Mr. Cab Driver fuck you I'm a survivor
I was reading up on things from the internet on this whole Foley scandal, and I had no intention of mentioning anything here about it. This is a personal blog about exercise, one queer man’s attempt at getting healthy. Let Ann Cuntlier rail about how the Democrats are hypocrites, while ignoring the hypocrisy that she spews on a daily basis. I know that already, and I pragmatically believe that all politicians are whores of one sort or another.
Let Sean Hannity pejoratively push the Foley discussion towards the 1983 sex scandal where then congressman Gerry Studds admitted to having consensual sex with a 17 year old male Congressional Page in 1973 (nineteen hundred and freakin’ seventy three, people) and Barney Frank’s assistant (I heard FUX News regularly refer to Steve Gobie as Barney’s boyfriend, and yet there is no real record of him being anything other than an assistant, maybe fuck-buddy at the worst.) running an alleged male prostitution ring out of Barney’s apartment (it turned out that Mr. Gobie was lying – but no one today is mentioning that part.) Barney turned himself in when he learned what Mr. Gobie was telling people, and what did the Congress reprimand him for when they found no wrong doing? Fixing parking tickets for Mr. Gobie.
Oh, and the page sex scandal from the 1983, I find it interesting that AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME that Studds was being reprimanded by the Congress, Republican Congressman Dan Crane from Illinois, was being reprimanded for having sex with a 17 year old female Congressional Page. I don’t hear Hannity or Limbaugh or Savage (Michael the wing-nut, not Dan the sex columnist) mentioning Dan Crane. I did hear them complain quite a lot that Studds was allowed to run as a Democrat in the subsequent elections, and he did and he won. Dan Crane ran for election after his scandal as a Republican…and lost. But they don’t bring up that bit, do they? No, they go on and on about how sick and perverted the Democrats are because of their sex scandals.
But I wasn’t really going to say anything about that. I don’t care enough right now. I am focusing my energy (and a little bit of my own money) on getting rid if the awful Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I would say his name, but I fear that he is so evil, so vile, so repulsive, that just by saying his name, babies might get sick, flowers will die and the elderly will start going into a panic, so if you don’t know who I am talking about, look it up on Wikipedia. Either under Pennsylvania Senators up for reelection in 2006, or just look under EVIL! His picture has to be there.
Then I read an article by B. O. Bennett. Mr. Bennett helped to set back the gay civil rights movement by decades (and yes, believe that it is a civil rights movement, no matter what the right wing wants to you to think. The right to marry, serve your country, work where you want to without fear of losing your job because of how you were born is all about civil rights.) by working diligently for Bob Dornan. Mr. Dornan was, for a long time to me, enemy #1. One of his famous saying was “Don't use the word 'gay' unless it's an acronym for 'Got Aids Yet?" Mr. Bennett worked for Dornan for many years, helped him with all his hate, and then, once he was done with politics in 1994, that is when Mr. Bennett decided to come out of the closet.
And then he wanted all the rights that many of us fought for just because he came out of the closet. He and his partner want to marry. Well, where the fuck was he from 70’s and into the late 80’s when Dornan and his like were supporting as well as crafting their anti-gay hate legislation? Oh yeah, he was helping him write it. He was supporting every little hateful thing Dornan could bring up (Dornan also famously was referred to a specific group as “lesbian spear chucker”, showing that he was a homophobe and a probable racist.)
In the mid-80’s, when I was 17, I told my grandmother I was gay. When I went to a Christian college in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I told people I was gay. I didn’t jump out of the closet, but I was slowly coming out. All my professors knew I was gay because I’d told them. Most all of my friends knew I was gay, because I told them. One of the deans of the college knew I was gay because I told him (and he was gay as well, so that one kind of nullifies itself.)
When I graduated college and went to work at one of the Big 8 Accounting firms (yes, I am old enough to have worked at an accounting firms – I think there are 4 big ones left now) I hid it. But when I started dating Joe and he was political, even being interviewed on a local news channel as a gay man who served in the military during the whole storm Clinton got into when he tried to lift the ban on gays in the military, I realized it would be important for me to be out of the closet. A close friend who worked at the firm advised me against it, but I was standing up for myself. So I brought Joe to a work event. And 6 weeks later, they’d found some lame-ass reason to fire me, but made me sign a paper saying they’d pay me severance and not contest unemployment if I promised not to sue.
And where was Mr. Bennett? He was secretly sleeping with men while dating a general’s daughter in the hopes to make it look like he was straight. He tried to run for Congress as a republican but didn’t make it. As a member of Congress, I’m sure THAT is when he would have come out and done some good. Just like Steve Gunderson, who was out when he was first elected…oh wait, Gunderson was closeted as well when he was first elected.
