Accountability moment: not one more gay cent until we see some results

When politicians make promises, they should be held to them. Especially when they promise hope, a new kind of politics, that they want to take contributions from actual people and be accountable to them. Well, we heard lots of promises, but we've not seen any action. Until we start seeing the change we paid for, President Obama and the Democratic party can forget about getting any more of my money:

I pledge not to donate to the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America, or the Obama campaign until Congress passes, and the president signs, legislation enacting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT), and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

And yes, I'm serious about this. You'd better believe corporate donors are getting their money's worth right now, as they belly up to the trough for "healthcare reform". If they don't get what they paid for, they're not going to give again – and guess what, neither am I.

Both DOMA and DADT were passed during the previous Democratic administration. The just-finished Bush administration produced plenty of sturm und drang about teh gays, but never actually did legislative harm to us. The Obama administration had better start righting some wrongs, and President Obama had better start doing something to fulfill his pledge to be a "fierce advocate" for our community. With sixty filibuster-breaking votes in the senate and a strong majority in the house, the Democratic party has an opportunity to actually pass the agenda they trumpet when they come around begging for cash. With the midterm elections coming the time to act is now; otherwise it becomes increasingly obvious that the Democratic party is determined to block action on these issues in order to keep the gay money coming.

Either put up or find another sucker. If you feel the same way, join me in the pledge.

Asking more from family and friends on queer rights

Following the election last Tuesday, I am very happy and hopeful about the future. Even though Proposition 8 passed in California, President Barack Obama will appoint liberal Supreme Court justices who will eventually give me full equality in the United States, maybe even in my lifetime. I have hope.

But in the meantime, it's going to be rough. Each step forward will be met with stiff opposition. Queers have long been convenient targets for political hate campaigns. This will get worse before it gets better. It already is.

Recently I've discovered that several long-time friends don't agree I should have equal rights, including the right to be married. Some of them have participated in campaigns specifically intended to take away my civil rights. By definition, these people are not my friends, and I will no longer encourage such behaviour with my continued association. These people will no longer be able to truthfully say "I have gay friends, but..." – not if they're referring to me.

I am also raising my expectations of my friends and family. In the past I simply asked friends and family to accept me and not say bad things in my presence. I didn't feel I had the right to ask them to volunteer for a cause, contribute money, or vote a certain way. Although I knew in some cases that they were opposed to my rights, I ignored it. I had very low self-esteem, and I just felt happy that people actually liked me: Internalized homophobia is powerful and insidious. Those days are past.

Now I will call on my friends and family to help advance my civil rights whenever I see fit. Since my friends and family love me as I love them, I expect they will be willing to help me. If friends and family are engaged in or supporting organizations that hold anti-gay agendas, it is my expectation that they work to improve those organizations from within. To be clear, I'm not unreasonable: I don't actually expect my friends and family to live up to my every expectation any more than I live up to theirs.

Queer issues will never be as important to most of my friends and family as they are to me. But now I'm not going to hesitate to ask for help, and if that turns out to be a problem, it will be short-lived. It will be fantastic if they choose to help, and it will be okay if they don't, but no friend will be allowed to work against my civil rights and remain my friend. This is called self-respect, and it starts now.

Help stop constitutionalized bigotry in California

California's Proposition 8 is intended to end same-sex marriage in California, which the California Supreme Court ruled constitutional in June. The California Assembly had previously passed a law to allow same-sex marriage, but Governor Schwarzenegger (it hurts to type that) vetoed it, saying that it was up to the supreme court to decide. Well, they did, and although Arnie said he'd campaign against Prop 8, he's done dick-all about it. I guess he's too busy to call a press conference.

Anyhow, the Mormons are pouring enormous sums of cash into the campaign for Prop 8, and although many high-profile celebs are donating to the fight to stop it, it isn't enough. I've given, and I'd like to ask you to give as well. Everybody deserves the right to marry the person they love, and shouldn't have to emigrate to do so, as I did. Equality can be maintained, but only at a cost. Please give now.

Just what is the freaking deal with Henry freaking James lately?

Having just finished The Conversion by Joseph Olshan, I find that a plethora, a torrent, a veritable cornucopia of recent gay lit seems to revolve around Henry James, "The Master".

Well, three books anyhow, but three books mark a trend. The first I noticed was the most Jamesian (and by far the best), Alan Hollinghurst's 2004 novel The Line of Beauty. Chronicling upper-class life in Thatcher's Britain, Hollinghurst earned the Booker Prize. His first book The Swimming Pool Library was powerfully charged with social commentary, but The Line of Beauty was stunning, and all about the Henry James.

Next up: Edmund White's 2007 novel Hotel de Dream in which Henry James appears as the villain. A riveting semi-fictional tale of Stephen Crane's last days from his wife's point of view, it echoes some of the death themes White first explored in The Married Man, echoing Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. Although I prefer White's biographical novels, particularly The Beautiful Room is Empty, this is my favourite of his historical fictions thus far.

