men. One of the reasons I originally went to the Dominican Republic was to find out how third world people survive. I have since learned that, although the Dominican Republic is very poor, it is not the poorest of the third world nations. The first trip I took back in the early 1990’s was with my union, Local 371 of the NYC Human Resources Administration.

The second time I went there in 1995 on my own I met Leonardo Rojas. He introduced me to his family. His mother, father, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers lived on a small dirt farm about 40 miles north of Juan Dolio which is on the south shore of the Dominican Republic. Juan Dolio is about 4 miles east of Boca Chica. I also observed a few other farms of various local families.

In our neighborhood in Wheat Ridge and Lakewood, many home-owners have tool sheds in their backyards. In the area of the Dominican Republic that I visited that was what one called a house, a casa. Given the occasional hurricane, and the year-round heat of the climate, I realized that is a more sensible alternative to making a home a larger structure that would eventually probably get blown away anyway is to live in a tool shed, a casa. On the Rojas farm there was no electricity or running water, but they did have a water pump with an underground spring beneath. And an out-house. There was a nice population of chickens, ducks, hogs, goats, cows and even a pony. There were about three casas.

Also, when I went the second time, I tried to relocate the hotel I originally stayed at, and a policeman who remembered it told me a hurricane had blown it away.

When Leonardo drove me about in the areas north of Juan Dolio, he told me that large stretches of land had no police which was why he could drive me about without his having a driver’s license. His family’s farm was located in one of these police-free zones.

The third time I went, I paired off with Edwin Velez at the Plaza Real Resort, again in Juan Dolio. I met his father who used to drive me around San Pedro de Macoris east of Juan Dolio especially when I needed to go shopping at Jumbo’s, the thoroughly modern Supermarket, located in that town. I was still also seeing Leonardo Rojas during my 3rd visit, and I once went with him when I rented a car to go to Jumbo’s. I told him he could do shopping for his family, and I observed what the favorite culinary treat for his family would be, and it was octopus tentacles. Can you imagine?

Also, when I was at Jumbo’s with Leonardo, I noticed a blond American doing shopping with a very beautiful Dominican man about 22 years old. I said to myself, “Gee, a gay American with enough money to move to the DR, and get himself a good-looking live-in escort, who probably was also his housekeeper”. The Dominican companion was very well dressed. At least for now I bet the blond man was happy.

The local economy for what it was, consisted of palatial casinos and hotels surrounded by luxuriant palm gardens. If and when you have to go to the bank, do not be surprised to see guards armed with automatic rifles. That was a little scary.

The Republica Dominicana is almost a paradise, a utopia, but “You don’t want to go there,” because the locals have become slighted jaded, and they have learned that the easiest way to realize cash is to con tourists. Mexico has the same problem.

About twenty-five years before my forays into the Republica Dominicana, I had a fixation on Italian men. I kept my eyes open and noticed a lot of beautiful Italian men. On my trip to Europe, I visited Rome. The policemen there are called sbirri. Men just do not get any better-looking. The sbirri were tall, dark-skinned, and mysterious in their long-caped black uniforms. My trip to Europe was mostly sponsored by Queens College, my undergraduate alma mater.

When I returned to Queens College, I took an Italian language course, and the instructor was on loan from Rome or Naples. Signore Genovese. He was amazingly beautiful and wore custom-tailored $2,000 silk suits and perfect expensive Italian shoes. Even the heterosexual men in his class took notice. The girls all fell in love with him. I fell in love with him, sort of. His skin was a dark olive hue, and I remember that, when I was looking at him, I said to myself that he was a beautiful person of color, that is to say, the puritanical racist in me said he was a person of color. We all have these irrational fears and prejudices that have been instilled in us. Of course, scientifically he was a Caucasian.

The liberal in me now says I have just engaged in a sort of evaluating people by their looks and their race, which is a sort of racial stereotyping. I should not want to go there. Still I saw what I saw.

© 30 April 2018

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Sorting It Out, by Gillian

Whatever ‘it’ is, I feel as if I have been sorting ‘it’ out for ever; from the all-encompassing entirety of my life, to it’s tiniest details, ‘it’ never-endingly needs to be sorted out.

I guess it started, as so many things inevitably do for us all, with my mother. I have no idea how old I was when I began, only very subliminally at this stage, to try to sort out my mother in my own head, or probably more correctly, in my own psyche. But I was very young; too young to come anywhere close to expressing anything in words, even to myself. This particular sorting-out was going on at a much more primitive, instinctive, gut level. In my teen years, when an aunt told me that my parents had had two other children who had died before I was born, I felt a huge step closer to sorting out my mother’s complexities of hidden emotion. But there I stuck, until much later I finally began to come somewhere close to understanding not only my mother, but the effect her own traumas had had upon me.