As a matter of fact, Steve likes to say that he was the first openly gay republican member of Congress who was reelected as an openly gay man. He was reelected ONCE as an openly gay man, in 1994, after 7 previous elections as simply “Steve” the republican. He wasn’t known as a gay man for 7 of the 8 elections that he won. He won in 1994 more out of the inertia that is incumbency in US politics than anything he stood for at the time. He decided not to run again. He was probably just exhausted from running for Congress so many times, that to stay on as a gay man for a few more terms, maybe doing some real good (to give him credit, he was the only republican to vote against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, though his vote was clearly made after he had decided not to run again) was just too exhausting to even think about.
And, in case Mr. Gunderson wants to be more self righteous about it all, he was pushed out of the closet, on the floor of the Congress, by everyone's favorite homophobe, Bob Dornan.
In my job after I left the accounting firm, I was too afraid to jump back out of the closet. So I hid it. I hid it when I heard an assistant manager at my company refer to one of my fellow coworkers who was gay as a “Butt Pirate.” I kept my mouth shut when the manager made the comment about Elton John “He sings pretty good for a faggot,” and then laughed, showing a lack of tolerance as well as poor grammar.
After two years, I couldn’t take it anymore. In my job interview for my current job in 1996, I told them flat out “As a gay man, I need to know what protection you provide for gays and lesbians in your company.” And to his credit, the manager who was interviewing me was more than happy to show me that the company did have an extensive policy to protect their workers, all 28,000 of them from every walk of life. And if you want to talk about old and conservative, the company I work for is one of the oldest stock insurance companies in the United States, with roots back to 1792. And I have been allowed to give presentations in front of the division president about being gay and the troubles with working in corporate America as a gay man. And he applauded me.
So what did Mr. Bennett do after he stopped working for hate monger Dornan? He went on to a cushy job with Southern California Edison, and now is a “public affairs consultant” in Long Beach. And NOW he wants everyone to know he is gay, and NOW he is trying to get gays the right to marry. And NOW he wants him and his boyfriend to be able to just be a normal couple, because in 2003 his boyfriend had a stroke and he wasn’t allowed to ride with him in the ambulance to the hospital, because he didn’t have the same civil liberties as his hetero counterparts (his partner came out of it and is now in better health.) Had he been working on these civil liberties starting in 1973, when he got to our nations capital, instead of hiding behind his right wing benefactors, maybe he could have ridden with his partner.
I have had a rainbow flag at my desk since Pride 1997. It is usually the first thing that goes up when I move desks. By example, I have had 3 people at my work in the past 10 years tell me that I changed their personal views on homosexuals. Just by being out, just by working next to or near them day in and day out for years, I was able to make a small change in the world. And 2 of these 3 people are parents, so they will effect on their spouses and their children and maybe on their parents as well. Maybe they will have the possibility to change a friend’s point of view. Maybe they will be a bit more supportive and tolerant at their churches if they meet a gay person. But if they only change themselves, that is 3 people that I changed because I was out of the closet. What if I’d hid?
I am not brave. I am not courageous. I am a simple man, one who realized through proper upbringing, that I needed to be truthful to myself and others around me. Any modicum of change I've helped has been derived just by being me, not by being active politically, and not by being a homosexual. People I worked with saw a regular guy, who wasn't ashamed to talk about being homosexual, didn't hide from it and was upfront with anyone. I understand that there are times you can't be upfront and honest with employers, but I do believe you can ALWAYS be honest with friends.
Oh, and in 2000, Bennett met with W, one of the famous gay republicans Austin 12, and still voted for him. Still voted for a man who has shown through action that he hates gays. A man whose entire political party hates homosexuals and has used them as scapegoats since the early 70’s. A man who will allow gay baiting at any time to avoid real issues. And why does Mr. Bennett say that he is still a republican? Mr. Bennett wrote in an article published just 4 days ago, that he remains a republican because “…terror abroad trumps deeply held personal issues I can still fight and win at home.”
And why was Mr. Bennett writing his article? Because he thinks this whole Foley scandal is going to make it more difficult to be gay in the Republican Party.
He makes me sick. He makes me want to wretch in anger and loathing. I have written this to say one thing:
Fuck you, Mr. Bennett. Don't get me wrong, I hope you do get your same sex partner benefits. And I hope you live in a community where your job and housing is protected. And I hope that all the queer bashers that get to hear their Republican congressman call Barney Frank “Barney Fag” so they think that they can justify their hatred stay away from you and your family and loved ones. But fuck you, Mr. Bennett, for helping be a thorn in my side, and not just for making my being openly gay so much harder because you had no guts when you were younger, but for continuing to support the republicans out of some stupid, baseless thought that republicans are the only political party that can save us from Terrorists. FUCK YOU MR. BENNETT, you lame asshole, for not having the intestinal fortitude to be helpful 33 years ago, and fuck you for continuing to support these hateful bastards, even after years of abject proof that the Republican party wants your support and will never, ever support you.
