Tag: Culture and Current Events

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Going Green by Betsy

     My Daddy was in the lumber manufacturing business. He cut down the trees, took them to the mill, and made boards out of them, then sold the boards to those who use them to make things that people buy; i.e, furniture manufacturers, construction companies, etc. He knew his trees. It was said of Charlie Mac that if he were blindfolded and transported and dropped anywhere in the U.S., he would know where he was by identifying the trees surrounding him.

     It must be in the blood. I love trees, too, although I can’t identify the different species like my dad could. But I do believe they are among my favorite plants. And amazing plants they are. Here are just a few reasons we all should appreciate trees.

     It is widely accepted that the aspen grove is the largest living organism on earth. A single grove of genetically connected trees can cover a mountainside.

     Trees are among the oldest living beings on the planet, too. The bristlecone pine often lives longer than 4000 years.

     Trees can be beautiful as well. We have all seen the vibrant colors produced in the fall by many of the deciduous trees as well as the blossoms in the spring. Trees have provided us with some of nature’s most spectacular shows of color ever seen anywhere. Driving through Utah and western Colorado recently I experienced a visual feast of mountainsides of yellows, reds, and oranges which took my breath away with their spectacular beauty.

     Trees provide us with a renewable resource whose value is beyond calculation. We love trees for all of these reasons, yes. The main value trees have for humankind, however, is their ability to absorb co2 and produce oxygen and to help keep the atmosphere clean.The Amazon rain forest produces more than 20% of the oxygen of the planet as it performs its service of recycling co2 into oxygen.*

     Consider, however, that just as we are beginning to appreciate these forests and their true value, we are losing them at an astonishing rate. There was a time when rain forests covered 14% of the earth’s land surface. Currently that coverage is down to 6%.*Every second another one and one half acres of rainforest is lost to agricultural development, logging enterprises, mining operations, and even tourism.*

     The greatest misfortune is that when the forests are clear cut, burned and bulldozed, the trees, other plants, and indigenous people are gone forever. The plants are no longer the renewable resource which were of much more monetary value than the farm, ranch, or whatever entity that replaces it. Medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, oils and other resources can be sustainably harvested for generations with a much greater economic return when the rain forest is preserved. Such operations provide employment for entire communities of indigenous inhabitants who then earn five to ten times more money than they can earn by chopping down the forest for timber and farming.*

     My dad who ran logging operations for his lumber mill also lamented the disappearance of the rain forests of the world and clear-cutting practices in this country. He knew better than most that the lumber could be harvested without destroying the entire forest. Proper forest management is common practice, yet shortsighted governments, greedy corporations, and unknowing individuals prefer to by-pass these practices for their own purposes–another example of entitled indifference, greed-driven shortsightedness, ignorance, total disregard or denial of the consequences for the future and the good of the whole.

     Perhaps a lesson could be taken from the aspen grove. While the trees within the grove are interconnected through their shared root system, each tree stands as an individual and at the same time is connected to the whole. The trees as individuals are allowed to thrive while connected to and dependent on the survival of the whole grove. At the same time each individual tree contributes to the whole while enjoying its own well being. Is it possible that humankind could do the same?

*http://www.rain-tree.com. Update January 29, 2013.

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Prisoner C.3.3 – A True Queer Irishman by Pat Gourley

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.”

Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray – 1891

     March 17th is the day many celebrate all things Irish and it has often been said that everyone is Irish on that day. It certainly has evolved for many into an excuse to get royally pissed, often on green beer. Though the exact year of St. Patrick’s death is somewhat a matter of conjecture there seems to be some historical agreement that the actual day was March 17th sometime in the 5th century.

     Snakes and shamrocks are often closely associated with Patrick. He may have actually used the shamrock to teach the mystery of the Holy Trinity, i.e. three-in-one. The shamrock was certainly a pagan symbol and as with so much of Christianity was co-opted by the new religion probably to enhance recruitment.

     The snakes are a bit more of a shaky matter. Post-glacial Ireland never had any snakes but Patrick gets credit for driving them all out of Ireland. One account relates that he may actually have hallucinated being attacked by snakes after completing a 40-day fast and then defeated them. That sounds about right to me. After a good night sleep and some real food and water the snakes were all magically gone.

     One thing historians agree on was that a young Patrick, a Brit actually and not Irish himself, was captured by raiding Irish pagans and hauled off from Roman Britain to Ireland where he spent several years as a slave. Eventually he did return to Ireland as a missionary. I think we can give him at least some credit or blame for converting Ireland to Catholicism although even this is contested by some. He certainly has become the patron saint of Irish Catholics.

