Practical Uses for Pornography

Over the weekend I was in the town of Monmouth, Oregon to lead another LGBT faith outreach workshop centered around the documentary For the Bible Tells Me So. Just to put this in context, the giant billboard alongside Highway 99W just north of town proclaims in bold red letters, "POLK COUNTY IS PALIN COUNTRY." (In 2004, Polk went for Bush by 12 points.)

After the screening, we broke up into small groups for discussion. I talked about the challenges of trying to conceal my sexuality as a teenager from a born-again father. "That must have been very difficult for you," said a concerned, sympathetic older woman. Then I recalled one of my more brilliant strategies.

"Yeah. I used to hide pictures of naked women in my bedroom for my dad to find, to throw him off the trail."

Wonder if That Means Anything?

Last night I dreamed I moved to San Francisco and forgot to tell my father.

Why Sarah Palin's Family is Fair Game

"I have said before and I will repeat again: People's families are off limits," Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said on Tuesday. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."

Noble words, with which I'd happily be first to concur. But no...not until I hear the same principled stance from Republican activists who have made discrimination and fear-mongering a rallying cry and make people like me political props in their campaign of distraction.

The 2008 Republican Party Platform explicitly calls for writing discrimination into the Constitution, seeking both to deny same-sex couples the right to marry and to deprive the courts of their proper role in protecting the civil rights of all citizens from the tyranny of the (shrinking) majority.

Their defense of "traditional" marriage is lined with all the discredited tropes of the waning anti-gay movement. They insist that restricting marriage to heterosexual couples protects "our children's future," although the government neither requires nor recognizes procreative intent or capability as a characteristic of civil marriage. The platform paints a disparaging view of children who grow up "in homes without fathers," while failing to note that the research they cite exclusively refers to the children of heterosexual mothers whose fathers chose not to live up to their responsibilities, not the children of committed same-sex partners. We are meant to ignore that some children of single-parent households turn out just fine (see Obama, Barack) and others have two fathers.

You see, according to Republicans like Sarah Palin, a family like this one is a better place for children than this one. The belief that any pairing of married heterosexual parents provides a stabler, healthier home than any same-sex couple could possibly offer is just not born out by any sort of evidence, at all.

Never mind their foreign policy disasters or the tanking economy -- look out! Here come Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi! Give me a break.

This is not a trivial issue. Palin and her ilk have literally campaigned on the promise to protect America from gay bogeymen (and women). Sure, in an ideal world, Bristol Palin and her circumstances would be irrelevant. They should be. And so should the private lives of millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, taxpaying, hard-working citizens. But when the RNC uses us to scare up voters, I refuse to sit idly by and not point out the egregious hypocrisy of people like Sarah Palin.

So Bristol Palin is 17, pregnant, and scheduled to marry the teenage father. Now, who knows? Maybe these two are genuinely in love and will live a happy, committed life together. It's entirely possible. My grandmother was pregnant (turns out, with someone else's child, my father) when she married her husband, and they're still married 65 years later and raised three kids, two of whom are divorced. But the research shows that pregnant brides are 50% more likely to get divorced, and that's factoring in a heterosexual divorce rate that isn't anything to be proud of.

Here's why Sarah Palin's family matters. You won't find anyone to argue that Bristol was being responsible by getting pregnant while unmarried and still in high school, even if they now assert she's doing the right thing by marrying the charming father. Though McCain aides may protest that the "liberal media" is smearing Palin's family, it was the GOP that first trotted out the Palins as a model to be emulated.

If you agree with Barack Obama that this subject should be off-limits, then you're at odds with James Dobson, whose activist organization Focus on the Family -- note the name -- is at least as political as it is religious. Here's his statement on the Bristol Palin situation.

Now, let's reflect back on his comments regarding the daughter of a sitting vice president who got pregnant outside the bonds of civil marriage.

Seventeen year-old Bristol Palin is about to marry a fellow teenager; they will have full government recognition and protection for a relationship that is, let's face it, a last-ditch attempt to make right a stupid mistake made in a brief moment of passion. Sarah Palin thinks this is just great. Yet compare that to Mary Cheney, who had been in a committed relationship with her partner for 15 years when they made the conscious decision to raise a child. (They're now at 17 years together, 6 years past the average heterosexual marriage duration of 11 years.) Sarah Palin thinks that Mary and Heather deserve no recognition or protection; Mary is the biological mother, so in the unfortunate event of her death, Sarah insists that Heather has no claim to the child. Sarah thinks Heather should not have been allowed to be present in the hospital for the birth, nor should she be allowed to be with Mary in the hospital under any circumstances. The couple, according to Palin, is not entitled to any insurance, inheritance or social security benefits.

