Much of this site focusses on LGBTQ spirituality - but as the accompanying blog illustrates, this topic can often meander into many directions.
Casslan's nonfiction has appeared in Out Now, Entre Nous and El Tecolote. She has also published a chapbook of poems entitled 24th St. and Other Poems which highlights the Lower 24th St. corridor in San Francisco.
She has also recently published a book about an openly gay priest, Father Richard Purcell OFM, who died on August 4th, 2011. Richard lived with Native American for 20 years in the Arizona desert, and their beliefs and culture formed much of his own sprituality. Richard also ran a homeless shelter for men with AIDS for two decades in San Francisco's Mission District. As he slowly died of Lou Gherig's disease over a five year period, many of the men who he onced housed and cared for, ended up caring for him. Excerpts from this book can be found at this site.
By Susan Casslan | May 12, 2012 at 07:21 PM EDT | No Comments
News in past few weeks includes reports of Romney bullying another student in boarding school. Rumor has it that the student was gay. I won't go into details on the story, but if interested in details, try:
Midst all of this, two of Romney's comments stand out strong. First he says that he does not recall the incident (although he doesn't deny it). Second, he says if it occurred, it was just a "prank." Oh yeah, and there's a third: He didn't know the guy was gay (although Romney allegedly called him a "girl" as he held him down and forcibly cut his hair).
I've got to comment on this "prank" issue. When any kid, gay or straight has been bullied, they will not refer to it as a prank. They might call it severe abuse, damage that lasts a lifetime, or grounds for suicide or drug addiction. Or they might just say that the bullier was pretty disturbed or an asshole. But prank... nah, I've never heard that description.
Romney says he doesn't remember. Many of the Christians I know say that the strongest incidents that stick in their minds - are the times they hurt others. I've talked to a lot of old people too - who say these are the biggest regrets they carry to their graves.
So how does one who claims to be a Christian (and Mormons are purportedly Christian) - say he does not recall an incident when he hurt someone else that badly? I'm not trying to judge - as we all do bad, stupid things that we regret. But it's generally best if one honestly cops to it.
By Susan Casslan | May 10, 2012 at 03:06 PM EDT | No Comments
I couldn't let another day pass without reacting to Obama's recent announcement. He supports gay marriage. My feelings around this are... mixed.
I've chosen to only listening to snippets about the announcement on the news. That's because the dualistic, black and white news broacasts in this country are so limitted. They do not go into depth on this, or any subject. Plus, in an effort to be "balanced," the broadcasters are expectedly including interviews with homophobes. One brilliant indivdual said on the news yesterday, "This country was founded on morals, so that's why I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman." This country was founded on morals? Explain that to Native Americans or the descendants of slaves.
Then we hear such tired old refrains of why marriage is wrong -those who say we have Adam and Even and not Adam and Steve and blah, blah, blah... One never gets used to hearing this hateful, ignorant jargon - people putting moral judgements on one's own being. So I turn it off.
Second, I've never been a big fan of gay marriage to begin with. Not because I don't think it's fair, and not that I don't applaud countries like Spain and Candada that have it. It's just that I am mindful of how backwards my own country can be, and how this issue has been carefully used by many to divide us. There are times in fact, that I suspect that much of the push for gay marriage may have been put out by the right itself. Does that seem far fetched, when gay marriage has done so much to advance other right wing politicians and causes?
In addition, in most polls of gay people, the average gay person does not see gay marriage as a priority issue. Many LGBTQs would rather see us receive more funding for gay services (such as for homeless gay youth), or to address anti-gay violence or the bullying of gay kids in schools. So much of our community's money and energy has been put into marriage.
As the media drones on about this latest development, I am wondering, why is this such a big issue? Why has our existence been put at the center of a major election, where there are so many more important concerns. Try Iraq and Afganistan for instance, global warming, the economy, or the growing chasm between rich and poor. Gay marriage has been used as diversion, and as these things tend to go... people are pitted against each other, so that we can stay divided and not focus on our real causes and enemies. This is tragic, because real problems don't get dealt with - and the backlash of hateful rhetoric continues to put so many people at risk.
I'm not blaming Obama for any of this. In the least, he has spoken his truth (if it is his truth), and that's a lot to say about any human being, especially a president. And especially when supporting gay issues of any kind puts one in serious danger. So... even if Obama doesn't remain president, he may live as a man of integrity, at least on this issue. For whatever Obama has achieved or not achieved in these past four years, he is a thoughtful, intelligent man and that is saying a lot. Those types of leaders are hard to come by these days.
I need to add in conclusion, that my partner and I don't intend to marry. For one thing, we don't need the state to recognize our relationship. And we are concerned about all of those individuals gay and straight who don't benefit from marriage because they're single. Why romantic love is the only partnership that warrants marriage's economic benefits is a mystery to me. Perhaps it harkens back to when women were men's legal property (which in looking at history books, wasn't too far back).
At the same time, I try not to think dualistically. I am also an optmist. And if some day gays can marry in the US, maybe it will decrease homophobia and ignorance for future generations. And maybe Obama will forge a path for people who are confused about this issue, or simply don't understand, know, or value the millions of the gay committed relationships and families that exist.
We can only wait and see. As for this week, I'm selectively listening to the news.
By Susan Casslan | April 29, 2012 at 11:35 AM EDT | No Comments
Some may describe Stefan Salina’s new creation A Parade in June: Brief Encounters with a Closeted Gay Christian as a "comic book." Salinas himself, a San Francisco writer and artist who immigrated here from Houston, calls it a "graphic novella." However defined, the book is indeed a remarkable work of art.
This is a beautifully written story about a young gay man’s journey into Catholicism, and each frame of illustrations is a stunning feast of color and design. Salinas received his BFA in art at the University of Houston, and what a blessing for all of us that he’s utilizing his education and gift.
Salinas shares a story and perspective that is seldom told – that of a gay Christian. He does so in a manner that is compelling and easy to read. It will certainly appeal to a broad variety of readers, regardless of their age, orientation or background.
This is a tale that needs to be told – a view of gays that is not based on tired old stereotypes. Salinas’s work is honest and touching, and much to the delight of any San Franciscan, the book vividly describes gay life in SF. This includes the protagonist’s encounter with Father Donal Godfrey, a local Jesuit priest who is much admired by many gay Catholics, and who has taken a brave stand against homophobia in the Church.
A Parade in June is worth picking up, and hopefully it will be widely read. It will undoubtedly serve as a force against ignorance, and also help LGBTQs who are trying to find their own spiritual path.
The book can be purchased at: www.stefansalinas.com/parade.htm
By Susan Casslan | March 04, 2012 at 03:19 PM EST | No Comments
Feb 29, 2012 By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
A gay woman says she was denied the sacrament by a Catholic priest at her mother's funeral. Barbara Johnson, married to her partner in Washington, D.C., was stunned when the Rev. Marcel Guarnizo of St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, Md., blocked the Communion cup with his hand and called her a sinner in front of the church.
Johnson recalled to Boorstein on Tuesday, and again to MSNBC today, that he refused the sacrament and called her a sinner as she came to mourn her devoutly Catholic mother.
The Archdiocese of Washington, which includes Gaithersburg in southern Maryland, has apologized in a letter to Johnson. According to The Post, a high-ranking official wrote:
... the lack of "kindness" she and her family received "is a cause of great concern and personal regret to me."
and the letter said:
I am sorry that what should have been a celebration of your mother's life, in light of her faith in Jesus Christ, was overshadowed by a lack of pastoral sensitivity. I hope that healing and reconciliation with the Church might be possible for you and any others who were affected by this experience. In the meantime, I will offer Mass for the happy repose of your mother's soul. May God bring you and your family comfort in your grief and hope in the Resurrection."
The archdiocese's policy is in line with the official position of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. It makes clear that while the church speaks against homosexual behavior, it calls for all people to be treated with dignity. The document, Always our Children, concludes in a message to homosexuals and their families,
Though at times you may feel discouraged, hurt, or angry, do not walk away from your families, from the Christian community, from all those who love you. In you God's love is revealed. You are always our children."
Johnson told an MSNBC she wanted Guarnizo removed from parish life "so no other family will experience this."
The doctrine is that people who are actively choosing to continue sinning should not present themselves for Communion. Hence, divorced folks not remarried in the church, for example, are not supposed to get in line for the Eucharist.
But most bishops, certainly both Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, and before him in the D.C. post, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, do not refuse Communion to anyone in a public setting. Neither does the pope who has given the sacrament to politicians who support legal abortion. They urge people to search their own hearts in the light of the church's teachings and they urge priests and bishops to make doctrine clear in their work.
Other bishops take a louder and more public stand as did Cardinal Raymond Burke when, as Archbishop of St. Louis, he announced that presidential candidate John Kerry should not seek communion in that diocese during the campaign.
The incident comes to light on the same day that the Rev. Franklin Graham apologized to President Obama for judging the state of Obama's soul. As Graham was reminded by several pastors, only God knows who is saved by grace.
By Susan Casslan | February 21, 2012 at 08:02 PM EST | No Comments
Netflix has blessed me again with a few more gems to share. I speak of The Way, starring Martin Sheen and directed by his son Emilio Estevez. The second is Le Quattro Volte, an Italian film directed by Michelangelo Frammartino.
I was reluctant to see The Way, since it got some bad press, but then I talked with two friends who recently had walked El Camino de Santiago, the subject of Estevez’s work. The El Camino, which stretches through the Pyrenees from France into Spain, has been followed by spiritual pilgrims for centuries. It ends at a cathedral where the Apostle James is apparently said to be buried.
After hearing my friends’ stories, I wanted to at least check out the scenery in the film (The Way was filmed on location). I was pleasantly surprised. Sheen’s character (an American physician who is grieving the death of his son), is quite believable, as are the fellow pilgrims he meets, when he decides to make this 500 mile journey on foot. These people are authentic and amusing, and the film lacks the schmaltziness that I encountered in Sheen’s previous "Catholic" movie about Dorothy Day where he played Peter Maurin.
The Way leaves us with no profound moralism – other than the fact that we’re all on a journey in life. And absolutely none of us knows where this road is leading. But one thing is certain – things will go a whole lot smoother if we connect with one another along the way.
Le Quattro Volte was a little more difficult to follow, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is heavy into action or dialogue. In fact, the film has absolutely no dialogue. Zero. The film starts out by focusing on an old goat herder who seems seriously ill. For many scenes we get to see him coughing, and perhaps dying. Not an attractive sight, especially when you keep asking yourself, "Where the hell is this movie going?"
It is going… possibly nowhere. Just like our own lives, as we are all also dying, and in the end, there is little that separates us from this old man. Or even from his goats.
The film zooms in on the slow evolution of nature… life, death and the seasons. It is the dimension of time that we may sometime catch glimpses of when involved in meditation. There are other things going on in the film – other people; villagers who we see and hear in the distance. They take part in festivals and religious processions. They engage in activities that seem to give their life meaning, but only for a while. For eventually, something much louder (although silent) steps forward.
For example, the villagers cut down a beautiful living tree and make it into a long pole. Then they use it for some piñata-like game. After all their joy and excitement around this game passes, the pole lies lifeless on the ground. And then some wood cutter comes along and cops up the pole for fuel. He brings it back to the villagers so that they can stay warm.
The movie speaks of change and impermanence. Change that is silent and unseen, but constant, and in the end, so much greater than anything else we can imagine or perceive.
Le Quattro Volte is not light entertainment, but thought provoking and well worth sitting through.
By Susan Casslan | February 12, 2012 at 09:21 PM EST | No Comments
At this coming Sunday's (Feb. 19) San Damiano’s Day of Dialogue for LGBTQ Catholics and their families and friends, we will be discussing the book The Velvet
Rage by Alan Downs (See info below). Although the book is particularly aimed at gay men, all orientations and genders are welcome.
A key theme in Downs's work, is that if a child is not loved unconditionally for who they are, they develop a shame that they carry with them into later life. And they will try desperately to cover up this shame by any means necessary.
This lack of unconditional love is especially poignant for LGBTQ people, who are considered inherently flawed by so many in society - including their families - the people who are supposed to love them the most.
Downs is a therapist who treats gay men, and he has repeatedly seen the manifestations of this shame. He's seen gay men try to compulsively pursue sex, drugs, success or money. He's seen this extreme desire for perfection among these men, in their need for the perfect looking boyfriend or body or wardrobe. Yet even when they find these things, none of it satiates the emptiness that they’re trying to run away from. Downs outlines ways for gay men to get out of these cycles of self defeating behaviors.
As I noted, it’s not just gay men who suffer from shame or can benefit from Downs’s theories. And I also think it would be good to look at how these patterns in gay men effect the rest of our community. For example, Downs notes that some gay men are constantly looking to "hook up." Thus, if another man enters a room, everyone else immediately becomes invisible. I have repeatedly felt this phenomenon within our community, and it definitely doesn’t do much for building community. Thus, I look forward to seeing where this discussion goes.
The Days of Dialogues are retreats for LGBTQS and their families and friends – where we have an open discussion on spirituality and sexuality. They are held at San Damiano Retreat Center in Danville and run from 1 to 4 pm.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
1-4 pm
San Damiano Retreat Center
710 Highland Drive, Danville, CA 94526-3704 San Damiano phone number: (925) 837-9141
By Susan Casslan | December 19, 2011 at 05:24 PM EST | No Comments
Gay clergy disinvited from Castro Catholic church
by Cynthia Laird, Bay Area Reporter
At least three gay and lesbian clergy members were disinvited from participating in Advent services at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro, the Bay Area Reporter has learned.
The call for the gay clergy not to attend came from the Archdiocese of San Francisco, sources said.
George Wesolek, spokesman for the archdiocese, confirmed that Archbishop George Niederauer made the decision.
"The basic reason is that Archbishop Niederauer felt the themes for vespers should better reflect the themes of Advent," Wesolek told the
B.A.R.
Wesolek said the decision came shortly before November 27, the first Sunday of Advent.
The Reverends Jane Spahr and Roland Stringfellow were among those asked not to participate, as was retired Episcopal Bishop Otis Charles. All three were scheduled to take part in Most Holy Redeemer's Advent vesper services.
Spahr, a retired Presbyterian minister, is well-known for her advocacy of marriage equality. She has repeatedly been brought up on church charges related to her marrying same-sex couples. A church court in August 2010 found her guilty of officiating the weddings of 16 same-sex couples. But at the same time the tribunal praised Spahr's ministry over the years and her compassion. She founded a church group in the 1990s for gay Presbyterians.
In an email, Spahr confirmed she was disinvited from Most Holy Redeemer's services. She was to speak Wednesday, December 14. Spahr said that the people at Most Holy Redeemer "felt so badly" about the decision.
"It saddens me that Otis, Roland, and I will not have the opportunity to come and be with you," Spahr wrote in an email to Most Holy Redeemer, which she shared with the B.A.R. "There is so much prejudice, misinformation, and mystery still about who we are either as LGBT people or advocates and allies."
Spahr added that the Most Holy Redeemer parish has "been in the forefront of loving people through HIV and giving us the opportunity to thrive in expressing the fullness of who we are as we integrate our sexuality and spirituality."
"Your ministry there in the Castro has helped save so many lives," she wrote. "How sad for the archbishop that he is missing the depth and breadth of your ministry and how he still sees you as 'one issue' rather than the fullness of who you are. The heart of your ministry embraces true hospitality and welcome, the kind of ministry Jesus lived."
She said that congregants at Most Holy Redeemer "do not have to apologize" for the archbishop's decision.
"We will pray that his heart will open as he experiences your love and grace," she added.
A woman who answered the phone at Most Holy Redeemer Tuesday said that Father Steve Meriwether, the senior pastor, was not in the office this week. A message left for Mike Poma at the Castro church was not immediately returned.
Stringfellow is the welcoming congregations coordinator at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion. He was a community grand marshal in this year's San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade.
He told the B.A.R. that he was neither shocked nor surprised at being disinvited.
"I was disappointed," he said.
Stringfellow, who was to appear December 21, said he was able to help congregants with a conversation around being welcoming when the church hierarchy isn't. He hopes to meet with a small group of people in February to explore that issue.
Charles was the Episcopal bishop of Utah and was married to a woman for many years. After his retirement in 1993, he came out as a gay man, divorced his wife, and moved to San Francisco. In October 2008 he married Felipe Sanchez-Paris, Ph.D. in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. The couple had a church wedding in 2004 that was covered in the San Francisco Chronicle .
He told the B.A.R. that he received a call the night before his scheduled appearance "indicating that my participation in a liturgical service was unacceptable to the Chancery (in all likelihood, the archbishop): presumably, my participation as the first openly out gay bishop, legally married according to the laws of the state of California, might suggest approval of gay marriage."
Charles, too, indicated he was not that surprised by the archbishop's decision.
"Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for the Roman Catholic hierarchy to denigrate, subtly and not so subtly, LGBT people and those who stand with them. The sad fact of this disrespect for the dignity of every human being is the apparent message it sends: silence, invisibility, and even duplicity are valued as life choices," he added.
"To be open, honest, and authentic will be costly," Charles said.
Interestingly, Most Holy Redeemer was honored by the archdiocese in October when the church received the McGucken Award for its worship space. The church was selected by the Archdiocese Worship Commission and the Environment, Art, and Architecture Committee as "an excellent example of environment where the setting further lends to the highest level and accessibility of liturgy for all worshippers, and is recognized as a model in our archdiocese."
I knew I would eventually have to witness first hand, that which was the center of Richard’s heart and being. I would need to travel to the desert where he had lived for so many years.
A few days before he died, he talked to Chandika on the phone. "It’s beautiful out here," she told him. "It’s really warm."
"Wonderful!" He said. "I’ll be there soon. I can’t wait to be placed beneath the warm Arizona earth."
After the funeral in San Francisco, it took everyone a while to re-group and plan for more ceremonies at the Tooham O’odham and Akila O’odham reservations in Arizona. By September, many of us were able to make that journey. On September 30, a Mass and procession with the Tooham O’odham took place during the day in Covered Wells. Later, people traveled north to Santan. There, the Akila O’odham held an evening Mass, followed by an all night vigil and the burial of Richard’s ashes at daybreak. After that, they hosted a feast.