And attempting in turn to sort out my own heart and soul was, of course, another life-long challenge. I say life-long, but now I don’t actually think that’s right. I lost the first forty-plus years. During those decades I spent plenty of time sorting out many many things; anything rather than sort out myself and the real me I was born to be. But eventually I got there, and only then could I set about sorting out me – a task which still takes up a considerable part of my time and dwindling energy.

But I must admit there is something oh so satisfying about sorting ‘it’ out. In fact, I frequently feel a great desire to get my hands on something and sort it out. This is in fact just a passing fancy, or fantasy, you understand. I’m retired. I plan to stay retired. If someone offered me millions of dollars to sort out anything from the airline industry to Amtrak to our government to any and all homeowners associations, I would refuse. But I do like to complain instead.

My most recent ‘it’ I dream of sorting out is the mid-range hotel industry. I’m not talking about the low end old roadside motel. You get what you pay for and should not expect more. And I’m ignoring the high end because I cannot afford them and so cannot judge. I am talking about the average Best Western, La Quinta, Ramada, Holiday Inn, Microtel etc. usually somewhere in the $80 to $150 per night range. These are my most recent bugaboo because Betsy and I had stayed in very few hotels over the last twenty years as we always camped. Now we no longer have our camper we have been ‘enjoying’ – and I use the word very loosely – hotels. To start with, almost every one of them has something which doesn’t work, most frustratingly the coffee maker. One we stayed in on our recent Arizona trip, only had hot water; no cold. Most unusual. No matter how you manipulated the knobs you could not get cold, or even cool, water. In more than one hotel, the rooms seem to have been designed for, or at least by, people eight feet tall. In one there was an electrical outlet above the door, just under the ceiling where not even most basketball pro’s could reach it. In another, the microwave was similarly placed, requiring any normal person to stand on a chair to use it. Lawsuits waiting to happen! What are they thinking when they design these places?

In one hotel we had no TV remote – strange but not all bad. There’s something about those things that makes my skin crawl. I am compelled, it seems, to think of all the other hands which touched those buttons after being in God only knows what unthinkable place the moment before.

And I am clearly not the only one with that reaction. In some rooms they insist on proclaiming that their remote is clean. One sign read, ‘this instrument is completely sanitary’, which for some odd reason bothered me more than suspecting it was filthy. Oh well, just one more good reason not to turn on the TV.

Maybe the answer to all this is simply to patronize that old mom and pop 1960’s motel down on the old road, where there is no coffee-maker, no fridge to hum and cough all night, no microwave to malfunction, probably an ancient fat TV sans remote, and sometimes only cold water. She who expects little will not be disappointed. But really, Betsy and I are now becoming so expectant of complications that we move into our hotel room like itinerant tinkers with bags and boxes of miscellaneous equipment: spare light bulbs, a step-stool, extension cords because wherever we want to plug anything in there will beyond any doubt be no convenient outlet, a plug-in kettle in case of the anticipated malfunctioning coffee-maker, and movies on DVD that we can watch on our computers without forming any relationship with that ‘sanitary’ remote.

And last but certainly not least, we provide our own breakfast, which of course has to be something which can be eaten cold if necessary, in anticipation of the out-of-order microwave.

I must admit we have occasionally had an excellent hotel breakfast but too often they offer nothing even remotely edible. Fruit-loops, a day-old sticky bun, weak coffee and some glow-in-the-dark orange drink masquerading as juice just isn’t breakfast. We have also learned to be very wary of the much-touted ‘hot breakfast’. Well OK, toasted Wonder Bread is hot!

So I dream of how I would sort it all out if I were in charge. And it’s only a dream. But in all sincerity, I wish someone would. We have so many tourists these days, visiting from all over the world. Every time the light doesn’t work and the coffee maker spits scalding water on my hand and I’m invited to a delicious breakfast of a plastic packet of instant oatmeal which I can’t eat even if I want to because the ‘hot’ water is only tepid, I cringe with embarrassment for our country.

‘Do you suppose things work better in other countries?’ Betsy asks.

No, perhaps not. But how I wish those tourists and business people could leave here so impressed that here, they do.

But I’m not going to sort it out.