     As a young Irish Catholic lad my coming out as queer was in retrospect heavily influenced and directed by that peculiarly intense version of guilt inducing religiosity, Irish Roman Catholicism. St. Patrick then for me represents in some ways a stifling religion that has done more than its share of oppressing Queer people.

     Though certainly not unique to Ireland or the Irish the whole messy and very sad kettle of fish that is clergy sexual abuse has really come home to roost in recent years in Ireland. The far-reaching tentacles of this perversion are currently in the press in the form of Cardinal Keith O’Brien and his resignation for inappropriate sexual advances. Cardinal O’Brien is Irish and was born in Northern Ireland. He recently resigned as the religious head of the Catholic Church in Scotland because of “drunken fumblings” of a sexual nature towards several other much younger clergy and students.

     This was apparently not a case of serial pedophilia and perhaps could even have elicited some sympathy for a man only able to address his gay sexual nature when drunk. An unfortunate but not infrequent manifestation of internalized homophobia still today. However, this guy’s self-hatred manifested itself only just a year ago in a public diatribe condemning the “madness of same sex unions and the tyranny of tolerance.” Sorry, no sympathy here, only pity.

     So on this St. Patrick’s Day I prefer to celebrate a different Irishman. Not one of the O’Brien’s of the Church or an old and largely mythological saint of a religion that is rapidly imploding into irrelevance. Rather I prefer to honor the legacy of a much more honest and open queer Irish man, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), dramatist, novelist and poet.

     I acknowledge that what got Oscar in so much trouble, ending in a severe two-year prison term at hard labor, was in part the result of “yielding to his temptations”. Oh yes and then taking very queenly umbrage at being implicated as a sodomite by the father of one his young lovers.

     He decided to sue this man for libel. Obviously Oscar was not openly embracing his inner queer here, but it was the 1890’s in Victorian England. At trial things didn’t go so well. Wilde eventually ended up being charged and convicted of “gross indecency” and the charge of libel against the father of his lover dropped. Sodomy in those days in England was a felony. In the English penal system Wilde was Prisoner C.3.3.

     I would like to end with a couple more delicious quotes from Prisoner C.3.3:

“ Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

“We are all in the gutter but some of us are 
looking up at the stars.”
“Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”

     Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone and don’t forget to lift a pint to Oscar! His life I think on balance was a positive way to yield to temptations in a manner that keeps one’s soul from growing sick.

For St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2013

Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris, France
Photo by Pat Gourley

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 am currently on an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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I Can’t Change it, Can I? by Gillian

TV images double time on the screen.
Grainy monochrome figures rushing to trenches,
cheering and laughing and slaps on the back.
Scrambling now into no-man’s-land,
not laughing but screaming, hanging on wire.
Then hobbling home, shell-shocked and shaking,
the lucky ones.

Well I can’t change it can I?
It’s all time gone by.
Have some more chips and dip.

TV images now retouched and colored.
Tough young GIs run and fall on the beaches
screaming for medics and mother and home.
Gazing now in horror at Auschwitz
turning skeletons free to a horrified world.
We must never forget we say and we mean it.
How soon we forget.

Well I can’t change it can I?
It’s all time gone by.
Let’s have some more popcorn.

TV images now moving in real time.
Countless dead in Rwanda and raped in Darfur
screaming for help while the TV world watches.
Is this now, is it real? We’re not quite sure.
I send ten dollars to an 800 number
that lies on the screen in the blood and the gore.
I can do no more.

Well I can’t change it can I?
It’s too far away.
Let’s have some more pizza.

TV images now look quite ordinary.
Our leaders all lie and our bankers are crooks
our country is broke, all except for the rich.
Gazing now in horror at Congress,
they fill their deep pockets, care nothing for us.

All that they want to do is what’s best for them.
I just ignore it.

Well I can’t change it can I?
It’s all gone too far.
Let’s have one more beer.

