Proceed at your own risk

THE DEATH OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

Despite the conventional wisdom and the many red herrings, I believe it would be a profound error to blame the Internet for the looming demise of the Fourth Estate.  Video may have killed the radio star, but contrary to popular opinion and the pronouncements of pundits, the Internet did not kill the free press.

The Fourth Estate plays a critical and vital function in a democracy; it is an essential cornerstone of a free society.  Knowledge is power and without it "the people" become powerless, easily manipulated and the playthings of rich men with armies, some with guns, some with advertising.

In May of 1789, struggling to avert a revolution and democracy, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estates General', France's awakening legislative assembly. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'"

History has proven Burke right over and over again.

Among the first key targets of any dictatorship or autocracy, religious or secular, in the move to seize power is the press.  Control the flow of information, control the nation.

A free press is uncensored, not just by government and religion but also uncensored by commercial interests.  Some decades ago, our government began allowing non-journalist-owned corporations and foreign interests to start acquiring communications companies.  Prior to that, while entertainment was run as a for-profit business, news divisions were run as not for profit.  Objectivity and the truth were the paymasters; today it is the commercial interests of GE and Wall Street.  Years ago the quality of news and media was judged by the Columbia School of Journalism; today it is judged by Madison Avenue and Wall Street.

Historians may look back on the death of The New York Times as that moment in time when the final nail was hammered into the coffin of American journalism.

The New York Times is one of a handful of media outlets still owned by journalists, the descendants of journalists and publishers dedicated--as corny as it sounds--to all the news that fit to print.

As we begin 2009, The New York Times, is viewed by industry observers as being on its last and very shaky legs.

Many Americans won't notice and many others will shrug their shoulders and say, "So what?"  They will see it as just another liberal propaganda tool going down the toilet; and while the Times does take progressive positions on its editorial pages, it has thus far mostly remained true to the core tenets of journalism.  Part of the problem is that Americans have been convinced by the oligarchy that bigotry is Christian, gossip is news, fascism is conservatism, and truth and objectivity are "left wing" propaganda.

But even though most Americans won't hear the toll of the death bell should the Times go under, the bell will be ringing for American democracy.

Celebrity gossip was at one time a column in a newspaper, or a fringe magazine lying on a table in the local beauty parlor.  Today, celebrity gossip--most of it completely fabricated--is the daily and almost exclusive "information" diet of the vast majority of Americans.  We've lost our ability to make the critical and informed decisions required of a free people because we've confused freedom with apathy.  We've convinced ourselves that freedom is devoid of responsibility, conscience, conscientiousness and both self and mutual respect.

Some would argue that the blogosphere has stepped in to fill the growing void left by the disappearance of real journalism. That is just a load of crap, to be blunt.

Blogs are fun and interesting but they are personal web journals based on highly individual opinions.  Journalism, the kind that underpins democracy and freedom depends on objectivity, facts and multiple confirmed sources.  A blogger's opinion is not news, it's one person's opinion.

Today's "journalism" is dominated by over-produced blogs that dispense entertainment and emotional perspectives which are then presented as "news".  Some of these fools actually pull huge incomes, win big advertisers and make and break elections that are reshaping and corrupting this nation, leading us away from anything even remotely democratic or free.

And when you pursue multiple sources in the blogosphere, make no mistake about it, you are gathering opinions, not facts.

Don't get me wrong.  I love Rachel Maddow, but she's nothing more than a prime time TV blogger, as is Keith Olberman, Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart.  None of this is news and none of this is journalism, but CNN and FOX would have you believe that it is.  At least Jon Stewart is honest about it.  CNN and FOX call themselves 24-hour news channels.

And then there's Perez Hilton.  Millions of gay men worship his blog and spend hours on it; how many of them actually spend time reading credible, fact-based news outlets?

And before you go all pot calling the kettle black on me, I am not and have never pretended to be a news source. I'm giving you one man's observations and opinions, nothing more.  I don't follow the news so that you don't have to.  If anything, I hope my ravings and rantings will motivate you to go and read the news, become informed and take informed action.

The New York Times has to repay $400 million in debt in the first half of 2009. It plans to mortgage its new 41st Street headquarters, but what that will bring in an uncertain real estate market is unknown. The firm's 'Boston Globe' and regional newspaper operations lose money, so they will be hard to sell.

And Rupert Murdoch, still barely digesting The Wall Street Journal, is in the early stages of maneuvering a hostile takeover that will make his global fascist, homophobic propaganda empire pretty much complete.

Not too many decades ago Congress valued and protected the Fourth Estate. Foreign ownership of American media was illegal, today it is the dominant force in all forms of communication.  Congressional watchdogs made certain that our free press was protected from conflicts of interest and the self-interests of governments, corporatoins and the military.  Today most members of Congress are working towards a book deal or their own TV or radio talk show or negotiating advertising rates.

It may very well be that the day will come when all of our news and information will come via the Internet, but the open question is whether it will be provided by a free and legitimate functioning free press or entertainment and commercial interests and a mob of very unruly bloggers.

THE FIRST MARCH

PLUS CA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE

As I read about the new French initiative demanding that the world community decriminalize homosexuality, I felt that uniquely Jewish chill that still sometimes accompanies memories of the Holocaust and Eastern European purges (pogroms). 

