Tag: LGBTQA

Posted on

Self Acceptance, by Pat Gourley

Well this phrase certainly sums up the entire “gay agenda” now doesn’t it?

One of the insidious accusations pitched our way around a “gay agenda” is that we need to recruit to our ranks. Reproducing, per conventional wisdom, is not one of our strong points, this despite the fact that many queers do reproduce.

I would though argue that self-acceptance is really a very potent recruitment tool. That is if you define recruitment as the creation of safe space for people to get in touch and express their intrinsic identity. No brainwashing or perverted sexual enticement needed, just provide a bit of sunlight and water and voila. Not to indulge too much in a trite metaphor but it is like a flower blooming. When given the chance queerness reaches its full potential and gloriously presents itself for all to see and appreciate. Homophobia both from external sources and the more insidious internalized form can prevent this from happening.

I could pontificate on this for a few more paragraphs and come up with a few more cheesy metaphors but since this is meant to be a personal story telling exercise I’ll just say a few words about my own self-acceptance. I was very fortunate to come of age sexually in my late teens in an environment that was in rebellion on many fronts. Civil rights, women’s liberation, strong anti-war sentiment and exploding gay liberation were all ingredients in the stew I found myself in.

We will mark the 50th anniversary of the summer of love this coming year, 2017. I strongly encourage pilgrimages to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. The neighborhood is suffering under the ravages of gentrification but a bit less so than other parts of the City. Since I rarely pass on the opportunity to quote lyrics from my favorite band these couple of lines seem appropriate here:

Nothin’ shakin’ on shakedown street. used to be the heart of town.

Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart. you just gotta poke around.

Shakedown Street. Garcia/Hunter

If you get the chance to visit slowly amble along Haight Street and poke around a bit.

My own coming out was certainly facilitated by the social, political and cultural upheavals of the late 1960’s. It is however the personal self-acceptance on a deep soul level that provides the spark for queer actualization and this can take awhile. It is a process and rarely a single bolt of enlightenment. There were ups and downs along this path for me during the first 10 years of that self-discovery. I would date those years of maturing self-acceptance to be roughly from 1966 to 1976. It was capped off and really cemented with the “coming-out” letter I wrote to my father.

His response to my letter was rather unexpected, loving and astonishingly thoughtful. He said that my gayness explained a lot and he now understood better why I had always been sensitive to the underdog. Being Catholic he also encouraged me to search out the Gay Catholic group Dignity. I did that but my participation was fleeting.

I truly regret loosing his letter and not following up better with inquiries as to how he found out about Dignity; dad died in August of 1980 a few short days after the second national gathering of Radical Fairies ended here in Colorado. I suspect though that the Dignity referral came from the same parish priest who I came out to in the early 1970’s. This man, who after a painful counseling session involving my expression of personal doubt about my gay path, put his arm around me and said I would make a great priest! That did not happen.

I do realize that my own personal self-acceptance was much less traumatic that it has been for many. I was truly lucky in this regard and so fortunate to have had a great dad in my corner to help the process along.

I have for some reason been listening to lots of Lucinda Williams these days, especially it seems since November 8th. She has a song that seems apropos to the whole self-acceptance gig for us queers. The title of the tune is “A World Without Tears”: Here is aYou Tube link to aversion of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-W-qKAQJQo

© December 2016

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.

Posted on

My Favorite Place, by Betsy

On a mountain trail, riding on my bicycle through a beautiful setting with no traffic, on the tennis court, with family, with my honey especially in her arms–all of these are places I love to be. But favorite means ONE place, not a dozen. So I have to really think about this. It came to me rather quickly actually. My favorite place is IN THE NOW. To be in the now is to be totally present wherever I am. To be in the now means not worrying about the future or evaluating the past.

My partner and I are currently trying to learn what it means to be in the now. So, in truth, I am a long way from mastering the concept promoted by Ekhart Tolle in his book The Power of NOW.

According to Tolle being in the now means being in an enlightened state of consciousness. Letting go of one’s ego and entering a state of elevated consciousness. I cannot say that I have ever gotten even close to this.

It’s not difficult. Do not try to understand this with your mind, says Mr. Tolle. Just FEEL it.

Ekhart Tolle is one of the great spiritual teachers of our time, and I really do want to learn from him. I cannot disagree with anything he teaches. Such as the concept that our minds and our egos get in the way of our reaching enlightenment, the Now. The same question keeps popping up in my head: Why is it so hard for us to get beyond our egos and beyond the interference of our minds, our thoughts? Thoughts just have way of creeping in most of the time.

