Painter who stood in the calle outside the Guggenheim in Venice. He’d talk about Jesus, physics, politics. Everyone thought he was crazy; I found him fascinating.
| x365 | Comments (3) |
Summer: when have i ever been worng.
Summer: except right then
Me: classic.
| Sweeeet | Comments (0) |
Last weekend we went to Pier 1 to try to find a few small tchotchke-like objects with which to decorate our house for Christmas. Last year I was working 6 days a week, we had just moved, Brian had broken his wrist and suffered from mono, and so we let our first Christmas together kind of slide by. We made up for it by buying each other lavish gifts.
This year I am bound and determined to decorate and to entertain. I have begun "Project Forced Merriment," in which I am aggressively cheerful and jolly, and I force others to follow suit, like it or not.
On our trip we found a dining room table we loved, that was marked down, and, thanks to the gift card my sister gave us LAST Christmas, that we could afford. And so, we bought it. The nice boy at the store ordered it for us, and we picked it up tonight. I bought some tchotchke-like objects to place on it, and now we are SO ready for guests for the holidays. I also picked up a copy of Amy Sedaris’ I Like You to give me some entertaining ideas:
| Casablog, Food | Comments (0) |
After a rough patch in college, my only lesbian friend joined the army, started dating a man and moved to Korea. I’m incredibly glad she’s happy.
| x365 | Comments (1) |
Is that gay boy who will never, ever grow up. Too bad, really, because he’s loaded with talent, and in the right lighting, he’s pretty cute.
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Favorite roommate. We’d party until four a.m., go to work early, then do it all again. Those are good memories, but I’m glad we’ve grown up.
| x365 | Comments (1) |
Brian sent me this. Self-hatred, revisionist history and overly dramatic attempts at heterosexuality were a part of my life for so long that I recognize the signs. I spun my story out so much that by the time I was convicted to tell it honestly, I almost didn’t recognize it.
Luckily, I never got married to a woman; even when I believed being gay was wrong, something in me believed more strongly that it would be worse to date or marry a woman just in some lame attempt to prove I was straight.
Brian showed the story to his brother, who said, "When will that church realize that they hurt more people than they help?"
I want to love the church - the family of believers - but sometimes they’re like a stupid stepchild who doesn’t understand not to touch the hot stove unless you hit him. Or, in this case, relentlessly mock him.
Things like this make me angry because I see signs all over of how it’s psychologically unhealthy. John J. McNeill said that whatever is bad psychology must be bad theology, and I think he’s right; God challenges us and convicts us, yes, but we are never unsafe, never unhealthy in all of this. Whinging, hand-wringing little faggots who marry unfortunate, sympathetic women just so their church will accept them are not safe or healthy, and neither are their wives, their families, or the people who care about them.
| Heaux-Meaux, This I Believe | Comments (0) |
When I hit adulthood, my dad became my rock. Fall 2004, which I spent living with him in Weatherford, was the best time of my life.
| x365 | Comments (1) |
I found two sites created by people I knew in Wake Forest’s evangelical community, of which I was a part, for a time. These are people I missed and I was really stoked to find them. That community was good to me and produced several friendships which are still strong today. But, in the words of the Dixie Chicks: "I fought with a stranger and I met myself; I opened my mouth and I heard myself." When I got back from Europe it didn’t take me long to realize: I am not an evangelical.
I do not consider myself an evangelical today. As far as affiliations go, I am a Congregationalist , and I quite love it.
This month the evangelical community has been rocked by the scandal around one of their leaders, arguably one of the most powerful religious figures in America today, Ted Haggard. Ted Haggard, if you’ve been living under a rock, admitted to "sexual immorality" after he was outed by a gay male escort with whom, by all accounts, he had been having PAID sexual relations for over three years.
Everyone seems really surprised by this. I wonder if any of those people have seen the documentary Jesus Camp, in which Haggard is featured prominently. Because when I saw that movie, I leaned over to Brian and said, about Haggard, "What.A.Faggot." Also, I thought it seemed that he had meth-face, though I wrote this off as my own nasty habit of judging people too harshly. Turns out, I was right on all counts. I do not count this as a sign of my own intelligence, but rather a sign that Ted Haggard’s faggotry translates seamlessly onto film.
I think the healthiest thing that ever happened to me was coming out as a gay man, because I now officially have nothing to hide. Granted, I can never, ever run for public office just on the strength of things I’ve written on this blog. Still, it is freeing to not feel as if I have to fit into a certain mold that has nothing to do with who I really am. Now, I have wonderful evangelical friends, whom I love and against whom I have nothing, who would say, "You never had to fit into a certain mold!"
But those people aren’t gay.
And Ted Haggard is. Which is fine. What is not fine is that Ted Haggard has told his 14,000-plus congregation - shit, he told PRESIDENT BUSH - that being gay is wrong, that gay people are disordered and sick, and that people like me and Brian are what is wrong with America. He never told them to hate us, but he planted that seed. It’s a seed that tears families apart because parents will not even look their children in the eye upon finding out they are gay. Like several friends of mine whose parents yanked them out of college for this exact reason. Or the thousands of kids who live on the streets because they are not welcome in their homes. Or the ones who take their own lives.
Not that Ted Haggard cares about any of this, or that he cannot explain it away in his own mind. But it infuriates me that he puts his congregation, and all the believers who look up to him, all the ones who struggle and struggle because HE TELLS THEM THEY ARE SICK, through this kind of mental anguish, and all the while he’s getting his from a male escort, all the while playing "best little boy in the world."
This makes him a faggot. That is what that word means to me.
What is discouraging is that instead of talking openly about how he has struggled and how it has hurt him, Faggard is hemming and hawing, dodging left and right, lying at first, then admitting to nothing specific - just "sexual immorality." How cowardly. How sick. Here and he could get help - real help - and give it.
But, see, it’s not about compassion. It could be, but it’s not. No, no, it’s about scoring a perfect on the God S.A.T. The past few decades it’s become about having Washington’s ear - power. I hope to God that Haggard’s family finds compassion for him. Yes, he’s a despicable, lying, immoral hypocrite, but on some level, who isn’t? Still, it sucks to know that people are suffering the way I used to because of things he said just because he hated himself, because some other douche bag told him he should.
Like I mentioned earlier, I found two websites of people whom I knew when I was hanging out with a bunch of cool evangelical Christians. I don’t regret those times, and I do not think poorly of those people - they were incredibly good to me. But I am not one of them, and the older I get the less I feel a kinship with the evangelical community. This is odd, because I also feel more secure about what I believe and where my life is going. I hope that no matter what happens with Ted Haggard, he gets to experience some of that.
I just hope I don’t run into him in a gay bar, because it might be hard to hold my tongue. Or my camera.
| Heaux-Meaux, This I Believe | Comments (0) |
Laurie’s sister Carmen came over yesterday to interview Brian and me for a paper she is writing in one of her social work classes at Baylor. The assignment, as I understand it, was to interview a family. Carmen, being the rebel she is, decided that at super-conservative Baylor, she would interview a gay family. Hence: me and Brian.
The interview was simple enough: "What do each of you see as your role?" "Where do you go to get support?" "What is your definition of family?"
My favorite question, though, I did not expect: "What are the challenges you face every day?"
My answer was something like this:
I think that this relationship is NOT one of those challenges. Not that we don’t work on our relationship or strive to make it better, but we never feel like we’re dancing as fast as we can to keep it together as a couple. Most of the time it’s easygoing and free that it’s the thing that helps me get through the other challenges. What’s healthy about the relationship for me is that it’s not this huge challenge I face every day.
| The Power Of Two | Comments (0) |