I think of my maternal grandmother's family and their hundreds of Jewish-Russian neighbors, most of whom were pulled out of their beds on an early October morning in 1917 Russia, herded by Russian Cavalry like cattle to a public plaza, shot and then dismembered by Cossack scimitars.

I think of my ex-wife's family. Her father came from a family of eight siblings; her mother from a family of six siblings. Along with her maternal and paternal grandparents making for a family total of 18 men, women and children--and not counting cousins and "greats", all but six were taken from their homes, stripped naked and either shot or gassed to death, buried alive or shoved screaming in terror into huge ovens.

 

Her parents, Dora Rose and Henri had fled to Paris just weeks before the Nazis invaded Poland.  Dora Rose and her baby girl Simone were hidden on a farm in the French countryside by the resistance. Henri joined the French army.  About a year after the fall of France, Dora Rose, her infant daughter and Henri survived an "underground railroad" to the Swiss border where they spent the remainder of the war living in a Swiss refugee camp for homeless Jews.  In 1945 they returned to Paris and rebuilt their lives in a world where Judaism had finally been decriminalized and Jewish refugees were finally allowed to emigrate to more hospitable lands--including the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and the land that in 1948 would become modern Israel.

Many of the six million Jews who were systematically persecuted, tortured and ultimately murdered during the 1930s and 1940s would have survived had the world community granted them political asylum; but during the 1930s the two great super powers, the United States and Britain, were engaged in political, cultural and economic relations with the Third Reich, openly sympathized with Fascist Europe's anti-Jew laws and turned a blind eye to the developing genocide.  As a result, hundreds of thousands of Jews applied for asylum and were denied.  Their fate could have been London, Montreal or New York; instead it was bullets, nooses, mass graves and ovens.

Today, some 60-plus years have passed since the 15-year-long Nazi horror show that featured the wholesale murder of  Jewish-Danes, Jewish-Italians, Jewish-Hungarians, Jewish-Greeks, Jewish-Poles, Jewish-Austrians, Jewish-French and the many many other nationalities that were denied political asylum and were subject to laws that criminalized being Jewish or even having Jewish ancestry going back several generations--laws that carried sentences of mandatory imprisonment and death.

Today, some 60-plus years later, I find myself living in a world where gay men and women seeking political asylum from nations that criminalize homosexuality, persecute and torture homosexuals and punish them with death are being denied asylum by the United States, Britain and most other nations around the globe.  I find myself living in a world where 75 nations criminalize homosexuality.  I find myself  living in a world where the United States is engaged in open trade and diplomatic relations with nations that impose the death penalty for homosexuality.

The clarion cry after World War II was "Never Again!"  Well, my friends (as John McCain would say), "Again and again and again."  As a Jew, I cry. As a gay man, I shudder.  And as a gay Jew, my blood runs cold.

THE FRENCH INITIATIVE

While Bush, Congress, Clinton and Obama stand silent on this issue, France has broken from the pack and announced its intention to ask the United Nations to push for homosexuality to be decriminalized around the globe.

This past Saturday, Human Rights Minister Rama Yade told a delegation of French gay and lesbian groups that Paris would push for "a European initiative calling for the universal decriminalization of homosexuality."  The American Human Rights Secretary stood silent because we don't have one.

Minister Yade said Paris would submit the initiative to the United Nations after it takes over the rotating six-month EU presidency in July -- a period during which France will speak for all EU member states at the UN General Assembly.

Human rights groups regularly campaign for Western governments not to deport gays or lesbians back to one of the many countries where they are at risk of persecution--or in the case of Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen--at risk of execution.

Ironically, many of the anti-gay laws found today around the world are artifacts of British colonial times, imposed by the Victorians on cultures that otherwise were more accepting of human sexual diversity before they were exposed to the blessings of Christianity--Hindu India would be one huge example of this.

Human Rights Watch recently took Britain to task over the case of a gay Iranian who was denied asylum last year although he said he feared death if forced to return home.

Mehdi Kazemi, 19, said he discovered while in England that his boyfriend had been arrested in Iran, charged with sodomy and hanged. Under international pressure to reverse their decision, British authorities have since granted him a reprieve from deportation.  This same disgusting scenario played out over and over again in pre-World War II London, only with Jews.

Kazemi was lucky but his case still remains open.  Many other gay Africans and Asians have not been so lucky and have been denied political asylum by "gay-friendly" nations, forced to return to their homes and subsequently imprisonment or death.

Today, we often look back in horror and wonder how the United States, Britain and other democracies could have morally and ethically engaged in foreign trade with Hitler's Germany while that nation was pulling Jews out of their beds during the dark of night and carrying them off to slave and death camps.

Today, the same scenario is played out with gay men and women in nations that Washington counts among its best friends including Dubai, Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.  And, of course, there are the Islamic death squads purging Iraq of its gays right under the noses of American Don't Ask Don't Tell troops.

I'm not naive; and I fully understand that for Washington, oil, income and empire far outwieigh the importance and relevance of frilly little girly things like morality and ethics; but where does Christianity stand on this issuse?  Where is the rage from the Vatican and the Evangelicals when gay men and women are arrested, imprisoned and executed?  Hate the sin, not the sinner.  Thou shalt not kill.  In fact Rome and Colorado Springs turn the same blind eye and deaf ear to the murder of homosexuals that they turned to the murder of Jews during the first half of the 20th Century.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. (To my French friends:  forgive my American computer's inability to employ the proper accent marks.)