Back to the topic–my favorite place. What I am speaking of is the NOW meaning the present moment. Put in other words: my favorite place is wherever I am at the moment. Right now my favorite place is here, trying to sort out my thoughts and put them down on paper so you all can get some understanding of what I am trying to say. On Monday afternoon my favorite place will be here in this room listening to your wise words. Oh, oh! There I go thinking about the future, already projecting myself into it. Who knows, I might be sick on Monday and then nowhere would be my favorite place except asleep in my bed.

We do get ourselves into trouble, do we not, when we anticipate the future.

We do ourselves a disservice when we anticipate something in the future. We may be setting ourselves up for disappointment or disillusionment.

And how many of us have ever completely tormented ourselves over something that happened in the past–a few minutes ago or long ago. Or something bad happens a few minutes ago or long ago and we cannot let go of it. We go over and over and over it in our minds. Both past and future are constructs of the mind and are illusions, says Tolle. Only the now is real. I like the concept.

Have you ever been in a place where you wanted desperately to capture the moment and make it last forever, such as a place of indescribable beauty? Visiting some of our national parks lately, I have noticed that everyone has a camera. This is a way of making the beauty last–taking it home with you. I am very glad that Gill and I have thousands of photos and I enjoy looking at them just as much as anyone.

But what you cannot take home with you is how it FELT to be surrounded by awesome natural beauty. The memory is not the same as the feeling itself. Tolle speaks of being one with the universe. Surrounded by incredible natural beauty and really taking it in is perhaps the closest I will ever be in my current human form to that feeling.

Tolle’s concepts are the same that have been handed down through the ages by many of the great spiritual teachers. Just spelled out in a different way. I will continue to read his books. That’s the easy part. Applying the principles to everyday issues and happenings is the hard part. But it’s a good place to be.

© June 2013

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.

Posted on

Family, by Ricky

Too many choices to pick from. Which family should I write about – my growing up family, my waiting for the divorce family, my step-father family, my Boy Scout family, my married family, or my widower family? I have actually written about all of these “my families” before so if you want to read of them again look up my past stories on the SAGE blog or my personal blog.

So this leaves me with only my LGBT family to write about. I did not list LGBTQ because I don’t know of any Q’s in my LGBT family unless I make the Q stand for “queer” instead of “questioning”. I also did not list the “LGBTQ alphabet” written about by Will a couple of years ago because, if I did write about it, I would still be here reading it to you when you came back next week and would still not be finished.

In the vernacular of the times, it appears that the LGBT “family” is referred to as a “community”. In a particular viewpoint, community is correct as a metaphor. After all towns and cities are made up of neighborhoods and communities of biological families or individuals. LGBT communities are made up of non-biological groups / ”families” of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders; each category which also has sub-categories of preferences.

Since LGBT marriages are now legal, there will also be legitimate biological LGBT families with children either natural or adopted. These relationships existed before but were not usually sanctioned by law or the hetero communities they lived within.

There was a time in the not distant past (which may come again) when gays were persecuted. When meeting together in public places they would talk among themselves using female names do disguise the fact they were gay. This practice continues to this day in the modified version of calling each other “girl”. I personally dislike the practice because, I am gay but I am definitely not a girl.

To close on a positive note, I have a gay friend who if he wants to know if someone is gay will ask, “Is he family.”

© 5 September 2016

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

Posted on

Choices, by Ray S.

Never had to make a choice or decision because my mother always did that for me. That’s what mothers do.

The US government decided I was draftable like all the other boys my age in 1943. Faced with making a choice as to what branch of the service would want me, it resulted in a trip to the US Army Air Force office and enlisting in their air cadet program. It seemed the best choice of all evils and besides I didn’t think I’d fit nicely into a tight white sailor suit.

Footnote here: Can you imagine me flying an airplane? I couldn’t even drive a car then.

The air corps was making all of our choices now having replaced Mama. As good fortune would have it, the cadet program was oversubscribed, so the powers that be (or were) scattered all of this wet behind the ears pubescent material to the winds. The talented ones went to aircraft mechanics school. The rest of the class members, having finished basic training in the wilds of Gulfport, were shipped off to a military police contingent where they were assigned to 11 pm to 7 am guard duty. Here we could reflect on our recently basic training that had taught all of the little boys how to be good little soldiers, drink beer, smoke cigarettes, strip down and reassemble a carbine, report on parade grounds at 6 am dressed only in your issue raincoat for “short arm” VD inspection (and he wouldn’t show us his), learn the intricacies of KP duty, and checking the scenery in the barracks shower.