I was amazed at how the Native Americans had organized such extensive and beautiful ceremonies for Richard, especially since it had been so many years since he’d lived in their midst.
"Richard was one of us," one Pima woman told me. "He spoke our language."
"If the O’odham love someone," said Chandika. "They never forget."
I was unable to make it to Covered Wells during the day, but I did make it to the Akila O’odham reservation at dusk. As I drove alone in a rental car from the Phoenix Airport, the desert’s effect on me was immediate. The sky was massive and outlined by blue, jagged mountains. The earth was alive with creosote, mesquite, saguaro, tomatillo and salt bush... and I opened the window and inhaled the plants’ wonderful smells.
When I arrived, the outdoor Mass was already in session, and over one hundred people had gathered. As the stars appeared, they were joined by a warm, dry and shifting wind.
I spotted Chandika and gave her a hug. She whispered, "Richard said to listen for him in the wind." Then she added, "As usual, he’s talking a lot tonight."
Father Ed Fronske, who had known Richard from both of their seminary days, gave the eulogy. "I dared call him a mystic," Fronske said of Richard. "He was very close to God and very much in love with God." Then Fronske quoted the theologian, Gregory Baum: "Religion is essentially a relationship with God, or else religion is playing games and keeping busy."
When referring to Richard’s ALS, Fronske cited St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians: "Therefore, we are not to become discouraged; rather although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day... for we look not to what is seen but what is unseen."
"That was Richard’s focus when I visited him or called him on the phone," said Fronske. "I had never seen him as joyful as I did in those last months."
had told me. One thing she really loved about the O’odham was their silence. "White people are too loud," Chandika complained, and that was why she kept returning to these reservations.
The O'odham were very quiet on this night. They spoke in hushed tones and at times they sang. They sang Christian-folk, as well as Native songs. All were heartfelt and moving.
"Why do you stay awake all night?" I asked one Akila O’odham woman. "Because," she said. "When someone dies, we want to spend as much time with that person as possible before we send them on their way." Then she laughed that the O’odham had been joking earlier. They said that Richard was probably standing at some gate, wanting to be released on his journey, but the people were delaying his departure. "We could just see Father Richard," she smiled. "And him saying, ‘I want to get moving and all of you are holding me up, having so much fun telling stories and singing.’"
I heard some of these stories on this night of Richard’s time in Arizona. Once, he tried to speak Toohno O’odham, and ended up botching the language. He had meant to say to a woman, "I like your dress," but it came out as, "I like your ass."
One woman said that her son so emulated Richard, that the boy wanted to be a priest. The boy would say funerals for pets when they died, and he hung his grandmother’s frying pan in a tree, and banged on it like it was a church bell.
Other stories contained an emerging theme. That Richard had deeply touched the individual lives of these people. That he had changed them on a profound level.
"So many Indians had given up on the Catholic Church before Richard came," said an older woman. "They had lost hope."
A man explained that Richard had incorporated the Native’s own religious beliefs and practices into what Richard was teaching.
It was clear that Richard’s effect on these tribes had been extraordinary. He had planted seeds here that were still in full bloom. One individual said that it was Richard who first brought the Cursillo movement to the reservations.
I had never heard of this Catholic movement before, and certainly not from Richard. Thus, I was surprised to hear that he had introduced it to the tribes. As I inquired more into what Cursillo meant, it made sense that it had been associated with Richard. The movement had begun in Spain in the 1940s, in the years after the Spanish Civil War. A pilgrimage was planned at that time to the shrine of Saint James at Compostelas. Preparation for the journey stirred up a spirit of restlessness among various Catholic action groups. There was a desire to confront a lot of dissatisfaction with the Church and kindle a spirit of renewal.
The Cursillo movement itself is difficult to explain, but it is basically about learning to bring the light of Christ’s teachings into our daily lives. It was also part of other movements that occurred just before the Second Vatican Council. In truth, even though much has been made of Vatican II, and how it brought new life to the Church, the council had grown out of other renewal efforts that had started years earlier.
The Cursillo’s connection with Vatican II and its emphasis on the spiritual growth of individuals (not institutions), made me understand more clearly why Richard was into it. Now, the Native Americans had taken the movement much further than I’m sure Richard had expected it to go.
Some of the O’odham wore t-shirts with a picture of a rooster on the back, and rainbow colored lariats – all symbols of Cursillo. The rooster, with its many colored feathers, represents the rainbow in the Old Testament were God makes a covenant with his people. The colors also refer to De Colores, a Spanish folk song that is associated with the Cursillo.
Legend has it that when groups of Pilgrims were one day returning from a Cursillo (translated as "course"), their bus was held up in a thunderstorm. After the storm passed and the sun came out, and the countryside was alive with color, one of the men pulled out his guitar. He started to sing De Colores and other pilgrims joined in. The song speaks of the many colors of nature and the exquisite joy of just being alive. And accompanied by guitars on this night, as the sky grew lighter, this is what the people sang:
All the colors, all the great, glowing colors that we see in the sky at sunrise, All the colors, all the colors are seen in the thousand reflections in sunlight, All the colors, all the colors are seen glittering in a diamond ring, And that's why a great love of the colors makes me feel like singing so joyfully
Morning
The stars began to fade and the mountains became more visible. People who had gone home or who had crawled into their cars to get a little sleep, returned and a larger crowd gathered. More musicians arrived and the singing grew louder. As daylight emerged, we sang Mañanitas to Richard, to bid him a good morning.
Then, as the steeple bell rang in the village’s little white adobe church, we gathered flowers in our arms and walked silently across the desert toward the cemetery.
The dry and dusty graveyard was filled with so many weathered crosses. Very few of these graves were marked with any names. And yet people knew who was buried there, as individual grave sites held assorted flowers and gifts. The unmarked graves made me think of the O’odham themselves. These humble people, whose allegiance lay with each other, and less with the extreme individualism that is so rampant in my own culture. And today, this allegiance, and love and sweetness, was also extended to us and to Richard.
Max held the priest’s ashes in a box and Joseph Enos, the Native healer, performed a blessing and sang some prayerful songs. Then Richard’s ashes were tenderly placed inside the grave with other gifts. Creosote was also lowered in the hole, as it is a medicinal herb that Richard often drank as tea. As the sun burst over the eastern horizon, we each tossed handfuls of sand into the grave. Then the tears began to flow.
The people filled up the grave with dirt and placed a large wooden cross above it as a marker. The cross held Richard’s picture and his name and the dates of his birth and death. Richard had asked to be buried with Marty and with the other men from Marty’s Place, but the native people wanted something else. They preferred to give Richard a strong and visible memorial – and his own special grave. After the hole was filled in, we covered it with flowers.
I thought that perhaps now, I finally understood what Richard meant to these people and what they meant to him. Richard loved all of us at Marty’s place, and he enjoyed his life in San Francisco. But the Tooham O’odham and Akila O’odham were his family in the deepest sense of the word... and now he'd finally returned to them for good.
By Susan Casslan | September 23, 2011 at 12:39 PM EDT | No Comments
This article on Mychal Judge, the openly gay Franciscan Priest who died on September 11,2001, appeared in the Tablet on September 10, 2011
By John Felice
Tuesday 11 September 2001 was a cloudless, pristine day in early fall. I was on the way to the funeral of a fellow friar in New Jersey and, as I headed towards the West Side Highway, the car radio announced the crash of a plane at the World Trade Center. I looked to my left and saw a faint puff of smoke coming from the North Tower.
By the time I had crossed the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, a second plane had hit the South Tower. The city went into lockdown and there was no turning back. The news announced the death of Fr Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar from St Francis of Assisi Church and a chaplain of the New York Fire Department. It was time for me to find some way to get home. Late that night, I managed to get a police escort back into the city.
My room in the friary was right below Fr Mychal's and we both had windows that looked out on to 31st Street and the fire station across the way. It always seemed to me a place of camaraderie and easy banter, a kind of secular friary. The Holy Name Province's relationship with the fire department began in the early 1970s with Fr Julian Deacon, who was a member of the friar staff at St Francis Church and struck up a relationship with the firefighters across the street.
Gradually this relationship became formalized and Fr Julian continued his service until his death in the late 1980s. Fr Mychal was his successor and after his death the role passed to Fr Christopher Keenan, the current fire chaplain. This long and wonderful relationship has enriched us both. The firefighters and the friars have a similar sense of camaraderie, loyalty and mutual respect.
The morning after 9/11, reality began to sink in. I saw one of the fire trucks covered with dust and debris, its ladder half raised with an American flag at its top. The firefighters were quietly standing still just trying to absorb the unimagined, the loss of members from their own house. People began to bring flowers and lay them at the door of the station. The shock of the tragedy began to settle in like the cloud of ash that hung over the city for days. The grief and the mourning and the funerals without caskets began to unfold day after day, week after week for months.
But we had our own loss to mourn. Fr Mychal died at the foot of the North Tower wearing his fire chaplain coat and tending to his beloved fellow firefighters. The picture of Fr Mychal's body being carried out of the rubble by four first responders became the lasting image of the larger loss of life and the bodies that were never rescued from the debris. Fr Mychal officially became the first person listed among the dead of 9/11. His funeral and his legend began to grow from that day.
A few months later, I was asked to say a few words at an awards ceremony honoring Fr Mychal. I said, in part: "Although that tragic event took the lives of almost 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, Mychal became the symbol of our grief as a city and as a nation. His selfless act brought meaning and dignity in the face of the incomprehensible destruction of that day. His actions and those of his beloved firefighters, as well as the police and emergency service workers, gave us something to be proud of at one of our darkest moments."
And of Fr Mychal himself I said: "There is a rush to canonize Mychal these days and I think it is a mistake. In making saints out of people, we often shove them away from our experience and place them on a pedestal. He was a very human, flawed, complex person just like the rest of us. His real legacy to each one of us is that such is the stuff of greatness. Our limits are largely self-imposed. Our willingness to say yes, more than no, to the events and people that make up our day teaches us the life lesson of putting others first. It is a freeing and joyful way to live."
Ten years have gone by since that terrible day. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 comes with mixed feelings. If you lived in New York City at the time of this tragedy, deep emotions are still attached to the event. The overwhelming sense of loss and destruction lingered long after the collapse of the towers. There is an uneasy feeling when picking through the carnage of the past and a reluctance to remember again those sad days. But time moves on.
On the footprint of the North Tower now a new building is rising, and the World Trade Center memorial is complete. But the years between have brought two intractable wars, the continuing loss of life and treasure, vastly increased security measures and the uneasy estimate of the lives lost for the Iraq and Afghan people. No one can guess how long our military presence will remain in the region. No one has yet to discover the language that can begin to heal the cultural and ethnic divisions that have seemed to only grow worse.
But life does go on. We will never forget the courage, the kindness and the deep-felt bond that held us together as a people during those first months. It is with the eye of history that we need now to consider the wisdom of the courses we have chosen since 9/11 and the impact they have left on our world. We cannot remake the past but we can all help fashion the future. I am reminded of a simple prayer attributed to Fr Mychal:
Lord, take me where you want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what you want me to say,
And keep me out of your way.
Fr John Felice OFM was provincial minister of the Franciscan Friars' Holy Name Province, which serves primarily the eastern coast of the United States, from 1996 to 2005. He is currently director of St Francis Friends of the Poor in New York City, which he co-founded in 1980 to provide housing for the mentally ill.
By Susan Casslan | August 20, 2011 at 12:14 PM EDT | No Comments
The 1% Problem
By Eugene McMullan
When we think of social problems, we tend to think of problematic individuals. Homelessness, for example, is the problem of the homeless individual. Solutions also focus on the individual. The "socially conscious" individual exercises the privilege of sharing a usually quite insignificant percentage of his or her resources with "the less fortunate."
Solutions billed as social often hinge on "changing hearts and minds" and patterns of individual behavior. When enough of these are changed, it is presumed, social reform will follow. But is that how it works? What if the social is by definition unresponsive, or responds to collective shifts in "consciousness" in partial, misleading and irrelevant ways? It is true that the falsehoods of homophobia are abhorrent, for example, but what if the effort to dispel one set of lies serves to imbue or mask a larger set?
The Black civil rights movement did not demand first and foremost a change of hearts and minds, I would argue. It demanded moral outrage, yes; a sense of the unfairness of the status quo, yes. But it did not prioritize ridding millions of Americans of their racist assumptions and attitudes. It prioritized concrete reforms. Many of the white legislators and politicians who supported those reforms, and even the more idealistic whites who went to the South to register voters or march with King, remained—however indefensibly—racist.
A few weeks ago Lt. Dan Choi spoke up regarding the Senate committee hearing on the Respect for Marriage act, pointing out that all of the witnesses were, or appeared to be, white and privileged. There were also no bi-national couples represented. I watched the webcast live, and had a similar reaction. I also noticed that the speakers kept talking about taxation, inheritance, home ownership, and providing for children. I felt for their personal struggles, yet few of their examples were particularly relevant for my partner and me, as we are not yet in a position to consider buying a house or supporting children. For so many of us, the dream of what often counts as a middle-class class life remains just that—a dream.
Individual-oriented approaches abound, and they are almost always misleading and inadequate. Taken together they reinforce the sense that something—however changeable and elusive—is wrong with individuals. Maybe on an unconscious level society (the ruling class) recognizes in the disease of individuals, the "dis-ease" of the many who are so uncharitably dominated by the powerful few.
Eugene McMullen is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and the lead organizer for Catholics for Marriage Equality in California.
By Susan Casslan | August 01, 2011 at 06:43 PM EDT | No Comments
In his new book, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, Simon Baron-Cohen takes a logical look at issues that have long been primarily placed in the hands of religion. The author asks: Does empathy (or lack thereof) have a biological origin? And if so, is it possible to measure and/or alter the level of empathy in humans?
As a professor of psychopathology at Cambridge, Baron-Cohen suggests that genetics and brain circuitry can strongly influence whether individuals possess disorders such as autism, Asperger’s disease or narcissism. All of these diagnoses are associated with reduced levels of empathy.
With some people, zero empathy can manifest in destructive (but not always dangerous) ways. I’m thinking of some of the very high functioning individuals we might encounter at work – people who do their jobs well but have no social skills. These people might figure into the autistic spectrum of disorders, and are what Baron-Cohen calls "zero positive." In other words, their behavior might be annoying or misunderstood, but they themselves are not intentionally cruel.
Baron-Cohen labels sociopaths (including serial murderers) as "zero negative." They have no empathy and they are dangerous. In fact, some even take pleasure in cruelty (hurting others may actually stimulate pleasure centers in their brains).
The author does not use science to explain all degrees of human empathy. He also cites cultural influences and psychological causes such as child abuse. In fact, he claims that the levels of human empathy may be decreasing in the world (perhaps due to a global deterioration in moral values – or because of what so many people must do now to simply survive).
Baron-Cohen contends that levels of empathy form a bell curve. Most people lie in the middle. They have average quotients of empathy (women tend to score higher than men, and economically depressed individuals score lower than those who have money). The outliers on this scale include the zero-negative and zero-positive contingents: psychopaths, narcissists and those who possess autistic traits. Other outliers are people with excess empathy: saints or heroic do-gooders.
The writer claims that the vast majority of people adapt to reality by lowering their empathy quotient. Having too much empathy might be too painful. One could suffer too much around the pain of others, and it could also set us up to be victimized or abused.
Baron-Cohen’s book also left me wondering… how do any of his theories intersect with theology? After much thought, I believe that there is an intersection.
For one thing, Baron-Cohen’s ideas take the sting out of the eternal question: Why do some people behave in evil ways? They behave that way because they lack empathy. I am less likely to curse at someone when they cut me off on the freeway – if I realize that this is just what these kinds of people do. Likewise, if a clerk or co-worker is rude, it is helpful to know that their behavior is more about them, than personally about me. With this perspective, even Jesus was right when he said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." They really don’t.
Baron-Cohen does not propose that levels of empathy are static. On the contrary, they fluctuate with states of mind and life experiences. For example, when intoxicated of physically ill, someone might have less empathy. And we might also gain empathy with age, maturity or after experiencing physical or emotional pain (which would make a person more aware of the pain of others).
If we could measure empathy or identify individuals who lack empathy, we might be able to help these people or prevent them from doing harm. And if we could teach empathy, we might make the world more empathetic. This is not rocket science. Jesus taught empathy and so did so many other spiritual leaders. Parents teach empathy to children. On our jobs or in other realms of our lives, we all have the opportunity to create more humane environments and thus spread or teach caring.
Baron-Cohen’s theories do not preclude religion. In fact, he describes a situation where these two disciplines, religion and science can easily work hand in hand.
By Susan Casslan | July 06, 2011 at 01:43 PM EDT | No Comments
I'm a little slow on the uptake as far as films are concerned. I rarely go to theaters anymore. Too expensive and I don't like hearing ads for Coca Cola or joining the army. So I've grown very fond of Netflix.
In sifting through its titles last night, I stumbled up on a gem from 2007 - Save Me, directed by Robert Cary and written by Craig Chester (story) and Robert Desiderio (screenplay). It's about this gay guy, Mark, who is addicted to alcohol, cocaine and sex. He bottoms out and his family sticks him in a recovery/half-way house to "straighten" him out – (clean and sober-wise and also in terms of his sexuality).
Mark's pissed at first, but really has nowhere else to go. So he goes into alcohol and drug withdrawal, and then emerges remarkably bonded with the people who support him through this difficult process. As the weeks wear on, he finds himself emotionally connected with his housemates and with the couple who runs the recovery center. Ted (Stephen Lang) and his wife Gayle, (phenomenally played by Judith Light) are anti-gay born-again Christian types - but they're also very caring people. They are sincerely devoted to the "boys" they are trying to save. As Mark cleans up, the film beautifully conveys the kind of metamorphous a person goes through in early sobriety. Mark has the kind of intense spiritual awakening that so many addicts grab hold of when they first abandon alcohol and drugs. Mark's recovery and his newfound love of Jesus are real. He reads the Bible in church and lovingly reunites with the family that had him committed.