Again, my blood runs cold.

PURGING GERMAN SISSIES

The Interfaith Alliance, a progressive religious advocacy group, has issued a press statement denouncing Scott Lively, one of the key speakers at this past weekend's "Shake the Nation" conference in Boise, Idaho of "bearing false witness" and of being "mean-spirited and hurtful."  Lively was the keynote speaker at a seminar blaming Hitler and the Nazi Party on homosexuals.

"Shake the Nation" was a fundamentalist ultra-right wing conference that brought together a superstar list of homophobes, including ex-presidential Republican candidate Alan Keyes, to issue a call for religious war against the homosexual agenda--kind of a KKK rally for the 21st Century but with press conferences held in a popular Baptist church rather than cross burnings in a remote forest clearing.

Lively has been singled out by protesters, religious and otherwise, because  his particular brand of homophobia seems unusually hateful, ugly and horrific. Lively has written a book claiming that Hitler's Nazi party was actually a homosexual movement very much driven by "masculine" gays waging war on sissies--just like the straight-acting gays of today show their contempt for Christian Siriano--but without death camps.

In his book, "The Pink Swastika," Lively details his theory that although the Nazis did persecute homosexuals, the homosexuals the Nazis persecuted were almost exclusively the effeminate members of the gay community in Germany, and that much of the mistreatment was administered by masculine homosexuals who despised effeminacy in all its forms.  We have bars like that over on the far west side of Chelsea.

As appalling, outrageous and homophobic as this "Nazis were gay" theory appears to be, Lively may be on to something.  Sure, his perspective is perverted in that special Evangelical-stupid-as-shit kind of way, but could his bottom line actually be on the money?

Depending on the historical context and the political environment could the psychopathology of the Closet produce something as horrible as a Nazi?

Roy Cohn, a gay Jew stands as one of the evil masterminds of McCarthyism, a short-lived but monstrous Congressional attack on communists, Jews and homosexuals that cost many their lives and many, many more their careers, families and friends.

The notorious closet case Ted Haggard, at one time America's most powerful and influential anti-gay crusader, turned out to be a meth and gay whore addict.

Queer Karl Rove threw gay rights under the bus in support of his Republican masters.

Wearing a dress and sucking on associate FBI director Clyde Tolson's dick, J, Edgar Hoover, the man who founded the FBI and ran it like an absolute monarchy for 48 year, purged thousands of gay men and women--who he called subversives and radicals--from government, industry and academia.  Over the course of half a century and eight presidential administrations, Closet case Hoover may have ruined more queer lives than Hitler, Haggard and AIDS combined.

As we consider Roy Cohn, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, James McGreevey, J. Edgar Hoover. Larry Craig and the relentlessly growing list of closeted gay men who act out their repression, frustration and self-hatred by crusading against their own kind, one must consider--as uncomfortable  and as disturbing as it may be-- that Hitler's National Socialist movement may very well have been partly fueled by the same sexual repression that clearly drives many of our own Evangelicals, neo-conservatives and right wing Republicans.

One cannot deny that the Closet breeds an authoritarian mentality.

The factual details of the relationship between homosexuality and the Nazi party is murky at best. However, the homo-eroticism of the Nazi regime is undeniable; and the link between ultra right wing politics, authoritarianism and the psychopathology of the Closet is also undeniable.  It is also undeniable that the psychopathology of the Closet can lead to psychopathic and extreme sociopathic criminal and dangerous behavior.

We do know that Hitler's once elite paramilitary corps of Storm Troopers (SA) was headed by the brutal and violent Ernst Rohm, a practicing homosexual.  The SA, which drew many members of the Nazi elite, grew to become a threat to Hitler's authority and the absolute power of the Prussian aristocracy and it traditional hold on the German military.

Between June 30 and July 2, 1934, under Hitler's direct supervision, the SA was destroyed; hundreds of prominent Germans were shot in their beds during the night.  Rohm's own deputy and lover, Edmund Heines, was found naked in bed with an 18-year-old Storm Trooper.  They were both shot on the spot.  In justifying the purge of this threat to his political and military power, Hitler said, "We needed to put an end to homosexuality, drunkenness, debauchery and high living in the SA."

The early association between prominent homosexuals and the Nazi party is fact.  Spin ultimately portrayed Hitler as criminally homophobic and Antisemitic.  Hitler plundered the wealth of the Jewish community to fund his plans to build an empire, much in the way Henry VIII did with the English Catholic Church and the Spanish did with the Aztec and Inca Empires.  Hitler ultimately added homosexuals to his death list following his military and political need to eliminate one of the threats to his authority.  These facts do not minimize the horror of Hitler's crimes, but disgust for Hitler's crimes does not justify lying about the past and rewriting history to suit contemporary political correctness.

The pathology of the Closet has led to gay men driving witch hunts against gay Americans:  Larry Craig, Roy Cohn, Hoover and the Catholic Church are prime examples.   So despite Nazi abominations, it would be dishonest to not consider the possibility that National Socialism was born in the Closet.