Eventually through discovery, familiarity, or unknowing choices, the appearance of latent libidos or the right time and the right place, this boy found out what people meant by the pejoratives “queer” and “fairy.” However there was a conscious effort called ‘in denial’ to not own those words openly for some thirty to forty years hence.

Dating and girls:

It was a blind date that never ended until she delivered an ultimatum. The morning of the wedding the butterflies kept saying, “Do you really want this?” But, the die was cast, no choice, just make the best of it … for fifty-five years. And there were many good times and some not so good.

Is chance a choice or is choice a chance? A sunny day in June, crowds gathered at Civic Center Plaza, and I chose to hang out on the perimeter of all the action observing what PRIDE was all about.

Another CHOICE, after all of this time it was becoming easier—attending a SAGE of the Rockies conference. Meeting and learning to know there was a place for me in this beautiful tribe; and I belonged. Knowing I could reach out and love freely and openly. Finding I finally could come out of a closet I had lived in all of these years. I realize now that I might be the only person that didn’t know or suspect I was and am queer—in the most positive sense. My closet like many others suffered from structural transparency.

Now I am faced with another CHOICE. Trying to determine is this ‘indiscriminate love’ or ‘unconditional love’ that I feel for all of you; and is there really that much of a difference?

© 11 July 2016

About the Author

Posted on

New Year Hopes for the Community, by Nicholas

According to my records, with this piece, I am starting my seventh year of coming to tell and listen to stories on Monday afternoon.

It seems odd to think about hope in this grim start to what may be a long and grim year of frustration, setbacks and bad news. This is not a very hopeful time we live in. But maybe this is when we most need to remind ourselves that hope is possible, hope is what keeps us going, hope is what gets us out of bed each morning. And hope, no matter how irrational, is good to have.

So, my hope for the lesbian, gay and trans community is that we learn to turn to each other more for joy and less out of necessity. I know that fearsome problems still haunt our world and community. Violence and bullying is a daily fact for many of our youth. Discrimination still runs rampant in many areas. Determined gay-haters, like the soon to be vice-president of the United States, persist in their work to undo the dignity and security of LGBT lives and generate hostility toward us. There is still plenty of inequality and prejudice out there.

But in many ways, our world is getting less frightening and our grasp on basic rights is growing more secure. It is no longer acceptable to openly degrade gay people—which is why our enemies have to resort to ever greater subterfuges to try to harass us. They’ve lost the sanctity of marriage so now they are reduced to fighting for the sanctity of toilets and who shall be allowed to do their business in which ones.

We still have battles to fight, but my hope is that we will seek out each other’s company less out of a sense of a need for protection, less out of desperation, and more because we just want to be around other L, G, B and T people. We come together not so much because we need to seek shelter in a hostile world but more because we can best express ourselves with each other.

I have many non-gay friends and love them dearly. It’s not that I sense any barriers between us. Yet, there is still more I sense in sharing with queer folk. We share experiences that we’ve all known and don’t have to explain. We share a humor derived from being outsiders. We share spiritualities, arts and a sharp sense of just what community is—or is not. We have been forced to make up our own culture and so we have. We are different and we should relish opportunities to engage those differences.

Most of us come out of a time when lesbians and gays could never take anything for granted. And we shouldn’t. Above all, we shouldn’t take each other for granted. You can find very fulfilling relationships with non-gay people but I do believe that there is one thing we can find only with our own kind—happiness. I do hope that organizations such as the community center we are in continue to thrive—not out of fear and self-defense but from joy. We still need to find each other. I hope that we continue to come here because we want to, not because we have to.

Even in a world more tolerant and open, there is still that special depth of connection that we get to see only in each other. Call it love or desire or a magical ability to coordinate colors and a flare for decorating, you won’t find it outside. You may be welcome to watch football games with legions of Broncos fans, but you won’t get much of a response by commenting that Eli Manning is so much better looking than his brother Peyton. They just don’t get it.

© January 2017

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

Obama and Gay Centurions and Death, by Louis Brown

I have three interpretations of “Leaving”: (a) Evaluation of Barak Obama’s presidency; Barack Obama will soon be leaving office; (b) Louis Brown leaves New York City from which he recalls another fond memory; (c) Leaving as dying: death of brother, Charles Brown.

