Mark Foley, and “real” gay relationships
In an opinion piece for the LA Times, Michelangelo Signorile says that the media should have “outed” Mark Foley as gay soon after his hypocritical votes in favor of anti-gay legislation. I agree with Signorile about “outing” hypocritical public figures, and consistently always have. But there’s something else in the article that I wanted to highlight…
Foley lived in a glass closet in Washington, where many people, we’re now being told, assumed he was gay, even as he orchestrated a lie for the voters of his district with help from the media both in Washington and at home in Florida.
Foley’s closet wasn’t just about protecting his political career. He seemed to be filled with shame. According to one gay man quoted in the Washington Post last week who challenged Foley on his voting for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, Foley justified marginalizing gay marriage by saying, “I could never compare any relationship I have ever had to the nature of my mother and father’s relationship.”
For Foley, homosexuality meant second-class status.
That kind of self-loathing is bound to play out in harmful ways. Would Foley have made online sexual advances on teenagers if he were openly gay or if he’d been reported on, truthfully, by the media as a gay man long ago, and faced the consequences? It’s quite possible the answer is no.
I find the phrase I highlighted above just heartbreaking, for Mark Foley’s sake as well as for my own.
I love my parents, and the people who are especially my role models for a good marriage — my paternal grandparents, who are just wonderful people. But do they somehow have a more “valid” relationship than mine? Of course not. When I see my girlfriend, I see someone as important to me as the members of my own family; someone that love, adore, want to become a better person for, to live with and build a life with.
If I can live up to my grandparent’s example even half way (I’ve referred to them in the past as living examples of “happily ever after”) then I will be more successful as a spouse than 95% of heterosexual married couples are. And I love Stephanie so much that I want that for her and for me. I want a relationship like my grandparents have, with love and stability and surrounded by family and friends.
As loathsome as I think Mark Foley’s behavior was, I hope that someday he finds a relationship that moves him in that way, too — an equitable relationship based on respect and honesty and concern for the well being of his partner.
People You Meet While Gardening
I met two interesting people this weekend while planting bulbs in my front yard. One of the is our neighbor, Craig, who owns the house to the north of us, and is moving back in. He’s not new to our neighborhood — his family has owned the house for decades — but he’s just now returning because he’s been in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past four years in the military. I didn’t ask him what branch or anything about what it was like, (I figured that was way too much to get into) but of course a million questions raced through my brain. He did mention, while talking about is plans for working on the house, about possibly being called back to service, but he seemed pretty pragmatic about it. I hope that doesn’t happen; I’d prefer having someone live there. The house has seemed pretty lonely all this time.
The other guy I met was John Elrod, the Republican candidate for State Representative for District 97 running against Ed Mahern. He was walking around knocking on doors and leaving flyers. I talked with him for a bit, and was somewhat surprised that he said he went against his fellow Republicans on the marriage issue. He said that he felt the “government should get out of the marriage business altogether and marriages should be considered as ‘civil unions.'” I was tired and dropped the ball on that question — I should have followed up specifically on the marriage amendment and how he would vote on it, because his other statement was way too broad.
One thing that really bugged me — when I later opened his flyer, the interior contained photos of the logos and signs of all the downtown neighborhoods, making it seem like they were endorsing his campaign. I certainly know that’s not true, but anyone else reading it would get that impression. Not cool.
Marriage, children and equal rights
Good As You presents an especially apt point about the fallaciousness of the “reserving marriage for the nuturing of children” argument:
Hmm..you know why the judges “ignored is that marriage is not primarily about adults; marriage is about the nurturing and development of children?” Because marriage certificates don’t legalize unions with the caveat that those unions produce children! Marriage is one thing; reproduction is another!