Sarah Palin is receiving heaps of praise for supporting her teenage daughter's decision to have a child before she even completes high school and to marry another student who openly boasted on his MySpace profile that he doesn't want kids while simultaneously insisting that Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who had been in a committed relationship longer than Sarah has been alive, deserve no protection or recognition.

John McCain, Sarah Palin's running mate, cheated during his first marriage which ended in divorce.

Gay folk get scapegoated for the political gain and moral failures of uninformed ideologues like Sarah Palin, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and David Vitter. I will heed Barack Obama's call to leave her family alone just as soon as she stops blaming me for everything that is wrong with heterosexual marriage.

Republican, heal thyself.

A Bold Prediction

Sarah Palin will not be on the ballot in November. She may well withdraw from the ticket by the end of the week.

Well, That Answers That

I've mentioned before that my father and I shy away from any kind of substantive discussions, especially about religion. (Brief summary for the uninitiated: he's a born-again Baptist and I'm a gay Episcopalian.)

Years ago he filled my head with all kinds of nonsense about Revelation and Biblical "prophecy" and "the Rapture" and whatnot, and only recently did I find the courage to look again at the marvelous last book of the New Testament and begin to explore what's really there. Some of my father's views have moderated a bit over time (he has stopped inquiring about my dress size and plans on voting for Obama this fall -- mostly because he has come to see that Iraq was a boondoggle of criminal dimension), but I've often wondered if he still held the same views about "the Antichrist" and all that.

Presently, he is on a solo bike tour of Oregon; he called me from a campground about 30 miles from Chemult (where?) to check in and let me know he's all right.

"Did we invade Russia, yet?" he asked.

"No, no, we're still talking that over," I said. Then, perhaps rather stupidly, I said, "Besides, everyone knows that Iran is next."

"I was kind of hoping Israel would take out Iran," said my father.

"Hmm...I'm not sure that's something we should really be hoping for."

"Well, it would mean that Christ's return is imminent, that's for sure."

Sigh.

No, Wait; Second Worst Vacation Ever

It occurred to me that the worst vacation I ever took was a trip to Victoria, B.C., with my father when I was 16, in a risky attempt to repair our relationship after I came out. He asked me, "So...am I supposed to start buying you dresses for your birthday?"

I didn't speak to him for about a year and a half after that.

It's Nice to See You, Too

When I showed up at the restaurant this afternoon to meet my father for lunch, he didn't say "Hello."

He said, "Nice comb-over."

Okay, now...wait a second. I know I'm a little thin right up front. It's kind of fluffy. But this is not a comb-over. And my hair has not changed since I was 23. That year, suddenly my hair got a LOT thinner, and I was pretty worried. But then it stopped, and my hair has looked exactly the same for eleven years.

Still, I've been thinking: maybe it's time to shave it. Just to see. What do you think?



I won't do it for at least a couple of weeks, after my stepfather's memorial.

I Was Thinking Someplace with a Menu

With all that's been going on in the past couple of weeks, I haven't had a chance to get together with my father to celebrate either my birthday, which was last Monday, or Father's Day, which was the day before and which I observed by marching in the Gay Pride Parade, aka, not my father's sort of thing. What with my stepfather's recent passing, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen my grandmother -- who's lingering in a nursing home on the other side of town -- in quite a while. I proposed that the two of us go have lunch for father's day/my birthday and then go visit her. Kill three birds with one stone, as it were.

I called him up and suggested that we meet somewhere for lunch tomorrow at 12:30, after I get done with church, and then go over to the home.

My father says, completely serious: "Well, they serve lunch at the home at 11:45."

Yes, because for my birthday I want applesauce and creamed corn on a tray with a side of tapioca in a plastic dish and a glass of grape juice to wash it down. Not.

A Sacrament of Chicken a L'Orange

Today I stood and watched a box containing my stepfather's body get lowered into the ground, where it will remain forever (well...as long as the concrete liner lasts), and then we threw some dirt on it. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life.

Up until this point, Death has not had a major impact on my life. Almost nine years ago we lost my grandfather, but he lived in California and had suffered from Alzheimer's; in a way, "Gramps" had already been gone for a while, and frankly we were all relieved because we hated the idea of him lingering in a facility. But this is the first time Death has come right into my home, so to speak, and deprived me of someone I am accustomed to seeing and talking with frequently, someone whose absence now is bizarre. In a cerebral way, I recognize that he is dead. But on a more fundamental plane, I don't think I have accepted that he is gone.