© May 2017

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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How Religion Influenced My Sexual Identity, by Phillip Hoyle

Oh, I was religious. I was so religious that I attended Graduate Seminary pursuing a Master of Divinity degree in preparation for ordination into the ministry of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I had decided to concentrate on aspects of religious education but found myself more intrigued with the social ethics professor’s offerings. The second course I took from Professor Richard A. Hoehn was called Morality. The first assignment was to write a short paper “How I Came to My Moral Concern.” I wrote something like this:

I am sure I did not conceive of my moral concern as a moral concern. I was reared in a church that assumed that moral concern flowed from religious concern. One sought to be religious; in so doing one would obviously be moral. Not that all believers were moral. More importantly I was taught to be moral at home where its teachings were part of the day to day activities.

Several family decisions of social location established moral contexts and assumptions that greatly affected my life. When my parents were planning to marry, they chose to build their house in the wrong part of town. It was perfect for them: a block from one set of parents, a block from the high school, three blocks from the church, four blocks from Hoyle’s IGA where dad worked, five blocks from elementary schools we kids attended. In the grocery store, all people were treated the same and the customer was, at least in most ways, always right. I grew up in a racially integrated neighborhood, attended integrated schools and classes from kindergarten through ninth grade in an army town where people spoke English, Spanish, German, and Japanese. I grew up knowing preachers and prostitutes, mechanics and madams, choristers and conmen, scholars and sleezes, farmers and fairies, musicians and musclemen, woodworkers and writers. For a kid growing up in a Kansas town of 20,000 population, my world was large. Whatever would become my sense of morality, it would always have to see this larger view of human connection.

Now to the topic of the day: My sexual identity is a part of my human identity, part of my moral identity, part of my Christian identity. I am a person, a nice person, and a religious person (at least in so far as I retain Christian thought in my overall views, Christian values in how I relate to the larger world). In summary, I am a Christian gay man who seeks the common good, (not just of my family, not just of my gay world, not just of my American world, but also of my place in the whole world). I reject any small view of homosexuality or bisexuality or of any of the sexual permutations of that larger term LBGTQAetc, or of queer. I am brother to all gay men and lesbian women and transgendered persons and poly-this-or poly-that folk, and to straight folk of all stripes whether I like or appreciate them or not or can understand anything any of them say. I’d appreciate their acceptance but don’t expect that to be given very freely. So I go on my way into the world and into my future, telling stories, making friends, tolerating, and hoping somehow to be tolerated. And I will continue telling my story as a part of all of you telling yours. I’ll keep smiling and, of course, hanging out with diverse convocations of others who care to get together in celebration of their differences.

Oh, I was religious; still am in an increasingly gay, queer way.

© June 4, 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.” 

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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I Call It Bullshit, by Pat Gourley

“I have talked so much in the past few days that sometimes I feel like I might have used up all my words and I’ll never speak again. And then I hear someone say something really stupid and I can barely keep myself from snapping in two.” 

Emma González from Harpers Bazaar 
February 26th, 2018

Our topic for today is “Your Favorite Childhood Hero”. For some inexplicable reason I wrote on this topic back in January of this year. I must admit though that being off a month or two is not all that unusual for me these days. So I’ll just chalk it up to the vapors of early dementia perhaps and rather write on my current heroine.

That would be the 18-year-old dynamic self-identified bisexual woman of Cuban heritage, Emma González. The opening quote of this piece is from an article Emma wrote for Harper’s Bazaar in late February of this year just a few short weeks after the deadly shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School in Parkland Florida where she is a student.

That this woman is someone to be paid attention to and emulated was further cemented yesterday at the Washington D.C. March For Our Lives. She held the podium for a few short minutes and the last four of which were in total silence with tears rolling down her cheeks. Leading over 800,000 thousand Americans in 2018 in four minutes of reflective silence is powerful medicine indeed that must be reckoned with.

There were many moving and heart-wrenching speeches yesterday, including a few here in Denver. I’ll admit it may be a sign of my own poorly evolved sense of “identity politics” but the fact that Emma identifies as bisexual has me attracted to her and her bravery even more strongly – no apologies.

The vile and psychotic vitriol being directed her way from the slimy corners of right wing nutville is only further proof for me that she is totally right-on in calling bullshit. Attempts to photo-shop her tearing up a copy of the Constitution is so desperate as to be truly pathetic. It is a doctored photo taken by Teen Vogue where Emma is holding and then tearing up a shooting range target. It is hard to pull off this crap in this day and age of instant response and in particular trying to smear a woman with 1.44 million twitter followers as of March 23rd, 2018.

I attended and participated in Denver’s March For Our Lives yesterday in Denver. As with the recent Women’s and Immigrant Rights Marches I have found these events to be very invigorating and they do seem to be prompting me to get off my ass a bit more. Yesterday’s event in particular seemed to be a great example of “intersectionality” finally becoming part of the overall progressive movement though much work needs to occur for this to become an actualized reality.