According to various reliable historians, the Berlin Sex Research Institute was destroyed by the SA in 1933 because its records included 40,000 interviews with members of the Nazi Party, interviews that provided a written record establishing that only a minority of Nazi party members were exclusively heterosexual.

Lively, through contemporary homophobic eyes documents much of the relationship between Germany's macho homosexual community and the Nazi party in his book. Of course, the fatal flaw in Lively's understanding is his inability to differentiate between the psychopathology of Closeted queers and an openly gay culture.

From an historical perspective this may seem like a fine line.  But judging Germany's openly gay community by the examples of the Nazis would be to judge the openly gay world of America 2008 but the examples of Haggard, Foley, Craig and Rove.  You do not define a people according to the pathology of its sickest members.

Lively gets a little--perhaps a lot--carried away claiming that "Most of Hitler's closest aides were homosexuals or sexual deviants. This circle included not only Roehm but the Hitler Youth leader, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Economics, Hermann Goering (who may not have been homosexual but who liked to dress in drag, paint his nails and put rouge on his cheeks), his personal attorney and his bodyguards. Hitler himself likely functioned as a male prostitute in the days of his youth in Vienna.  Heinrich Himmler, second in power only to Hitler, was publicly opposed to homosexuality but may have been a closet homosexual himself, and served Roehm faithfully and loyally until Roehm fell out of Hitler's favor."

Lively argues in great detail that the "masculine homosexual movement in Germany created the SA, and the SA in turn created the Nazi Party."  And this uber macho masculine queer culture loathed and despised effeminate gays.  Lively concludes that the queers who were sent to the death camps were murdered by their own community for the crime of lisping and limp wrists.

Lively's book also focuses on a horrible fact that is, no matter how horrible, true.

"Many of the guards and administrators responsible for concentration camp horrors were themselves homosexuals, Lively says  "A Nazi administrator at Treblinka had a harem of little Jewish boys" and "sought in Treblinka only the satisfaction of his homosexual instincts."

In some camps, SS guards would actually sponsor lotteries to see which of the "young attractive homosexuals" would go to whom, while at the same time, according to one historian, they "lashed out with special fury against those who showed effeminate traits." A Pink Triangle survivor said, "The ones who were soft were the ones who suffered terribly."

The "Butch" homosexual guards and capos were capable of unrestrained cruelty, sadism and savagery. A guard at Auschwitz, for instance, strangled, crushed and gnawed to death as many as 100 boys and young men a day while raping them at his leisure.

Yes, Lively is disgusting in the way he uses this history to condemn all homosexuals as perverts and criminals, but Lively's lies and spin does not serve the gay community if it drives us to deny truth.

For gay men and women, the worst outcome of the habit of rewriting and manipulating history is that it masks the true horrors and dangers of the Closet, it trivializes the Closet and makes it seem a viable option still today, in the year 2008.  And that, the truth and history teaches us, is a very, very dangerous thing.

THE FIRST MONTH AT WORK

One of our gay rights groups has released a brochure for straights in the workplace entitled the Seven Things You Should Never Say To LGBT Coworkers.  The big seven No-No's are:

1. I suspected you were gay.
2. I'm sorry.
3. Why did you tell me that?
4. Which bathroom do you use?
5. We are not close enough for you to share that information with me.
6. She-male.
7. What do you like to do in bed?

While I think the list falls far short of useful, it did remind me of the many gay-straight adventures I enjoyed during the my first month after coming out at work.  This was 1989, so I'm hoping that things have improved somewhat.  At the time, I was Chief Operating Officer of one of the world's largest public relations agencies, headquartered in New York City.  I was also President of the agency's most profitable global specialty division, medical communications, a division I had founded in 1979 and had grown into a $35 million business.  Finally, I was also on the Board of Directors.

So while I felt on very shaky personal ground as I began the process of coming out, professionally I believed myself to be in an unassailable position.  I felt I had the power of position that would allow me to stand tall and proud and out.  I was wrong.

In fact, after a couple of years of harassment, insults, humiliation and battling, I was fired for being gay.

The "excuse" used for my termination was that I had expensed travel for my boyfriend, something that officers of the firm routinely did on business trips with their spouses and girlfriends.  I was told that expensing travel for a girlfriend who accompanies you to a company conference in Paris is policy while expensing travel for a boyfriend under the same circumstances is stealing.  The icing on the cake came when I refused the Chairman of the Board's recommendation to submit to reparative therapy--which the company would generously pay for even though it wasn't covered in our group medical insurance.  If I would agree to undergo treatment for my mental illness, I would be given a medical leave of absence and then allowed to return.

Well, again, this was almost 20 years ago and things are much better today.

Again, those first 30 days were quite the funhouse ride.  Perhaps the hardest part was to find myself elevated to the status of hero by the agency's large contingent of closeted gay and lesbian employees who started coming to me  as individuals and in small groups to thank me for having the courage to take this step and making the workplace a safer place for them.  For a few days, that was exciting and gave me a sense of mission, but only for a few days.

I should have seen the trouble coming when I was told by more than one colleague that they really didn't need to know that I was gay.  Why couldn't I have just kept that to myself?

