Tag: Culture and Current Events

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Figures, by Gillian

During my working life at IBM we often quoted a favorite catch-phrase, the tyranny of numbers. As you can well imagine, we were for the most part, like most if not all businesses, largely ruled by numbers. But this particular term originated in the computer world of the 1950’s, not so long before I began working for IBM in 1966, when computers were still the size of a house and you literally opened a door and went inside one to fix whatever ailed it. Computer engineers were unable to increase the performance of their designs at this time due to the huge number of components involved. In theory, every component needed to be wired to every other component, which were typically strung together via wire-wrapping and soldering by hand, a large part of my job for the first two years of my career. In order to improve performance, more components would be needed, and it seemed that future designs would consist entirely of countless components connected by endless wiring installed and endlessly repaired manually by countless people.

We were freed from this particular tyranny by the silicon chip, reducing that multi-faceted piece of house-sized equipment to something that can fit inside your watch. But the phrase has, unsurprisingly, never lost it’s appeal. I say ‘unsurprisingly’ because we are ever increasingly, it seems, ruled in every aspect of our lives by facts and figures; perhaps more accurately the facts of figures, in everything from the entire planet and indeed the universe down to every individual. The numbers applied to both the universe and even just our planet are so huge most of us cannot even grasp them. Our sun is one of an estimated two to four hundred billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. Does that really mean anything to you? It loses me! Just the age of this planet, roughly 4.5 billion years, is beyond most of us. In an effort to help us understand such huge figures some clever people have tried to put them into a different perspective. The age of the earth, for instance, and it’s major events, have been portrayed as a 24-hour clock.* On this scale, humans don’t appear until almost 11.59 pm, dinosaurs at 10.56, and I must tell you that we didn’t manage to invent sexual reproduction until after six in the evening. (Incidentally, my own problem with this depiction is – when exactly does midnight arrive and what happens then??)

As to the personal, I used to know what I weighed, and was sadly aware that that figure (in more than one sense of the word!) indicated that I was overweight, except back in those politically incorrect days I was just ‘fat’. But simple weight is no longer good enough! Now I know what my BMI number is, which in turn tells me that if I don’t lose some exact number of pounds, I shall not be old-style fat, nor new-style overweight, but new-age obese! Talk about tyranny!

We seem to have fallen into some kind of paint by numbers version of reality, don’t we? We fail to vote because, according to the poll numbers, we already know who will win, so why bother?

If we do vote, for many of us it is meaningless because we live in a district gerrymandered – based on yet other numbers – to ensure one party will always win. Our President is voted in by one set of numbers and out by another, depending on which way our country choses to count.

This tyranny of numbers is nothing new. Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime minister in the mid-eighteen hundreds, famously said there are three levels of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

In 2010, a man named David Boyle wrote a book entitled The Tyranny of Numbers. ** He examines our obsession with numbers. He reminds us of the danger of taking numbers so seriously at the expense of what is non-measurable, non-calculable: intuition, creativity, imagination, and happiness.

‘We count people, but not individuals. We count exam results rather than intelligence, benefit claimants instead of poverty …… Politicians pack their speeches with skewed statistics: crime rates are either rising or falling depending on who is doing the counting. We are in a world in which everything is designed only to be measured. If it can’t be measured it can be ignored. The problem is what numbers don’t tell you – they won’t interpret, they won’t inspire, and they won’t tell you precisely what causes what.’

It feels so strange. As they so often do, things have come full circle. By inventing our way out of the original tyranny of numbers, we created the very devices which now create the new tyranny.

Yet there is good news. Am I not right in thinking that the LGBT community is less a victim of all the numbers games than most? Perhaps it is an unexpected benefit of having been invisible for so long. We have never been, and right now it looks as if we never will be, identified in the U.S. census.We didn’t exist so we couldn’t – and to some degree still cannot – be counted. No-one can come up with accurate statistics about us. They don’t know what beer we drink or restaurants we favor. They don’t know what ads to send to our TV’s and computers. They don’t even know where we live. Statistical generalities about our community are almost impossible. And on the other side of the coin, I think we tend to care much less about their stats anyway; possibly because they so infrequently include us or apply to us as a group, but I prefer to believe it is simply because we are more independent, more free-thinking, than many.