(a) President Barack Obama: I voted for him twice. He talks like an enlightened liberal person, but, when the chips are down, he reacts like a hostile right-wing Republican. He went to Flint, Michigan, and spoke to a roomful of black students and told them, “I have your backs.” The facts do not really bear this out. His EPA knew all along that the governor of Michigan was poisoning the people of Flint but did nothing to interfere. His administration did nothing to get the governor of Michigan impeached and removed from office. Mr. Obama, like a bellicose right-wing Republican, continues to wage a perpetual war in Afghanistan, despite the widespread opposition of the American public. When Scott Walker was stripping union workers in Wisconsin of their labor rights, Mr. Obama was silent, breaking with the long history of the Democratic Party advocating for the rights of working people. Au contraire, Mr. Obama promotes TPP which is very hostile to the interests of American working people. So, despite some of his good qualities, Mr. Obama is just another failure in a long line of failed presidents.

(b) Louis Brown leaves New York City: one of my fondest memories of New York City was viewing for the past 3 years in June at the Gay Pride March the Alcazar Night Club float. This consisted of a large truck with a large dance floor platform on which around 15 very tall brawny beautiful Hispanic men, dressed up as Roman Centurions; they performed a rather wild and frenetic and yet very well-rehearsed, disco-style dance routine, accompanied by very loud disco music. The spectacular performance was not pornographic but was very suggestive and very erotic. Imagine, a loud boisterous display of male on male eroticism in public on a sundrenched day in June. I later thought that I should have videotaped the event so that, when asked why I recommend putting Classical Studies in gay and Lesbian studies curriculums, I would show these Hispanic gays evoking ancient Rome. They did a good job in expressing gay pride and making a naughty historical reference. Remember, if you want your minority group to promote a sense of community, and to empower itself, you have to learn its history – so taught Alex Haley, author of Roots. Amen.

(c) Leaving meaning dying: My brother Charles Brown died in 1999 at the age of 52. One of my friends told me he observed that my brother would stay a little too long at night at a local Irish bar in the nearby town of Flushing, New York, and would imbibe too many Martini’s, Manhattans and Bloody Mary’s. That is what killed him. Charlie Brown was thin, and soft-spoken and gay. He worked at a good job at the 42nd Street Library. He had several different boyfriends, but one long-term boyfriend, Pat Marra, was unusually good-looking. He was quite tall, had beautifully formed hands and dark wavy brown hair. He looked like a DaVinci painting. He was so beautiful he reminded me of my Italian teacher, il signor Guido, another unusually gorgeous Italian. I remember even the heterosexual male students in that Italian class were flabbergasted when they looked at him. To accentuate his good looks, he wore very expensive Italian silk suits and stylishly elegant Italian shoes. That was Italian 101. Everyone in the class was looking forward to Italian 102, but, at the end of the semester, Mr. Guido returned to Italy. Boohoo.

Two points to make, my brother Charlie died of alcohol abuse, and his boyfriend, Pat Marra, died of an illegal narcotic overdose, either heroin or cocaine, I forget which. Question, how could the gay community have intervened in their lives to prevent substance abuse? What was missing in their lives?

© 2 November 2016

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.

Posted on

Eavesdrop Follow Up, by Ray S

At lunch the other day I was concentrating on my ham on rye when I couldn’t avoid overhearing two men on the adjoining bar stools. Maybe their two-martini lunches encouraged their animated conversation when one exclaimed to the other, “But I don’t understand, how after all these years she could do that to Harry? What about the business? What about the children?”

His friend responded, “She’s been that way all her life—so they say.” I wonder who ‘they’ were and why Harry didn’t have a clue.

“Guess not, be damned if the two of them aren’t friendly with each other, all three of them, that is.”

The next response was something like: “Look, you ought to know. You’re married. Women are so flighty and unpredictable, like lovey dovey and then ‘Not tonight, I’ve got a headache,’ or ‘We did it last Wednesday.’”

I’ve got experience, what with a wife and two daughters. I can’t figure them out. So I just grin and bear it. The other guy followed with something like, “I’d throw the bitch out—after marriage counseling. Ha!”