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 now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Deepest Passion by Gillian

Passion
is that whip-crack of thunder
following
the lightning flash across the sky
no
time to breath
It‘s
the forest fire of red white heat
urged
on by the winds flashing and cracking
no-one
can stop it
It’s
the wild wet waves crashing, smashing
against
the rusty red rocks
shattering
into wild wet pieces
that
re-form to recede at peace
only
to return
It’s
the early snow that softly falls
whispering
to dry autumn leaves
the
perfect flake clings to your skin
to
melt there
Passion
is a billion stars
in
an endless black night
and
the sudden lone howl of a wolf.
© August 29, 2011
 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 now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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The Painting by Will Stanton

Among that modern, minority population who are familiar with great paintings and appreciate their beauty and historical significance, the late-sixteenth-century artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio holds an important position.  His revolutionary, true-to-life style amazed and sometimes even shocked his contemporaries.  Today, anyone who might happen to stumble upon one of his portraits or Biblical scenes might be more accepting because, unlike abstract works of art, his realism is readily understood.   Of course, those people with religiosity minds who are horrified by reality and especially nudity may not be very accepting of his paintings.
  
A well known Caravaggio’s painting is “The Musicians.”  In addition to the great technical skill and beauty of the painting, it also represents an art form most often thought to possess even more power to move human minds and emotions, the music created and sung during his time and many decades thereafter by musicians the likes of which we have not seen in over a century. 

Caravaggio was born in Milan in 1571.  As a youth, he trained with a student of the famed painter Titian.  When 21, Caravaggio went to Rome where he worked for painters ironically often less talented than he.  He also took exception to the reigning style of painting religious and aristocratic figures in an idealistic manner.  He felt strongly that the figures should be more natural and frequently took models right off the streets, a habit that continued throughout his career, often to the dismay of church authorities and  patrons.

By the age of twenty-four, Caravaggio began to sell his own paintings through a dealer who, fortunately, thought them sufficiently worthy to bring them to the attention of the influential Cardinal Francesco del Monte, who then provided Caravaggio with lodging, board, pension, and protection.  The cardinal purchased forty works from Caravaggio. Among them was “The Musicians.”  

At first glance, the viewer observes that one figure is quite different from the other three: that one individual has the more normal, darker skin tone and perhaps somewhat less refined facial features.  That is the young Caravaggio himself.  He began a habit of often using his own likeness in paintings even to the point that, in later paintings of David and the defeated giant Goliath, he even portrayed himself, when older, bearded, and even more swarthy, as the severed head.  Perhaps Caravaggio’s self-deprecating habit resulted from his realization of his own fiery temper along with some remorse regarding the fights and serious troubles which later plagued his life.

The Musicians by Caravaggio

The other three figures actually were musicians in the employ of the cardinal, and some of them appear in other paintings by Caravaggio. These three musicians undoubtedly were (in polite terms of the time) musici, part of an entourage that the cardinal kept in his service over his lifetime.  Apparently the cardinal was generous with Caravaggio; for the figure with the lute, Mario Minniti, also apparently became Caravaggio’s companion while the artist was in residence.

The peaceful scene of this painting belies the dramatic and traumatic life that Caravaggio would lead later.  Often having to flee from one city to another because of various public altercations and attacks upon others, one case even resulting in death, he frequently seemed to be able to ingratiate himself with local authorities and receive commissions, that is, until his next troubles forced him to leave.  Finally, severely wounded himself from an encounter and after a long convalescence, he attempted to return to Rome; however, he again was arrested on the way.  By the time he was released, he had missed his boat with all of his belongings.  Attempting to overtake the ship, he arrived at Port’Ercole.  Having contracted pneumonia, he died on July 18, 1610, three days before the arrival of the document he so eagerly had awaited, the document from Rome granting him clemency.

Although Caravaggio did not live to see his fortieth birthday, his fame has withstood the test of time.  Numerous books have been written about him, and his surviving paintings hold places of honor in various museums and churches.  And, should you locate one of his paintings that have disappeared over time, your own fame and fortune surely are assured.

© 26 July 2011

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life
stories.  I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me
particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at
times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived
pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some
thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Reflections on Bayard Rustin for MLK Day, 2013 by Pat Gourley

“The barometer of where one is on human rights questions is no longer the black community, it’s the gay community. Because it is the community which is most easily mistreated.” 
Bayard Rustin, 1986.

          I grew up in an all white Irish farming community and went to Catholic schools where African Americans, or any people of color for that matter, were as rare as hen’s teeth. FYI, hens have no teeth. I did though have the opportunity to be informed and sensitized to the amazing reality of racial inequality in America in the late 1960’s by my high school government/civics teacher. This teacher was a Holy Cross nun whose enlightenment on these issues put her truly in a league of her own in northern Illinois in 1967. An amazingly dynamic woman named Sister Alberta Marie (SAM) showed me the harsh realties of racial injustice in America and the horrible folly and crime that was the war in Vietnam.