And I am safe in sticking with that because there are, and perhaps never will be, any statistics to prove me wrong!

* https://flowingdata.com/2012/10/09/history-of-earth-in-24-hour-clock/https://

** www.goodreads.com/book/show/2556446.The_Tyranny_of_Numbers

© June 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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I Met a Fairy, by Ricky

I MET A FAIRY TODAY THAT SAID SHE WOULD GRANT ME ONE WISH.

“I want to live forever,” I said.

“Sorry,” said the fairy, “I’m not allowed to grant eternal life.”

“Fine,” I said, “Then, I want to die after Congress gets its head out of its ass!”

“You crafty bastard,” said the fairy.

© 8 Apr 2012

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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What Makes Homophobes Tick? by Lewis Thompson

The easy answer to this query would be that “homophobe” means “a person with an irrational or obsessive fear of homosexuals”, according to Wikipedia. But it would be important to dig a little beneath the surface to examine not only where the “irrational or obsessive fear” arises from but also why it seems to persist over many years.

Any American born in the last century almost certainly spent their formative years being inculcated with certain “inalienable truths”. Among these were–

* To be white is better than to be a person of color;

* To be male is better than to be female;

* To be a female is better than to be a male who wants to become a female (if a female wants to become a male, well, who can blame them?);

* To be rich is better than to be poor;

* To be rich and a crook is also better than being poor;

* To be a Christian is better than to be a non-Christian;

* To be a non-Christian is better than to be an atheist;

* To be an atheist is better than being a homosexual because, at least usually, you’re not an embarrassment to your relatives;

* To be conservative is better than being liberal (because all of the Founding Fathers were conservative, otherwise, they would never have written the Second Amendment);

* To be black, female, liberal, a non-believer, and gay is the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person and they surely should be imprisoned at birth and executed as soon as their politics, non-believer status, and sexual orientation become manifest.

So, we can readily comprehend that homophobia is the natural outgrowth of a society based upon gender, race, religious and countless other biases. It is endemic, almost akin to fluoridated water, which, as we all know, was responsible for the rise of the John Birch Society.

© January 12, 2015

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way. 