By this time the ham on rye was finished and so was I. I felt like an intruder, unwanted guest, and personally imposed upon by their noise. I picked up my check and headed for the cashier, and back to the office. Somehow the experience at lunch hung over my thoughts all afternoon—so much so that that evening I called a longtime friend who is a counselor at the GLBT Center here in town. She and her partner were the first lesbians I ever met and a real eye opening pleasure for a straight man.

We talked for quite awhile. The over-heard story at lunch time made me wonder too about their question—idle curiosity I guess, because when I met Nel and Liz I simply accepted them as another new couple of acquaintances to add to my list of good friends.

Nel was quite open in her reply—after she regained her composure from smiling knowingly and a controlled laugh. “Jim,” she replied, “It isn’t that complicated, just a lifetime of misguided, badly twisted, confusing thoughts about who you really are. And that condition isn’t exclusively homosexual information. From our previous talks about you and Doris, it is something that comes early or sometimes late in life. It’s the relationship between two people who have discovered how much they mean to each other, not how much they need each other. Being needy isn’t being in love, so perhaps the woman who was the subject of your accidental eavesdropping had that epiphany and started to live honestly and authentically with her new wife.”

“Nel, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and with that same heart wish that your thoughts could penetrate the alcohol hanging over those two guys’ heads. And maybe filter through to their unfortunate wives.”

Next time I’ll pass on lunch at the bar. Think I’ll take Doris to lunch. The company will be superior, and I’ll be with my most-loved one.

© 18 July 2016

Posted on

Setting Up House, by Pat Gourley

Having moved many times in my adult life and once while still living at home with my parents I am quite familiar with setting up house. The first move in my teenage years was when my family left Northern Indiana and relocated to NE Illinois in 1965, I was 16 years old at the time. This was as it turned out a great change getting me out of rural Indiana. Unfortunately, Mike Pence is really not an anomaly back there, and into a new home and school. At Marion Central Catholic High School, I was taught by a great radical Holy Cross nun who to this day influences my world view. Oh, and there was the older gentleman I met in my new surroundings who became my first queer love.

Though I have been very fortunate for never having to “set up house” after any sort of natural or manmade disaster I think this move as a teenager really set a tone for me later in life making frequent moves much easier. All but one of my moves since age 18 has involved setting up home with other folks and a wide variety of individuals at that. Two moves in the last 50 years, totally 28 years, have involved setting up shop with a male lover. Having a loving companion in your life with whom you decide to share living space with is always a bit different than moving in with people who are just roommates.

My most recent move, now a little over three years ago, is unique in my adult life in that it has involved no one else – not a lover or any roommates. I really do yearn for more companionship in my day-to-day living situation and would prefer this be somebody or somebodies on site. A lover at this time is fraught with hurtles and unlikely to happen. My HIV status complicates this certainly but really the big issue is finding someone who could stand to share a bed with me. I get up to pee at night an inordinate number of times and my propensity to fart in bed occurs often enough each night to be a contribution to global warming, a form of methane one step from being weaponized: the one and really only drawback to a largely plant-based diet.

Even my cat has had to adjust to these frequent nightly wind emissions. He will only sleep spooning my belly even though it is just as cozy in the crook of my leg. The leg position however puts him directly in the line of fire and is avoided it seems at all costs.

So, if I am to avoid one of my greatest fears of aging, living out my last years alone, it will need to be with roommates and individual bedrooms. I have many years of experience living communally and do hope that these last few years of going it alone have not made me into such a fussy old queen that sharing living space is now out of the question.

Though I have certainly learned to never say never I find the prospect of any sort of assisted living very unsettling and something I hope to avoid at all costs. Let’s be honest “assisted living” has become the politically correct euphemism for nursing home. Oh, sure a few assisted living situations come with a supported modicum of independence but these often involve significant financial resources. Ending up in such a place is something I personally dread more than dying alone and being eaten by my cat before someone finds my body. I am therefore in support of ballot initiative 106, the medical aid in dying proposal on the November 2016 ballot here in Colorado. [It passed.]

I have, I think, walked a fine line in this writing group acknowledging the reality of my HIV status while trying to avoid weaving it into everything I have to say. It is far from everything I have to say and I feel stating it too often can really be disingenuous to say the least. Having said that my options for finding like-minded individuals these days to set up house with has been severely limited by the many individuals l have lost out of my life from AIDS. I would therefore find it a bit cathartic to have us write some time about taking down a house after the death of a lover, parent perhaps or simply a roommate. This would I think be something most if not all of us could write about.

© 11 September 2016

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.