About a week after I came out, I placed a framed photo of my boyfriend on my desk and was quickly told by the head of the firm that quite a few employees had come to him to complain that while they were fine with my sexual orientation, they would prefer that I not flaunt it.  "How was I flaunting it?"  My boss pointed to the offending photo of a handsome man sitting by himself at a cafe table in Venice, Italy.  "That photo," he said, "is unnecessary and not appropriate in the workplace."

Furious, I asked him why that photo was any different from the photos that he had on his desk of his wife and kids.  He raised a knowing eyebrow and  said, "Please, Richard, you're smarter than that.  I have no problem with the gay thing, but that picture is just not normal and it's upsetting the staff."  I refused to take it down.

The penultimate moment came during the second week after coming out when I was called before my fellow board members to respond to charges of sexual harassment.  Those of you in the corporate world know that the definition of sexual harassment extends to any actions or words that create a sexually uncomfortable environment or situation for your colleagues.  And a number of twenty something men had filed charges against me claiming that by openly discussing my sexual orientation, it was essentially a declaration of my sexual attraction for them.

I glared at my fellow board members, a quiet fury brewing deep within; but I was also very much afraid and wondering how I would survive this strange new world.  I was still arrogant enough and confident enough in my position to refuse to play their game.  I noted that this was offensive nonsense and left the room.  At the next staff meeting, knowing full well who had filed the charges, I feigned ignorance and conducted myself as if nothing had changed.  After the meeting, I retreated to the executive washroom and vomited out my anxiety attack.

It took another two years of almost daily insults and assaults, finally ending in accusations of theft based on expenses incurred by my boyfriend who accompanied me on business trips--despite the fact that company policy allowed for travel with significant others.  And then I was fired.  To be honest, I've never quite recovered from that experience.

Today, I'm a senior officer in a billion dollar organization that has more openly gay men and women, including several openly transgender individuals, than a small American city.  One of our female employees was recently asked to shave her small but prominent beard.  A lesbian, she hissed back, "I earned this beard and have no intention of shaving it."  The straights didn't get it, the gays most certainly did.

And this is our world without ENDA.   Oh, and here's a bit of advise for gays on what not to say to straights in the workplace.

1. Go fuck yourself.
2. Sure I think you're hot, now bend over so I can shove my desk chair up your ass.
3. Cute baby, have him call me when he hits 18.

You get the idea...

THE BALD EAGLE IS SO YESTERDAY

With little notice and no fanfare, on February 13, 2008, the United States Senate added yet another national icon to that illustrious list already including the Bald Eagle, our national bird; the American Beauty Rose, our national flower and the mighty Oak, our national tree.  Let the record show that effective Valentine's Day eve, we have Larry Craig, our national gay.  (Sorry, Jimmy McGreevey, you'll have to settle for longest gay divorce in history.)

You think I'm kidding.  I know you do.  But I'm not.  Just because the press and even the gay blogosphere totally missed this story, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Thank God you have me catching the stories that everyone else drops.

Let me put it plainly and simply: The United States government has officially designated their first Congressionally mandated queer.

Sure, like most Senatorial declarations, the language is legalize and murky.  But buried within the obfuscation, one finds the startling truth.

Poor Larry can "I'm not gay" until the cows come home, but when the prestigious and all powerful United States Senate goes to the trouble of giving you landmark status as a gay American, you are a gay American.  Jim McCreevey must be beside himself  with jealousy.  A self-designated gay American ain't nothing compared to a federally designated queer icon.  Everyone knows the Bald Eagle, but few have even seen an Eastern Goldfinch, the New Jersey State Bird.

Larry says "I'm not gay".  The United States Senate says: 'Oh yes you are."

The precise wording from the halls of Congress:  “The Select Committee on Ethics resolves this matter through your public admonition so that, on behalf of the United States Senate, it may make known clearly that the conduct to which you pled guilty, together with related and subsequent conduct discussed in this letter, is improper conduct which has reflected discreditably on the Senate"

Yes, you read that right.  After an agonizingly long 8-month investigation the Senate Ethics Committee ruled that Craig was in fact guilty as charged.  Think about that.  No less an august body than the most powerful legislative body on earth has gone on record--national register, Smithsonian archives on record--stating that toe-tapping, toilet Casanova, Larry Craig was working a man-on-man, or cop-on-Senator blow job.

Actually, we're not really sure who was intended to give and who was intended to receive, so even though we now have a national gay, we're still up in the air regarding a national bottom and a national top.  I guess there's still hope for McGreevey.

The six members of the committee — three Democrats and three Republicans — told Craig they believed he "committed the offense to which you pled guilty" and that "you entered your plea knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently."

The panel said Craig only tried to remove his guilty plea after his attempts to avoid public disclosure had failed.

But what the panel also said, was that after a thorough investigation by federal agents,  it was clear that Larry Craig is gay, making him, in my view, America's first First Fairy.

GAY RIGHTS: MUST BLOOD BE SPILT?

Contrary to the propaganda, when it comes to basic human rights and the fulfillment of the promise of our own United States Constitution, this nation has mostly been a follower and only rarely a leader.  This is a democracy based on big words but little action.  We confuse self-interest and acquisition with freedom and the responsibilities of democracy.