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Don’t, by Pat Gourley

“ Do or do not. There is no try.”
The Buddha
This quotation,
ostensibly from the Buddha, is on my current favorite t-shirt. This is my
favorite shirt since it has a long tail and easily covers my big belly. The
belly fat is due in large part to two things: my major sweet tooth that seems
to primarily kick in between seven and nine PM every night and my HIV meds that
rapidly accelerate the metabolic syndrome that leads to abdominal fat
deposition. My protruding belly is in stark contrast to my gaunt, wasted
looking face that makes even Keith Richards look good on his worst days. I
won’t even address the current sorry state of my ass.
The above quote may
remind some of you of a line from Star Wars spoken by Yoda. The Yoda version also
goes something like this just with more dramatic punctuation: “Do. Or do not.
There is no try.” (The Empire Strikes Back).
Supposedly
Yoda lived to be 900 years old but the Buddha still has him beat by living at
least several millennia prior, so I am going with Buddha as the originator of
this famous line. This I suppose could be a phrase comparable to the infamous “shit
or get off the pot”. No hanging out on the throne reading the paper. For
god-sakes focus and commit to the task at hand or not.
At first
blush with this topic I thought I want to be a ‘doer’ rather than responding to
the often-harsh command: don’t! Then it quickly occurred to me that there have
been many “don’t-directives” in my life that I have to say have proved helpful.
A few that come to mind are: don’t play in traffic, don’t own a gun, and don’t
eat lead paint chips, don’t pick-up that snake or don’t sashay into a straight
bar on Bronco Sunday afternoon and ask, what ya watchin’ fellas?  And the one that I saw recently on Facebook, “don’t
come out of the bathroom smelling your fingers no matter how fragrant the hand
soap was you just used.”
Perhaps I
was overly primed to see the following based on today’s topic but in reading a
nice long article on Larry Kramer in the NYT’s from last week I was
particularly drawn to several quotes by Kramer using the word “don’t”.
I’ll get to
the quotes in a bit but for those of you perhaps not familiar with Larry Kramer
he first came on the national gay scene in a significant way with the
publication of his prescient 1978 novel Faggots.
The novel was a rather unflattering though brutally honest look at the wild sexual
abandon of gay male life in the later half of the 1970’s.  Kramer as a result was persona non grata in
the gay world but with the onset of the AIDS nightmare a few years later Faggots took on an air of prophecy.
Kramer also
has significant accomplishment’s in the worlds of film, theatre and literature
but perhaps in some ways most impacting were his successful efforts around AIDS
activism. He was a seminal founder of both the New York based Gay Men’s Health Crisis and a few years
later of the iconic and change creating movement called Act Up. I have included a link to this NYT piece on Kramer and
highly recommend it as an important historical snapshot of this great gay man
and his many accomplishments. He is a consummate example of the real life
advice contained in the phrase “don’t be afraid” or to again shamelessly
exploit an old Buddhist bromide “leap and a net shall appear”.
Quoting Kramer
from the NYT’s article: “I don’t
basically have fences to mend anymore. The people I had fights with down the
line, some are dead. But even when we fought, I think we were always — I love
gay people, and I think that’s the overriding thing in any relationship that I
have with anyone else who’s gay. Never enough to throw them out of my life.
I’ve never had huge fights with anybody. Much as I hate things about the system
and this country, in terms of the people I deal with, I don’t have any.”
I have been
keenly aware of Larry Kramer and his many bold and often at times very
controversial proclamations and actions since 1978.  He has pricked my conscience on numerous
occasions shaming me actually to do more than I would have without his kick in
the ass but still never achieving his level of fearless integrity. I still
today in many ways lamely persist with my own at times crippled activism.
It is 2017,
almost 40 years since the publication of Faggots,
and as Larry reminds us, at age 81, in his last quote in the article the
struggle continues: “I don’t think that
things are better generally,” he said. “We
have people running this government who hate us, and have said they hate us.
The fight’s never over.”
© 21 May 2017 
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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Sorting It Out, by Pat Gourley

On seeing this topic for today’s Story Telling Group the
first thing that popped into my head was how often I hear the word “sorted”
spoken on the several English and occasionally Australian shows, often murder
mysteries, I watch on Netflix.  I was
left to wonder if the phrase “sorting it out” is just not the American version.
Checking the Urban Dictionary,
the number one definition for “sorted” was using it in reference to be
completing a task or an idea. For example, I have got it “sorted” mate or will
you “sort” that for me mate. I must say I much prefer hearing “sort or sorted” in
an English accent than I do the mundane mid-western American version: “I’ll
sort that out for you”.
There are also many other, some much more colorful, definitions
of “sorted” that are apparently part of British slang. For example, it can mean
to be under the influence of Ecstasy or that one’s class A recreational drugs
have arrived or perhaps my favorite usage getting fucked up but not to the
point of blacking out. I am sorted!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sorted
I will now make a sharp left turn and return to the specific
phrase “sorting it out” and how this may have relevance in my current life.
Though I am relatively comfortable with my lack of belief in a god or gods,
which I guess, makes me an atheist, I do at times get a bit squishy with this
world-view and fall back on maybe being an agnostic. The word agnostic conjures
up a phrase used by the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn “Only Don’t Know”. His use
was, I am sure, more sophisticated than my superficial view around whether or
not there is a god, but I can honestly say when pondering the Universe and how
the hell we all got here I really “only don’t know”.
To be very honest though I am still sorting this “god-thing”
out. Oh, I have absolutely no problem throwing out the overwhelming mythical
teachings of all the world’s great monotheistic religions, Hinduism and even
much from certain Buddhist schools. In hindsight it was harder to give up a belief
in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny than it was to jettison many of the tenets
of the Catholic Religion I was indoctrinated in.
Those original questions Harry Hay used in helping to
challenge and flesh-out our queer identity, that of our being a real cultural
minority he believed, seem pertinent for me today in “sorting it out”: Who are we, where did we come from, and what
are we for.
Questions it seems that can easily be expanded beyond just
coming to grips with and adding meaning and substance to being gay.
Which brings me to why I am reading two books currently. Both
are by men who have been intellectual, and dare I say Spiritual, influences on
me over the years.  These are authors I
have read seeking answers on this whole supreme-being thing or a more
sophisticated question perhaps being: Is evolution, not only of life on earth
but of the ever-expanding Universe as a whole, really spirit in action and what the hell are the implications of that,
for me of course.
The first book is by Stephen Batchelor and is titled Secular Buddhism – Imagining the Dharma in
an Uncertain World (Stephen is also the author of Buddhism Without Beliefs and Confessions
of a Buddhist Atheist among others) and the second is The Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber. Wilber’s book clocks in at
806 pages with relatively small print and no pictures. So, if this tome
provides guidance for me in “sorting it out” don’t expect an update for
probably at least six months and most likely much longer.
Actually, I am most likely reading both of these books
because I am just a lazy fuck looking for a short cut – an answer to the
question of what is our true nature and that of the whole amazing Universe.
Both Wilber and Batchelor have decades of very disciplined meditative practice
informing and guiding their views. I on the other hand have spent more cushion
time than the average bear but in comparison to these two guys my effort is
like a single grain of sand on the beach. All of this reading of course may
well be folly if I am not willing to do the work. I wonder sometimes what is
‘faith’ really but a con foisted on folks i.e. no need to do the work just
accept our word for it and it will all be fine.
“Stay tuned to this space.” — Rachel Maddow
© 8 May 2017 
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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Don’t, by Betsy