Posted on

The Solar System, by Pat Gourley

“If the Universe doesn’t care about us and if we’re an accident in a remote corner of the Universe, in some sense it makes us more precious. The meaning in our lives is provided by us; we provide our own meaning.” 

Lawrence M. Krauss

The last sentence of this quote, from the controversial physicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss, I think could be viewed as a synonymous description of the actualized queer person. We have had to, through our multitude of unique coming out paths, provide our own meaning. Many of us have started on our path of self-actualization feeling very isolated and alone wondering what is wrong with me. Most of us though eventually realize how precious we really are. We are the golden threads in the tapestry of humanity.

As modern astronomy has proven beyond a doubt our solar system is phenomenally insignificant in our own very insignificant galaxy. Best estimates from data provided by the Hubble Deep Space Telescope is that there are between 100 and 200 billion galaxies in the ever-expanding Universe. Our own galaxy the Milky Way is estimated to contain between 100 billion and 400 billion stars.

If there is a God, or sole initiator of this whole phenomenon, that entity surely must have a bit more on their mind than whom we, inhabiting the third rock from the sun in this miniscule solar system, are fucking. I mean really get a grip and begin to try and comprehend the mindboggling immensity of the Universe. It really implies an extremely exaggerated sense of our own importance to think the initiator of the Big Bang leading to the creation of 200 billion galaxies is preoccupied with our drama. If there were a hell this over the top human hubris alone should get us sent to hades for eternity.

I will admit that perhaps I have a very immature and un-evolved sense of the spiritual. I will concede there may exist an omnipotent source of direction running through the evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang to date, call it God if you want. Sorry but the comprehension of such an entity at this point in my life is way above my pay grade. It would require an amount of faith-based belief I find really unthinkable and quite frankly a lazy copout. Maybe I could be further along in actualizing the possible reality of this wonder and not having to rely on faith alone, if I spent more cushion-time but I don’t think that is going to happen either.

I actually am quite content thinking we really are the result of a bunch of lucky evolutionary “accidents” that have occurred since living things first appeared on the planet 3.8 billion years ago. When you look at all the countless evolutionary steps and cross roads traversed and we still made the cut it is really something. It is quite precious really.

I was at a very wonderful event recently when two dear male friends decided after 27 years of living together they should get married. Though the words marriage and God were spoken several times during the event it was actually billed on the program as a “Celebration of Love”. I think the institution of marriage was cooked up to control property and women and then their reproductive capacity. I do believe we queers are really bringing our own meaning to it all, to this age old and until recently heterosexual institution.

I was asked to participate by doing a reading or two lasting no more that a couple minutes. It did cross my mind that if there is anything to this God business my stepping into one of his churches might unleash a meteor strike ending the human race right then and there. That did not happen. I was able to read a poem by Walt Whitman and another by Rumi with no detectable dire consequences resulting.

So even if God doesn’t exist and the Universe doesn’t care a twit about us and we are just a happy evolutionary accident in an isolated solar system on the edge of an in significant galaxy it sure is still amazing. As gay people we also get to provide our own sense of meaning and that creative self-realization adds immensely to the human dance on this third rock from the sun.

© October 2016

 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.

Posted on

Hysteria, by Ray S

I wonder how many of my friends here resorted to the same tactic as I have done? That is to look into what Mr. Webster had to tell me about today’s topic, Hysteria. 

HYSTERIA, Noun [Greek, hustera, uterus, orig. Thought to occur more often in women than in men] 1. A psychiatric condition characterized by excitability, anxiety, the simulation of organic disorders, etc. 2. Any outbreak of wild, uncontrolled feeling: also hysterics, hysterical, or hysteric, adj.,–hysterically adv.

After some pondering those defining words I had a “Eureka moment” and determined how I wear this hysteria word garment.

My thoughts and studies about who and what I am as a so-called QUEER concluded: an in-between creature, a genderless in-between combining masculine and feminine energies.

Permit me to subject you to another stolen quote lifted from the pages of an old copy of R.F.D., the magazine of the Radical Faeries:

“We embody masculine and feminine energies in a unique way… the unconscious regenerative Earth Mother and the conscious constructive Sky Father…. Our work as fairies is to bring harmony between the two—to take the gifts of the Father back to the Mother.”

With this new knowledge I now can continue my life’s journey, realizing that my feminine side is simply experiencing a fit of hysteria.

#

Let’s hear it for some uncontrolled feeling—more power to you!

© August 2016

About the Author