Intersectionality is a relatively new concept to me, admittedly a bit late to get on the bus here, and I think to many since it has yet to make it into my spell check. It is defined though as: “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage: through an awareness of intersectionality, we can better acknowledge and ground the differences among us.” Credit for this concept and analysis goes to a woman named Kimberle Crenshaw an African American civil rights activist and academic who developed it in the late 1980’s. She is currently a professor at UCLA.

I have been impressed with many of the MSD High School student activists urging the mainstream press to talk with kids of color from urban areas where gun violence is endemic and a 24/7 daily fact of life. The intersectionality of race, class, gender and so often gun violence is so striking as to be beyond doubt.

The diversity of people and their often-poignant signs at yesterday’s march were ample evidence of the reality and power of intersectionality. Let me close with my favorite sign from yesterday as proof positive that we are all in this together. A woman a few feet ahead of me in the march was carrying a sign that read: “If I put a gun in my uterus will you regulate it then”.

That women’s reproductive rights and health are so ardently regulated and guns are not is truly bullshit.

© March 2018

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Escape, by Louis Brown

Garrard Conley tries unsuccessfully to escape from his same-sex sexual orientation.

Full Title of book: Boy Erased: A Memoir (2016) by Garrard Conley

Genre: Autobiography

Theme: escaping the deleterious effects of ex-gay therapy

Why notes on books?: When I find a good book, which is rare, if you read my insightful notes, when you read the book, it will be a lot easier and more meaningful.

NOTES

(1) Garrard Conly was the only child of an aspiring Baptist minister in Arkansas. His parents insisted, once they knew he was gay, that he undergo reversion therapy. Garrard was 15 years old.

(2) My guess is there are at least a couple of hundred of books written about the experiences of ex-gay therapy survivors.

(3) When he was 19 years old, Garrard Conley was enrolled in an ex-gay “therapy” program called “Love in Action” (LIA).

(4) Garrard had to enroll in LIA, otherwise his father would not pay for his college education. So, Garrard enrolled.

(5) Needless to say, Garrard fell in love with some of the other program participants who reciprocally “fell in love” with him.

(6) The intention of the author of this book is to get rid of ex-gay therapies because of the obvious (and not so obvious) harm they do.

(7) Because Garrard agrees to go to LIA, he goes to a Presbyterian undergraduate college (sometimes referred to as a seminary), but the location of the college is not divulged.

(8) While at Presbyterian College, Garrard makes friends with Charles and Dominique (he and she) who are black non-believers but who are good gospel singers. Presumably Garrard identifies with them because, like himself, these two black roommates are socially outsiders.

(9) P. 164, Garrard kisses a male art student, named Caleb.

(10) LIA forces Garrard to make a list of his sins in an MI (Moral Inventory).

(11) P. 292, reference to The Firm, a movie produced by Sydney Pollack, that we know was based on a novel by John Grisham. (Louis previously did a Plot Summary of John Grisham’s Sycamore Row).

(12) P. 274, reference to Psycho, the film by Alfred Hitchcock (which by the way I have already reviewed when the prompt was “Drain”. In the movie, the victim’s blood is filmed as flowing down the shower drain, an unforgettable scene.

(13) P. 297, reference to Dorian Gray, a novel by Oscar Wilde.

(14) Pp. 318-9, Garrard ogles J lovingly again. That is, participants in the LIA program are assigned letters of the alphabet to identify them.

(15) This book was made into a film.

(16) Another student at the Presbyterian college is David. Garrard claims that David raped him and also another underage boy. And yet Garrard attends David’s Pentecostal church.

(17) Some LIA instructors are Brother Brandon, Danny Cosby, Brother Hank, Brother Nielson, Brother Stevens and Smid.

(18) P. 92, One of the instructors, Danny Cosby, reminded Garrard of Jeff Goldblum, a character in the movie Jurassic Park. Jeff Goldblum was the skeptical guess of John Hammond and got his leg broken by a rampaging dinosaur.

(19) Back when Garrard was 15 years old, he was paired off with a girl named Chloë. Garrard’s parents expected he would marry her eventually. Garrard tried but failed to have sex with Chloë because, for obvious reasons, he was just not interested.

(20) P. 333, Love in Action was a subsidiary of Exodus International which has since gone out of business (in 1995), and, when they went out of business, they apologized for all the damage they had caused.

© 9 April 2018

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Time and Preparation, by Gillian

This grungy old green tote bag I schlep all my junk in every Monday came as a gift from The Denver Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security when, about ten years ago, I took a class rather grandiosely titled CITIZEN EMERGENCY RESPONSE TRAINING. It was actually pretty basic, but it did inspire me to a certain basic level of preparedness. No, Betsy and I are not about to go and live in a cave in the wilderness where we have hauled enough supplies for a year, accompanied by enough guns and ammo to fight off the hungry hordes who failed to prepare. But I do believe, especially in these uncertain times, a little planning is worthwhile.