My mother was not big on “don’ts.”  I cannot remember either of my parents
issuing constant “don’t do this’s, don’t do that’s, don’t forget to’s…,
etc’s.”  When they did, it was usually
for my safety: “Don’t climb too high, don’t jump off the roof, don’t swim out
too far.” 
In spite of the dearth of don’ts uttered by my mom in my
younger years, it changed as I grew out of childhood into adolescence and young
adulthood. As I grew older, I heard one “don’t” on a fairly regular basis: “Don’t
get pregnant.”
I’m not sure why my mother was so fearful of this one aspect
of my behavior. I had never given her cause to worry about my general
deportment in the past.  I had been
anything but a wild child. I usually stayed in line. But when I was dating boys
in my later high school years and into college, my mother was definitely
worried about my virginity. Perhaps she was projecting the feelings she
remembered having when she was the same age. 
Little did she know, her daughter had no chance of losing her virginity
as long as I was dating “nice” boys. There was no chance I would lose control
and “go too far.”  I suppose I could have
reassured her, but we, my mom and I, never talked about such topics especially
topics involving feelings. This was not uncommon in those days just as my mom
probably never talked about feelings with her mom a generation before.  Perhaps if my mother and I had been
comfortable talking about feelings, just maybe I would have known more about my
inner self earlier in my life. Perhaps I would have understood better who I was
really instead of proceeding simply according to the standards I knew.
I also know that my mother was concerned about appearances
and how her family looked to others. I think this was common in those
days.  And her eldest daughter becoming
inappropriately pregnant certainly would not look good.  I sometimes wonder which my mother would have
chosen had she been given the choice: You have a daughter who is unmarried and
pregnant, or you have a daughter who is a lesbian. Either would have
unthinkable to her I’m sure.
I am not being critical of my mother. This was a cultural
characteristic. My scanty religious training did not promote the peeling of the
onion skin to reveal secrets about ourselves, especially secrets having to do
with our sexual proclivities.   In my
experience religious doctrine, the ultimate standard upon which we all based
our conduct, not only did not promote introspection, but discouraged it.
I did not do much better as a mother with my daughters. After
all, like my mother, I had never been taught the importance of, or more
importantly HOW to talk about personal and intimate subjects with my children.
Also, children by nature certainly are not comfortable revealing deeply held
feelings which often they are reluctant to admit even to themselves that they
have.
In my old age I find myself in a continual process of sorting
out that which should be spoken from that which must simply be accepted and
from which I must detach—detach with love, but detach— and go on my own
way. 
BTW, on the very, very outside chance that anyone especially
children or grandchildren and more especially in-laws—should anyone happen to
ask me for any advice or even just an opinion, I will be glad to offer the best
I have to give based on my long experience.
© 5 Jun 2017 
About
the Author 
Betsy has been active in
the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been
retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major
activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a
volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading,
writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage.
She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren.
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her
life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.
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Journaling in the Age of Dick Pics, by Pat Gourley