          SAM was herself very involved in peace activist work primarily, though not exclusively, aimed at opposing the war in Vietnam. She brought the great Jesuit activist Father Daniel Barrigan to our high school my senior year, an effort I always thought instrumental in getting her booted out of the Order a short time later. Important for me personally she arranged to send a small group of her students, myself included, to rural Mississippi to observe the activities of literacy teachers working primarily with poor black farm workers. This trip to Mississippi coincided closely with my own first male sexual encounters with a wonderful mentor several decades older than myself. My senior year was quite busy and many of my activities had lifelong and very positive implications.

          The harsh realities of life for the black folks I ran into in Mississippi were almost incomprehensible for a little middle class white kid. I was though aware of Martin Luther King Jr. and viewed him as the leader of the Civil Rights movement but it was this trip that started to bring it all home in a very real and substantive fashion. I knew about the 1963 march on Washington and the “I Have a Dream Speech.” Someone I was not aware of, though I may have at least heard his name, was Bayard Rustin. As it turns out this very openly gay man was not only a mentor for Dr. King, he was the main architect for the 1963 March on Washington and the person most responsible for bringing the potent concept of nonviolent action to the Civil Rights movement.

          Remarkably Bayard was boldly open about his sexuality in the 1940’s and 1950’s. It was an arrest and conviction on “morals charges” in California in 1953 that was to haunt him and in many respects diminish the credit he richly deserves for his role in the Civil Rights movement. The “crime” he was convicted of was sex with a couple other men in the back seat of a car; it did not even involve being busted in a public cruising area—the most common form of institutional terror inflicted on gay men at the time. He was throughout his life a frequent target of FBI surveillance and, I suspect, mischief meant to discredit his powerful organizing capabilities that in many respects made him such a potent target of the racist forces opposed to civil liberties for African Americans in the early 1960’s. Strom Thurmond in an attempt to derail the 1963 March made a point of publically stating that a “pervert” was largely organizing the whole affair.

          Bayard was though a very active proponent of civil rights long before the 1960’s and was pushing to sit in the front of the bus long before Rosa Parks. He was a Quaker and had been involved and active in a group called the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His involvement with this group also was curtailed by the public humiliation that came along with his arrest and conviction for the “crime” of loving another man. He was also a strong advocate of workers rights and a strong supporter of the Trade Unions. He was of course, as were most activists worth their salt back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, involved with the Communist Party. He did significant prison time in the 1940’s for resisting the draft. This activist pedigree when looked at in its totality including in part being a felon, a draft dodger, a pervert, a nonviolent disciple of Gandhi, an African American and a communist is quite impressive and really has no equal when compared with LGBT leaders of today.

          One of his most profound insights and something he stressed through sixty years of activism is that we are all in this together. Certain Buddhists refer to this as the concept of One Taste. Bayard Rustin truly grasped the essence of One Taste in the following statement: “We are all one and if we don’t know it we will learn it the hard way”. So on this MLK day in 2013 I would encourage all my LGBT brothers and sisters to remember these words from our dear comrade Bayard and be willing to expand our work and activism beyond our own, albeit legitimate, concerns of marriage and military service. What a great gift from our community if we could produce more Bayard Rustin’s fighting for income equality, world peace, repeal of the Second Amendment and a Manhattan project to address climate change.

          If you are more interested in the life of this great gay man who played such an integral role in the life and activism of Martin Luther King, Jr. I highly suggest the award-winning documentary film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2003), available on Netflix. Also the very extensive biography, The Lost Prophet (2003) available on Kindle by John D’Emilio, is well worth the read.

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 am currently on an extended sabbatical in San
Francisco, California.
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Are We in Indonesia Yet? by Nicholas

