Cut the Bullshit

He does it every year, and every year I froth at the mouth.

The “he” above is Jorge Raschke, and the “it” is an event called “Clamor a Dios,” which thousands of Evangelicals attend, as well as local “dignitaries” and shameless politicians. None of that bugs much less surprises me—so what is it that makes me crazy?

It’s held on the steps of the capitol, the very building that I, an atheist, help pay to maintain.

“Do you think they’d ever let a bunch of faggots hold an event on the capitol steps?” said my friend Pablo, as we passed the event one year.

I saved my breath.

Well, the rumor on the street is that the event is getting less crowded every year, which may have prompted Raschke to turn up the heat. And that may be why he announced recently that—owing to his Godless agenda—the governor may be the victim of hit men brought in from outside.

And the gov should take this seriously because guess what? This isn’t just Raschke talking; rather, God him-or-herself revealed it directly to Raschke. Take a look at this….

“En las escuelas trataran [sic.] de enfermar a nuestros niños con la ideología de género, como ya está ocurriendo en el estado de California, donde ni los inodoros se escapan de esta agenda que acapara a las escuelas, colocando en peligro a nuestros niños”, adujo el evangelista. 

El controvertido religioso afirmó que el presidente Barack Obama lleva a la nación estadounidense a su peor destrucción y aquí nuestro gobernador García Padilla sigue ese mal ejemplo.”

(“In the schools they are trying to poison our children with gender ideology, as is occurring in California, where even the bathrooms don’t escape this agenda that monopolizes the schools, putting our children in danger.

The controversial religious affirmed that president Barack Obama is taking the United States to its worst destruction and here governor García Padilla is following the same bad example.”)

Good news—it’s not too late. According to the reverend, García Padilla has a chance: it’s late, but not too late. What does the gov gotta do? You got it—repent and apologize to the people of Puerto Rico.

And what, you ask, has the governor done?

Well, he and his party have come out in favor of LGBT issues, and this has put us all in jeopardy.

OK—my father got after me and made me watch 6 minutes of pretty dreadful eternity in which Raschke bangs the usual drum: the dangers of the homosexual lifestyle. And he drags out the usual bromide, too—he loves the sinner, but hates….

No.

You slimy bastard, you are NOT getting away with this. Not until every gay kid can come out and be sure that his parents won’t kick him out of the house. And if forty percent of the kids on the street are LGBT—about four to eight the rate of LGBT folk in the general population—well, who do you think is to blame?

You know, Raschke, what’s gonna happen to these kids? Sure, some will be OK, but a lot of them won’t. They’ll fall prey to prostitution, drugs and drink, and crime. And it’s not just the kids that you’re shooting down the drain, Raschke. It’s also families, and however misguided these families may be, is there any parent who could want his or her child out on the street, especially now, when it’s 30 below zero in my hometown, and for much of the rest of the nation?

Because those people listened to you, Raschke, and guess what? The Leviticus got in well enough, but the loving the sinner? Not so much.

You know, Raschke, my parents weren’t religious, but they were very socially conservative, and there were years when I was sure that if I told them I was gay, they’d be devastated. You know how that feels? Two things at least: first, you have some terrible sickness in you, a spiritual or psychological illness worse than cancer. Because the cancer isn’t you, and can be cut or zapped out. But being gay? That’s you, and you think that it’s the worst thing in the world. So you hate yourself.

The second thing? Since your parents would be destroyed if they found out you were gay, it means you’re not worthy of their love. You know, I once decided that it would be better for all concerned if I just faded away from the family, that it would spare my parents if I just disconnected. Surprise? My parents were distraught. You have two daughters, Raschke—could you live with yourself if for some reason one of your daughters drifted away?

Because that’s what we did for a long time. We came home as little as possible; we left our boyfriends and girlfriends at home on Christmas Day. And wondered if we’d still have them when we got back home.

Oh, and another thing about those days. It was generally better to glue yourself to the television, since the last thing you wanted to do was talk to the people you loved. Because yes, you still did, as much as a person who had stopped loving himself could.