The genocide of indigenous peoples and their cultures, slavery, Japanese-American concentration camps, the lynching of Blacks and Jews throughout the early and mid-20th Century, millions of children going to bed hungry every night--all facts that very much contradict the message we unsuccessfully peddle to the world and self-delusionally to ourselves.

Our industrial might saved the world from fascism in the 1940s, not because we cared about human rights and genocide but because of Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 of it's day.

We were among the last Western nation to allow women the right to vote.  We were the last western nation to abolish slavery and we did it kicking and screaming all the way.  And now we are on the fast track to become the last Western nation to abolish discrimination based on sexual orientation.  But history suggests that blood must be spilt before that happens; it's the American way.

Even a quick glance back at our own history suggests that the optimism with regard to civil rights that seems to prevail in the queer community, an optimism based on the smoke screen of recent queer visibility, is unrealistic and diversionary.

Human slavery was not abolished in the United States through civilized or legal means. it took a horrible and bloody war pitting brother against brother.  It was an issue that destroyed families, communities, entire regional economies and left an ugly legacy that was not even legally addressed until yet another century had passed--the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

England and France abolished slavery through due process of law and a recognition by the majority that this practice was an abomination--even though it was supported by Biblical scripture.  In the United States, with Bibles thumping, millions of Americans went to war to defend this shocking crime against humanity; the Baptist Church split in two with the Southern Baptist Church waging a holy crusade to defend the concept of human flesh as property.  It is no coincidence that this same Southern Baptist church is today the most adamant and committed adversary of gay rights.

As we move into this election year--perhaps one of the most important and historical presidential elections in American history--we must not lose sight of reality. We must not allow ourselves to be blinded by wishful thinking and empty rhetoric from both gay and straight leaders.

This is a nation of people that was not so long ago willing to go to war to deny men and women of diverse backgrounds not just their civil rights but their very humanity.

It may not take bloodshed to fix the abomination of queer oppression, but it will certainly take passion at the polls, passionate civil disobedience and anger in the streets before the goal of American equality for all men and women is achieved

The pandering, peaceful, polite sycophancy of the large gay advocacy groups has delivered little more than relentless failure; we may not need to be spill blood this time, but we must also remember that blood is the American way, not negotiation.  One thing is certain, the current course is fatally flawed.

QUEER TRUTH IN HISTORY MAKES HISTORY

It might have escaped your notice and it has certainly not registered on the mass media radar screen, but one of the most startling and important moments in queer history will occur in London this coming summer.

As far as I can tell, for the first time in history, a world class mainstream cultural institution, the British Museum will OUT one of the greatest leaders in world history as an openly gay man.

In other words, this globally influential academic and research leader will  officially reject western history's habit of denying the gay truth about major historical figures.

Can you imagine a world in which gay men who changed the course of world history are openly acknowledged as gay men?  Well, the British Museum can imagine such an unthinkable thing.

British Museum director Neil MacGregor is celebrating the life of one of the most important and epoch-making Roman Emperors, Hadrian.

Sponsored by British Petroleum, "Hadrian: Empire and Conflict'' (July 24 - Oct. 26) will feature some 200 loans from 31 countries and take place in the British Museum's specially refitted circular Reading Room.  Hadrian ruled the Roman Empire from 117 to 138 A.D. and ordered the building of a wall dividing England and Scotland.

"Hadrian is part of  a series of exhibitions on great empires that have shaped the world,'' MacGregor told reporters earlier this week.  "It's those great empires that established the connections and patterns that the world is still living with.''

But, MacGregor was also quick to point out that this Roman emperor was also selected because multiple new discoveries offered a "chance to write new history,'' which is part of the British Museum's purpose, he said.

"Hadrian was gay, and we can say it," said Thorsten Opper, a British Museum curator who is publishing a profile of Hadrian to coincide with the show.

In fact, Hadrian's lover, the young Greek boy Antinous, whose death caused the  emperor tremendous grief, will feature throughout the exhibition.  A head of Antinous, borrowed from Paris's Louvre Museum, will be displayed, as will a bowl from Georgia with his effigy.  Upon his lover's death, Hadrian elevated Antinous to the status of God, a God celebrating same sex romantic love, a fact  I suspect few of you were taught in school.

The British Museum intends to change that.

The exhibition will reveal the many faces of Hadrian, a skilled and ruthless military leader who crushed the Jewish revolt of 132 A.D. and faced down rebellions in Britannia, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Mesopotamia.

At the same time, Hadrian's patronage of the arts will be celebrated. It was he who built Rome's Pantheon, one of the most emulated monuments in architectural history, which the British Museum's Reading Room itself was modeled after.

Hadrian supported one of Rome's most lively periods of art, music and literature in an environment that also celebrated male beauty and male homosexuality.  Histories have often "speculated" that Hadrian "might have been bi-sexual."  This was dishonest and incredibly offensive, but such is gay history--until now.

Rule Britannia.

Some months ago, I wrote an essay on a major new archaeological discovery concerning Hadrian.  At the time, I had imagined that one day in the far distant future, historians will consider the wholeness of man and stop pretending that queers emerged somewhere between Monday and Wednesday of last week.