Saying that this legal, civil arrangement is all about a non-required by-product of the coupling is kind of like saying that one’s obtaining of a driver’s license is all about the the car, not the legal right. In reality, the person may just want to be recognized as a legal driver, and they might want the license solely for ID purposes. In fact, this New Yorker has a legal license AND a car, but he hasn’t driven in four years. Doesn’t make my license any less legal! And while it may sound insensitive or callous to compare a car to a human child, the comparison in this instance is quite apt. You can’t deny one the ability to obtain any sort of civil permit or license simply because they don’t utilize the legality in the way that you see proper!
links for 2006-10-16
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A group of ethnic Tibetans trying to flee Tibet were shot dead by Chinese troops on September 30, at a Himalayan pass near the border of China and Nepal (Tibet is an “autonomous region” of China, having been taken over by the PRC in the 1950s).
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“Let me emphasize that no one—including adults—should have a blog or personal website (unless it is for legitimate business purposes).” – Yeah, you’ll take my website when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
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The story of how Friendster blew it, and mySpace succeeded.
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The Mark Foley game!
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Another Mark Foley game you can play online.
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A forthcoming exhibit at New York’s Museum of Modern Art will feature work selected by unlikely curators: visitors to the YouTube video-sharing site. MoMA solicited videos to be included in a retrospective of the Residents, an avant-garde multimedia group
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Elephants herds are suffering from decades of poaching.
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One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts in the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming
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Kant’s Regulative Principle of Aesthetic Excellence: The Ideal Aesthetic Experience
Projects Around the House (Revised)
Revised list of stuff I’d like to accomplish this weekend, if I have time…
Help the neighbors clean up brush- Sweep out the back of my truck
- Put my truck bed cover on the truck
- Rearrange the living room furniture
We got part of this done. We still need to move my desk - Rearrange the library and move my desk in there
- Clean the kitchen and downstairs bathroom
We got a lot of work done in the kitchen - Vacuum whole first floor
Take more stuff to the basement (chairs, tools)- Vacuum in the basement
Bring extra waste basket from garage into house for recycling- Clean the aquarium
Plant the rest of the bulbs in the flowerbeds
I planted 25 Muscari bulbs, 30 daffodils, 2 bleeding hearts cuttings, 2 bearded Iris cuttings, 1 peony cutting, 6 hyacinths, and about 50 tulip bulbs. I have about 75 more tulip bulbs to plant.
I finished planting all the bulbs.- plant edging pavers into side flower bed
- Add step to bottom of basement stairs
- Install coat rack bar in Dining Room Closet
- Install additional shelf in Laundry room
- attach lattice to the back porch
- install towel hooks and toilet paper holder in upstairs bathroom
- examine top two basement stairs and measure for replacement
- hang some of the framed artwork
links for 2006-10-14
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In speeches, statements and news conferences this year, the president has repeatedly declared a range of problems “unacceptable,” including rising health costs, immigrants who live outside the law, North Korea’s claimed nuclear test, genocide in Sudan and
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His ability to yammer about himself as if he’s a hero of legend survives intact. A quiz — who said it, hitchens or Shrute?
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And of course when you’ve got a queer-unfriendly cause like that, it’s a given that all of the “pro-family” all-stars are gonna come out for the thinly veiled game of smear the queer
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Condoleezza Rice warmly acknowledged the family members of Mark Dybul, whom she was swearing in as the nation’s new global AIDS coordinator. As first lady Laura Bush looked on, Rice singled out his partner, Jason Claire, and Claire’s mother. Rice referred
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Reporters could have relieved the disgraced lawmaker’s repressed sexuality by revealing his orientation and hypocrisy years ago. – By Michelangelo Signorile
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Same-sex Couples and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Population: New Estimates from the American Community Survey
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Foley wrote to jeb Bush on Sept. 29, 2004: “Have I done something to offend the White House … I am always getting the shaft … they came to ft pierce a few weeks ago and said I was not allowed to attend … yet joe negron is there …
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What would happen to the earth if people disappeared? A timeline of how long it would take for man-made things to disappear.