      I’ve heard it said that you have to learn
some language by a very early age—say, four or five or six—or you will never be
able to learn any language. And once you learn any language, you can,
theoretically, learn any other language. Of course, most of us have sat through
enough Spanish, French and German classes to know that that part of the theory
is questionable. The point is that one’s brain must develop its language
capacity early in life or it is lost forever, that part of your brain just
won’t grow.
      I sometimes feel that way regarding what
is usually referred to as “technology,” meaning computers and all their spawn,
i.e., iPads, tablets, nooks, kindles, iPhones, 3G, 4G, and, OMG, I don’t know
how many other devices or apps. Though I am at least primitively computer
literate, I fear that whole new languages are now in common use about which I
know nothing. And it may be too late for my aging brain to learn them.
      Over the years I’ve worked through a number
of stages in my personal relationship with technology. I’ve passed through the
stage of computers being interesting, useful, or even wondrous in their
capabilities. I’ve passed through the stage of thinking, OK, that’s enough—I
can write, cut & paste, send emails, crop photos, research questions, and
get on You Tube. I am tempted toward the stage of concluding that computers are
really a nuisance and I might just one day re-boot the thing out the door. But
then, emails are very useful and where else does one find porn these days?
      Now I am entering the stage of more or
less panic that if I don’t make some big technological leap I will be left
behind like a blacksmith on an automobile assembly line. Skilled but
irrelevant. I do know some basics of computer literacy, but…  Well, the fact that I’m using the word
“computer,” which nobody uses now, given the array of devices available, shows
how far behind the times I have sunk. My fear is that I will not be able to learn
the new language of the moment—they seem to change quickly—and I will be left
unable to communicate with anyone in the world.
      But rapidly mutating technology is just
one of the ways in which I am coming to feel like a stranger in my own land.
Culture shock is getting to be a daily occurrence. Most all pop culture from
music to television shows is a mystery to me. The obsession with money dismays
me. The fondness for states of unreality whether drug or television or church
induced leaves me alienated. And the poisonous and paralyzed political milieu
is depressing.
      I was once in a workshop of writers and a
woman author gave a lengthy description of her process in writing an essay. An
idea will come to her, she said, and she will mull it over for a while which
can be anywhere from a few hours to months. Then, she’ll jot down some notes as
the idea expands and facets of it come into view. Eventually, she will organize
her notes and develop nuances of her argument or narrative. At some point, she
will compose all these thoughts into a coherent essay.
      I thought, that’s me alright and all the
other dinosaurs still roaming the earth. Doesn’t she—don’t we—realize that
NOBODY DOES THAT ANYMORE!!?  This
leisurely process of developing your thoughts to explore nuance, is so
20-years-ago. One doesn’t pause to think things through or just walk around
with an idea until it jells or makes sense. Today, if a thought ever dares to
enter your head, you must get it out, like a virus, as quickly as possible
before it takes root and grows into who knows what. You spit it out as fast as
you can on your blog or text it to your million friends on Facebook. Keep
paddling around in the shallow water because you have no idea of what might be
out there in the depths. Could be something bigger than you.
      It seems that what’s on the surface is
thought sufficient, no need to get below the shiny surface. I remember in grade
school one day we learned how to diagram a sentence. I learned how sentences
were put together and acquired another tool to express myself. I thought, this
is power, knowing this gives me power. I know more about using my language.
Now, sentences are no longer diagrammed. In fact, they’re hardly even used.
What use is a sentence when you have only 140 characters to say everything. But
then, why would you need more than 140 characters anyway?
      I guess I just don’t know this place
anymore. I’m a stranger in my own country. I feel like I’m in a country I don’t
know, don’t understand, and actually don’t like. I might as well be in
Indonesia or somewhere.

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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Dis-ease by Donny Kaye