I have never had the discipline needed for any form of consistent journaling or diary keeping. The closest I have ever come to writing with focus has been this SAGE Story Telling Group. I suppose you could say my writings on AIDS were a focused personal collection of my observations and reactions to that nightmare, a journaling of sorts. My AIDS writings though when looked at over nearly three decades beginning in 1981 were actually quite sparse and spread out.

Looking at my expanded title for this topic you may wonder how I am going to leap from “journal” to “dick pics”. It is not going to be very smooth but is being driven in part by a strong desire to document a few of the crazier statements, actions and proclamations, often sexual in nature, that I have run across lately in my excessive Internet browsing and cable news watching. Further documentation, as if we needed any more, that in 2017 the world has gone totally insane.

One phrase I want to immortalize in particular really sticks out and that is “ the smoke of Satan”. This one is perhaps originally credited to Pope Paul VI. He was reacting to what was, and still is, apparently quite significant ongoing and organized homosexual activity amongst the Curia in Rome. Surprise!

This smoke of Satan business has now gotten even worse under the current Pope Francis per some observers. The whole phrase was “the smoke of Satan has infiltrated the Church”. We queers have been called by many names throughout history but I must say “the smoke of Satan” may be my favorite.

I mean what does that even mean? Perhaps Satan is fond of a post-coital cigarette? Or something a bit more-kinky involving blowing smoke up someone’s ass, which is well documented in gay male internet porn often by those with a cigar fetish. I think though the phrase remains open to interpretation, let your imagination run wild.

So the next odd turn of phrase that I think deserves journaling on my part comes from a Republican Congressman named Buddy Carter from Georgia. Referring to the Senate being unable to address health care he recently said, “Somebody needs to go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their ass.” At first blush I thought maybe he was referring to anal beads. Pondering further I guess I again have no idea what is being referenced here. If you have Internet access and time on your hands I have included a link to an article detailing the apparently long history of the phrase. Not to cast any aspirations but it seems to be Southern in origin. http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/07/27/_snatch_a_knot_in_their_ass_explained.html

And of course what sort of chronicling of the salacious would not include the current vivid description of someone in the White House supposedly being pre-occupied with sucking his own dick. Though I think the comment was meant to be mean-spirited it has been great fun watching various pundits, often on live TV, trying to address this one. Several commentators, mostly women I might add, have tried in part to dismiss the act as ridiculous and physically impossible. Au contraire!

Even a cursory perusal of gay internet porn, using the search term of ‘auto-fellatio’, will show that for some it is truly quite possible to suck one’s own dick. Albeit it helps a lot to be rail thin, flexible like a yogi master and have a long shlong. This slight was directed at Steve Bannon though and of course he is most likely not well endowed, an adept yogi and certainly not rail thin.

One last mention of an activity that certainly warrants a deeper dive into the psychology of it all is the “dick pic’. The current flap surrounds again some jerk working for Fox News apparently harassing female co-workers with snaps of his junk. Without really giving it much thought I wondered if at least the first phone pic of a dick did not come from a cruising gay male. I mean after-all we have been for millennia in the forefront of facilitating hook-ups. A ‘dick pic’ certainly cuts to the chase for some and we have after all perfected the art of non-verbal sexual communication. Perhaps this is just one more thing co-opted by the straight male.

In researching this piece, and yes this did take a bit of legitimate research, I happened on this tongue-in cheek but delightful YouTube video on the history of the ‘dick pic’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sFnktGzxCs

Enjoy!