Last summer archaeologists had unearthed what was clearly the first official and largest and most lavish gay bathhouse ever conceived.   The bathhouse stood on a private 5-acre villa in a Roman suburb.  The villa had been the spectacular home of an ancient Roman equivalent of a billionaire, Quintus Servilius Pudens.  We know that Quintus Servilius Pudens was a close personal friend of Hadrian.

One of the lead archaeologists on this dig, in making the announcement of this major discovery, explained: ""The Romans had more leisure time than other people, and it's here in the baths that they typically spent their time. Because you could eat well, you could get a massage, you could have sex, you could gossip, you could play your games, you could talk about politics - you could spend the whole day here.  However, to have a bath complex of this size, this scale, it's very unusual."

The Associated Press reported that this 2nd-century private bathhouse consists of an "exceptionally well-preserved two-story complex, which extends for at least five acres, includes ornate hot rooms, vaults, changing rooms, marble latrines and an underground room where slaves lit the fire to warm the baths."

In an honest world, the headline on the AP story might have been something like: "Archaeologists Unearth What May Be The First And Largest Gay Bathhouse Of Antiquity."  But until now, we did not live in an honest world and mainstream historians and archaeologist had no problem with simply ignoring gay truth and telling homophobic lies.

A number of straight readers condemned my post, insisting that there was no proof that Hadrian or his young lover were gay; in fact, did gay even exist back then?

Well, to those readers I say--with the full support of no less an authority than the British Museum--go fornicatum yourselves.

QUEER HISTORY MONTH: DROWNING IN THE RIVER LETHE

As October draws to a close, it's worth noting that most of us neglected to celebrate the fact that these 31 days were officially designated by some politician to raise awareness of popcorn, Hispanic heritage, country music, pickled peppers, breast cancer, cook books, depression, toilet tank repair and college drinking--some 45 topics, objects and causes in total, too many to list here.

But lost in this jumble of commemoration and awareness-raising celebrations: Queer History Month.  But the fact that October was Queer History Month was lost in the noise and clutter of commemorative month festivals, fairs, postage stamps, galas, public service announcements and marathons, is likely not the reason Queer History Month was mostly ignored and overlooked by just about everyone, gay and straight alike.  The more likely reason you didn't pay attention is because you hear the word "history" and you nod off, you mostly don't care.

And that is a terrible and dangerous thing.

"Most people, especially young people, tend to know little history," explains Joe E. Jeffreys, Ph.D, Adjunct Professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Department of Undergraduate Drama. (Pictured below teaching a class in LGBT Performance Studies at NYU.)

"Teaching history helps people put their work and experiences into larger contexts.  History helps people gain a greater appreciation and understanding of where they came from, who and what came before them and the world they are part of.  It builds perspective.

"For gay people," Dr. Jeffreys continues, "who have historically felt isolated and adrift in a world that seems to undervalue, scorn or ignore them, teaching history can instill a sense of community and of pride in a shared heritage.  Teaching gay history is especially important as gay people have historically been invisible and largely hidden or obfuscated in its chronicle."

The perversion of historical truth and the omission of historical fact are among the greatest enemies of civilization and freedom.  Not only does it prevent us from having a true and valuable understanding of who we are and where we've come from, it prevents us from advancing and making the same dreadful mistakes over and over again.

Perhaps (or most certainly) the greatest example of this folly is the terribly destructive role homophobia plays in the understanding and teaching of Western History, a history that has been mutilated and dangerously corrupted over the centuries by organized religion, dictators and ignorance.  If a man and a woman live together, sleep in the same bedroom and share breakfast in the morning, no one questions the obvious sexual, romantic and intimate nature of their relationship. But when it concerns two men, absent volumes of eyewitness accounts describing public acts of fellatio, the personal lives of such historical figures become one of history's mysteries.  Too often when mystery is applied to the personal lives of historical figures, it's because they were lifelong bachelors of spinsters--words we've mostly come to understand were euphemisms for homosexual. 

It's an historical view that is simply absolute nonsense and harmful on too many levels.

Leonardo Da Vinci's personal life is one such great mystery.  He never married, he left no children and he was never seen in the romantic or sexual company of women.  In fact, in Da Vinci's personal diaries he describes the act of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman as "disgusting."

It is known that a 10-year-old Adonis, Giacomo, whom Leonardo affectionately nicknamed  his little "demon" (Salai), joined Da Vinci's personal household in 1490.  "Salai" was the son of a penniless farmer.  Salai had ravishing good looks and curly hair, and Leonardo showered him with fine clothes–this would have been unusual behavior toward a servant or pupil.  Salai remained devoted to Leonardo until his death.

In 1476, a 24-year old Leonardo and three other young Florentines were anonymously accused of committing sodomy with an angelically beautiful boy model and male prostitute named Jacopo Saltarelli. Leonardo was actually confined for two months and subjected to a grilling into his sexual life and thoughts that was quite as thorough as, and far more brutal than, a contemporary encounter group procedure. Eventually the charges were dropped without a trial.  We also know that there was a series of beautiful boy apprentices of apparently little artistic talent throughout the great artist's life.

Western historians look at these facts and declare Da Vinci's personal life "a great mystery."