Smile.  The threesome posed with an apprehensive grin
as their buddy taking the picture commented on the potential FaceBook caption
he would assign to this particular photo op,
“My buddies waiting to get tested at the STD Clinic”. 
And then, one-by-one each of
the buddies was called into the clinic offices 
for their chance to fill one of those plastic containers, complete a blood
draw,  and finally, meet with the
counselor. 
“Have you had sex in the
past 48 hours?” questioned the counselor. 
“Yes.” 
“24? ”
“24 what?”
“Hours”
‘”Uh, yes.”
“More recent than 12?”
With a grin and a deep sense
of satisfaction, “Yes.”
The counselor then proceeded
to demonstrate, using his finger, how a condom rides down the organ, exposing
the shaft and consequently exposing the base, you know—The BASE, to potential
infection.  It seemed like the lead into
an infomercial for some type of device, much like a garter that could be
attached somewhere on the body to hold the condom in its appropriate location
for $19.95 (and if ordered within the next while, the order would be
tripled).  Just what was needed for the
threesome who had been waiting in the outer office for their time for direction
and instruction in safe sex. 
Upon leaving the Clinic, the
buddies compared the stash of condoms each had been given proclaiming there was
agreement that they were safe for the next while, at least 48 hours. 
A week later at coffee there
was a sense of relief and satisfaction knowing that each of the three had gotten
his tests back.  All was OK. 
“No syphilis,” the first
proclaimed.
“All is clear with me,”
stated another; only to be joined by the third, “I’m clean.”
There was a deep smile and
hug shared by the three, as they raised their mugs to their mouths and cheered
this most recent reporting.  Something
they have committed to on a routine basis.
AIDS, has become the focus
of health considerations for the GLBT community since the early 1980’s when the
death causing syndrome at the time was first identified.  Especially for men, AIDS was thought by some
to be God’s judgment and retribution for “unnatural relationships between men.”  This particular disease for a while ravaged
the bodies and lives of many of our brothers and sisters, as well. 
As a result of the focus on
AIDS since the 80’s, the disease is better managed within the culture.
AIDS has become part of my life.  Knowing that each of us to some extent live
with AIDS daily, even though it is not in my body, it has become part of my
culture and day-to-day existence.  AIDS
exists all around me and I don’t want it in me. 
Understanding how AIDS has
become part of our culture, and my day-to-day existence, I’m also drawn to the
realization that much of my reaction to life actually creates Dis-Ease.  
Dis-Ease
actually occurs within each of us as we experience the contraction that comes
with judgment, be it judgment about something or someone outside of me, or more
commonly, judgments against my own self. 
It has been suggested by some researchers that there is a physiological
reaction within the bodies various systems to the contraction that is
experienced within when judgment occurs. 
 Judgment causes the very cellular
structure to break down.  The cells
within the body vibrate in a completely dissonant way.  There is contraction.  The fluids do not move through the cells as
they were created to move.  The nutrients
do not become transported or delivered to the cells.  The waste matter is not processed
properly.  Everything gets clogged up,
and there is dis-ease.
Dis-ease
exists within me in a very physiological way. 
Its cause may result from actual physical infection or from the
contractions within resulting from my judgments against myself and others.  Certainly there are measures that I must take
to protect myself from external causes of infection resulting in disease, such
as those recommendations of the STD Clinic staff.  Equally, I must pay attention to the
contractions and disruptions to my bodies various systems that occur when I
experience judgments against myself and others.
I entered the office alone.  There were no buddies, no photo op.
“Have you made any judgments
against yourself or another in the past 48 hours?”
“Yes.” (I mean, after all,
do I want that politician representing me as a gay man?)
“24?”
“Yes.” (Well, the person in
the express checkout line had more than ten items.)
“More recently?”
“Yes.  Actually in the moments before sharing this
writing.”  Stated without a grin or sense
of satisfaction.
Oh for an infomercial
offering some type of device that would help me to self-monitor the judgments
that occur in my mind, moment-by-moment. 
The judgments that create contractions and dis-ease within that can serve to be more lethal than
actually contracting some other dreaded disease, such as AIDS.  The remedy?  Hmmmmmmmm! 
The remedy, self
forgiveness.  For each time I am judging
another, even the driver in front of me or the customer in the express checkout
ahead of me, I’m actually judging myself. 
Certainly those judgments against myself about being unworthy or in some
way, not enough; ripple through my body in the form of contraction that
disrupts the various systems within my body creating dis-ease which can be as life
altering as other forms of disease. 
I am learning what to do to
protect myself from dis-ease.  I take my
vitamins, practice safe sex and even wear my seatbelt.  The consideration that begs my attention is Am I as vigilant about monitoring the
judgments that can exist in my life experience in a very inconspicuous way?
 The judgments that are life altering especially
when I withdraw and step aside out of a sense of unworthiness.
Dis-ease.  I live with it silently.  Separately. 
Alone.  
Hey, what was that 800 number
again?

About the Author

Donny Kaye-Is a native born Denverite.  He has lived his life posing as a
hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that
of a gay male.  In recent years he has
confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding
his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated
life.  “I never forgot for a minute that
I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject
and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.” StoryTime
at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the
stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall
the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the
deepest corners of his memory.  Within
the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of
four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family
and friends.  Donny is divorced and yet
remains closely connected with his family. 
He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with
himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing
integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of
the GLBTQ community.  