© August 2017

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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Anxious Moments, by Louis Brown

( A ) Because Bernie Sanders told his followers to campaign for Hillary Clinton, I went to the local office of Ed Perlmutter, member of U. S. Congress, and did many hours of phone work for her. However, I felt uncomfortable doing so. Hillary Clinton, despite her consistent claims to being a liberal, really isn’t. She admires Henry Kissinger, voted for the War in Iraq and generally does not even acknowledge the existence of the liberal base of the Democratic Party. She was for the TPP before she was against it. Her opposition to the TPP was not sincere and she really never touched on the underlying hostility the TPP represents to working people in America. However, when I campaigned for her, I kept my real opinions to myself. Was this an anxious moment of an awkward situation?

( B ) When I took the course for para-legal studies at Queens College, NYC about 12 years ago, I noticed there was no real preparation to pass the final exam. Many participants told me you really did not have to know much to pass the final exam. So I did not take the final exam. And I flunked paralegal studies at Queens College. In addition to the dishonesty of the course presentation, I also noticed at Queens College (Flushing, NY) that there were virtually no Americans in attendance there – not in paralegal studies, not in the undergraduate school or the professional graduate school departments. I once saw a group of Jewish students, and I said to myself well at least there are some Jewish Americans attending college here. But as their boisterous dinner party in the cafeteria proceeded, I learned they were all from Israel, no Jewish Americans. Later I noticed there was one exception, one awkward Jewish American young man, not a part of this group, and I definitely identified with him. He was taking the paralegal course too. I doubt he passed the paralegal final exam either.

My point is that, as much as I am against xenophobia and am generally anti-Trump, I do think it is strange that the American public is not permitted to attend medical school. Trump is succeeding in appealing to people’s fears.

( C ) At Democratic Party meetings, including the Lesbian and Gay Democrats of Queens County, supporters of the AFL-CIO, like myself, remember when Democrats and the AFL-CIO spoke for the economic interests of about 80% of the American public, and, as a result, the Democratic Party flourished and was the majority party for many years. Now that the Democratic Party has dumped the AFL-CIO, they are losing dramatically elections all over the country. Many people like me know why, but our pro-labor advocacy is rarely brought up at Democratic Party meetings or at their promotional events. About 3 years ago I called the Colorado AFL-CIO and they told me they were not on speaking terms with the Colorado Democratic Party. I called the offices of Ed Perlmutter, Michael Bennet and Mark Udall, and they all told me they could not comment on what the Colorado AFLCIO said or thought about them. Why not? Because of the absence of the AFL-CIO in Democratic Party politics, you can expect their numbers in the Congress and state legislatures to decline even further. What a shame!

© 12 June 2017

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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Assumptions, by Gillian

We all know the old saying that if you ass/u/me, you simply make an ass of u and me. I enjoy plays on words, so I like that one. It is also absolutely true. Assumptions of any kind are never safe, and we’re frequently sorry. We learn pretty fast about many assumptions we should never make: the bus/plane/train will leave or arrive on time, teachers and parents are always right and life is always fair, if I always tell the truth I will be rewarded, and Mr. Right will come along and we will live happily ever after.

As we get older, we adjust to more subtle assumptions we should not make. Self-improvement books tell us not to assume everything in the world is about us; indeed, to remind ourselves on many occasions, this is not about me. Similarly the assumption we make that we constantly need to offer our opinions is erroneous. One book has an entire chapter challenging me constantly to ask myself, Why Am I Talking?

Erroneous assumptions about any given situation often turn out to be very embarrassing, even under circumstances where no-one else knows the assumptions I was making in my own heads. One of my favorite stories on these lines is from when I was somewhere in my mid-thirties. I managed an IBM department which employed several temporary employees in addition to the permanent staff. I began to notice one of the latest temporaries, a very attractive young man, eyeing me a little too often; a little too much. I groaned to myself. This was not good. I was married.

I was going to have to deal with this situation. And soon. Lo and behold, only a couple of days later, the man came into my office. He shuffled his feet and looked a little uncomfortable. Then he said,

‘Sorry if you’ve noticed me staring at you. I’m kind of embarrassed but I have to tell you. You remind me so very much of my mother.’