I often wonder how my own life would have been different, had I been taught that the great Roman emperor Hadrian,  the heroic and legendary Richard The Lionhearted, the great hero of France Joan of Arc and literary giants Christopher Marlowe and Walt Whitman were gay.  If truth rather than homophobia were taught, we would have learned of George Washington's likely bi-sexuality--not a dirty secret or a slanderous allegation, but a likely historical fact.

If that information had been imparted with the same objectivity. openness and occasional good humor as the sex lives of Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte and the great heterosexual poets would there be less bigotry in the world and would I have benefited from a fair balance of positive role models that would have allowed me to live in a world of inclusion rather than secrecy and isolation?  Would we be living in a better society informed by truth rather than the supernatural and a Biblical scale plague of ignorance?

The answer to these questions is an obvious and resounding yes.  Instead, we were taught lies, secrecy, shame and invisibility and instead live in a nation of lies, secrecy, bigotry, ignorance, shame and corruption.

Today, when I read about debates over the inclusion of queer history in school systems around the country, I am flabbergasted.  Millions of Americans, including prominent and influential clergy and politicians challenge the value of truth and fact as if truth is some horrible danger to children and the American family.  No, truth is a horrible danger to superstition, myth, bigotry, ignorance, oppression, persecution, hostility and cruelty.

Kody Trauger, 21, a queer (self-identified) male student of queer history at New York University: "History tells us about ourselves. Gay history is activism. It creates a knowledge base since mainstream history excludes queer people. It provides insight into where the community is going and how we got where we are today."

Throughout time and in most mythologies and legends, forgetfulness is the trick used by monsters and gods alike to diminish and control man. Interestingly the classical Greek work for "forgetfulness, " "lethe, " is related to the word for "truth", "a-lethe-ia." In Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the several rivers of Hades: those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness.

Some ancient Greeks believed that souls were made to drink from the river Lethe before being reincarnated, so they would not remember their past lives. However, another river of Hades,the Mnemosyne had a very different effect.

Those who drank from the Mnemosyne would remember everything and attain omniscience.

Knowledge is power.

Anonymous, 20-year-old queer (self-identified) male student of queer studies at New York University: "It's comforting somehow to see that gay people have been around for a long, long time. It helps me secure my personal identity...I guess...to know that I'm not some mutant."

Those who would exploit and control us--from politicians to clergy to corporations-- bottle, glamorize and aggressively promote the virtues and pleasures of the Lethe waters.

The enduring strength of the Jewish minority is almost entirely based on truth and on remembering. The Bible mostly functions to remind us that to forget is to perish. Judaism, unlike most other religions is based on history, the remembering and the learning of history and a reverence of history. Surely one of the reasons Judaism was so reviled by the Catholic Church for so many centuries was its advocacy of learning, literacy and knowledge. Truth and literacy are seditious in an authoritarian society. Until very recent times, Jewish populations stood apart from Christian populations in one very critical way: literacy.  The Protestant Reformation and movable type changed all that and as a result Europe began to move from feudalism, absolute monarchy and barbaric religious wars to Renaissance, enlightenment and humanism.  Knowledge and access to knowledge began to set people free.

Anonymous, 20-year-old gay (self-described) male student of queer studies at New York University:  "I am studying gay and lesbian performance in order to understand how the use of queer content has evolved over time in the theater.  I want to connect with the work of the amazing artists who have come before me and have pushed the boundaries and paved the way for new, challenging, innovative and moving work. I have also taken other gender and sexuality studies courses and I'm very interested in the scholarship and theory on the construction of gender and sexuality.

"Studying gay history gives me hope on the days where I am trying to fit into a society that is molded on the basis of oppression and discrimination and inspires me to challenge the status quo both in my work as an actor and my everyday life."

The current Bush administration depends and thrives on the waters of Lethe. American regard for literacy and remembering (aka history) is at an historical low point. For too many Americans, the love of freedom and democracy, the legacy of 1776 and respect for individual human and civil rights are washed away by relentless government threats of terrorism and evangelical promises of rapture.

But as treacherous as this is for the general population, it is profoundly more threatening to the survival and health of minorities and queer America in particular.

The greatest challenge facing queer Americans as we near the end of the first decade of the 21st Century is its communal disdain for history. Ignoring and forgetting history may seem a luxury that the mainstream can easily afford, but it means oblivion for a persistently beleaguered minority.

Without history, we leave in a bubble. Without history we miss the warning signs. Without history we loose appreciation and our ability to truly value and treasure what we have and what we've gained and why it's worth a fight. And without history we are doomed to an eternity of reincarnation rather than enlightenment.

Luisa Ines Garcia, 19, female, "usually straight", student at New York University:  "What's going on in the gay world is inevitably tied to what's happened in the past.  What's going to happen in the future is inevitably tied to right now and history helps to put 'right now' in context.  History illuminates and highlights irrational/ignorant/hateful/unneccsary stereotypes and prejudices that have been naturalized.  Awareness!"

I recently attended a queer history class at New York University in order to better understand how queer culture is changing and how young queers understand the value of history.  Much of what I heard and much of what I was told by Dr. Jeffreys and several of his students very much helped inform this piece.  My  heartfelt thanks to them all.  In the near future, I'll also be talking more about what it is to be queer; incorporating many insights and views from these same students and others I've been interviewing over the past few weeks.