And finally, back to Joseph Olshan's The Conversion. It is also part of a recent spate of young-gay-Italian-American-Jew-under-a-loggia fiction that is clogging summer bookshelves from Provincetown to Fire Island (but I digress). The Conversion is chock full of Jamesian references, ranging from explicit mentions to flaming manuscripts to the aforementioned loggias. But it surprised me with its layered subtlety and insightful parallels, and it kept me guessing until the end.

Apparently part of the maturity of gay fiction is the rediscovery of the canonical figures from the mainstream whose gay subtexts were so very circumspect. At the same time, gay fiction has entered the mainstream and exists less and less as a separate genre (just try finding a section in a bookstore anymore). Eighty-eight years after his death, Henry James seems to be the model for gay fiction to come. Or maybe some excitable queens are taking the whole "Master" thing just a little bit too close to heart.

Saturn's Children: an homage to Friday

Charles Stross was a bit embarrassed about the cover to his new book Saturn's Children. Charlie's a stand-up guy: he cares about people, women specifically, and I think he was worried people would think he was a creepy lech. But this book is about a lonely sexbot, and the cover doesn't just stand on its own: the book is a tribute to Robert A. Heinlein's Friday, and so is the cover. The book has an engaging milieu and a somewhat bewildering set of characters (personality versioning is hard to keep track of) and Stross maintains the pace and keeps the story moving. It's a good read, and a nice departure from the usual strong-AI-ate-my-balls story lines. It's packed with obscure Heinlein references and in-jokes:

"Why bother learning all that biochemistry stuff—or how to design a building, or conn a boat, or balance accounts, or solve equations or comfort the dying—when you can get other people to do all that for you in exchange for a blow job?"

an inversion of a fatuous quote by Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love

Friday was one of my favourite Heinlein books: for a nerdy gay teenager, an oppressed bicurious gengineered courtesan spy was terribly compelling; plus she was black (covers lie), and she traveled the world in semiballistic missiles, tumbling into bed with various exciting characters of various genders. At the time young-adult fiction didn't really speak to gay kids; at that time gay fiction was exclusively boomers talking to their contemporaries about AIDS and Fire Island (not to say that I didn't devour those books, but they didn't mean as much to then as they do now). At the same time I was obsessed by comic books, particularly the New Mutants, teenagers who were hated and oppressed because their secret mutant powers manifested themselves at puberty. So for a science-fiction-obsessed gay boy, Friday presented a character with whom I could identify.

Cory Doctorow has spoken a great deal about why he chose to write Little Brother, a young adult novel about technology and totalitarianism. He read Heinlein when he was a boy: he explained that young people are very idealistic and looking for different ways of looking at the world. Friday did that for me, but I don't think of Saturn's Children as a young-adult book: it is more of a story-driven contemplation on the evolution of identity with technology. The references to Friday are creative and amusing, and the contrast between the two stories shows how the shape of the future has changed over the past twenty-five years. Saturn's Children is seemingly addressed to people of Charlie's (and my) generation.

Tales of the City

I've read Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City almost as many times as I've read The Lord of the Rings. At times it was a vice, honestly... it seemed like every semester in university the week before final exams I'd dig into these volumes instead of studying. Alternately silly and tragic, the books now span thirty years. As much as I sometimes malign the cultural accomplishments of the boomers, these books chronicle some of the best stories of the generation.

The latest volume, Michael Tolliver Lives, brings us up-to-date with the San Francisco clan, and is flavoured with not a little of Maupin's current love life (it feels by far the most autobiographical of his books) and is once again focused mostly on the title character. His writing has lost a fair bit of its satirical sting, but the depth of characterizations has improved, as has his subtelty. The sympathy with which he depicts his characters' internal conflict is more moving than ever. And although he leaves it open ended, this book feels like closure, which makes me rather sad – but honestly, I'm very pleased because I never even expected to see it written, and by all indications Maupin never expected to write it, either.

Overheard by the pool

This afternoon I got about twenty minutes in the sun down by our pool, which just opened for the season a week ago. Since I haven't really had much sun this year, I am blindingly fish-belly white, so a little bit of sun goes a long way – but even so I was sad when the clouds rolled in (it was a little too cool at ~22c to stay there without the sun).

I parked myself at the upper-right corner of the pool (it doesn't look quite that pristine anymore, three years later) near where the afternoon pool queens gather to dish. I had my iPod implanted and was gamely trying to complete Halting State. When the first song ended, I paused to eavesdrop on our neighbours' conversation.

"I got them in New York. I really liked them, but the only ones they had were scratched, so I ordered them and they said they'd deliver them in a couple of days. But do you know how long it took? It took seven weeks. [italics his] I was calling that woman every single day, eventually she stopped taking my calls."

So I turned my iPod back on and kept reading. The next song ended, so I paused again.

"Yes, they're Armani, but not the new ones. I don't like them very much."

I turned the music back on and stuck my nose back in my book.

A few minutes later I paused to turn over, and saw Adolfo arriving at the pool for his swim. I hit pause, and then gaggle next to me fell silent (yes, they were still talking about sunglasses) and watched as Adolfo took off his shirt and shorts and stepped into the pool. After he was underwater, they resumed.

"I loaned him my Pradas but then after he wore them I didn't like them anymore."

After that I left, so I can't attest that they continued to talk about sunglasses longer than the twenty minutes I was there.