All of this seems rosy, but as part of this journey, Mark also needs to deny his sexuality and turn straight. That's when things get complicated. Especially when Mark falls for another guy in the halfway house (Scott, played by Robert Grant). And we also find that Gayle has a secret. She once had a son who was gay and the boy OD'd on drugs when he was 17. Not exactly a suicide – but an untoward death that could have been prevented. Gayle suffers from buried grief and guilt and she hopes to redeem herself by rescuing other gays from what she perceives as a deadly lifestyle. She especially sees her son in Mark, and this relationship opens up a Pandora’s box that begins to topple Gayle’s rock solid demeanor and unquestioning Christian belief system.
I'm not sure how I missed this movie when it first came out; or how the film itself missed out on some of the praise and recognition that it truly deserves. The acting, especially by the film’s lead, Chad Allen is extraordinary, and the story itself was extremely thought provoking.
Especially interesting was the lack of "black and whiteness" between those in the story who view homosexuality as natural and healthy and the Christians who try to condemn it. Cary demonstrates that the differences between these groups may not be as polarized as we might perceive. There may be more potential for connection between these people than we realize.
Perhaps. And if not, Save Me is still worth seeing, if only for the questions that it lays on the table.
By Susan Casslan | June 30, 2011 at 04:01 PM EDT | No Comments
I wasn’t going to the Dyke March this year. I had grown so weary of it. Especially tired of the big party atmosphere with too much booze and the mindless littering of Delores Park. A march that has held practically zero political content or any creative ways to bring these throngs of people together in any meaningful dialogue. To me, it’s always seemed like just one big giant party.
My girlfriend calls me uptight. She says the march is a celebration and an open expression of peoples’ sexuality. What’s wrong with that? I don’t know. Maybe it’s my Catholic and/or reserved Midwestern background that holds me back from really getting into it.
Still, last Saturday as I saw a lot of these lesbians filtering out of the Delores Street neighborhood, and into other areas of the city, I was struck with a sense of kinship and pride. There really is something pretty cool about lesbians. These brave women who don’t give a damn what society thinks. They’ve given up the privilege and protection of living with men to venture out and define their own fate… and they have somehow transgressed one of the greatest taboos – to dare to love other women in such a misogynistic world.
So I suddenly felt like heading down to the march. I got into the spirit. And when I arrived, I was stunned. The event had immensely changed. For one thing, it was bigger. The crowds not only filled the entire south side of the park, they had also filled all areas north toward Mission High School and then onto the west end of the tennis courts toward the Castro.
The demographics had changed too. The revelers were no longer only (mostly dykey looking) women. They were now people of all persuasions and a lot of men. They were predominantly young, and they conveyed an aura of people who were freely just being themselves. Whatever that happened to be.
I witnessed no homophobia or sexism from the men. The ones I saw just seemed to be there to support the women, and join in the fun. If this is the face of a new generation, I was highly pleased. I mean, isn’t that the goal of any liberation movement, that people should live in peace and openly be who they are?
So I was surprised when I read a lesbian online discussion board after the march. It appeared that the men’s presence on the march had stirred up some controversy. A lot of women didn’t like it. I could understand where they were coming from. I might have held their position in my earlier years. Perhaps during my 30’s when I went through a sort of feminist awakening. But those kinds of perspectives don’t work for me anymore. Those kinds of divisions. And this idea that we can control people or put them into categories.
The spiritual teacher Maryanne Williamson has some thoughts on categories. She says that when we stereotype people or try to pigeonhole them, it’s like dumping a puzzle onto the floor and then trying to find meaning in a single piece. It doesn’t work.
So if the younger generation is blurring the lines between us – the lines between gay, straight, male, female, black, white, whatever…. more power to them. I’m happy if this is the direction we’re heading.
By Susan Casslan | June 13, 2011 at 01:53 PM EDT | No Comments
This week I went to my favorite Catholic church, Most Holy Redeemer (MHR) in the Castro. There I heard Father Stephen Meriwether give a beautiful presentation on gay pride. As we are well into June and San Francisco's pride celebration is next week, the talk was very appropos...
Meriwether began by talking about the word pride itself. He said that in religious circles, it was given a bad rap – as in the pride of the seven deadly sins, or "pride commeth a before a fall." But he also said that pride is a good thing, and that as human beings we have much to be proud of.
For example, he told us, we have a lot to be proud of as Catholics. The church has had and still has many flaws. But it also has done good things in the way of serving the poor, building schools and hospitals, and in helping create community. We too as humans have flaws, he said, but we are also "God’s handiwork" and his or her "gift to the world. "
"People are very diverse," he continued. We are one nation, one people – but we often speak different languages and are of different races and ethnicities. We also have different sexual orientations. This is a good thing. It is not something to be frightened of, for diversity enriches society.
"It is better to be than not to be," said Meriwether, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas. "Your being is a gift of God. At our core we are a reflection of that divine being. Not a perfect reflection, yet even though we may be flawed; we don’t lose the goodness, love and care of God."
"We’re not perfect," he repeated, "but that doesn’t mean we should skulk around because we’re ashamed of our failings. No. We have weaknesses, but we still get on with life."
In regards to the gay pride parade, Meriwether said that a lot of people who condemn it (including church authorities) have probably not watched it very closely in recent years. The parade has had some blatant displays of sexuality, but these days the parade is mostly composed of "families with small children, main line sponsors and every politician who can find a convertible."
By and large, he claimed, the parade consists of people who say "We are who we are. We have faults and failings, but we’re proud of being people and being part of society." He noted that most people at pride don’t go there with some religious reflection. But for some of us, our life and all we do is an expression of our faith. And we live, breathe, communicate, socialize and are part of the world. So it’s good for people to celebrate their being. Their existence.
After Meriwether spoke, he engaged us in a lively discussion. And as I listened to members of the audience speak. I was drawn even deeper than I had previously been, into the heart and soul of this parish. These LGBTQs had so many thoughtful and insightful things to share.
One of the topics they brought up was how difficult it was to be a Catholic in the Castro. A lot of gays don’t understand why any queer would want to belong to a Catholic church; and many Catholics criticize the church that these queers belong to. MHR had been viscously attacked by other Catholics both in the press and on the web, and as the pastor of this parish; Meriwether especially had been the target of hostility.
A lot of these attacks occurred after one particular incident. In October of 2007, two members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence*showed up at mass in their costumes. They then went up to receive communion from the visiting bishop. Bishop Niederauer initially said that the sisters had approached him respectfully, and he made a prudent decision to offer them the host. He later recanted this, and apologized for the act. He proclaimed publically that to give the sisters communion had been a mistake.
The story flew like wildfire all over the country and served to whip up hysteria and homophobia. One person who really fanned the flames was Bill O’Reilly on his Fox TV News program.
It wasn’t clear what the sisters’ intentions were on that day. I heard one rumor that they wore their costumes because they’d been at the Castro Street Fair that morning. And they wanted to also go to mass and didn’t have time to change. Whether or not that was true, they were quite respectful during the service, and the organization that they belonged to is involved in a lot of charitable work. In fact, other Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have protested when they’ve been accused of mockingly imitating nuns. "We’re not imitating sisters," they’ve said. "We are sisters."
In fact, one of my friends told me that he had considered joining the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, but then realized it would be too much work. He didn’t have time for it. "They work very hard," he said. "Their organization does a lot of good, and the sisters have to prove that they’re worthy of being part of that community."
Other people at mass at day, many of the members of the MHR congregation, barely batted an eye when they saw the sisters. To them, the site of a couple of guys in drag in the Castro was no big deal. And several of the parishioners did what they always do with newcomers at mass. They did what any true Christian would do. They welcomed the sisters and invited them downstairs after mass for coffee.
*The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is an order of mostly men dressed like nuns. (They call themselves an order of queer nuns). According to their website, the Sisters devote themselves to "community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment." They also believe that all people have a right to express their unique joy and beauty and they use "humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit."
By Susan Casslan | May 16, 2011 at 01:49 PM EDT | No Comments
Aging alone: Older lesbians, gays have higher rates of chronic disease, mental distress, isolation
By Gwendolyn Driscoll UCLA Center for Health Policy Research March 29, 2011
Members of California's aging lesbian, gay and bisexual population are more likely to suffer from certain chronic conditions, even as they wrestle with the challenges of living alone in far higher numbers than the heterosexual population, according to a new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
Half of all gay and bisexual adult men in California between the ages of 50 and 70 are living alone, compared with 13.4 percent of heterosexual men in the same age group. And although older California lesbians and bisexual women are more likely to live with a partner or a family member than their male counterparts, more than one in four live alone, compared with one in five heterosexual women.
A lack of immediate family support may impact aging LGB adults' ability to confront statistically higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, poor mental health, physical disability and self-assessed fair or poor health, compared with demographically similar aging heterosexual adults.
The study, which draws upon three cycles of data from the biennial California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), underscores the importance of considering these unique needs and chronic health conditions in providing health care and social services to the estimated 170,000 self-identified aging LGB adults in California — a population that will double in size over the next 20 years.
"Many aging LGBT Californians do not have biological children or strong family support," said Steven P. Wallace, the lead researcher on the project.
"Organizations that serve these communities need to take this into account and consider outreach and support mechanisms that enable these individuals to maintain their independence and ability to age safely and in good health."
The policy brief, The Health of Aging Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Adults in California, includes the first data published on aging LGB adults based on a large statewide population. And among a population whose health needs are too often associated only with HIV and AIDS, the study offers the first insights about broader health conditions and trends.
Among the findings:
Gay and bisexual men have more chronic conditions Gay and bisexual men experience higher rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, psychological distress, physical disability and poor self-rated health than their heterosexual counterparts.
Aging LGBs suffer greater psychological distress
Aging LGBs report symptoms of psychological distress significantly higher than their heterosexual counterparts (1.45 times higher for gay and bisexual men and 1.35 times higher for LGB women).
Even more affluent, educated LGBs may be uninsured Only one in five aging LGBs is low-income, and 35 percent are highly educated (compared with 16.6 percent of the heterosexual population), yet aging LGBs have a statistically similar rate of being uninsured (8.1 percent versus 10.6 percent of heterosexuals).
Since chronic and life-threatening health conditions appear increasingly in individuals' early 50s, the authors studied the health of LGBs between the ages of 50 and 70 as a "first look" at the likely health profile of this coming generation of LGB elderly.
And the report's authors recommend that service providers prepare for this generation, both by providing services and resources that target LGBs and by increasing cultural competency and sensitivity among health care providers.
"Access may be equal, but we know that quality of care for LGBs often isn't," said Susan Cochran, a co-author of the study and a professor of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health. "Attitudes are changing, but we still have to continue to push to eliminate discrimination and increase understanding of the rich and diverse life experiences of these individuals to improve the quality of the care they receive."
By Susan Casslan | May 02, 2011 at 01:10 PM EDT | No Comments
Too many questions on the morning after the announcement that Bin Laden has been killed. I will leave it to writer David Sirota to offer some of his thoughts:
“USA! USA!” Is The Wrong Response
By David Sirota from UP, as appeared in Salon.com, May 2, 2011
There is ample reason to feel relief that Osama bin Laden is no longer a threat to the world, and I say that not just because I was among the many congressional staffers told to flee the U.S. Capitol on 9/11. I say that because he was clearly an evil person who celebrated violence against all who he deemed "enemies" -- and the world needs less of such zealotry, not more.
However, somber relief was not the dominant emotion presented to America when bin Laden’s death was announced. Instead, the Washington press corps -- helped by a wild-eyed throng outside the White House -- insisted that unbridled euphoria is the appropriate response. And in this we see bin Laden’s more enduring victory -- a victory that will unfortunately last far beyond his passing.
For decades, we have held in contempt those who actively celebrate death. When we’ve seen video footage of foreigners cheering terrorist attacks against America, we have ignored their insistence that they are celebrating merely because we have occupied their nations and killed their people. Instead, we have been rightly disgusted -- not only because they are lauding the death of our innocents, but because, more fundamentally, they are celebrating death itself. That latter part had been anathema to a nation built on the presumption that life is an "unalienable right."
But in the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys. Indeed, an America that once carefully refrained from flaunting gruesome pictures of our victims for fear of engaging in ugly death euphoria now ogles pictures of Uday and Qusay’s corpses, rejoices over images of Saddam Hussein’s hanging and throws a party at news that bin Laden was shot in the head.
This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory -- he has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history -- the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed.
Again, this isn’t in any way to equate Americans who cheer on bin Laden’s death with, say, those who cheered after 9/11. Bin Laden was a mass murderer who had punishment coming to him, while the 9/11 victims were innocent civilians whose deaths are an unspeakable tragedy. Likewise, this isn’t to say hat we should feel nothing at bin Laden’s neutralization, or that the announcement last night isn't cause for any positive feeling at all -- it most certainly is.
But it is to say that our reaction to the news last night should be the kind often exhibited by victims’ families at a perpetrator’s lethal injection -- a reaction typically marked by both muted relief but also by sadness over the fact that the perpetrators’ innocent victims are gone forever, the fact that the perpetrator's death cannot change the past, and the fact that our world continues to produce such monstrous perpetrators in the first place.
When we lose the sadness part -- when all we do is happily scream "USA! USA! USA!” at news of yet more killing in a now unending back-and-forth war -- it’s a sign we may be inadvertently letting the monsters win.
• David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More: David Sirota
By Susan Casslan | April 12, 2011 at 12:34 PM EDT | No Comments
Tammy Baldwin, Democratic Congresswoman from Wisconsin, is the first non-incumbant openly gay person to serve in congress. She has been there since 1999 and has recently taken on an important battle to try and expose election fraud.
The following statement by Andrew Beckett appeared on Wisconsin Radio today:
Baldwin Calls for Federal Investigation in Waukesha by Andrew Beckett on April 12, 2011
The Waukesha County Clerk last Thursday announced 14,000 votes from the City of Brookfield went uncounted in the race for Supreme Court, nearly two days after the election. Wisconsin Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is asking the U.S. Attorney General to investigate how and why that happened.
Baldwin says an objective review of the error is needed in order to assure the public that Wisconsin elections are fair, accurate, and transparent.
Officials with the Government Accountability Board are already carrying out a review of the voting results and the error. However, Baldwin says the redundancy of a federal investigation would be welcome.
Baldwin says “sunlight is the greatest disinfectant” and more impartial observers would serve the state well. She says the move is needed to restore voter confidence.
Several liberal advocacy groups have also called for a federal investigation in Waukesha County. The clerk has maintained the numbers were left out by mistake, due to a database entry error.
By Susan Casslan | March 29, 2011 at 01:59 PM EDT | No Comments
Before he died, Dominic Dunne admitted publically that he was "bisexual." To those of with even the most minimal gay-dar, this was no revelation. I always figured the guy was queer, but until I saw the 2008 documentary Dominic Dunne - After the Party, I had never given much further thought to this man. However, after renting the DVD, I suddenly discovered a modern day hero. And Dunne embodies so many of the unsung qualities that we as gay individuals fail to see in ourselves.
Dunne was effeminate as a child, a quality his father, a successful heart surgeon, despised. The father so berated Dunne for being a "sissy" that even in his old age, Dunne still carried scars from the abuse. "It's awful to hurt a child," he tells us in the film. "It's a terrible thing."
Such a sissy was an unlikely hero in World War II, but Dunne managed to win a Bronze Star for bravery during The Battle of the Bulge. This was one of the many twists and turns in a life that a gay person is not supposed to have. But Dunne shows us, that despite stereotypes and labels, human beings can be complex and their paths can lead them to unexpected places.
Dunne's life lead him to a heterosexual marriage where he deeply loved a woman knew the joys and heartaches of fatherhood. Two of his children died in infancy and his one daughter was murdered.
Dunne's career as a movie producer paralleled his maniacal obsession with celebrity and gossip. Such an obsession might have appeared shallow on the surface, but I feel it reflects a deeper trait in so many gay men. Gossip is a way to delve deeply into the subtleties and weaknesses of human nature. And who better to explore this in than the rich and famous? These are people we envy or put up on pedestals. Gossip and innuendo bring them back down to earth.
I realize this on the rare occasions I pick up a People or Us magazine. This is usually at the hairdressers where there is no shortage of this type of reading. I catch up on what JLO or Mel Gibson or Jennifer Aniston are up to. And as I read I think, "This stuff is really the only journalistic truth that's out there." I mean, we can't find truth in our morning newspapers or the evening news. No wonder people find refuge in the Ellen Show or Entertainment Tonight. At least hearing about how some star got busted for drugs or is screwing somebody else's wife is information we can trust. Hillary Clinton discussing the Middle East or Fox News talking about illegal immigration certainly isn't.
So that became Dominic Dunne's professional niche - the trials and tribulations of the rich and famous.
From a spiritual point of view, Dune shines in this movie. He not only digs up celebrity dirt (a high form of truth-seeking), he is unabashedly honest about his own life. "I used to be an asshole," he tells us simply and he probably was. He was also an alcoholic, smuggled pot over the Mexican border, and he admits shooting up cocaine with an individual, who on that same occasion, actually died of an overdose. Dunne doesn't hold back. He speaks as a man who has nothing to lose. And when you hear of his losses, you realize that this is probably the case.
Dominique, Dunne's daughter, was strangled in 1982 by an ex boyfriend. By then Dunne had bottomed out on drugs and alcohol and had lost all his money. He was living alone in an isolated, one room cabin in Oregon. Just when he thought he could lose nothing else, his daughter died and then his world truly seem to end.
By then in his 50's, and perhaps as an act of redemption, Dunne began to write. A chance meeting with editor Tina Brown, led him to write about the trial of his daughter's murderer for Vanity Fair. Prior to that trail, Dunne had never set foot in a courtroom. He was devastated by the injustice he witnessed, especially when his daughter's killer walked away with only a two year sentence.