Oh, and Happy Coming Out Day today!
Let Sean Hannity pejoratively push the Foley discussion towards the 1983 sex scandal where then congressman Gerry Studds admitted to having consensual sex with a 17 year old male Congressional Page in 1973 (nineteen hundred and freakin’ seventy three, people) and Barney Frank’s assistant (I heard FUX News regularly refer to Steve Gobie as Barney’s boyfriend, and yet there is no real record of him being anything other than an assistant, maybe fuck-buddy at the worst.) running an alleged male prostitution ring out of Barney’s apartment (it turned out that Mr. Gobie was lying – but no one today is mentioning that part.) Barney turned himself in when he learned what Mr. Gobie was telling people, and what did the Congress reprimand him for when they found no wrong doing? Fixing parking tickets for Mr. Gobie.
Oh, and the page sex scandal from the 1983, I find it interesting that AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME that Studds was being reprimanded by the Congress, Republican Congressman Dan Crane from Illinois, was being reprimanded for having sex with a 17 year old female Congressional Page. I don’t hear Hannity or Limbaugh or Savage (Michael the wing-nut, not Dan the sex columnist) mentioning Dan Crane. I did hear them complain quite a lot that Studds was allowed to run as a Democrat in the subsequent elections, and he did and he won. Dan Crane ran for election after his scandal as a Republican…and lost. But they don’t bring up that bit, do they? No, they go on and on about how sick and perverted the Democrats are because of their sex scandals.
But I wasn’t really going to say anything about that. I don’t care enough right now. I am focusing my energy (and a little bit of my own money) on getting rid if the awful Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I would say his name, but I fear that he is so evil, so vile, so repulsive, that just by saying his name, babies might get sick, flowers will die and the elderly will start going into a panic, so if you don’t know who I am talking about, look it up on Wikipedia. Either under Pennsylvania Senators up for reelection in 2006, or just look under EVIL! His picture has to be there.
Then I read an article by B. O. Bennett. Mr. Bennett helped to set back the gay civil rights movement by decades (and yes, believe that it is a civil rights movement, no matter what the right wing wants to you to think. The right to marry, serve your country, work where you want to without fear of losing your job because of how you were born is all about civil rights.) by working diligently for Bob Dornan. Mr. Dornan was, for a long time to me, enemy #1. One of his famous saying was “Don't use the word 'gay' unless it's an acronym for 'Got Aids Yet?" Mr. Bennett worked for Dornan for many years, helped him with all his hate, and then, once he was done with politics in 1994, that is when Mr. Bennett decided to come out of the closet.
And then he wanted all the rights that many of us fought for just because he came out of the closet. He and his partner want to marry. Well, where the fuck was he from 70’s and into the late 80’s when Dornan and his like were supporting as well as crafting their anti-gay hate legislation? Oh yeah, he was helping him write it. He was supporting every little hateful thing Dornan could bring up (Dornan also famously was referred to a specific group as “lesbian spear chucker”, showing that he was a homophobe and a probable racist.)
In the mid-80’s, when I was 17, I told my grandmother I was gay. When I went to a Christian college in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I told people I was gay. I didn’t jump out of the closet, but I was slowly coming out. All my professors knew I was gay because I’d told them. Most all of my friends knew I was gay, because I told them. One of the deans of the college knew I was gay because I told him (and he was gay as well, so that one kind of nullifies itself.)
When I graduated college and went to work at one of the Big 8 Accounting firms (yes, I am old enough to have worked at an accounting firms – I think there are 4 big ones left now) I hid it. But when I started dating Joe and he was political, even being interviewed on a local news channel as a gay man who served in the military during the whole storm Clinton got into when he tried to lift the ban on gays in the military, I realized it would be important for me to be out of the closet. A close friend who worked at the firm advised me against it, but I was standing up for myself. So I brought Joe to a work event. And 6 weeks later, they’d found some lame-ass reason to fire me, but made me sign a paper saying they’d pay me severance and not contest unemployment if I promised not to sue.
And where was Mr. Bennett? He was secretly sleeping with men while dating a general’s daughter in the hopes to make it look like he was straight. He tried to run for Congress as a republican but didn’t make it. As a member of Congress, I’m sure THAT is when he would have come out and done some good. Just like Steve Gunderson, who was out when he was first elected…oh wait, Gunderson was closeted as well when he was first elected.