And no, I don’t lose sleep worrying over alien invasions (from this planet or any other) or, where we live, floods. Earthquakes and tornadoes are always possible but not huge threats right here. My main concern is our infamous Grid. I fear The Grid could easily fail us. Natural disasters or computer hackers could equally easily bring it down. And no, I don’t necessarily mean the real Doomsday scenario in which one big sector comes down which in turn overloads the next until the entire country, or the whole continent, is without power. It probably could happen, but it is beyond the scale of any preparations I plan to make for survival.

Remember the panic over The Millennium? Computers were going to crash so nothing would work: no power, no gas, no groceries? That’s very much my vision of life without The Grid. Very little will work. How easily we forget, when we have all those things, our degree of dependence upon The Grid. We’ve all sat through power outages of a couple of hours; maybe even a couple of days. It really is miserable. We cannot get out of the habit of anything and everything being available at the flick of a switch or the turn of a knob, or more likely the tap of a key. And it’s all gone.

My worst-case survival preparation is a month without power. It’s not too hard to envision damage to The Grid severe enough that it takes a month to bring it back up. We have enough bottled water and canned food to stretch, very meagerly, for three or four weeks. We have sleeping bags in the basement, which retains a pretty even temperature so we shouldn’t burn up in a summer emergency or freeze in mid-winter. We have wind-up flashlights and a lantern – irritating because of the continuous cranking required but good enough until we can replace the inevitably dead batteries in the good lights. And we do have a good supply of batteries. We have endless books for entertainment in the daylight hours, along with playing cards and board games. We have a camp stove with a couple of fuel bottles, so we could heat up food or water, if only occasionally. We have cash – very well hidden so don’t even think about it! – because even if any supplies are to be had we clearly will not be able to use credit cards. What we do not have is those guns and ammo the TV survivalists always display, so if we get to the stage of starving marauders breaking and entering I fear we’re doomed. Other than that, I’d say we’ve got a pretty good chance.

When I took that class, it was quite apparent that most of us were Seniors. Who among the young people have time even to think about surviving for a month without power, never mind taking time actually to prepare for such a thing. Good preparation in fact usually saves time in the long run, but most young people find it hard to concentrate on that long run. When we’re young we wing it; fly by the seat of our pants. It takes time to prepare and in youth time is scarce – or at least that’s how it seems.

As I age I find preparation increasingly important, you might say vital. Fortunately, in retirement I have time for it. I schedule my cups of tea very carefully so that, with a little luck, I will not have to scuttle to the bathroom in the middle of Act One. Before our month-long road trip last year we each had a ‘staging area’ to collect everything we needed to take with us. This has to be a large area of floor where things can be spread out, so we can check and recheck what we have already placed there. Things cannot be put in the car or into the suitcase because we can’t remember what we’ve packed and spend days or weeks packing and unpacking and repacking.

I never go the grocery store without a carefully prepared list – even if it only has one item on it. If I go without that piece of paper I shall return home with seventeen things I bought in case we’re out but I can’t remember. The thing I won’t have is the one thing I went for in the first place.

Old age is a full-time job!

Problem is, preparation doesn’t always work. Just last Monday I carefully gathered up all library items which needed to be returned on my way to The Center, remembered to put my library card with them to check out new books, placed everything in a tote bag which I put right in front of the door into the garage so I couldn’t possibly forget it. Come time to leave I picked up the bag and went into the garage. There I remembered my other bag, this old green one I talked about earlier, was still sitting on the table with my story in it. I put down the library bag, went back into the kitchen for the Storytime bag, into the car and I was off! Only as I drove past the library did I remember the bag left sitting on the garage floor.

I fear that our careful emergency prep will fail if ever put to the test. We’ve hidden the cash so carefully that neither of us will remember where it is and no amount of searching will turn it up.

Our arthritic fingers will be too weak to open any of the cans with the old manual opener, ditto any screw-tops. We might be able to manage the water, but it’s stored in carcinogenic plastic bottles so by then will probably kill us.

The fact is that time is running out and no amount of preparation can stop it. I don’t find that depressing; I find it deeply relaxing. It relieves an awful lot of pressure. So I’ll try to get the list right before I go to the store, and I’ll try to return my library books on time. But if I don’t, the world will not tilt on it’s axis or turn to blue cheese. I have finally found how to live in the now.

© January 2018

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.