Dunne spent the rest of his life exposing other alleged killers of women such as OJ Simpson, Claus von Bülow and Phil Spector. They were celebrities and worthy of selling books and magazines, but probable killers just the same. Dunne was garnering money and attention, but he was still on a lonely crusade to convict these men, if only in his books or the press.
Dunne is elderly and grey in the film, but still snooping around places like the Spector mansion. He doesn't quit until bladder cancer finally slays him at the age of 82.
The only thing Dunne isn't honest about in this movie is his own sexuality. He never mentions it. He revealed his bisexuality, mostly in his last book Too Much Money, a semi-autobiographical novel which was released posthumously. Dunne wrote in his book: I just don't talk about it (homosexuality). It's been a lifelong problem." His son Griffin claimed that it was just like his Dad to "finally come out and then leave."
Dominick Dunne may seem like a B-level writer. He's also accused of having a skewed and uneducated take on the legal process. But this film shows a man whose brutal honesty about himself eclipses other criticisms. He's also been to hell and back and he emerges with an extraordinary tale to tell. This documentary is worth watching, and Dominick Dunne should have come out a long time ago. He had much to be proud of and we should be proud to call him one of our own.
By Susan Casslan | March 24, 2011 at 02:32 PM EDT | No Comments
As we approach the 31st anniversary of Oscar Romero's death, this article about Obama's recent visit to El Salvador is worth reading:
Barack Obama, Oscar Romero and Structural Sin By Greg Grandin | March 23, 2011, The Nation
In El Salvador, on the last leg of his Latin American tour, President Barack Obama paid a highly symbolic visit to the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero, shot through the heart as he raised the Eucharist chalice during a mass, in March 1980. His assassination was ordered by Salvadoran military officer Roberto D’Aubuisson [1], a School of the America’s graduate.
As El Faro [2]—an important online source of independent Central American news—put it, Obama’s homage to Romero is a “truly extraordinary” gesture, since D’Aubuisson not only ran private-sector financed death squads but was a founder of ARENA, an ultraconservative political party that until 2009 had governed the country for two decades and enjoyed excellent relations with Washington.
Today, El Salvador is led by President Mauricio Funes, head of a center-left coalition government that includes the FMLN, the insurgent group turned political party Ronald Reagan wasted billions of dollars and over 70,000 lives trying to defeat in the 1980s. By lighting a candle for Romero, Obama, it might be said, was tacitly doing in El Salvador what he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—do in Chile: apologize for US actions that resulted in horrific human tragedy.
Obama in San Salvador focused on trade and immigration and celebrated Central America’s transition away from the civil wars of the 1980s and early 1990s. But hope, in reality, is in short supply; it would be difficult to exaggerate the crisis that today engulfs Central America, one that might very well turn out to be as bad as the 1980s.
Squeezed by Plan Colombia to the south and Mexico’s disastrous War on Drugs to the north, Central American violence has skyrocketed. Whole regions in Honduras and Guatemala are either overrun by narcos, or militarized by security forces, themselves deeply involved in criminal activity, including drugs, illegal logging, car theft and kidnapping. The explosion of biofuels production and the intensification of mining (particularly gold mining) has created an ecological disaster and generated widespread social dislocation. Protesting peasants, especially in Honduras and Guatemala, have been checked by a revived planter-death squad alliance, though now “death squads” generally go under the euphemism “private security.” An increasing number activists are turning up dead. In February, the bullet-ridden bodies of four Q’eqchi’ Mayan community leaders—Catalina Muca Maas, Alberto Coc Cal, Amilcar Choc and Sebastian Xuc Coc [3]—were found in a river.
Just last week, as the Canadian human rights group Rights Action reported [4], over the course of three days—March 15–17—hundreds of police officers, soldiers and private security forces entered fourteen Mayan communities in the municipality of Panzós shooting live ammo and firing tear gas in an effort to displace peasants to make way for African palm and sugar plantations. Peasants futilely begged soldiers to allow them to harvest some of their crops. At least one person was killed, many wounded, others arrested, and thousands are now living in makeshift shelters on the side of the road. The plantations are capitalized by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, as part of the larger multilateral lending that supports the production of biofuels [5], to be sold in the United States. This social catastrophe is just one of the more recent expressions of the counter-insurgent neoliberal “security corridor,” running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico, I’ve written about here [6].
In his memoir, Obama says [7] he came to political awareness in the 1980s, opposing what he called Ronald Reagan’s “minions.” If so, he no doubt had some exposure to the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, or CISPES, perhaps the most prominent of the organizations that worked to fight Reagan’s Central American policies. CISPES still exists, and it is still doing great work.
Most recently, timed to coincide with Obama’s trip to El Salvador, CISPES has launched [8] a campaign opposing the Canadian-based gold mining corporation, Pacific Rim, which under the terms of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is suing El Salvador for $77 million. That figure corresponds to the profits Pacific Rim expected to earn had the Salvadoran government not revoked its operating permit (in response to an impressive, cross-class protest movement made up of environmentalists, progressive religious folk and peasants concerned with the high level of heavy metal contamination of water and soil and rocketing infant morality rates that resulted from similar mining operations).
That’s right, under CAFTA’s Chapter 10, private companies can sue countries for projected future profits lost as a result of national laws or regulations. But you might ask how a Canadian corporation can sue under the terms of CAFTA, since Canada isn’t a party to the treaty. Simple: Pacific Rim purchased in 2007 a Reno, Nevada, shell company to act as front. Forget that bugaboo of the jingoist right, so-called “anchor babies.” What we have here are “anchor corporations,” foreign businesses that get a toehold in the United States to secure their right to plunder. The suit will be arbitrated by the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, a shadowy appendage of the World Bank (more than half of the suits launched by corporations in the ICSID are against Latin American countries, and to give a sense how CAFTA has locked Central America into the neoliberal “security corridor,” Brazil has never joined the ICSID, Bolivia and Ecuador have withdrawn from its jurisdiction, and Venezuelan has announced its intention to pull out. Nicaragua, too, has threatened to withdraw, but it is unclear it can do so under the terms of CAFTA). As CISPES puts it, “As a candidate Obama promised to remove the rights of corporations to sue governments from trade agreements—it’s time he takes action.”
We can only hope that Obama finds inspiration in Oscar Romero’s life: Romero, after all, started his public career as a cautious moderate who believed he could quietly work with El Salvador’s ruling class to coax needed reform. The reality of Salvadoran society forced his conversion into an outspoken, confrontational leader who directly attacked those who perpetuated what he called “structural sin:” “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed,” Romero wrote [9] before his murder, “it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.” If Romero was alive today, he would recognize CAFTA’s Chapter 10, along with the broader, disastrous policies Washington is pursuing in the Mexico-Central America-Colombia security corridor, as prime examples of “structural sin.”
By Susan Casslan | March 22, 2011 at 10:05 PM EDT | No Comments
It was with great joy that I returned to Wisconsin this week, the state of my birth. Joy and pride is what I felt in this 5th week of the protests against Scott Walkers war on labor. I drove down to Madison for the March 19th demonstrations, a day that was unseasonably sunny and warm.
I felt grateful for the weather, and humbled to realize that freezing cold and snow did not deter Wisconsinites during the previous weekend. On March 12, over 100,000 protesters showed up for a march that was sponsored by farmers. The farmers had declared their solidarity with union workers against Walker’s latest dastardly deed - the allegedly illegal move to erase collective bargaining.
This past week’s was called by The Iraq Veterans for Peace. And as the farmers had done before them, these young veterans asked the crowd to connect the dots: knowing that what hurts unions affects us all. The veterans have seen the devastation of war and know exactly what it costs. They also know very well that these wars are being paid for by our tax dollars – money that is increasingly being stripped away from public services.
I was glad to see the unions reach out to other sectors in this movement. When welfare reform hit mothers (not union workers, but workers just the same) in the Clinton era, the unions were silent. I have also not heard unions speak out too loudly about the plight of homeless or gays or illegal imigrants. But now things are changing and unions are discovering that this is a fight they cannot wage alone. And the rest of us are realizing that we need labor and its (diminishing) money and power and ability to cause such a public fuss. That is exactly why Walker wants to get rid of unions. Because they are one of the few remaining opponents of the corporate greed that have some political clout.
Better late than never is what I say about some of these union workers. I’m even willing to forget that many of them voted for Scott Walker in the first place. I am from rural Wisconsin and used to going home and finding NRA signs in windows and Bush/Cheney in 2000 or 2004 bumper stickers on cars. Now these signs have been replaced with Solidarity with Labor posters and Anti Walker declarations on small town front lawns. Even in a remotely located Wall-mart, I was accosted by solicitors trying to get me to sign recall lists.
“I wish I could,” I told them, “but I’m from out of state.
And now I divert, but not too far. What has any of this have to do with LGBTs? Well, for one thing, I have hope that Middle America is walking up. And maybe we won’t be used as a wedge issue anymore.
“Vote Republican and vote for family values!” That’s what we’ve been hearing for what seems like forever. And either a pro or anti-gay marriage measure on any ballot has been like gold for the right. Such initiatives have been magnets to drag people to the polls. God, gays and guns. Nothing has worked better to get evil politicians into office than exploiting peoples’ prejudices and fears.
But now, with this thing in Wisconsin, a new world is being born. Working people are getting wise. “Wait a minute,” they’re saying. “The Republicans have their paws in my pocket. Now they’re knocking on my back door.”
People are like Dorothy, the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. At that moment when Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals a scrawny and balding old man.
“Is THIS the Wizard?” They wonder.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” He declares.
But they are paying attention and they don’t like what they see. “What do you mean we’re supposed to hate gays? What do you mean we’re supposed to fear Planned Parenthood?”
“We think we’d rather pay attention to the fact that you just pilfered our collective bargaining rights.”
I have no idea where all this will lead, but I have a mustard seed of hope. And as one of those gays who fled Middle America in search of a more tolerant place to live, it was a joy this week to come home. And I felt that whoever we were or whatever we looked like, we were marching together.
By Susan Casslan | February 19, 2011 at 08:13 PM EST | No Comments
Protesters continue to swarm into Wisconsin's state capitol and refuse to be bullied by big money and corrupt legislatures. All these people are asking is that the government not take away collective bargaining. The workers have conceded on everything else.
Governor Walker insists that the state is in the red, but it wasn’t before he took office. It had a surplus. According to Rachel Maddow, this surplus existed until Walker gave away $140 million in big business tax breaks. Now the governor wants to deprive nurses, teachers and so many other service workers one of the only tools they own – the ability to collective bargain.
Unions are falling like dominoes all over the country and for the most part, the other side seems to be winning. But what unbelievable courage we’re seeing in Wisconsin (and of course Egypt and Tunisia and everywhere else people are standing up and saying that they’ve had enough).
On Thursday, 77% of the nurses at Stanford University Medical Center voted to approve a strike. If the nurses didn’t vote, it was a “no,” so 89% of the nurses who voted said, "yes, let’s walk out if we have to.” They said this knowing that this won’t be a short and easy strike. They said this even though many are the sole breadwinners in their families and jobs right now are hard to find. No workers vote like that if management is being fair. And Stanford, by their own admission, made over $140 million in profits last year.
So what happens when caregivers say no? Rush Limbaugh, who makes $50 million a year just called the Wisconsin protesters “freeloaders.” And a lot of people are saying that any nurse who walks out on his or her job is committing a grave and unconscionable act.
By Susan Casslan | February 01, 2011 at 12:51 PM EST | No Comments
The following article appeared on January 29 in the New York Times
Remembering David Kato, a Gay Ugandan and a Marked Man By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — It was late at night and totally dark when I first met David Kato. He had been described to me as “the most out” gay Ugandan and the country’s leading gay rights crusader, reviled by many, revered by a small few — but definitely well known. So I was a bit surprised when he suggested that we conduct our interview in an empty lot behind a disco, down a dark gravel road.
“I’m really sorry about this,” he said to me, sitting just a few feet away but barely visible. “This is Uganda, after all.”
At the time, December 2009, Uganda’s Parliament was considering whether gay people should be executed. A Ugandan politician had crafted legislation, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, after a visit from American evangelicals who advocated a program to “cure” homosexuality. The evangelicals later disavowed any intent to inspire the bill.
In fact, as soon as it was put forward, many human rights groups were forecasting what would happen next. They said that just the notion of the government’s seriously considering the death penalty for gay people would spur lynch mobs and spell open season on Uganda’s gays.
Last October, a Ugandan newspaper published a diatribe against homosexuals with Mr. Kato’s picture, and another, on the front page under the words: “Hang Them.” On Wednesday, he was attacked in his home during the day and beaten to death with a hammer. The police called it a robbery. Mr. Kato’s friends were emphatic: He was killed because he was gay.
However the investigation turns out, Mr. Kato felt certain that he had placed himself at terrible risk. That’s why we met in a vacant lot. That night he told me about his life — how he had gone to Uganda’s best schools, had become a teacher and had lived for several years in South Africa, one of the most progressive countries on the continent.
So I asked him the obvious.
Why come back to Uganda?
“We are few people who are out here,” he said. “Me, I’m a professional teacher, I went to nice schools. My role is to fight and liberate.”
He was a small man with thick glasses and thin wrists. He said police officers had broken his arm and cracked him in the nose after he held Uganda’s first gay rights news conference several years ago. He talked fast, constantly scanning the darkness. He struck me as clearly brave and deeply frightened.
Uganda, which Winston Churchill famously called the “pearl of Africa,” doesn’t feel like an especially intolerant place. Most people here seem free to say what they want, even regarding President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power 25 years straight.
But beneath the mild surface is an intensely strong current of religion. And in March 2009, the American evangelicals came to Uganda to discuss what they called “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda,” and to assert that gay men often sodomized teenage boys.
Many Ugandans have told me that gay people, historically, had been tolerated in their villages. Perhaps they were looked at a little differently, but they were not viewed as a threat. But now, that had changed.
The Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who attended the antigay meetings, said the Americans had underestimated the homophobia. “They didn’t know that when you speak about destroying the family to Africans, the response is a genocide,” he said. “The moment you speak about the family, you speak about the tribe, you speak about the future. Africans will fight to the death. When you speak like that, you invite the wrath.”
Don Schmierer, one of the evangelicals who visited in 2009, called Mr. Kato’s death “horrible” and said, “Naturally, I don’t want anyone killed, but I don’t feel I had anything to do with that.” He added, “I don’t spread hate.”
On Friday, Mr. Kato was buried in his home village. Several hundred attended, including a priest who told the mourners to repent. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill is still being discussed and may become law this year.
By Susan Casslan | January 18, 2011 at 02:09 PM EST | No Comments
John Ross, the remarkable writer and activist died this week in Mexico. I actually met him once and had an interesting interaction. I had just gone to a protest after the election of George W. Bush for his second term in 2004. People in San Francisco were needless to say, quite upset. Somebody even started a bonfire at the intersection of Mission and 24th Street. Several nonviolent resisters were arrested. I was walking away from the protest, feeling very depressed and like most San Franciscans, I suspected that the election had again been rigged. A raggedy looking older guy with long hair ended up walking beside me and we shared aloud our dismal moods.
After we were talking for a while, I suddenly noted, "Hey, are you John Ross?!"
"Yeah," he replied, still walking.
"I really like your work! I've read several of your books."
He said nothing.
"Say," I continued. "What do you think about all this? Is there any hope for this country?"
"No," he decided to say after contemplating my question.
"Yeah," I had to agree. I mentioned how the news media had become such a propoganda machine under Bush.
"You really can't expect much more out of it," he told me. "The news has always only been some filler to stick inbetween the commercials. But I don't think about all of that. I exist in another reality. I'm a Sandanista."
I wasn't real clear on what he meant. I may never be. Here is an obituary on him that appeared yesterday in Counterpunch. He will be sadly missed.
January 17, 2011 All the Right EnemiesFarewell to the Utterly Unique John Ross By FRANK BARDACKE
John’s gone. John Ross. I doubt that we will ever see anyone remotely like him again.
The bare bones, as he would say, are remarkable enough. Born to show business Communists in New York City in 1938, he had minded Billie Holliday’s dog, sold dope to Dizzy Gillespie, and vigiled at the hour of the Rosenberg execution, all before he was sixteen years old. An aspiring beat poet, driven by D.H. Lawrence’s images of Mexico, he arrived at the Tarascan highlands of Michoacan at the age of twenty, returning to the U.S. six years later in 1964, there to be thrown in the Federal Penitentiary at San Pedro, for refusing induction into the army.
Back on the streets of San Francisco eighteen months later, he joined the Progressive Labor Movement, then a combination of old ex-CPers fleeing the debased party and young poets and artists looking for revolutionary action. For a few years he called the hip, crazy, Latino 24th and Mission his “bio-region,” as he ran from the San Francisco police and threw dead rats at slumlords during street rallies of the once powerful Mission Coalition.
When the not so ex-Stalinists drove him and others out of P.L. (“break the poets’ pencils” was the slogan of the purge) he moved up north to Arcata where he became an early defender of the forest and the self-described town clown and poet in residence. From there it was Tangier and the Maghreb, the Basque country, anti-nuke rallies in Ireland, and then back to San Francisco, where he finally found his calling as a journalist. “Investigative poet” was the title he preferred, and in 1984, he was dispatched by Pacific News Service to Latin America, where he walked with the Sendero Luminoso, broke bread with the Tupac Amaru, and hung out with cadres of the M-19.
In 1985, after the earthquake, he moved into the Hotel Isabela in the Centro Historico of Mexico City, where for the next 25 years he wrote the very best accounts in English (no one is even a close second) of the tumultuous adventures of Mexican politics.
During the Mexican years, he managed to write nine books in English, a couple more in Spanish, and a batch of poetry chapbooks, all the while he was often on the road, taking a bus to the scene of a peasant rebellion or visiting San Francisco or becoming a human shield in Baghdad, or protecting a Palestinian olive harvest from marauding Israeli settlers.
He died this morning, a victim of liver cancer, at the age of 73, just where he wanted to, in the village of Tepizo, Michoacan, in the care of his dear friends, Kevin and Arminda.
