Oops...

After a day of reading scripts on the Highline park in NYC I had a spring in my step, a song in my heart, and a stupid (and painful) tanline that makes me look like an asshole.

Oh, well.

Note to Self - you're Scottish. The sun doesn't like you.

Never Blend In

My contribution to David E. Watters' "Give 'em Hope" campaign initiative.

Mother's Day

The Death of Osama Bin Laden

Perhaps I shall have more thoughts as news and information and gravity and "the next step" and all that jazz set in. For now, I'm feeling this.

Love, Little Kiwi

I'm not really *happy* about his death. I'm definitely relieved, but it's not as if his death suddenly means that the world is a safer place, and that those who believe what he believed no longer believe it. I hope American Conservatives don't give in to their typical bloodlust and demand to see the photo(s) of his dead body. I hope that in this moment, Americans show some class and take a moral highground - an enemy is vanquished, and the time is now to start remembering how to proactively change world culture toward understanding, not vengeance nor gloating or neanderthal-level machismo.

We do not need to see the photo(s). Those demanding that we do are sick lowlifes in this country, who should be ashamed of themselves. America, find your grace.

A Father's Message

My Dad wrote this as part of the PFLAG newsletter back home in Toronto. Thought I'd share it with y'all. Love.

The first Pride Parade that I attended, not as a participant but as a bystander, was in San
Francisco, while on vacation, in 1978. This was shared with my future wife, Irene, and well before our marriage and children.
Who knew it was a portent of things to come. Fast forward more than 30 years and I am now a member of the Board of Directors of PFLAG Toronto and its Treasurer. Why? Our son is a gay man. I watched him grow up alongside his sister, and both of these wonderful children filled me with love and pride – from toddlerhood to adulthood.
When our son came out the dismay to us was not that he was gay but the realization that throughout his youth he had worked at acting straight and tried to fit in, while suffering the taunts of schoolmates who picked on him. He missed out on fully enjoying his early teen years and we could not go back and “fix” it for him. Sadly this is a story often heard at PFLAG of youngsters being bullied, ostracized and marginalized because they are, or are perceived to be, ‘different’.
Through our children and my PFLAG Toronto involvement I have met so many people who accept each other for being exactly who they are. It has truly opened up my life, and made me a better person.
I am a Chartered Accountant by training, and have held a number of senior positions in large North American companies; Chief Financial Officer for Woolworth Canada and Club Monaco –Polo Ralph Lauren, to name a few. Today, I am happy to be known as a proud PFLAG Dad.
I am currently a part time professor of Finance at Seneca College. I proudly wear the rainbow bracelet when I am teaching and have found that occasionally students will ask why and what it means. This starts a dialogue that invariably ends with the student indicating that they have friends or acquaintances who are gay and they either talk about the difficulties they face or they ask about them. Often they thank me for speaking openly and personally about a topic they have not explored before. They say they will think about sexual orientation with more positive feelings.
It illustrates that we can educate the world, one person at a time. I am proud to be a part of PFLAG Toronto, helping to support the LGBTQ community and all families.

Gary Miller

Anti-Gay Conservatives Still Love Lesbian Sex

Male-male anal sex is the focus topic of anti-gay bigots. Not lesbian sex. We all know why. Men who have sex with men are "traitors" to their gender, and women who have sex with women don't count because women are "just sexual objects", to them.

So they obsess with gay male anal sex. It's fanatical. I'd love to hear, one day, the logical rationale wherein heterosexual oral sex is holy and it only becomes a sin when two people of the same gender do it....

Don't Fear Barbra Streisand

The senselessness that is the knee-jerk reaction that 'stereotypes' are inherently negative and harmful.

I grew up in a world where I learned, very early on, that there were certain types of gay men that were mocked, belittled, insulted and denigrated.  I also learned very early on that not only was it a *cough* "gay stereotype" to love Barbra Streisand, but the gays who loved her were deserving of derision.

Like an idiot, I accepted that knowledge without challenging it.
Oh, but then all that changed....




I suppose the question I have now, when people say things like "Why do gay guys like _______?" is actually to reply with "Why doesn't everyone like _______?"