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Oh, my. The young…
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That is funny. I’m gonna use Comic Sans on something, just to be contrary. Okay, no, I can’t bring myself to do that.
Mark Foley, and “real” gay relationships
In an opinion piece for the LA Times, Michelangelo Signorile says that the media should have “outed” Mark Foley as gay soon after his hypocritcal votes in favor of anti-gay legislation. I agree with Signorile about “outing” hypocritical public figures, and always have. But there’s something else in the article that I wanted to highlight…
Foley lived in a glass closet in Washington, where many people, we’re now being told, assumed he was gay, even as he orchestrated a lie for the voters of his district with help from the media both in Washington and at home in Florida.
Foley’s closet wasn’t just about protecting his political career. He seemed to be filled with shame. According to one gay man quoted in the Washington Post last week who challenged Foley on his voting for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, Foley justified marginalizing gay marriage by saying, “I could never compare any relationship I have ever had to the nature of my mother and father’s relationship.”
For Foley, homosexuality meant second-class status.
That kind of self-loathing is bound to play out in harmful ways. Would Foley have made online sexual advances on teenagers if he were openly gay or if he’d been reported on, truthfully, by the media as a gay man long ago, and faced the consequences? It’s quite possible the answer is no.
I find the phrase I highlighted above just heartbreaking, for Mark Foley’s sake as well as for my own.
I love my parents, and the people who are especially my role models for a good marriage — my paternal grandparents, who are just wonderful people. But do they somehow have a more “valid” relationship than mine? Of course not. When I see my girlfriend, I see someone as important to me as the members of my own family; someone that I love, adore, want to become a better person for, to live with and build a life with.
If I can live up to my grandparent’s example even half way (I’ve referred to them in the past as living examples of “happily ever after”) then I will be more successful as a spouse than 95% of heterosexual married couples are. And I love Stephanie so much that I want that for her and for me. I want a relationship like my grandparents have, with love and stability, surrounded by family and friends.
As loathsome as I think Mark Foley’s behavior was, I hope that someday he finds a relationship that moves him in that way, too — an equitable relationship based on respect and honesty and concern for the well being of his partner, and not taking advantage of people over whom he has power.
A snippet of brilliance from Shakespeare’s Sister
From the comments on this post about feminism — this statement, that is one of those “yes, that’s what I feel too, if only the thought had come out fully formed, but it didn’t” for me.
It’s a little nuance thing, but makes a huge difference. If I post on a t-shirt that I find offensive, and someone says, “I don’t find it offensive,” I don’t take umbrage. It’s when someone says, “Oh, it’s a t-shirt; get over it” that I get pissy, because what they’re really saying is, “I don’t find it offensive and neither should you.”
That’s particularly problematic when it’s said by someone who wasn’t the target of the message. If you’re a man who isn’t offended by a “Pussy: The Other White Meat” t-shirt, well, duh–it wasn’t designed to offend you. Its very existence is predicated on the fact that (some) men will laugh.
The men who don’t laugh are: A) sympathetic to why women are offended; and/or B) offended by the portrayal of men as insensitive cads and the assumption that men will find such sexism amusing. In the latter case, that typifies why I constantly say that sexism is bad for men, too.
links for 2006-10-13
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People think the drop in gas prices is deliberate and tied to the upcoming election. Color me surprised — I said the same thing.
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Wow. I so want to build one.
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An exhibit at Norway’s Oslo Natural History Museum documents homosexuality in over 1,500 species of animals.
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More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political poin
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Hitchens foresaw “a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate.”
“That would be all the distilleries in the world beating the crap out of Mother Teresa.” Hee! -
A list of the top Republican spin-job myths about the Mark Foley scandal
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London study on tagging airport passengers with RFID tags that could track their movement around airports — thus ensuring that I will never, ever, fly in a plane again.
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Summary of a talk by Malcolm Gladwell on precociousness. “What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement.”
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Seems like pretty good advice to me.
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