The days were bad, the nights were worse. I didn’t have the luxury of a religion, but could I cure myself if I went to a shrink? But how would I get the money?

You have blood on your hands, Raschke—you and everyone else who has trotted out the self-justifying line about hating the sin but loving the sinner. Because telling somebody that the deepest part of him, the most essential part of him, is sinful?

I think that’s a sin.

Boys Beware

It was a curious coincidence, hearing of the danger of the homosexual just after having read a biography of one.

“Homosexuals are sick,” announced the computer speakers. “But not a visible sickness like chickenpox or the measles. Mentally sick.”

“What in the hell are you watching?” I asked Mr. Fernández.

“Boys Beware, an educational film from the fifties.”

Wrong—it was from 1961.

And it was educational in everything but the message. Although some of the message made sense. Don’t get into cars with strangers. If a friend does, write down the license plate number, and the make of the car. If you have any doubt, go to your parents or a trusted teacher.

“He traded his life for a newspaper headline,” announces the narrator. For some of them—in my case us—can be violent. And careful, they / we may seem normal. Even really friendly—always a dangerous sign. One of the four boys in the movie makes the mistake of going to a motel. Well, why not? The guy—a suspicious type with sunglasses and a mustache (right, central casting wasn’t being imaginative that day)—had bought the boy a coke, taken him fishing, and then showed him a little pornography. The boy reports the presumed molestation to his parents—the man is arrested and convicted, but Jimmy is given “probation in the custody of his parents.”

Oh yeah? Isn’t this the classic “blaming the victim?” Shouldn’t we look on the kid as, well, a kid? They do stupid things, sometimes.

Well, it was shot in black and white, there in 1961. But apparently the message was no less timely—or important—in 1973, when they decided to shoot it again in color, though with the same script and soundtrack, but different actors.

1973 was the year I graduated from high school.

I tell you this because the ten minutes of nonsense that you can see below was the absolute background for my formative years. The men in their suits and their ties. Mother in her skirt, sweeping the walks. Even the voice of the narrator, with his folksy talk about “young people” is a voice no longer heard.

You never stop coming out, is a frequently-expressed truism in the gay world. Watching this film, I wonder if I can ever fully rid myself of the self-hate that comes with being told, for the first two decades of my life, that I was sick and perhaps criminal.

Perhaps? Well, unless I chose celibacy, definitely criminal. I didn’t realize, somehow, that the 1950’s were perhaps the worst years for oppression of gay people. In 1953, Eisenhower decreed a ban on homosexuals working in the federal government. Most gay people resigned--why wait for the axe? Joe McCarthy of Appleton, Wisconsin, threw fuel on the fire a few years later, and by then it was automatically assumed, if a man resigned from a government post, he was gay. The police are raiding bars, and taking a nice little pay-off in bribery money. Thugs are looming everywhere--to beat and bash gay men senselessly. Among all of this trauma, it's a wonder that there were men who continued trying to live their lives.

One of whom was Samuel Steward, a professor, a friend of glittering literary figures, and later, a tattoo artist. He travelled to England to meet Lord Alfred Douglas. To France, to meet Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein. Through them, he meets Thornton Wilder, and has a physical relationship on rare occasions for the next twelve years.

And apparently, he’s a gifted teacher, judging from the letter from a former student quoted at the end of the book. But he tires of it, and goes into tattooing. Then, after a dozen years or so of work, he closes up shop and retreats into a small cottage behind a bungalow.

The description of the inside of the house is heartbreaking. A compulsive collector, he can throw nothing away. Papers are everywhere, along with the empty food cans and the newspapers the dogs have urinated on. The stench is unbearable. It takes the executors of the estate several months to clear out the house.

He was a sexual renegade, writes the author. Yes, in the sense that he had plenty of sex, and didn’t feel much shame about it. But I wonder about that. How could anyone—he or I or any of us who grew up in an environment saturated with shame and sickness not have been, or still be, affected?