That's what I always find so puzzling - we're asked why "gay guys" like something, and yet for the life of me I cannot wonder why non-gay people don't love it just as much.  Likely, they do.  They just don't talk about it cuz, you know, people might think they're gay.

;-)

LittleKiwi, OUT!

Support for the Trans Community

Queer Talk - Part Four

Queer Talk - Part Three

Words to friends and family of LGBT people.

DADT and Affirmative Action

Queer Talk - Part Two

On approaching your parents and family as an adult, and not a child. Asserting yourself as an adult, and setting the tone for how you expect, and indeed demand, to be treated both as an LGBT person, and a human being of worth. Change comes when you demand that change come. Progress does not stand still.

Queer Talk - Part One

Part One in a short little series of conversations with my parents about dealing with LGBT family issues.

HAM BISCUITS

Which must be Southerner Closet-Speak for some deviant sexual act. Word, yo.

DADT Repeal - And So It Continues....

Gender-F**K

So, Thanksgiving night at my friend's house, and as the night goes on and we all get more and more inebriated it turns into Dress-Up Time with a side order of the macabre. The Grand Guignol merging of sex and death and gender-norms that typifies Williamsburg-ian art.

I posted the photo online, and within hours had message after message, comment after comment, all digging it. Which, frankly, surprised me. Messages from strangers, especially. Dudes I don't even know, most comments being on how "Hot" the pic is. I'm just stunned. Guys tend to be such conformists when it comes to how gender is represented, and yet I've literally had dozens of messages in the last few hours from guys who have a hard-on for this photo.

Something to think about.

Colds: The One Thing Everyone Loves To Share

The Importance of Being Allies - How Supportive are Your Supporters?

The above photo greeted me this morning when I signed onto Facebook. It's my sister and my brother-in-law; shirts they ordered from stonewall.org.uk. Wonderful, eh? And powerful.

All-too-often I hear members of the community saying that they don't need to "proclaim" their orientation or "wear or on their sleeve" or "be defined by it", which (to me) sounds more like cowardly gay-apologist nonsense that anything else. Look, the reality is this: anti-gay bigots sure love to scream from the rooftops how much they hate gay people. And as America refuses to pass hate-speech legislation, we cannot shut them up. What we can do is raise our voices to match theirs, and be just as vocal, just as visible, and combat their shouted lies with truth and love.

And so, these thoughts came to mind....

What's Next For Andrew Shirvell?

Well....is he? Of course he is. Family can always spot Family. But the biggest indicator is simply this: the "I totally hate gay people!" thing is pretty much the go-to disguise for closeted homosexuals.

Mark Foley. Ted Haggard. Larry Craig. Bob Allen. Glenn Murphy Jr. Ken Mehlman. Charlie Crist (wait for it..it's gonna happen). George Rekers. Rick Scott (wait for it..it's gonna happen). Jim Kolbe. Richard Curtis. Bob Bauman. pathetic theatre-queen Justin Caster. J.Roy Ashburn. Edward L. Schrock. David Dreier. Jim West. G. Harold Carswell. Roy Cohn.

Andrew Shirvell takes his place among the sorry list of homosexuals who were not merely closeted, but virulently anti-gay until...well...until the Good Ship Karma paid them all a visit.

Poor thing(s).... *le sighhhhh*

Shirvell had boasted, previously, about how "everyone supported him" in what he was doing. The problem, however, with living in an insular world where everyone reflects bigotry back at each other is that one becomes out of touch with...well...everyone else.

Shirvell, of course, is a homosexual. I say "homosexual" and not "gay man" because you're born a homosexual - you have to EARN being gay, by Coming Out and embracing who you are. You have to claim it and you have to own it. It is not handed to you.

So, what now?
Shirvell has been fired from his job as assistant A.G. Good.
Chris Armstrong will flourish. Young, bright, Out, strong? He's gonna do just fine.

Shirvell? No way he's going to live this down and find solid employment, and who does he have to turn to? A bigoted family he's spent his life trying to convince that he's not gay by being a big ol' anti-gay bigot.