As a matter of fact, Steve likes to say that he was the first openly gay republican member of Congress who was reelected as an openly gay man. He was reelected ONCE as an openly gay man, in 1994, after 7 previous elections as simply “Steve” the republican. He wasn’t known as a gay man for 7 of the 8 elections that he won. He won in 1994 more out of the inertia that is incumbency in US politics than anything he stood for at the time. He decided not to run again. He was probably just exhausted from running for Congress so many times, that to stay on as a gay man for a few more terms, maybe doing some real good (to give him credit, he was the only republican to vote against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, though his vote was clearly made after he had decided not to run again) was just too exhausting to even think about.
And, in case Mr. Gunderson wants to be more self righteous about it all, he was pushed out of the closet, on the floor of the Congress, by everyone's favorite homophobe, Bob Dornan.
In my job after I left the accounting firm, I was too afraid to jump back out of the closet. So I hid it. I hid it when I heard an assistant manager at my company refer to one of my fellow coworkers who was gay as a “Butt Pirate.” I kept my mouth shut when the manager made the comment about Elton John “He sings pretty good for a faggot,” and then laughed, showing a lack of tolerance as well as poor grammar.
After two years, I couldn’t take it anymore. In my job interview for my current job in 1996, I told them flat out “As a gay man, I need to know what protection you provide for gays and lesbians in your company.” And to his credit, the manager who was interviewing me was more than happy to show me that the company did have an extensive policy to protect their workers, all 28,000 of them from every walk of life. And if you want to talk about old and conservative, the company I work for is one of the oldest stock insurance companies in the United States, with roots back to 1792. And I have been allowed to give presentations in front of the division president about being gay and the troubles with working in corporate America as a gay man. And he applauded me.
So what did Mr. Bennett do after he stopped working for hate monger Dornan? He went on to a cushy job with Southern California Edison, and now is a “public affairs consultant” in Long Beach. And NOW he wants everyone to know he is gay, and NOW he is trying to get gays the right to marry. And NOW he wants him and his boyfriend to be able to just be a normal couple, because in 2003 his boyfriend had a stroke and he wasn’t allowed to ride with him in the ambulance to the hospital, because he didn’t have the same civil liberties as his hetero counterparts (his partner came out of it and is now in better health.) Had he been working on these civil liberties starting in 1973, when he got to our nations capital, instead of hiding behind his right wing benefactors, maybe he could have ridden with his partner.
I have had a rainbow flag at my desk since Pride 1997. It is usually the first thing that goes up when I move desks. By example, I have had 3 people at my work in the past 10 years tell me that I changed their personal views on homosexuals. Just by being out, just by working next to or near them day in and day out for years, I was able to make a small change in the world. And 2 of these 3 people are parents, so they will effect on their spouses and their children and maybe on their parents as well. Maybe they will have the possibility to change a friend’s point of view. Maybe they will be a bit more supportive and tolerant at their churches if they meet a gay person. But if they only change themselves, that is 3 people that I changed because I was out of the closet. What if I’d hid?
I am not brave. I am not courageous. I am a simple man, one who realized through proper upbringing, that I needed to be truthful to myself and others around me. Any modicum of change I've helped has been derived just by being me, not by being active politically, and not by being a homosexual. People I worked with saw a regular guy, who wasn't ashamed to talk about being homosexual, didn't hide from it and was upfront with anyone. I understand that there are times you can't be upfront and honest with employers, but I do believe you can ALWAYS be honest with friends.
Oh, and in 2000, Bennett met with W, one of the famous gay republicans Austin 12, and still voted for him. Still voted for a man who has shown through action that he hates gays. A man whose entire political party hates homosexuals and has used them as scapegoats since the early 70’s. A man who will allow gay baiting at any time to avoid real issues. And why does Mr. Bennett say that he is still a republican? Mr. Bennett wrote in an article published just 4 days ago, that he remains a republican because “…terror abroad trumps deeply held personal issues I can still fight and win at home.”
And why was Mr. Bennett writing his article? Because he thinks this whole Foley scandal is going to make it more difficult to be gay in the Republican Party.
He makes me sick. He makes me want to wretch in anger and loathing. I have written this to say one thing:
Fuck you, Mr. Bennett. Don't get me wrong, I hope you do get your same sex partner benefits. And I hope you live in a community where your job and housing is protected. And I hope that all the queer bashers that get to hear their Republican congressman call Barney Frank “Barney Fag” so they think that they can justify their hatred stay away from you and your family and loved ones. But fuck you, Mr. Bennett, for helping be a thorn in my side, and not just for making my being openly gay so much harder because you had no guts when you were younger, but for continuing to support the republicans out of some stupid, baseless thought that republicans are the only political party that can save us from Terrorists. FUCK YOU MR. BENNETT, you lame asshole, for not having the intestinal fortitude to be helpful 33 years ago, and fuck you for continuing to support these hateful bastards, even after years of abject proof that the Republican party wants your support and will never, ever support you.
Oh, and Happy Coming Out Day today!
posted by Mike at 7:06 PM
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