That’s the outline of the story. Then there was John. Even in his seventies, a tall imposing figure with a narrow face, a scruffy goatee and mustache, a Che T-shirt covered by a Mexican vest, a Palestinian battle scarf thrown around his neck, bags of misery and compassion under his eyes, offset by his wonderful toothless smile and the cackling laugh that punctuated his comical riffs on the miserable state of the universe.
He was among the last of the beats, master of the poetic rant, committed to the exemplary public act, always on the side of the poor and defeated. His tormentors defined him. A sadistic prison dentist pulled six of his teeth. The San Francisco Tac Squad twice bludgeoned his head, ruining one eye and damaging the other. The guards of Mexico’s vain, poet-potentate Octavio Paz beat him to the ground in a Mexico City airport, and continued to kick him while he was down. Israeli settlers pummeled him with clubs until he bled, and wrecked his back forever.
He had his prickly side. He hated pretense, pomposity and unchecked power wherever he found it. Losing was important to him. Whatever is the dictionary opposite of an opportunist—that’s what John was. He never got along with an editor, and made it a matter of principle to bite the hand that fed him. It got so bad, he left so few bridges unburnt, that in order to read his wonderful weekly dispatches in the pre-internet years, I had to subscribe to an obscure newsletter, a compilation of Latin American news, and then send more money to get the editors to send along John’s column. [John had a relationship lasting many years with CounterPunch, publishing hundreds of dispatches, with only trifling hiccups with the editors. AC/JSC.]
He had his sweet side, too. He was intensely loyal to his friends, generous with all he had, proud of his children, grateful for Elizabeth’s support and collaboration, and wonderful, warm company at an evening meal. When my son, Ted, arrived in Mexico in 1990, John helped him get a job, find a place to live, introduced him around, and became his Sunday companion and confidant, as they huddled in front of John’s 11-inch TV watching the weekly broadcasts of NBA games.
He was a great, true sports fan, especially of basketball. One of the last times I saw him was at a friend’s house in San Francisco, in between radiation treatments, watching a Warriors game on a big screen TV, smoking what he still called the “killer weed.” Joe and I listened to him recount NY Knicks history, the origin of the jump shot, and Kareem’s last game, which somehow led to a long complaint about kidneys for sale in Mexico that had been harvested in China out of the still warm body of some poor, rural immigrant who had been legally executed for jaywalking in Beijing.
The very last time I had the pleasure of his company was at breakfast in Los Angeles when Ted and I saw him off on his last book tour, promoting El Monstruo, his loving history of Mexico City. He was in great form. His cancer was in remission—a “cancer resister,” he called himself—and he entertained us with a preview of his trip: long, tiresome Greyhound rides, uncomfortable couches, talks to tiny groups of the marginalized, the last defenders of lost causes without the money to buy his books. It would be a losing proposition, like so many of his others, all of which secure his place among the angels.
Frank Bardacke taught at Watsonville Adult School, California’s Central Coast, for 25 years. His history of the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez, Trampled in the Vintage, is forthcoming from Verso. He can be reached at bardacke@sbcglobal
By Susan Casslan | January 17, 2011 at 12:23 AM EST | No Comments
Next month is another scheduled "Day of Dialogue" at San Damiano Retreat Center in Danville. (1-5 pm on Sunday, Feb. 13 at 710 Highland Drive, Danville, Ca). This is where LGBTs and their families and friends gather and spend the afternoon in open communication. Richard, who has lead these groups for years, calls them "Talking Circles" in the spirit of the Native Americans which he knows so well. Mostly we talk about what it's like to reconcile our sexuality with our spirituality, but there's no telling where these discussions will lead. All are welcome and there is no cost.
I have grown very fond of San Damiano over the years and have attended many retreats there. Was thinking today of a retreat by David Richo that I went to in 2009. It was called Spirituality in Relationships.
Richo proposed that the really horrendous events we might face in life, such as the sudden death of a loved one, are probably never dealt with. We just confront these tragedies in small pieces, a little bit at a time for the rest of our lives. Remembering them becomes like the repeated practice of the Mass, which revisits the crucifixion. And it is these harsh realities that often connect us with God or our higher power.
The serenity prayer clearly illustrates this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” In meditative practice we are present with what is. Richo said that bad things don’t happen so that we will have the opportunity to grow. Bad things simply happen, and then we personally have to decide what to do with these experiences. Do we become stronger? Do we become more compassionate? These events are like the various ingredients that make bread. Yeast, flour, salt, water. Taken alone, any of these elements are not that nourishing. But combined, they are wholesome and good. Likewise, we may find meaning with the combined experiences of reality, our belief in a higher power, and our daily interactions with one another.
By Susan Casslan | January 08, 2011 at 01:41 PM EST | No Comments
On January 6, a Francis D. Vardamis from Carmel wrote to the San Francisco Chronicle. He complained about the removal of Captain Owen Honors from his post at the USS Enterprise. Honors was recently fired following the expose a of some crude videos he made which degraded gays and women.
Vardamis comments “The personnel (watching these videos) were going to war. How dare the prudes in this country begrudge them a chuckle?” Vardamis blew the videos off as just “salty sailor tales.” “The videos are off color, but so what?”
Perhaps Vardamis should tell this to the mother of Seaman Allen R. Schindler. In 1993, while in the Navy, Schindler was beaten to death by some homophobic sailors. Or perhaps Vardamis doesn’t realize that by some statistics, 4 out of 10 women in the military are sexually harassed or assaulted. As long as our leaders don’t speak out against these abuses then they will continue to occur. I applaud the Navy’s action around Honors and maybe with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it is a prelude of policies to come.
As far as Vardamis is concerned, I doubt that he is a member of any oppressed minority.
By Susan Casslan | December 30, 2010 at 02:00 AM EST | No Comments
One great proponent of the gay community is Michael Kimmel. A sociologist at State University of New York, Kimmel has written extensively about men end gender. He has done serious research into the roots of bullying of gay kids, and he also sees homophobia as one of the basic props of sexism. He feels that if homophobia were dismantled, sexism would fall apart. This is not unlike the reasoning of Suzanne Pharr (1988), in her classic work Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism. In this book Pharr tries to imagine a world without homophobia and comes up with these and other images:
• People will be able to love anyone no matter what sex. • Affection will be opened up between women and men, women and women, men and men, and it won’t be centered on sex. • If affection is opened up, then isolation will be broken down for all of us, especially for those who generally experience little physical affection, such as single or old people. • There will be less violence if men did not feel they have to prove and assert their manhood.
Kimmel (2008) refers often to what he calls “The Guy Code.” He feels that from early on, boys and men learn this code of behavior which includes such things as “Boys don’t cry, nice guys finish last, and he who has the most toys when he dies wins.” Under these guidelines, kindness or compassion are not an option.
Kimmel doesn’t suggest that all or even most men believe in the logic of the Guy Code. But that doesn’t mean that they are not psychologically hampered or silenced by it. Kimmel does contend that more than anything, men worry about what other men think.
Kimmel (1994) quotes psychiatrists Willard Gaylin who cites that men commit suicide three times more often than women and it is usually due to social humiliation. Galylin writes “Men become depressed because of loss of status and power in the world of men. It is not the loss of money, or the advantages that money can buy… It is the ‘shame,’ the ‘humiliation,’ the sense of personal ‘failure’... A man despairs when he has ceased being a man among men” (p. 105).
Kimmel (PBS, n.d.) goes on to claim that one of the biggest fears men have is to be considered gay. This is because being homosexual means being weak or a passive receptor. This is much of what fuels homophobia. Another cause of homophobia according to Kimmel is the fact that homosexuality inverts the gender order. One of the most common questions that straight people ask gay couples is “Who is the guy and who is the girl?” With a straight couple the gender inequality is clear. Men have more power in society (although this doesn’t always translate to more power for individual men). Knowing that this power exists in the culture offers comfort to men, whether or not they personally feel powerful.
In gay relationships, this power imbalance is neutralized. Some men may view this as a threat to what they have been raised to see as their own entitlement. It’s very similar to what happens to white men when they see minorities or women breaking through the glass ceiling.
Kimmel notes a growing acceptance of gay people in society, but he also sees a tremendous backlash. In times of dramatic change, many will cling to the rock of what feels familiar. Anti-gay backlash often reveals itself through religious fundamentalism, anti-gay jokes, hate crimes or hate speech on right wing radio. Kimmel definitely sees it in the behavior of boys and young men when they bully.
Kimmel (1994) goes on to say that feminism has made some serious mistakes when it comes to understanding men. Feminism is based on the premise that women have less power, that the power imbalance in society needs to be changed and that women need to learn to empower themselves. This is all correct according to Kimmel, but men often don’t buy these precepts because so many of them don’t feel powerful. They’re slaving away at brutal jobs or they feel under the thumb of their wives or the financial needs of their kids.
Kimmel uses the analogy of a chauffeur driving a car. If you see a man as a chauffeur, it appears that he’s in control. He’s driving. But in reality, he works for somebody else. But through social conditioning, men, especially white men, learn throughout their lives that they are entitled to power - that they are better than women, gays, and people of color. So when they see any of these people get something that the men feel is rightfully theirs, the men get angry. They feel cheated. Kimmel gives the example of a man calling into a radio program complaining that “A black woman took my job.” Kimmel remarks that a more realistic comment would be, “A black woman took a job.”
Kimmel believes that this is one problem with young white men these days. Many parents and teachers complain that boys are not keeping up with girls. They’re falling behind in school and in their careers and much has been written about this phenomenon. Some experts blame schools. They claim that boys are being “feminized” by women teachers. Schools aren’t set up for the rambunctiousness of boys (this accepted belief that boys will be boys). Kimmel has another argument. He feels that since boys learn from society that they are entitled and superior, then they don’t have to do the grunt work that so many women and minorities accept as part of what it takes to not only succeed, but survive.
So many of these boys also have unrealistic expectations of themselves and their futures. Kimmel writes that they feel they’re going to be rich have some incredible career, but they refuse to do any of the leg work involved in sometimes simply leaving their parents’ homes.
These men’s sense of entitlement is even more preposterous in the face of today’s economy. Nobody can find jobs lately, so men’s disappointment with reality vs. their ideals has the potential to make them even angrier. Often this anger is directed at women, minorities or gays.
Getting back to the chauffeur analogy... Kimmel (1994) suggests that if the chauffer looked in the rearview mirror, he would really see who is running the show. It would be men or another man. Because ultimately, systemically, its men who have power over all of us. There are women in positions of power, but realistically, if you look at any state legislature, most CEOs or corporate boards or board of trustees, the majority of those people are white men.
But instead of really seeing where power and often oppression comes from, many individual men assert their power by practicing “the politics of exclusion.” This, Kimmel claims is “... The manhood of racism, of sexism, of homophobia... that is so deeply frightened of equality that it must ensure that the playing field of male competition remains stacked against all newcomers of the game...
“Exclusion and escape have been the dominant methods American men used to keep their fears of humiliation at bay,” Kimmel states, but “Neither exclusion or escape has ever brought us the relief we sought... Peace of mind, relief from gender struggle will come only from the politics of inclusion, not exclusion, from standing for equality and justice and not running away” (p.108-109).
References:
Kimmel, M. (1994) Masculinity as homophobia in E. Disch’s (Ed) Reconstructing Gender: A Multicultural Anthology. Retrieved December 29, 2010 from http://www.neiu.edu/~circill/F7587Z.pdf
Kimmel, M. (2008). Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. New York: HarperCollins.
By Susan Casslan | December 28, 2010 at 07:28 PM EST | No Comments
Wayne Muller is a therapist and an ordained minister. He’s worked with AIDS patients and with a relief organization called Bread for the Journey. In his audio book The Spiritual Gifts of a Painful Childhood, he talks about the names that Indians give their children, such as the color of the sky or the way a bird flies or an animal walks. With such names, if a person becomes frightened, lost or confused, they can easily remember who they are.
Muller claims that therapists often give people diagnoses such as “adult child of alcoholic.” Those aren’t names, they’re labels. And how small such labels must make people feel in the spiritual course of thier evolution.
I've been thinking about the labels of gay, lesbian or transgender. In so many ways, they do not describe who we are. And they have the potential to separate us from everything else that we’re a part of. On the other hand, maybe being nadle, (the Navajo name for an LGBT person), is sacred within itself. Maybe we are just another color of the sky.
Who we are, Muller says, is something that will not break. Yet when we face trials or sorrow, we have the opportunity to be broken down or broken open. That is why sometimes such tremendous peace comes to people who are about to die. “They remember who they are and feel the sanctuary of their own nature.”
According to Jesus, we will have tribulation. This is in line with the Buddhist noble truth that life is suffering. But Muller notes that the words “Be not afraid” are written over 300 times in the New Testament. And he emphasizes that these words were written by men who were being chased, arrested and crucified. He then quotes Gandhi who said “When we are afraid we lose our spirit.” Because we look outside of ourselves to control the world, and then we lose touch with who we are.
We must have faith, Muller states, but faith (or faithing) in the gospels, especially in the gospel of Mark is often written as a verb. To “faithe” is to walk as if the kingdom of God inside of you.
Muller, W. (1994). The Spiritual Gifts of a Painful Childhood. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.
By Susan Casslan | December 23, 2010 at 11:30 PM EST | No Comments
Christmas in the Barrio
This is the package we open today The low grey sky Damp and cold Lines around the block Wait at bakeries And for masa
In steamy apartment kitchens Above traffic Women chop onions, cilantro, garlic Fathers and uncles Toss children in the air
We blow all the money That we argued over two weeks ago We smile and say “Feliz Navidad” To the maintenance man The one we’ve grumbled Was the landlord’s spy
These are the families we’ve gathered Out of circumstance, love and necessity We go to them now For abrazos And laughter
From the book 24th Street and Other Poems by Susan Casslan
By Susan Casslan | December 13, 2010 at 03:08 PM EST | No Comments
Richard sleeps a lot. When he is awake, he is very alert, and immediately asks us how we are doing, always mentioning specific details about our lives.
He'll ask me about my family or about recent problems I'm having at work. He'll listen patiently and then after a while, frequently drift off into sleep - his snores echoing into the next room and down the hallway.
I told Richard about the book I’ve been reading, The Mist Filled Path: Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers and Seekers by Frank MacEowen. According to MacEowen, the ancient Celts believed that the world is upheld and sustained by a single melody called the Oran Mór. MacEowen encourages us to seek the Oran Mór in our lives or what he also refers to as “The Great Music.”
MacEowen writes that most indigenous or religious traditions have a creation story. These myths provide an “anchoring point of identity” and an explanation of how we and the world came to be. The Celts however, have no such story. MacEowen believes that this is because creation to the Celtic people is a living story. “...a story that wants for each of us to remember it. In other words, no matter how much we look, we will not find a story outside ourselves. We have all been woven into this story. We are the story and it continues to unfold” (p. 132).
One way this tale emanates is through the Oran Mór or the "Great Song" which vibrates “...through all of life, from the microcosmic level of electrons, atoms and cells to the giant swath of whole galaxies in the nautilus shell and hurricanes in-between” (p. 138).
MacEowen proposes that the Oran Mór is understood by all mystical, spiritual and religious traditions and it is accessed through chanting, drumming and singing. He also says that we can find this music in the cries of a bird, in our own heart beats and in the gurgling of a stream. So too does this song occur in the rising and setting of the sun and moon, as well as in the rhythm of the sea tides and waves. He urges us to look for it everywhere.
So often, as I sit quietly by his bedside, I have found the Oran Mór in Richard’s snores.
MacEowen also writes about the "mist" and how much of our spiritual journey is about moving into a mist of "not knowing."
"Maybe you're moving into the mist," I suggested to Richard, referring to his frequent lapses into slumber.
By Susan Casslan | December 11, 2010 at 09:52 PM EST | No Comments
On Thursday, the Senate voted to maintain Don’t Ask Don’t Tell by a narrow margin. Perhaps even bigger news however, is the recent stream of support for gays in military from such unlikely sources. Everyone – military leaders and even Republicans are lining up to applaud the acceptance of LGBTs in uniform. These are the same people who have viciously attacked this idea for decades. Shows you what two wars and declining recruitment levels can do.
I have never stressed out too much around Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Perhaps part of me appreciated the fact that it was one excuse for gays not to have to go to war. I do however feel sorry though for the service men and women whose careers have been ruined by this discriminatory policy. I also surmise that if gays were accepted in the military, it would go a long way in acceptance of them everywhere. But the whole idea of the military and the military industrial complex ultimately leaves little to celebrate no matter what happens.
If people really want to get rid of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I think one thing should occur. Every service member who doesn’t wants to be deployed, or wants to get out of the military, needs to immediately pretend that he or she is gay. It’s a no brainer and a win-win situation. Those wise souls would get to go home and eventually the law would change. Because if recruitment is dwindling now – imagine what this action would do to troop levels.
But the above scenario won’t happen. Or at least it hasn’t happened as far as my own research has proven. (If someone else has found otherwise, please let me know). I haven’t heard of one straight service person, at least in our two recent wars, who has pretended to be gay in order to get out. I guess it’s too shameful. Much better to be shot at or lose a limb.
What else is new this week? Amber Yust, a San Francisco transgender woman was contacted by a DMV employee by mail and told that she was going to hell. Man, does she have a lawsuit on her hands. This was a major violation of her privacy and it must have been pretty distressing, but at the same time... go Amber! Sue the bastards! Perhaps it’s great that this has happened as it shows just how ludicrous homophobia can be. And one of the biggest government bureaucracies has sure been caught with its pants down. It will be so sweet to see a transgender woman get some of those DMV fees that we’ve all been endlessly gouged for over the years.
By Susan Casslan | December 04, 2010 at 03:19 PM EST | No Comments
I was talking to a gay friend of mine who visited his family over the Thanksgiving. His sister said something to him and although on the surface, his sister's words might have seemed well meaning, my friend had a serious emotional reaction. He became very angry and depressed and his story reminded me of Deborah Tannen's (2001) book, I Only Say this Because I Love You: How the Way We Talk Can Make or Break Family Relationships Throughout Our Lives.