Because of my faith, I think I am in a pretty good place about Death. I am less and less sure of the existence of Hell; if it exists, I think one has to try hard to get there. Many would insist that's where my stepfather is right now; of Quaker origins, he was unbaptized, and not a churchgoer. He and I never spoke about God, but I have the sense he was agnostic leaning ever so slightly toward "possibly." A natural skeptic -- I recall him scoffing at the suggestion that there might be any such thing as a UFO -- I'm not sure he would have been on board with the Virgin Birth and the Bodily Resurrection. And yet I can think of few other people I have encountered in my life who truly lived the Gospel. He gave to everyone and anyone, without expecting anything in return. He loved to help people. I never heard him gossip or say anything unkind or unfair. He was, genuinely, slow to speak and slow to anger. He was one of the least materialistic people imaginable. His was a life of care and, in a way, ministry. He was truly remarkable. Here was a man who didn't need to study the Bible, because God's law was written deeply into his heart and His Grace interwoven throughout the fabric of his being.

What awaits us when we die? As a Christian, I believe in the notion of Heaven, that it is a dimension in which we experience joy, peace and reconciliation, a state of being where all is made known and injuries, regrets and disappointments vanish into bliss. As Peter Jackson's -- not Tolkien's -- Gandalf put it to Pippin, "The journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise." Paradise is nice, right?

And yet, nothing so far has hit me harder than this from CS Lewis' A Grief Observed: "I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch?" If Heaven exists -- and I believe it does -- it is not a place. Dan is not "somewhere else." We can't get to him by hopping on a boat with some elves. He is dead, whatever that means.

* * * * * *
As an adolescent, I went through a period of years where I was something of a terror. It took me a very long time to accept my new stepfather, and for a time I was spiteful and cruel toward him. He loved to cook -- and, fortunately, was a very good cook -- but I can recall being dissatisfied with what I felt was his rather limited repertoire. One of his favorite dishes -- presumably because of ease; you just throw a chicken breast in a dish with three tablespoons of frozen orange juice concentrate, two tablespoons of soy sauce, a teaspoon of ginger and a half-teaspoon of salt and bake for 30 minutes -- was chicken a l'orange. I can recall complaining, "Are we having chicken l'orange again? Doesn't he know how to cook anything else?"

What a little bastard I was.

So here I am, many years later, heartbroken by this man's absence. And for dinner I cooked up chicken a l'orange.

A Visit from Dad

My dad came over after work tonight to drop off my Christmas presents. He's a Southern Baptist who attends a church that believes in the literal inerrancy of Scripture and I'm...well, I'm a fag, so our relationship is, shall we say, delicate? We actually get along just fine, but there are certain things We Do Not Discuss.

Even though we live just about 8 miles apart, we don't see each other very often. Tonight was only the second time he's been in my apartment and the first time he's seen it with furniture.

"Hmm, you're a better housekeeper now than when you were ten," he said.

It was pleasant enough. He rode his bike here in the 30 degree weather so I offered him a cup of hot tea and we talked about a problem I was having with a spreadsheet at work (he's an accountant), played with the cats and made other banal small talk while sitting in the living room with the tree and listening to my Christmas mix on the iPod.

He did comment on my rather well-stocked bar, but I just said I like to entertain. Which is true. No one ever comes over, but I like to entertain.

About this time the iPod shuffled to "Hard Candy Christmas."

"Is that Dolly Parton?" my dad asked, with a combination of surprise and distaste.

"Yup. I love Dolly," I said. He looked at me skeptically.

"I met her once," he said.

Okay, time out. I am not really someone who's into celebrities, but Dolly Parton is on my very short list of people I would kill to meet. I just have a sense that she is an amazing human being. She is an incredibly compelling artist, both as a musician and an actress; she just seems to radiate warmth. I am mad about Dolly Parton.

Now, my father is the kind of guy who can't remember that he's told you a story before, so I've heard every story he has to tell about a hundred times each. Except this one.

"Wait, you met Dolly Parton?"

"Yeah, she came into the restaurant in Pleasant Hill."

"And...?"

He shrugged. "Mostly I remember the gazongas."

Yes. He said, gazongas.

Is it Too Late to Get Adopted?

Tonight I took my father and grandfather (*) out to dinner to celebrate my new job. We went to the local Italian restaurant which, in my father's book, counts as "fancy." You know, plastic grapes and empty wine bottles hanging from the ceiling with a steady Dean Martin soundtrack. Very upscale.

When the server came to take our order, my father eyed her suspiciously and said, "What's guh-notchee?"