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Watercooler: Choi and Sherrod ask us to be better than we are
- Dan Choi at Netroots. The quibbles with Lt. Dan Choi are
minor at best. Don’t protest in
uniform. Trying to subpoena the President
Obamais a tactic best left to birthers or Rod Blagojevich, people
whose connection with the real based world isn’t very tight. Despite these
bumps, there is no better individual articulating why “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
needed to end yesterday. Choi was at last week’s Netroots
Nation conference, and gave Senate majority leader Harry Reid his
West Point ring and discharge papers. As you know Choi,
was officially booted from the military last week. Both agreed the
senator would return the ring when the law was repealed.
- No need to participate in our own oppression. Ages ago,
some guy didn’t like something I wrote. Nothing earth shattering there. However,
he decided to insult me by saying I was a bottom. Strange he went there, but gay
life is filled with contradictions. Demanding our rights, yet using terms “fem”
or “bottom” as epithets of disdain. Look at this essay by Mike
Alvear. He dives in the thorny issue of femmy men and how they
can be big old sissy-phobes. Unfortunately this is part of the minority
experience. Gulping the rhetoric used against us, while spewing it back on our
own.
- Italian magazine catches priests doing the nasty. I feel
for the public relations people at the Vatican. From the priests/children
scandal, to the Connecticut holy
man who spent parish money on rent boys because he “deserved” to.
Now three priests, two Italian and one French (those freaky Frenchmen), are
caught by Panorama doing their priestly duties in the day and hitting the sheets with gay guys at
night.
- Some monetary justice for man kept from dying partner. Clay
Greene settled his suit against Sonoma County, California for
$600,000. County officials disregarded all of the legal paperwork the 78
year-old and his late partner signed, denied Greene visitation rights, and sold
all of their property after the partner’s death. The county’s lawyer denied any
discrimination, but acknowledged it might have been a problem to sell the pair’s
stuff. You think?
- Gillibrand doing the work. Remember a few months back when we were doing
stories about people taking on New York’s junior senator Kirsten
Gillibrand? Harold Ford, Rudy Giuliani, and George Pataki all
decided to leave her be. She’s still unknown in the state, but is following that
age old maxim about politics being local. She’s going to be a Democratic star.
Mark my words. By the way: Rep
Charles Rangel? She will cut you off real soon.
- Shirley
Sherrod saga. Good golly, Miss Molly! The racial
accusations were flying last week. Here are my three favorite moments:
Bill
O’Reilly’s weak apology. Ann
Coulter thinking Andrew Breitbart was set up. Glenn
Beck(!) coming to Sherrod’s defense. Would be nice if we didn’t go
nuts whenever the talk is racial. Like Shelby
Steele said ages ago, we all have too much invested in our
narratives of innocence—shams really– when the topic is on the table. Hopefully
Sherrod will tell her former bosses where they can take their job
offer.
- Man killed by police in cruising area. The tragic death of
DeFarra
Gaymon brings race and the closet into full view. The married CEO
was in New Jersey for his 30th high-school reunion. He was killed by an
undercover police officer patrolling a known cruising area. The officer claims
Gaymon propositioned him and resisted arrest. Writer Rob
Smith puts this death at the feet of black homophobia. Smith over
reaches a bit, but at some point black folk must give up our “don’t ask, don’t
tell” ideology (translation: cultural conservatism) when it comes to sexuality.
It is literally killing us.