According to Tannen, when talking to family, words can become an emotional minefield. Dialogue has many dimensions; first of all the words themselves, which if taken verbatim, can be entirely benign. But because of our long shared history, what we say to our family members can have hidden meanings that can be interpreted or misinterpreted in a multitude of ways.
For LGBTs, this minefield is especially treacherous. This is because so many of us, especially in relationship to family, have felt like exiles. In his book The Mist Filled Path: Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers, and Seekers, poet and shamanist Frank MacEowen (2002) claims that family in a Celtic sense, should be a "warm hearth and downy nest." Unfortunately, families can also be the "fiercest of blades that slash the peace of our souls."
When not accepted for who one is, MacEowen describes a condition known as "soul loss." MacEowen writes that soul loss occurs when we are exiled "... from the flowing awareness of peace that is our birth right. Our lives are meant to be steeped in peace, yet when we are living within a state of soul loss, our destined enfoldment toward a life of peace is postponed until we are whole again. We feel 'beside ourselves' until we have reintegrated after a harsh experience or trauma. This is as true for whole groups that have survived trauma as it is for individuals" (p. 5).
Because the Christmas holidays are often so much about family, LGBTs feelings of exile at this time can be especially acute. We may be estranged from family get-togethers, or if we attend, may feel safe to talk openly about our lives or to bring our partners.
One friend told me, "My family seems basically accepting. They have never openly rejected me or made homophobic comments in my presence. But what really gets to me during family gatherings is the silence. They don't ask me about my life because they feel uncomfortable with the topic or perhaps they don't want to pry. But it really makes me feel that they don't care as they are never seem interested in what I'm doing. They don't ask me about my relationships or any of the other things that they ask of my siblings."
John R. Ballew, a licensed counselor in the Atlanta area, has some tips on how gay people can cope with the holidays:
"Stop and take a breath. First, know that if you’ve got the blues, you’ve also got lots of company. Feeling melancholy during the holidays doesn’t make you some sort of freak, even if everyone else looks happy and …gay. One of the things that make the holiday blues more painful is feeling like you shouldn’t feel that way! This doesn’t mean seasonal stress is something insignificant. Far from it. Here are some suggestions:
*****
Manage your expectations. Decide for yourself what’s important and set priorities for yourself. Pace yourself. Do the holidays have spiritual meaning for you? Celebrate that, not trite holiday glitz.
*****
Don’t try to shop yourself happy. Overspending yourself into debt is like having a hangover that lasts for months. Making a budget and sticking to it is giving yourself a present!
*****
Practice good mental hygiene. Nostalgia is fine up to a point, but this is no time to dwell on past disappointments. Practice cultivating a grateful heart. Focus on what you have, not what you don’t have. Look for ways to help out someone who is less fortunate – serving meals at a soup kitchen or visiting a nursing home, for example.
*****
Watch your diet, sleep and exercise patterns. Watch the carbs. Don’t skip your exercise routine; exercise helps you stay emotionally resilient. And don’t drink too much. Drinking and party drugs can deplete your brain’s supply of serotonin, making you more vulnerable to depression.
*****
Be with people. Touch base with friends you’ve not heard from in a while. Spend time with people who care about you. If you know others who will be by themselves, consider having a potluck dinner together.
*****
Be alone and love it. What would pampering yourself look like? You might catch up on your reading. Schedule a massage or a day for yourself at a spa. If it would make you happy, you can decorate the hell out of your house or apartment even if no one else will see it!
*****
Set boundaries with your family. Many of us love our families, but for others the trip to the ancestral home is a test of our sanity. Assert yourself. Don’t let others make demands on you if compliance will lead you to feel resentful. If you find yourself feeling attacked or disrespected, remember that you’re a grown-up now. No one can make you feel small without your cooperation. Don’t give in.
*****
One of the joys of life as a gay human being is that we get to be creative in how we design and structure our lives.
*****
We don’t let others impose their expectations on us during the rest of the year – why should we let it happen during this season?
*****
Be imaginative, take great care of yourself, and celebrate the gift of life."
Wisdom well taken. Personally, I'd like the skip the holidays altogether. In fact, I told my partner, who is Jewish, "Let's follow the Jewish tradition and order Chinese food and go to a movie." She thought that might be a good idea.
By Susan Casslan | November 25, 2010 at 03:41 PM EST | No Comments
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the DVD release of The Kids are Alright, this purportedly five star film about a lesbian couple with kids. The duo includes Annette Benning as Nic and Julianne Moore as Jules (neither actress is a lesbian in real life). They have a boy and a girl with a sperm donor named Paul, who is played by Mark Ruffalo. Paul unexpectedly surfaces when the children are teenagers. His presence disrupts and changes some of the dynamics in a family (which as in most families) could use some disrupting.
The film’s director, Lisa Cholodenko, deserves significant praise for her previous works; Laurel Canyon and High Art. Thus, when she took on the task of making a mainstream production about lesbian women (Cholodenko is gay herself), I expected more out of her.
What’s wrong with this movie? A lot. First, there is absolutely no believable connection between Jules and Nic. They look like two straight actresses pretending to be lesbians, and what is more, their characters are downright cartoonish. In the script, Nic is flawed in that she is uptight and controlling. But she supposedly has some redeeming qualities that both Jules and her children love. The audience is not let in on the redeeming qualities. It’s impossible to even like her.
Likewise for Jules. She’s a space case who ends up sleeping with Paul midst the dissatisfaction of her marriage. Could something like this happen? Yeah, I guess, but it’s a bit of a stretch if you’re trying to portray a solid lesbian couple that’s been together for decades.
Another stretch is the fact that Jules and Nic watch gay male porn. I know of no lesbian in her right mind who would get off on two gay guys going at it. It’s one thing that Jules is so enthralled with Paul’s penis (which would be wierd for most lesbians I've met), but I’m not sure what planet Cholodenko was coming from when she shot this porn watching segment.
The only believable characters are the two kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutchenson) and Paul himself. Mark Ruffalo is gorgeous in this part and so lovable that one can’t understand why Jules and the children don’t just don’t dump Nic and move in with him.
Paul is the kind of heterosexual man who I’m sure exists, but is definitely rare. He so rare in fact, that this is probably why so many lesbians prefer women. He is sensitive and thoughtful, states “I love lesbians,” and even listens to Joni Mitchell. In one scene, he actually sings “Blue” with Nic at the dinner table. This scene is so excruciatingly embarassing, that I had to grab the remote control and fast forward.
What is really painful about this film, at least from this gay person’s perspective, is that it gives such an unflattering illustration of lesbian life. Cholodenko claims that she wasn’t making any social statement in The Kids are Alright. She said it was simply a story (a comedy) about people and their nutty relationships.
But if somebody has the resources to create one of the first mainstream and widely viewed images of a lesbian family, how could you not see this as some form of social responsibility? Are there lesbians as messed up a Nic and Jules? Yeah, sure. Lesbians are people and all people have problems. Our families are not models of perfection, but a lot of recent studies reveal that children raised by two women are doing extraordinarily well. Cholodenko may have been trying to say this with the movie’s title and ending, but in other ways, she constantly undermines this message. The kids need a Dad, the movie seems to say, and Paul is the perfect image of what that Dad would be.
Cholodenko also takes the stance that lesbian families are, (as A.O. Scott describes in the New York Times) “an established social fact.” Unfortunately, in most places, we are not. Nic and Jules live in a white picket world where they own a nice Volvo and house and Nic works as a doctor. Yes, there are some lesbian doctors and many other lesbians make big bucks; but in truth, most of us are struggling. Statistically, women make less money than men and when you tack on the social stigma and isolation that comes with two women together, you’re not going to see a lot of us breezing through Jule’s and Nic’s reality.
Even Paul, who is supposed to be a big slacker, has a great pad and a beautiful organic restaurant. Chokodenka is not alone among directors when she loses me these days. When I see a movie, I want it to be a genuine replication of life, and life for so many Americans right now, is not rosy. People can’t pay mortgages or put food on the table, and it’s the stories of these real people I would prefer to listen to.
The movie ends as Jules and Nik drive their daughter off to her first year at college. It’s a beautiful campus and Joni is definitely a privileged lass. She will be well taken care of and probably not far from home, and yet the entire family desperately weeps as they all say goodbye. Give me a break.
So... most people know little about lesbians and their families, and now they know even less. I feel like I’ve been waiting for forever for a decent movie that captures who we are in a respectful and authentic manner. I guess I’ll have to keep waiting.
By Susan Casslan | November 22, 2010 at 06:03 PM EST | No Comments
Brother Kelly Cullen, a member of Richard's province and a frequent visitor at Marty's Place, died suddenly last week while visiting Rome. To those who knew and loved him, this is a great shock and loss. The following obituary appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday:
Brother Kelly Cullen, a Franciscan monk who used his "tour de force" and "activist rock star" nature to turn a Tenderloin nonprofit into one of the city's largest developers of low-cost housing, died unexpectedly on Nov. 13. He was 57.
A Washington native who came to the Tenderloin in 1979, Brother Kelly was nearing the end of a pilgrimage to Rome when fellow travelers reported him missing Nov. 12. His body was found a day before he was due back in the United States. Authorities have not yet determined the cause of his death.
Brother Kelly was known among the rich and poor for helping the needy in the Tenderloin. When he became executive director of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. in 1993, the nonprofit was a financial disaster.
Though Brother Kelly didn't have experience as an administrator, he turned things around, said Randy Shaw, 54, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.
"In this neighborhood, we have a lot of people that lead very difficult lives, and we need people to come with a spark," Shaw said. "Kelly brought a spark."
When Brother Kelly took charge, the nonprofit oversaw about 575 units of low-cost housing. In 2005, when he stepped down from the position, the nonprofit had 1,600 units. It now has 2,500 units, said Donald Falk, who succeeded Brother Kelly as executive director.
"Kelly created the infrastructure," Falk said. "The people who have come after him, like me, we're just carrying out the vision that he put into place."
Even after leaving San Francisco to serve as director of the Mission San Luis Rey Retreat Center in Oceanside, Brother Kelly continued to take an active role in fundraising.
"He was extremely effective, with a very uplifting activism that magnetized both the glitterati and those who are down and out, the poor, to want to hang out with Brother Kelly Cullen," said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who knew him for 20 years.
Apart from being a believer in the Tenderloin, Brother Kelly pumped passion into his efforts to raise money. He embraced the idea of an annual celebrity pool toss at the famed Phoenix Hotel in 1992. The event, which raised more than $200,000 in October, has drawn people from Mayor Gavin Newsom to comedian Robin Williams to get dunked for charity.
"He was also a believer that a fundraiser for a nonprofit should be a 'funraiser' - forget the 'd' in the middle - and that's what it became," said Chip Conley, the hotel's owner.
Brother Kelly received his bachelor's degree in business from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1975 and a master of divinity degree from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley in 1982.
He began his ministry with the Tenderloin in the early 1980s, but the stress of transforming the neighborhood took a toll. He confessed the weekend before he left for Italy that stress was the reason he became involved with drugs, said Kit Cullen, his 77-year-old cousin.
"He wanted more energy, so he thought he would get it if he took methamphetamine," Kit Cullen said. "Consequently, he became addicted to dugs himself. Ironic, it really is."
Charlotte Siggins, a friend of 30 years, said Brother Kelly visited her in early October before the pool toss and told her he planned to make a trip to Africa next year.
"It's hard for me to believe that he's not here; it's very, very sad," Siggins said. "However, I know that Kelly would say to us that he's in a better place."
Vigil services will be held at 7 p.m. next Sunday at the Serra Center of Mission San Luis Rey Parish, 4070 Mission Ave., Oceanside. A funeral Mass will be said the next day at 10 a.m., with interment to follow immediately in the friars' crypt.
A San Francisco memorial will be held at 3 p.m. Dec. 3 at St. Boniface Church, 133 Golden Gate Ave.
By Susan Casslan | November 14, 2010 at 06:26 PM EST | No Comments
Since proceeds from the Premiere of Out: The Glenn Burke Story were going to Marty's Place, and Richard appeared in the film, the caregivers at Marty's Place arrived at the Castro Theater in full force.
The movie was sold out and the theater was filled with an odd combination of gays, professional athletes, slick broadcasting personnel from Comcast, and a sizable African American contingent connected with Glenn Burke’s family. Among the gays, there was this collection of old timers - men who had survived the AIDS epidemic, knew Burke and lived to tell his tale.
It was as if in uncovering Burke’s story, the producers of the film had lifted up a rock and this odd mix of all types of characters crawled out. These people who had lived through such an incredible time, but had never been allowed to voice what they had witnessed. They had especially never talked with each other. And yet here we all were together beneath the ornate and massive ceiling of this beautiful place.
The movie itself was great, but I’ll leave it to the reviewers to say how and why. When Richard appeared on the screen, there was jubilant applause. So many in the audience recognized him. And I couldn’t help but believe that his presence cast some spell over the Castro that evening. Before and after the movie, people were so talkative and friendly and coming together in a magical way. Barriers had been broken down - in this case mostly between the world of professional athletes and us queers.
I didn’t really get a chance to digest the film until I was chatting about it last night with Richard, Annie (a caregiver), and my grown step-son Curtis. Richard had watched the movie on DVD at home and I’d been with Curtis and Annie in the theater.
Curtis surprised me by saying that he felt that the film had some serious shortcomings. “The story was about this talented guy,” said Curt “who got kicked out of the major leagues because he was gay. End of story. But the filmmakers brought in all this crap that wasn’t relevant. Like the fact that Burke was hanging out with gay guys after the games. So what? That’s what gay guys do. Straight players would be going off with women, so what’s the big deal?”
Richard agreed. And Richard especially didn’t care for the talk in the film about the supposed problem with having gays in a locker room. Some straight mens' tired fear that queers might be looking at them. As if it’s all about sex. “And they kept using the word ‘sexual preference’,” Richard added. “When it’s not really a preference. Preference means you’ve got a choice. It’s an orientation for chrissake.”
In the panel discussion after the film, I too was disappointed that this locker room angle again came up. It’s also used to justify keeping gays out of the military. This myth that homosexuals go into locker rooms to cruise, not to just take a shower like anybody else.
During the panel, some of the older athletes said that they didn’t expect things to readily change in sports. (For gays to be accepted). “It’s not right,” (the homophobia), one football player empathized. “But that’s the way it is.”
There was no move to break ground in this area. To take a stand. To suggest, "Maybe it’s time that things do change as they don't have to go on this way.”
Annie believed that there was definitely a progression between the older and younger athletes on the panel. The younger ones seemed more open minded and comfortable with the whole subject.
I was proud of Curt. He can be very macho and is undeniably heterosexual, yet he was raised in San Francisco by gays. He sees our relationships as more natural and healthy than even many of us do. And he was peeved that this subject wasn’t covered as respectfully as it could have been in such a ground breaking film.
I was left thinking, “Yeah, all these important people come to the Castro and make us feel like we’re special.” But we already are special. And why should we leave it to others to define who we are? All of this definitely left me with much to think about.
Supposedly the film and the panel discussion will be shown again on the Comcast Sportsnetwork this Tuesday night (November 16) at 8 pm. I'll watch it again and think about it some more.
By Susan Casslan | November 10, 2010 at 01:24 AM EST | No Comments
Marilyn Pittman is a San Francisco lesbian comedian. She has been there for so many of us in the Bay Area as we’ve made our evolution through the decades... as we followed our own coming out stories and struggles with internal and external homophobia.
Since I first heard Pittman perform, I've seen our right to marry or even exist, wax and wane through pundits, elections and various people in the White House. And through it all, Pittman has offered a tremendous gift - the ability to make us laugh. For gay people, this is serious medicine.
Richard calls comedians "shamans,” and he first learned of their holiness while living on an Indian reservation. He says that the Tohono O'odham (Papago) are especially very joyful people. “I’m not saying they’re happy all the time,” he clarifies, “and they’ve had so many tragedies… But they have this deep inner joy. A writer named Leon Bloy once said that the surest sign that the spirit is alive in a person is his or her joy. With the Indians, one of the ways that joy manifests is with their humor. It comes up in every conversation. They just love to laugh.
“That is the big dichotomy between western and native religions. The humor. From the Roman Catholic perspective, the sacred is very serious. When you pray, you’re supposed to have this long face. But the Indians will have a very sacred dance with a clown who farts.”
Richards words made me think of Pittman. I’ve always appreciated people like her - those brave LGBT’s who come out on a public level. Pittman is not only a comedian; she has a great radio program called Out in the Bay which also deals with gay issues. Even in a tolerant place like San Francisco, the program is a much needed resource and lifeline for so many.
Thus it was with shocking sadness that I learned of a tragedy in Marilyn’s personal life. In 1997 her father shot and killed her mother and then killed himself. Her parents were a pretty ordinary Middle American couple. Pillars of their community. It happened out of the blue. I just can’t imagine…
Pittman was understandably blown away, and although she continued her work, she wavered emotionally. But as Richard described, she is a shaman. A sacred clown. So eventually she needed to pick up the pieces of this horror and weave it into the other stories that made up her life.
“That’s how it is,” Richard explained. “It all flows together. The comedy, side by side with grief.” Neither is separate or alone, like nothing or no one is.
Richard proves is to us every day. He lays flat on his back, paralyzed and barely able to breathe. And he cracks jokes. Day after day he keeps us laughing. And not in a sarcastic or cynical fashion. It’s just this pure, authentic and joyful humor. He looks at the twists and turns of time and despite life's other qualities, a glint of humor sparkles throughout.
Thus it is with Marilyn Pittman. She’s performing a one woman play now called It’s all the Rage and I saw its opening in San Francisco Saturday night at the Marsh Theater. In the monologue, she tells her parents tale and how they came to die. She tells her own story too – her relationship with them and how she was emotionally shattered by the loss.