Posted on

Till Death Us Do Part by Nicholas

Jamie and I never thought we would get
married. Through all the debate over gay marriage, we never felt really drawn
to it. We never thought about going to Massachusetts or to Canada as friends of
ours had to get hitched. We didn’t jump onto an airplane in February 2004 and
head to San Francisco when Mayor Gavin Newsum started issuing marriage licenses
and Jamie’s mom inquired as to whether or not we would—as I’m sure she deeply
wished. Long active in the struggle for gay marriage, she had flung herself
into that fray by driving up to the city from Menlo Park to volunteer as a
witness for couples who showed up at San Francisco City Hall. Her fondest hope
was to see her gay son married someday.
Jamie and I always said that, yes, we would
like to marry but only when it became immediately and practically real where we
live—in Colorado—and that did not look too likely in our lifetimes. We knew who
we were and we were confident about our love for and commitment to one another
so until legal realities caught up with our reality, we stayed home.
We did take care to put in place any legal
arrangements available to protect our relationship. We had our last wills and
testaments, legal powers of attorney, medical directives, medical powers of
attorney, house ownership agreement, and even, our official certificate of
domestic partnership from the City and County of Denver. We even carry these
documents with us in our cars should we ever need them in an emergency without
time to go home and retrieve them. We were set.
Of course, it all depended on the whim of whomever
might challenge us as to whether any of our documents and legal constructions
would work. Because, of course, we weren’t married.
Married couples don’t ever have to produce legal documents to justify
themselves.
Then May 15, 2008 happened. The California
Supreme Court ruled that the State of California had no justification to
prohibit the marriage of two people of the same gender. It amounted to
discrimination. California was liberated.
When I heard the news flash on the radio, my
instant response was: Let’s go home to California, where we used to live and
still had family and friends, and get married.
That day, Jamie was with his mom in Minnesota
visiting friends and relatives and my big worry was that she, with her activism
for marriage equality, would start lobbying for her son and prospective
son-in-law to do the wedding march ASAP. That, I feared, would only spark
Jamie’s resistance—we had so often said that marriage was not for us until some
unspecifiable time in the future, i.e., probably never. And there’s nothing
like a nagging mother to produce a quick “No.”

I hastily phoned him on his cell hoping to
short circuit what I imagined to be my mother-in-law’s certain campaign. Yes,
he and mom had heard the news and talked about it, he said. But, no, she hadn’t
been urging him/us to wed. She must really want this to happen, I thought;
she’s laying low. The motherly artillery was for now quiet.
I had my opening. I asked Jamie if he wanted
to go to California and get married, the closest to a proposal I’d ever make.
And he replied, to my surprise, that, yea, he would, the closest to a yes, I’d
ever hear.
I can’t explain this sudden turn about in
feelings toward getting married. We still would gain nothing in the state where
we lived. In fact, marriage was still as legally empty for us as it ever was.
Nothing would change. Maybe because we met and lived together in San Francisco
before moving to Denver and still had family and friends there and are always
going there that California is still was kind of home. It just felt like the
right thing for us to do. And that’s how we entered the dazzling world of
wedding planning. We were going all the way—a church wedding and catered
reception. Mom was paying.
From indifferent to ardent believers in 30
seconds. I’ve heard all the jokes—and told them—about marriage being a
wonderful institution but who wants to live in an institution. I guess we just
gave into the romance of the idea. Isn’t that why people get married
everywhere? It’s the romance, never mind the legal goodies, which, after all,
we now qualified for in at least 6 states and the District of Columbia. Of
course, we were also entering a legal Alice in Wonderland as to which rights we
had depending on which geographical location we were in. We could get bigger
and then we could get smaller.
We’ve never regretted our marriage. In fact,
we were both kind of surprised that it did seem to make a difference. We began
to think of ourselves in different terms as more than a couple, but a
recognized and sanctioned couple. It isn’t just straight people who have to
adjust their idea of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples. Now that we
have something we never in our wildest imaginations thought we would ever have,
we too wonder what this means. Are we changing the definition of marriage, like
the gay-haters say? Well, I hope so.
What, for example, do we call ourselves?
Spouses? Husbands? I don’t like the term “husband”—it implies there’s a “wife”
somewhere—but it does spell it all out in just one word and we’ve come to use
it. We love each other, we’re committed to each other, we share property, we
can make decisions for each other, and we have sex. No explanations are needed
as to who my “friend” is.



There’s a catch, though, Here’s the catch. We can’t get divorced. Anyone can go to California and get married. Only legal residents of California can use divorce court. We’re not residents. So, we are stuck. Stuck with each other for life. But that’s just where we want to be.

About the Author

Nicholas
grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in
Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles,
gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.
Posted on

Marriage by Gillian

Hey, you only have to look around my family to see.

IT  …  DOESN’T  
…   FREEKIN’ …     WORK!!

My paternal grandfather was what we would call these days a
recovering alcoholic. In his day he was just one of several local drunks. The
fact that he no longer touched the booze seemed to be ignored and he was still
thought of as a drunk by neighbors and family alike. Certainly my grandmother
never gave him any credit, or even acknowledgement, for having quit.