One day, he will be Outed. And after we (secretly, and some not-so-secretly) take pleasure in it (because, hey, karma is real...) we can encourage him to do the right thing: become an Advocate for equality, by sharing his story of how self-hate and religious bigotry turned him into a man hell-bent on attacking others to distract the people who were supposed to love him from the truth about Who (and what) he is....which is a closeted homosexual.

Here's hoping that one day Shirvell finds the strength to be a Gay Man.

Gender-Nonconformity

I remain, more and more, awed and humbled by my transgendered friends. It's hard enough being gay in this patriarchal culture of hetero-normative lies and bullshit, where gender-nonconformists are often the target of very insecure, angry and unintelligent people, but to be transgender is something that the world needs to catch up on understanding. There are, of course, more than two genders. There are at least six. I have many trans friends, and am continually inspired by their remarkable resilience in life.

Admitting to being gay is so difficult for some people, especially males, that they have to condition their "acceptance" of self by reinforcing that they're "still a real dude, and not one of those stereotypical flamers or somthing..." Ugh. What bullshit, eh?

So, you're gay, but you're still a 'real man', eh? Good think you're only gay. You wouldn't have the strength of character it takes to be openly transgendered.

It is Living Out Loud, indeed. Defying gender-norms, externalizing your internal self, and having the courage to *change* your gender in the eyes of a confused world that all too often chooses to react with anger and hate at anything that confuses them.

My brothers and sisters, I fucking adore all that you are and I will always have your back.

Oh! And here's a pic of my awesome parents with Buck Angel, because they're all totally fucking awesome.

Two videoclips I wanted to share. Buck Angel (*swooooon*) who is the hottest freakin dude ever, and who happens to have been born into a female body. Angel ROCKS. Take everything you thought you knew about what it means to be a man or a woman, coat it lube, and FUCK it.

OH, and this piece of genius writing.....the performances of which cut my soul apart, and then stitched it back together with their strength. I'm in awe.

:-)

Love, Little Kiwi

Purple Power

So, yesterday we all wore purple. Well, not all. A lot. And that's still pretty rad. NYC was awash in shades of purple, and I was rather moved by that. Not just showing solidarity in the wake of the recent LGBT youth suicides, and the violence, but as a show against the anti-gay bigotry that still plagues this country, and indeed this world culture. When there is anti-gay discrimination sanctioned by the government and written into law, what message is that sending to gay youth and the non-gay youths who BULLY them?

So, The Color Purple. All day. The looks of recognition and love exchanged by those who were sporting the color yesterday were lovely. It was like not feeling alone, in a city full of strangers.

And then, to top it all off, the sunset over Manhattan was purple itself. Rainbow shades of indigo and violet. No joke. I attached a photo, the view from my bedroom balcony (unedited!) to show ya. Neat-o, eh?

Why Are Bigots Obsessed With Sex?

It's just ridiculous. The obsession that the anti-gay crowd has with, specifically, male anal sex. It's like they're all the mother from Stephen King's "Carrie", utterly obsessed with the thing(s) they claim to loathe. And it's almost exclusively focused on male-male anal sex, not lesbian sex (because anti-gay males only hate lesbians unless it's two smokin'-hot babes getting it on for the sexual gratification of straight males...), and not oral sex. I dunno, do they have an explanation for why oral sex is ok, and holy, when performed by heterosexual couples? What about straight couples that have anal sex? When I say "I'm gay", I'm fully aware that some people instantly think "Butt Sex". I don't actually care, but many do, and I know that many parents don't want people to know that their child is gay because they don't want people to think that their son takes it up the ass. But why are they even thinking about it? Do they think, of their straight sons and daughters, "Oh, my daughter has a girlfriend! There are penises inside her!" "Aw, that's my son. He pounds pussy. YAY!"

Why? Ewwww! You don't think (I hope...) about your straight children, or neighbours, or friends, having sex. Why do people insist on thinking about what (they think) gay people are doing in bed?

Patriarchal nonsense. Gender non-conformity. A re-imagining of male and female roles and what they mean. It's such fucking nonsense.

Solidarity - Visibility - Coming Out Day

Every day, showing people that you care about Equality. Just a thought ;-)

It Gets Better, BD says so. And I'm his friend. So there.