But this is not on stage therapy. This play is what great artists do. Pittman offers this conversation to us and it skillfully intersects with our own personal sorrows. She opens her soul and we say “yeah, that’s us too.” The details may be different, but nobody escapes this planet without coming face to face with the horror of our own mortality and that of those we cherish. But when we somehow touch one another with love or with these shared personal histories, healing can occur.
Laughter is part of that healing and Pittman’s monologue is loaded with it. For example, in explaining the zaniness and her family (and we all have zany families), she reveals that her brother had two kids after the murder-suicide. The brother and his wife actually contend that the children, a boy and girl, are the dead couple reincarnated.
“Yeah, right,” Pittman snidely remarks. “One murders the other and they come back as siblings?”
The title of the piece It’s All the Rage alludes to the fact that gun violence is everywhere. Unfortunately, Pittman’s parents case is not unique. And Pittman’s father fought in World War II, and this might have left him with untreated PTSD. This is especially poignant today with so many veterans returning from war, and quite a few have killed themselves and their wives or partners.
Pittman also explores marriage itself. What’s up with this institution when it can get this crazy? She doesn’t have any answers, but she definitely makes us think.
Since myy words can’t come close to describing this show, I would urge others to simply hurry out and see it. Pittman got two standing ovations on opening night, so that might give you a hint of what it’s worth.
Light family entertainment? No. But if you want to delve deeply into the human soul (and have some good laughs along the way), I recommend you head down to the Marsh.
By Susan Casslan | November 04, 2010 at 04:20 PM EDT | No Comments
The following article by yours truly just appeared in El Tecolote. It hearalds the premiere of Out: The Glenn Burke Story, which will take place on November 10 at 7:30 pm at the Castro Theatre. Read on!
A homeless shelter seemed a far cry from where Glenn Burke had once been. Lauded by some as the next Willie Mays, Burke was a professional baseball player who had helped bring the Los Angeles Dodgers to the 1977 World Series. But by the early ‘90’s, he had fallen on hard times. He was living on the streets, had AIDS and was strung out on crack. At this low point, Burke ended up in Marty’s Place, a shelter in the Inner Mission District for homeless men with HIV.
To Father Richard Purcell, the Franciscan priest who founded Marty’s Place, much of Burke’s history was not unique. Purcell had met scores of others like Burke – individuals who had battled addictions in addition to AIDS. And many of them had also confronted a third challenge – the social rejection that comes with homophobia.
Like these men, Burke was also gay, but he didn’t fit the stereotypes. He was a gifted athlete with such a powerful build that his baseball teammates had dubbed him “King Kong.” Still, Burke lived an openly gay life at a time when it was unheard of, especially among professional athletes.
“He was an extraordinary individual,” remembers Father Purcell. “Of course when I knew him, he had a drug habit which was very destructive; but I could still see his core character. He was talented as well as magnetic and articulate.”
Burke’s story is so remarkable that Comcast Sports network is releasing a new documentary on Burke’s life called “Out: The Glenn Burke Story.” The film highlights the homophobia which may have contributed to the demise of Burke’s baseball career. For example, when rumors of his sexuality surfaced, the Dodger’s management urged him to marry, offering to pay for a lavish honeymoon. Burke refused. Shortly thereafter he was traded to the Oakland A’s despite protests from his teammates. Burke claims in his autobiography Out at Home, (co-authored by Erik Sherman) that Dodgers stars Dusty Baker, Steve Garvey and Dave Lopes told the club’s management, “You’ve traded one of our best prospects.”
Burke writes that the Dodgers were worried about how the average father would feel “… taking his son to a baseball game to see a fag shagging fly balls in centerfield.”
In Oakland Burke encountered more of the same. Some of his teammates told gay jokes and wrapped towels around themselves in the locker room whenever Burke was near. The A’s manager, Billy Martin, reportedly declared that he wouldn’t allow a “faggot” to play on his team. All of this and a knee injury contributed to Burke leaving. He was scouted briefly by the Pittsburg Pirates, but they rejected him after inquiring about his “bisexuality.”
Burke died in 1995 and despite his drug addiction, ruined career, and his terrible suffering from AIDS, Father Purcell believes that Burke died with an element of peace. “He died in truth,” said Purcell. “He told the truth. He didn’t’ live a lie and I believe that the truth sets people free, regardless of other repercussions.”
Purcell himself is currently dying of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Many of the men who Purcell sheltered, thanks to modern AIDS drugs, are now caring for him in the same building where Burke once lived.
“Burke’s time in the Mission was a game changer,” says Sean Maddison, the documentary’s co-producer. “I truly believe that his stay at Marty’s Place allowed Glenn to come to terms with his life, to regain the dignity he had lost to the streets.”
As far as making the film, Maddison states, “Never before have I worked on a project so challenging and rewarding. Each interview we did shed more light… We believe this piece has taken great steps toward fully uncovering the truth of Glenn Burke’s life.
“Tracking down the interviews was an adventure in itself. Baseball people were wary of talking to us at first and his family was harder to track down than we thought. Many of his friends had unfortunately fallen victim to AIDS. Quite possibly the most valuable find was Father Purcell. Glenn’s sister mentioned him and so I ended up in the Mission at the doorway of Marty’s Place.
“Purcell’s charisma and character are powerful. His illness, Lou Gehrig’s disease, is no match for his personality. His stories of bringing Glenn in off the streets and then sending him back out when he was high were both heartbreaking and inspiring.”
Maddison was so impressed with Purcell that he arranged for all the proceeds from the film’s premier to go to Marty’s Place.
The film will open on Nov. 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Castro Theater. Video excerpts from the film can be found at http://www.csnbayarea.com/pages/out. Information on the upcoming book about Richard Purcell and Marty’s Place can be found at www.susancasslan.com.
By Susan Casslan | November 03, 2010 at 12:54 PM EDT | No Comments
The Mission District has been on fire with activity over the past days. There’s been the election, the Day of the Dead celebration, where young white hipsters march through our barrio dressed as skeletons, carrying candles, and beating on drums... and of course, the Giant’s World Series victory. Monday night, the city went nuts. People were partying in the streets into the wee hours of the morning.
This baseball hysteria was noticeably missing at Marty’s place. Except in passing conversation, few of us paid attention to the games. Perhaps this was because most of the people who hang around the house were not born in the United States. The majority of us are also gay and gay men especially may have some aversion to sports. Sports can seem too much of a macho scene –too much of what gays have had to struggle against in order to be who we are.
But on October 30, when we saw George W Bush appear in the Rangers' stands, our tune changed. We remembered that Bush had once owned the Rangers (secured through some corrupt and crafty deal), and we were reminded of the enormous cultural gap between Texas and San Francisco.
When Bush showed up on the screen in any San Francisco bar where fans were watching the game, the crowd erupted in loud boos. We at Marty’s place recalled that in San Francisco we are clinging to a fragile island. A place where gay people can openly be themselves. Suddenly, even the World Series took on new meaning. San Francisco vs. Texas. We decided to cheer for the Giants.
The election is now over. Elections can be a time of extreme stress for voters. Especially if you think you’re on the losing team. And despite Obama’s victory in 2008, for too many years it’s been an uphill battle. The struggle continues. And for gay people, the implications are especially acute.
For some reason, our presence has historically been used as an election wedge. Liberal = pro homosexual. Tea party = “go back and the closet or you’re likely to get killed.” Don’t tell me why it’s that way. I have some speculations, but for now I’ll refrain from expressing them.
It’s no fun being a scapegoat for whatever reason; so even though I voted, I’ve limited exposure to the election blabber in the media. For my own peace of mind, I turn to other distracting things. Like maybe the World Series victory parade today. I think I’ll head down to Civic Center.
Richard didn’t watch the World Series on Monday night. Instead he stared at one of his favorite programs, Dancing with the Stars. When I told him the Giants had won, and that people were celebrating in the street, he nodded thoughtfully. “That’s nice,” he commented, and he encouraged me to also go out and celebrate. “Rejoice with those who rejoice,” he said, quoting from Romans 12:15.
By Susan Casslan | October 15, 2010 at 01:40 PM EDT | No Comments
The below press release is from Comcast SportNet Bay Area. It describes a new documentary about Glenn Burke. Burke was an openly gay professional baseball player who died of AIDS in 1995 and lived for a while at Marty's Place. The film's premiere will take place on November 10 at 7:30 pm at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. All proceeds will go to Marty's Place.
“Glenn was comfortable with who he was. Baseball was not comfortable with who he was.” –Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim, Childhood Friend and Sports Agent
Glenn Burke’s journey through baseball began and ended in Oakland, California. His career had many stops including as a multi-sport star at Berkeley High School, a brief stint at the University of Nevada, Reno as a prized basketball recruit, and playing professional baseball with the Los Angeles Dodgers.” He was hailed by one of his coaches as "the next Willie Mays."
Yet throughout his career, Burke felt like he had to hide his true identity from his teammates. Out. The Glenn Burke Story, a one-hour documentary produced by Comcast SportsNet Bay Area, tells the dramatic tale of Burke’s legacy as the first openly homosexual Major League Baseball player. From his Major League debut in 1976 and starting Game One of the 1977 World Series for the Dodgers to subsequently being traded to the Oakland Athletics the next season, and then walking away in 1980 from the game that he deeply loved, Comcast SportsNet follows one of baseball’s most dramatic arcs.
Many of Burke’s teammates were aware of his homosexuality during his playing career, as were members of management. And many of those teammates believe that his sexuality – and the reaction it provoked – led to the premature derailment of his baseball career.
Out: The Glenn Burke Story tells the tumultuous story of the wedge that was driven between Burke and the Los Angeles management, the ensuing similar situation in Oakland that led to Burke’s abrupt retirement, and the hero’s welcome that Burke received in San Francisco’s Castro District after he left professional baseball.
Comcast SportsNet’s narrative follows Burke through his public announcement of his homosexuality in a 1982 Inside Sports magazine article (‘The Double Life of a Gay Dodger’) and on The Today Show with Bryant Gumbel, to his subsequent downward spiral to drugs, prison, and eventually living on the same San Francisco streets where he was once hailed as an icon.
Burke’s story took on another level of tragedy when he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994, and he spent the final months of his life ravaged by pain and grief. Yet at the end of his life, the game that he claimed abandoned him so many years before reached out to one of its own. The A’s found Burke and provided him with constant support in his final months, as did some of his former teammates.
Glenn Burke passed away on May 30, 1995 at the age of 42 of AIDS-related complications.
Out. The Glenn Burke Story documents the extent of Burke’s courage, strife and friendship throughout his life, and the compassion and callousness of the sport of baseball. The program weaves together insights from Burke’s teammates and friends and media personalities, including Dusty Baker, Davey Lopes, Reggie Smith, Rick Monday, Manny Mota, Rickey Henderson, Claudell Washington, Mike Norris, Shooty Babitt, Tito Fuentes, and former Major Leaguer and gay rights activist Billy Bean.
Out.. The Glenn Burke Story, a one-hour documentary, premieres on November 10 at 8:00 p.m. PT on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and will air commercial-free.
Out. The Glenn Burke Story online press kit and video excerpts from the documentary are available at CSNBayArea.com/pages/out.
By Susan Casslan | September 21, 2010 at 11:47 AM EDT | No Comments
A meeting was called on Sunday between Richard's caregivers and the Aurora Dawn Board. Aurora Dawn is the foundation which has helped fund Marty's Place over the past 22 years. The Board usually does not meet with the caregivers, so we knew something big was going on.
We were correct, and as many of us predicted, it had to do with money. The foundation is running out of cash and it appears that they cannot keep Richard at Marty’s Place indefinitely. Since the shelter no longer houses men with AIDS, the foundation isn’t receiving HIV funding, nor is it accessing the many donations that Richard had helped solicit while he was well.
Unless the board receives some miraculous donation, it can only continue to run Marty’s Place for another six months. If Richard is still alive in six months, he will need to be transported to a nursing home in Oakland.
The announcement didn’t come as a surprise. Most of us had wondered how Marty’s Place had survived this long without clients. We wondered this, while at the same time we knew that Marty’s Place is still serving a serious purpose. It is helping Richard die at home, and it also provides a center for the endless people who pass in and out its doors. Men with AIDS who are on fixed incomes or the paltry $60 a month that GA provides, eat at Marty’s Place. Many do their laundry there, and people are constantly receiving free counseling and spiritual direction from Richard.
Carmen Madriz, who is a social worker and a board member, made the announcement. After telling us the news, she turned the meeting over to Richard. She asked him that in the wake of these changes, how did he feel?
Richard spoke through his bi-pap and I pulled out my tape recorder. "I feel," he began, "joyful, at peace and without fear." Then he continued:
"I have always known I will be well taken care of no matter where I am. The board is wonderful and have always been. I think it’s just a perfect situation. There’s no more a person could ask for. Really. When I will croak, I don’t know. It might come sooner or later. But I have a hunch, that by the time the six months is up, I’ll be gone to La La Land. That would really be good because then I won’t have to move my shit across the bridge.
"I just think it’s a good deal. I really do. I’m so grateful to the board for their feelings and I have respect for their feelings just as they are.
"I know everyone has strong feelings about this, and I suspect they are different than my feelings. As far as the caregivers, who could ask for better guardian angels to gather round their bed day and night other than this motley crew? They are just beautiful people. And each one is so different from the other. Just exceptional people and personalities.
"I think it’s really great that you’re writing that book Susan, because it includes so many of the people who are in the room today. And people who read the book – maybe it will inspire them to be as beautiful as the ones who have surrounded me. These have been the best years of my life.
"The reason why is that the other years I was so busy. First of all as a pastor for 20 years. And it’s no fun being a pastor because you have to deal with the system. I loved the people in the reservation and I loved the work, but the burden of being a pastor was so tough. Well, I finally got rid of that. And then I got Marty’s Place started. And I had no idea what was coming. It was just – plop… it was on my back. So for another 20 years I had so much responsibility helping people transition into another way of living. It was a wonderful thing. I loved it, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. I was stuck. I just didn’t know.
"I got rid of the thing on the reservation because the Bishop kicked me out,* but I didn’t know how to get rid of Marty’s Place when there wasn’t any Bishop. And so, when I got diagnosed with ALS I didn’t realize it at the time what was going to come down the line...but I realize now what a tremendous gift this diagnosis is for a 73 year old man who has to croak. What a gift, to be able to say 'I’m sorry, I’m not responsible. You pay the bills; you do the dirty work... You do this and that because I can’t.' It’s great. Not everybody gets a gift like that.
"A lot of people die in their tracks. Some get hit by buses. Some get some terrible disease where they waste away and suffer. I never suffer. There’s absolutely no suffering an all. I believe in karma. I believe that what you give is what you get. Honest to God. Maybe you die a terrible death and on the outside it looks like a curse. I’m not talking about my death here. But if people have given their lives for others, in spite of what suffering they may endure, they have a peace and a joy on the inside that nothing on the outside can hurt.
"That’s how it is. We’re not bodies after all, we’re spirits. Our spirit is in our body, or maybe we’re swimming in the Great Spirit. Maybe that would be a better way to put it. Sooner or later the body stops, but the spirit still surrounds us. There’s only one spirit. There aren’t individual spirits. So there’s no coming and going. There is no beginning and ending. These are just my thoughts, but to me, that’s how it is. There’s just one life. It’s all about life and it’s all about love. And if I’ve given my life and love to others, well that’s what I’m here for.
"It’s just a wonderful deal. So that’s how I feel about the whole thing. So don’t feel bad for poor Richard. Because poor Richard is very rich. I’m very satisfied no matter what happens. It’s like I always say; 'I don’t give a shit.'"
In his last sentence, Richard was alluding to one of his favorite comments. Whenever any of us asked Richard what he wanted – for example, "What do you want for dinner?" "Do you want to watch a movie?" "Should we turn on the TV?" "Shall we read to you?" ... his common reply is "I don’t give a shit." He never says this disparagingly, as if he doesn’t care or because he’s depressed. He says it because he is content with whatever happens. And those of us who know Richard, know that this is truly how he feels.
*Richard was expelled from the Tohono O’odham Reservation by a Bishop in Tucson over a political conflict. The details of this situation will be covered in my book.
By Susan Casslan | September 16, 2010 at 11:55 PM EDT | No Comments
Just heard this incredible radio documentary called Beyond Gay Marriage. Produced by Lisa Dettmer, it challenges the belief that most LGBT people are for gay marriage. It also discusses how the singular focus on gay marriage has hurt the gay community. Listen up!
A recent statewide public opinion survey has revealed that Latino Catholics may be one of the most progressive groups in support of gay rights in the US. The same survey, which was conducted by The Public Religion Research Institute also highlights a striking divide between Catholic and Protestant Latinos on gay issues.
According to a press release by the PRRI, the statistics on Latinos come from a bilingual (Spanish and English) poll of 3,351 adults in California, including oversamples of 350 African Americans and 200 Latino Protestants. It represents the most comprehensive portrait of religion and attitudes on same sex marriage and other gay and lesbian issues since Proposition 8 was approved. The survey was conducted among a random sample of Californians by telephone between June 14 and June 30, 2010.
Joseph M. Palacios, an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, has considered some reasons for these findings. In an opinion piece he submitted to The Washington Post, Palacios claims that among Latino Catholics “Family solidarity is strong and even though children may not follow ‘traditional family values’ as projected by the church and the U.S. society, parents want to keep their children within the family. It is not surprising that Catholics in general and Latino Catholics in particular, as the PRRI study shows, see that parents learn about gay issues from their children.”
Jose Lizarraga and Arturo Cortez are Latino Bay Area residents who were legally married on November 4th, 2008 (the same day that Proposition Eight was passed). Lizarraga was raised in a Catholic household. He says that the PRRI findings stating that Catholics may be more prone to accepting gays “was initially surprising, based on my personal experience with a church with has been systematically homophobic. From an anecdotal point of view, however, I can certainly attest to the importance Mexicans give to maintaining a family unit and how that supersedes anything.”