And if that statement doesn’t take the wind out of a girl’s sails, then I don’t know what does!

Although I have told the story quite often since, at the time I was so very glad that I had told no-one about this sexy young man who clearly had the hots for me!

Assumptions must change constantly with changes in time and space and circumstances, but I missed the boat on that one.

Changing political assumptions, now, another boat I missed although I did run to catch a later one. Growing up in in the extremely socialist Britain of the 1950’s, I always assumes that The Government, always with a psychological capital G, had my very best interests at heart. The very existence of The Government was in order to make my life better. I never once questioned that assumption. I had no doubts. Then, in this country, I encountered the likes of Reagan and Nixon and one more assumption bit the dust. That assumption was, of course, doomed, wherever I lived. Had I stayed in the UK it would have died just as swiftly, as the socialist Britain of my youth crumbled under the weight of Margaret Thatcher’s conservatism. I certainly see nothing in the current political scene that hints of any revival.

So as we age we leave a trail of broken and battered assumptions in our wake. Not that I claim to miss them much; their absence doubtless leaves me with a healthier, saner, ability to make rational decisions. But I notice, as I age, an occasional new assumption insinuates itself. I always assume, for instance, that at my time of life it is not a good idea to buy green bananas.

© March 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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Don’t! by Lewis Brown

When I was in a Methodist Church last September 2016, many people in the congregation were becoming overly excited by the American election events. One of the lady parishioners, Kim, stood up and said “We go to church to worship God, that is we do not [Don’t] put our trust and hope in the princes of this world but in God only.” On one level, I agree with her. Donald Trump, as hostile as he is, is only a paper tiger as Mao Tse-Tung would have said.


Last Sunday I attended the Congregational Meeting of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Rockies (MCCR). The pastor, Rev. Dr. Gail Atchison said they were having severe financial problems. I learned for instance that the large commercial gas oven in the kitchen had “blown up,” so that they did not even have a functioning kitchen for catering and hosting events.

To be realistic, looking around, the only gay businesses that actually have any big bucks is the gay porno industry. And they would love to contribute to gay social agencies but cannot since they are considered, fairly or unfairly, to be moral if not legal criminals. The answer is a clever business man takes the contributions and launders the money legally of course and makes the cash available to our worthy causes. In the past the gay porno industry has contributed generously to AIDS related service and health agencies. Why not a new commercial gas stove for MCCR?

Some of the gay porno companies are Titan Men, Falcon Video, Raging Stallions and Hot House Videos. They have become big businesses.

At the MCCR Congregational Meeting we also discussed the currently proposed Mission Statement which, unlike the previous more militant Mission Statement, did not say “to develop a sense of community and the building up of the gay and Lesbian community.” It did speak of advocating for poor people and the homeless but was not much different from what a Congregational Church would have in its Mission Statement.

The pastor Gail Atkinson also stated that she was trying (I think heroically) to get more parishioners by scouring local community organizations one of which was the Denver Gay and Lesbian Community Center. She said that when she went there, no one had ever heard of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Rockies or of the denomination Metropolitan Community Church. Imagine, the Gay and Lesbian Center’s staff members did not even know that the gay and Lesbian Church was located about 10 blocks away from the Center building. The right hand did not know what the left had was doing. Mind-boggling. The Center staff members were also quite hesitant to promise to refer any young gay and Lesbian people to a “church” or to any church, given the assumed hostility of most churches to gay people.

Consider the Hassidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. They are well organized. Their business leaders have cornered the market on the local photograph apparatus business, including the new digital cameras, and are well established in the diamond trade business, both of these businesses have become profitable. The typical Hassidic family therefore has an income from one of these businesses and lives in an apartment building owned by a Hassidic Jew so that the landlord – tenant hostility is avoided. The landlord wants the tenant to survive and thrive – for religious reasons.

So, when I hear phrases like “organize and empower the Lesbian and gay community,” I think this is what I mean. Organize like the Hassidic community in Brooklyn. They have successfully organized and the whole community has found a way to survive and thrive despite the hostility of our current politicians and hostile politicians of the past.

© 22 May 2017

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.