He had drunk his way out of a good job, lost the lovely old house
that they had owned when my dad was a little boy, and had to settle for moving
to the cold dark damp dreary dwelling I lived in as a child.

My grandfather rarely spoke, or moved for that matter. He sat in
his armchair beside the fireplace which rarely had a fire in it, hour after
hour, doing nothing.

For all the attention he paid us, we all might as well not have
been there.

At least he was harmless; unlike my grandmother.

She never spoke a civil word to anyone, but droned on with an
endless litany of complaints about my grandfather.

In some circumstances two negatives equal a positive but alas not
in human relationships.

MARRIAGE  …  DOESN’T  
…   FREEKIN’ …     WORK!!

My mother’s parents were very different.

Her mother actually did approach the storybook grandma image;
endless hours in the kitchen in a faded flowered apron, and my Irish maternal
grandpa was one of the delights of my youth. He was a stonemason, creating
gravestones from the local marble. I loved to sit and watch him, and
occasionally I was even allowed to help. He sang or whistled while he worked,
or regaled my juvenile ears with endless fantastical tales in which I doubt
there was an ounce of truth.

They lived in a gorgeous rambling old house, built in 1742. It
was light and warm with welcome, and different in every way from that of my
other grandparents.

But I can’t recall a single time when they talked to each other.

They lived separate lives, I think, and so survived.

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
My mother hated my father.

It took me many years to understand why; he had done nothing as
far as I could tell.

A therapist friend explained it to me many years after I left
home.

My parents had two children who died of meningitis within a week
of each other, before I was born.

Under such circumstances it is apparently not uncommon for one
parent, more frequently the mother, to blame the other, not from any logical
reason but because they have a huge need to hate someone for the dreadful thing
that has happened, and raving at God or a disease is just not personal enough,
not close enough, not cathartic enough.

At least, right or wrong, it’s an explanation that works for me
as I remember my mother’s inexplicable seething hatred constantly simmering
just beneath the surface, and frequently erupting, ostensibly over minor
things.

These days they would have divorced, I’m sure, but in those days
you just soldiered on.

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

My aunts’ and uncles’ marriages were little better and would, I
believe, also have ended in divorce had that been the ready option it is today.
I did have one uncle whose fifty years with the same woman seemed to be
mutually rewarding, but ironically we discovered, after his death, that they
were in fact never married at all.

Needless to say, my family history did nothing to foster a
particularly positive view of marriage.

I knew
that MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
But I got married anyway. How else was I to prove to myself that
I was NOT gay?

My ex-husband and I have personalities that were born to clash,
so even without that teensy wee
detail of my suppressed homosexuality, our marriage was doomed.

My cousin, who lives in London is on her third marriage so there
you go…

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

And it sure as Hell isn’t just my family.

Statistically, over fifty percent of marriages now end in
divorce.

So what do we, the GLBT Community, seem to want most in the
world????

Would we fight to get a surgical procedure that has a less than
fifty percent success rate?

Would we rush to get on a flight with a less than fifty percent
chance of ever reaching its destination?

Why are we rushing like some pack of crazed lemmings towards the
sea, when …

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
Of course I do understand; and agree.

We should have the opportunity, the right, to accept or refuse that seat on the doomed flight.

Yet, if it were freely offered, would we really want it?

Betsy and I sometimes mull over the question of whether we would
in fact marry if the opportunity arose. (Not a question we are likely to have
to answer in our lifetime, I think, though I do believe it’s coming.)

The answer is probably in the affirmative simply for practical
fiscal considerations, but certainly not for spiritual reasons.

I have two dreams for Gay Marriage.

The first is that when it finally becomes legal nobody does it!

They give a party and nobody comes!

How great would that be?

Thanks but no thanks, folks, we are above your failed
institutions.

I can see them now, the huge rainbow banners saying …..
MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
My second, serious dream, is that we can indeed be better than
our hetero brethren

and perhaps even help them out of the marriage doldrums into
relationships that actually work.

That should be our goal, way above and beyond getting that legal
sanction.

What if we had such successful relationships ourselves that we
could shine a light to guide the het-set out of the darkness they have created?

They would envy us, and copy us, and just maybe the world would
become a better place.

I can see the banners now, all those straight folks coming over
from the Dark Side, marching down Broadway.
GAY MARRIAGE FREEKIN’ WORKS!!!!!

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
now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.