Lizarraga adds, “As the eldest child of devout Catholic Mexican immigrants, my homosexuality has always been a contentious subject in our family. Twelve years after coming out, my parents still have a hard time fully understanding my lifestyle. However, undoubtedly by virtue of their unconditional love for me as their child, and the fact that I am in a happily committed relationship that is based on shared values of respect and trust, my parents have become increasingly accepting of who I am and who I have chosen to love.”
The PRRI study indicates that Catholics in general lean toward a faith that prioritizes justice and action. On the other hand, many Protestants focus on a personal morality and faith and a literal interpretation of the Bible. According to the study, when people believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God, they are more likely to reject gay rights. Palacios writes that Catholicism allows for complexity and ambiguity, and individuals make moral decisions not just on the Bible, but on the Church’s teachings, their own conscience and social realities.
The PRRI data reveals that peoples’ views on homosexuality may also be a strongly influenced by the messages of clergy. When Californians in this study heard negative messages about gays by clergy, they were less inclined to support same sex-marriage. If their clergy spoke positively of gays, the majority of those surveyed expressed that gays should be allowed to marry. Only 42% of Latino Catholics reported hearing about homosexuality in church, as opposed to 62% of Latino Protestants. When Latino Protestants (along with Evangelical and black Protestants) heard about gays in church, the messages were primarily negative.
As far as trusting the source of information regarding homosexuality, 42% of Latino Protestants said that they trusted their clergy a lot. Only 25% of Latino Catholics expressed the same trust in their clergy. 30% of Latino Catholics trusted the parents of gays and lesbian children or gay and lesbian couples when it came to learning about homosexuality.
Palacios suggests that often Catholic countries have a dual nature. They are conservative in terms of family communalism and the traditions of the Catholic Church. At the same time, many of these Catholics have learned from history that they do not want the church “meddling in politics.” This was potentially illustrated with the acceptance of same-sex marriage and adoption rights in Argentina, Spain, Portugal and Mexico City. Palacios contends that a sizable majority of US Latino Catholics share these attitudes.
According to the Pew Forum, about 21% of the US Population is Catholic, however nearly half of all immigrants to US are Catholic. Of these Catholic immigrants, 82% come from Latin America and most come from Mexico. If the PRRI study is accurate, as this population grows both in California and the US, Latino Catholics may have an unexpected positive influence on same-sex marriage and other LGBT legal rights.
By Susan Casslan | September 11, 2010 at 09:03 PM EDT | No Comments
I finally got a chance to see La Mission which was recently released on DVD. It was filmed in my neighborhood and it is about a Latino man and long time resident who discovers that his son his gay. Much has already been said about this film, so I’ll leave the details to the reviewers
My own opinion is that this isn’t a great movie – but it is good in many ways. I don’t know if others who are not familiar with San Francisco’s Mission District would feel the same. For those of us who are, it was fascinating to see this extraordinary document of the neighborhood. Years from now, people will view this film and find a perfect window into the Mission’s history.
La Mission’s leading role is played by Benjamin Bratt and his brother Peter is the director and writer. The two grew up here and their mother was an indigenous Peruvian and a Native American activist. The Pratts truly capture the eclectic nature of this locale. Its core is Latino, but it is rapidly becoming gentrified and new faces are moving in – young hip whites, artists, gays, and anyone else trying to find cheaper rent in a city where housing prices are off the charts.
The Mission is like an experimental concoction that some daring cook is trying to create. He or she is throwing in an odd combination of spices and ingredients, hoping for the best. As for now, the experiment is still evolving.
Benjamin Bratt (2010) mentions “It’s interesting to point out that the Mission district on its border abuts the Castro… (but there are) really no bridges between these two neighborhoods even though they’re neighbors.”
The Bratts should applauded for laying some very important issues on the table. These include gentrification, cultural conflicts and they also highlight Latino machismo and male violence, all of which intersect with homophobia. When the brothers spoke of making a film about a man who finds out his son his gay, even some white gay Hollywood executives pooh-poohed the idea. They were bored with it because they felt it had been done before. Peter Bratt explained:
“The underlying assumption there is because the dominant culture, the white culture, has to some degree explored homophobia in films like Brokeback Mountain and TV shows like “Will and Grace” and many others, that therefore other communities, other cultures, have also dealt with it. And so it kind of speaks to how the white experience is perceived as universal, and I think a lot of progressives and people on the political expression thought similarly. But when Proposition 8 in California came to the fore, Latinos and African Americans turned up in record numbers to support the proposition banning gay marriage, and I think that sent shock waves throughout the progressive community, and I think really brought to the fore homophobia is still a huge taboo subject within the community. As filmmakers and dramatists we thought what a rich terrain to explore.”
These brothers really did explore this territory. The end result is a wonderful gift for many communities both gay and straight, and definitely for the residents of the Mission
By Susan Casslan | September 06, 2010 at 03:49 PM EDT | No Comments
In my latest blog entry on Daniel Ellsberg, I was discussing the concept of conscience, or if I can broaden that thought today – morality.
All of this hoopla about Craigslist has me thinking about morality –at least in terms of prostitution and what many in men and women have to do to survive.
Someone (I’m not sure who) is accusing Craigslist of contributing to the trafficking of women and children.This is happening even though sex ads can be found within thousands of other Internet sites and newspapers.This is going on despite the fact that Craigslist itself has taken serious measures to prevent sexual exploitation on its sites.These measures are listed as follows on the Craigslist Blog:
educating and encouraging users to report trafficking/exploitation
prominently featuring a directory of trafficking/exploitation resources
providing specialized anti-trafficking tools for law enforcement
providing support for law enforcement anti-trafficking sweeps and stings
actively participating in NCMEC’s cybertipline program
leading all awareness efforts for the National Trafficking Hotline
meeting regularly with experts at nonprofits and in law enforcement
manually reviewing every adult service ad submitted
requiring phone verification for every adult service ad
implementing the PICS content labeling system
What these measures mean in practice is that those foolish enough to place ads on CL relating to trafficking and exploitation are caught by law enforcement, with lots of assistance from craigslist — hence the arrests you hear about.
Last year, when we began manual screening of adult services ads, those unwilling to subject themselves to Craigslist’s standards left in droves for the numerous venues which do not monitor ads. This migration is a matter of public record. You do not hear about arrests connected to the vast majority of adult services advertising because those venues do not cooperate with law enforcement, and do not urge their users to be on the lookout for and report suspected trafficking and exploitation.
For the sake of rescuing the exploited and prosecuting those responsible, is it really a good idea to eliminate the only venue for adult service ads that is highly responsive to law enforcement? The only venue that seeks out nonprofit groups and readily adopts their suggestions? Would it not be a step backward to confine adult ads to venues that don’t cooperate with law enforcement, that don’t care what advocacy groups and nonprofits have to say? Quite a few concerned parties, including front line workers in this field, have told us it would.
Craigslist started charging for “erotic services” at the repeated request of law enforcement, some of whom suggested fees of $100 or more. It was our idea to pledge net revenues to charity, an unprecedented pledge that no phone company or newspaper featuring adult ads ever took, and one which subjected us to significant state by-state regulatory burdens.
This pledge was met with accusations of dishonesty, and ridicule that we thought any charity would want our “tainted” money. Can anyone blame us for announcing in May 2009 we would not repeat this pledge with adult services? As was made clear a year ago, craigslist will continue to engage in charitable giving, privately, and as we see fit.http://blog.craigslist.org/2010/05/an-open-invitation-to-rachel-lloyd/
So my question remains, why Craigslist?I have no answers, but I hope some skilled investigative journalist will get to the bottom of this debacle.
In the meantime, I’d like to outline a little history on the prosecution of sex trafficking in recent years.Since George W.took office, there has been an emerging alliance between some anti-prostitute feminists and the religious right.They are infiltrating human rights and HIV/AIDS organizations and attempting to dictate morality with the help of government policies.¹
Under Bush, prostitution has purportedly been identified as a main cause of trafficking.Consequently, the previous administration refused to fund programs that did not take up an anti-prostitution pledge.In 2003, Congress amended the Trafficking Victims Protection act of 2000 so that NGOS could no longer get money if they supported or promoted the legalization of prostitution.Originally, this only applied to foreign NGOs, but by 2005, U.S. NGOs were in the same boat.This move or so called “gag rule” raised some serious concerns around the first amendment.¹
Because advocate agencies were fearful of losing funding they curtailed the services that supported sex workers.In a letter to Bush in 2005, many public health and human rights organizations complained that these new policies exacerbated stigma and discrimination against hookers, making it harder and harder to help these individuals.Brazil actually rejected $4 million dollars in U.S. global AIDS funds because of such restrictions. ¹
Due to lawsuits against the constitutionality of Bush’s policies, this gag rule was removed for US NGOs but it still applies to foreign aid recipients.And even in the U.S., conservative groups tend to get more money, and if an agency criticizes government policies, they are likely to be spurned or blacklisted. ¹
Much of the data compiled by the Bush administration on sexual trafficking has been called into question.The numbers of persons allegedly sexually trafficked and the way the government has analyzed their data has revealed serious flaws.For example, in 2005 the government claimed that 2/3 of their trafficking cases involve sex.Service providers on the other hand noted that sex trafficking only comprised 1/3 their caseload while the other 2/3 involved other types of victims.These included workers in the domestic, industrial and agricultural industries. ¹
There are accusations that in its crusade to go after prostitutes, the U.S. has not only driven sex workers further underground (and thus has made their work more dangerous), it has neglected helping other types of migrant workers who may be exploited or trafficked. ¹
The U.S. PROstitutes Collective (US PROS) is an organization that advocates for the safety of sex workers.They do not condone prostitution, but see it as an economic reality for millions.And one of the biggest dangers for prostitution is its illegality. http://www.prostitutescollective.net/
US PROS condemns the mixing up of trafficking with prostitution.These are two separate things. Trafficking is forced or bonded labor, abduction, kidnapping, false imprisonment, bodily harm, and/or extortion.There are already plenty of laws on the books that deal with these crimes. But perhaps law enforcement would rather sit around and cruise Craigslist, and then arrest women who are just trying to make a living. With Craigslist, sex work is at least more transparent. The hookers are not forced to turn tricks on the street.
But let’s get real.What is the true source of any kind of trafficking?What about global structural adjustment and neoliberal policies imposed by institutions like the World Bank and international Monetary Fund?How about NAFTA?The U.S. government and other nations have helped create policies that promote human trafficking and sexual exploitation because people are poor and desperate.Perhaps pointing fingers at prostitutes and Craigslist helps divert us from the facts. ¹
Reference:
1. Chang, Grace. & Kim, Kathleen .Reconceptualizing approaches to human trafficking: New directions and perspectives from the field(s).2007 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, August, 2007.
By Susan Casslan | August 30, 2010 at 03:00 PM EDT | No Comments
I just saw the film Daniel Ellsberg; The Most Dangerous Man in America, and I was struck with a feeling that has been coming with increasing frequency these days. It has to do with looking at a time of my life that seems very much like only yesterday – and yet that period now has become distant history. Is this what it’s like to get older?
Daniel Ellsberg was once a dashing young man with a flock of black hair. Now he is wrinkled and grey. The clothing styles, cars, furniture, telephones and unfortunately, even attitudes from that era seem terribly outdated.
What are the attitudes of which I speak? Daniel Ellsberg was widely seen as a hero in his day and his actions helped bring about the end of Nixon and the Vietnam War. And yet few people hail Bradley Manning – the US army intelligence analyst who is allegedly behind WikiLeaks as a hero.
What is also interesting in looking the old footage from the 70’s, is that the television news seemed much more thoughtful then – more willing to delve deeply into issues and not just something to fill in time between corporate sponsored commercials. Not just entertainment or the blatant propaganda that so much of journalism has become.
I have no idea what has brought about so many changes in this country. It’s probably a lot of things. For one, maybe the tanking economy, where a smaller segment of the population hoards more and more of the wealth. As the rest of us lose jobs, houses and options, people cling tighter to their own little piece of the dwindling pie. “I’ll take care of my own and screw the rest.”
Perhaps its the erosion of our civil liberties. This was brought on in part by the post 9-11 Patriot Act and the war on terrorism; and decades of people in the white house who I would define as terrorists themselves. Right now, you do not want to criticize the government, especially if it involves matters of national security. (Unless of course you are someone like Cheney breaching the security clearance of Valery Plame).
I teach nursing part time at a college and I would like to show my young students this Daniel Ellsberg film. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with our syllabus and I wonder whether the film would just go over the students’ heads. They might nod out during it or quietly play games or text on their iPhones.
I’ve complained to the students before about how different college life was now compared to my day in the 70’s. Then we were tearing apart the campus with protest. Today, at least at this private school, the students talk about clothes and how much money they to make after graduation. Frequently they seem aloof and bored.
From a spiritual point of view, all of this has me wondering about the concept of conscience. Both Ellsberg and Manning claim they were following their concience – but how that term has been viewed and valued may have varied with the years.
We are involved in contract negotiations at our hospital right now. When some of the older nurses said they’d be willing to strike, the younger ones asked (quite earnestly) “Why?”
In fact I overheard this conversation verbatim between a sixty-something and twenty-something nurse.
Younger Nurse: “Why would you strike? You’re about to retire.”
Older Nurse: “Because it’s the right thing to do. Because I care about your future.”
The younger nurse stared back at her with a blank face.
Another younger nurse joined the conversation. She worked part time for the National Guard. “Why would I strike for better benefits here?” She asked. “I get my benefits through the military.” I kid you not.
I don’t want to get too carried away with dissing the young. After all, many of them grew up in the Reagan and Bush/s years when the overwhelming message from all of society seemed to be “get what you can for yourself.” But according to the Pew Research Center, there is evidence that over the past three decades, youth have been disengaging from conventional politics and fewer and fewer are reading the newspaper. I don't think this is just due to apathy. Perhaps the young see the political landscape as a farce, so why should they get involved?
In 2008 those numbers may have increased to an estimated 54.5%. The highest youth voter turnout was in 1972 (the year Daniel Ellsberg made the news) when 55.4% of young people voted http://thetartan.org/2008/11/10/news/elections
I don’t know if any of these trends mean anything. I do know however, that young people have always symbolized hope in societies. And if they are idealistic about the future and about bringing on positive change, then their actions need to be applauded and encouraged. And when I see what corporate materialism has done to the American mind, especially in terms of its youth, I am very saddened.
I know very little about Bradley Manning. The WikiLeaks story has yet to entirely come out (and let’s hope that despite the increasing assaults on our freedom of information – the story will come out). However in the mean time, Daniel Ellsberg himself recently said the following:
“... there does seem to be an immediate parallel between me and whoever leaked the video on the assault on the 19 or 20 Iraqis. Someone -- allegedly, it was Bradley Manning -- did feel that that deserved to be out. Reuters, whose newspapermen were killed in the course of that, had been trying to get that through the freedom of information act for two years, as I understand it and had been refused. Let's say whoever did it, hypothetically, Bradley Manning, showed better judgment in putting it out than the people who kept is secret from the American people and from the Iraqis.”
“...there's no doubt at all, that enormous amounts of energy that should be made public are being withheld and that hundreds, probably thousands of people, I'm speaking now of the run-up to the Iraq war, which has a very great similarity to the lying and the secrecy that got us into Vietnam. I think if many people had recognized that their oath of office, which called them in to support the Constitution, really contradicted their promise to keep certain secrets, when those secrets concealed lies, concealed deception to the American public and getting us into a hopeless war, they should have given priority to the oath of office and they should have put that information out to Congress and the public. They should have done what I wish I had done much earlier than I did I had been in that position, too. I knew years before the Pentagon Papers came out that the Americans were being lied into an essentially hopeless war. I'm not proud of the fact that it didn't occur to me that my oath of office, which was to support the Constitution, called on me to put that information out and say, '64, when the war might have been avoided. But I certainly am glad that I finally came aware of what my real responsibilities were there. And I did put it out years later. At times, at that time, which published it, the "Times," and the 18 other newspapers, which defied President Nixon's injunctions and did put it out, were in the position of Julian Assange is in now. I'm very happy that he put it out and I congratulate him for it.”
Again, I don’t know Bradley Manning, but already I am seeing where the powers that be are trying to discredit him. The tone in much of the press is that he was a troubled young man who did something both treasonous and downright stupid. Not much talk about following his conscience. Not much talk of that at a time when the meaning of following one’s conscience is so murky and misunderstood.
And the icing on the cake of Manning’s emotional instability (so implies much of the press), is that the guy might be queer. This purportedly not only makes him unstable, it also makes him a security risk, and thus by many, justifies holding onto Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
When so many lies are said to be truth and visa versa, no wonder we’ve lost track of the definition of conscience. As Michel Foucault explained, truth is defined by whoever holds the most power. In the 60's and early 70’s, the people spoke up and let their voices be heard. And anywhere in history, when the majority of people refuse to buy lies, then often the leaders stop telling them.
The story of Daniel Ellsberg is becoming faded and yellow, but this film brings it back into the light. I think it would be great to dust this piece of history off and see how many of its lessons can be utilized today.
By Susan Casslan | August 25, 2010 at 01:33 PM EDT | No Comments
I just watched the film Burma VJ, which was directed by Anders Ostergaard. It’s an incredible documentary of the massive “Saffron Rebellion” which was lead by Buddhist monks in September, 2007 in Burma (now known as Myanman). Thousands of monks marched through the street to protest the August price hikes, which threatened to push the impoverished Burmese into further destitution.
The protest took place in a military dictatorship which forbids even peaceful assembly and arrests anyone who tries to photograph anything that is anti-government. The rebellion itself was filmed by guerrilla journalists under the Democratic Voice of Burma, also known as Burma VJ. The footage was smuggled to Thailand and then to Sweden where it consequently became this film.
Monks were beaten and killed in this uprising and some of the photographers who were caught filming are now serving life sentences. 38 of the monks were granted asylum in the US and now living in poverty here, working for low level migrant wages.
In watching all of this, I thought about martyrdom. Does it ever end? And what does it achieve when the powers that be respond with increased force and oppression? I couldn’t come up with any easy answers.
