No Marriage for Me, Thanks.

In the most recent round of the battle over gay marriage, I was once again tossed into a national debate and asked to play a role in a play I did not audition for.  A play that paints the picture of a world full of nice, attractive (but not too attractive) middle class gay and lesbian couples who are really, really good people with really, really happy children, but their really, really nice lives are so sadly inadequate because their relationships aren’t “legally recognized.” A play that assumes there is only one goal for gay men and lesbians in relation to marriage rights, and the only variable to consider is the level of intensity used in pursuing victory.

Therefore, I, along with tens of thousands of other queers, was expected not only to be interested in but support the campaign because of my sexuality. I felt like a friend of mine who every time she ran into a well-meaning aunt of mine would have to endure questions about the latest Jewish this or that. She is Jewish after all, doesn’t that mean she CARES about all things Jewish? Of course, she may care in the global sense of Jewishness, but in a whole bunch of cases, the events my aunt prodded her about were half a world away. They were unrelated to her life on the ground. Kind of how I feel about the gay marriage thing.

But with friends and family and all the good kind liberals cheering on “marriage equality,” I didn’t really see a non-asshole path to intervene. Rather than rain on loved ones’ marriage parade, I kept my mouth shut, complained in private.

But now that this election cycle’s battle is over, I would like to say for the record that I don’t want anything to do with marriage as it is currently defined. In fact, I would like the straight people I know to come out in opposition to marriage, period.

Why?
1)  A contract is a contract 100 percent.

Marriage is a property contract. No more. No less. If you want to stand up in front of your church or synagogue or ashram and pledge your undying devotion, go for it, but that should not be considered the equivalent of agreeing to a binding a property contract. Consenting adults who want to should be allowed to create a property contract, but it should be more complicated and involve MANY more hours of conversation and negotiation than applying for a license. Imagine how the divorce rate might go down if the two people seeking “marriage” had to talk through every single detail of their contract from whether the couches are now considered joint property to who will have the right to make end-of-life decisions.

2) Just because they have it, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Why do we think that because the majority has something, we need it? It is entirely possible, and in most cases likely, that the golden ticket they are holding just out of reach is a fraud, full of false promises of respect and acceptance. We only need to look to women’s fight to attain “equality” in the workplace to see that true social transformation will come when we redefine the meaning of work, not when we succeed in fitting more workers into untenable conditions.

3) I don’t think assimilation is the key to acceptance.

Remember the Mattachine society? Probably not. They were nice, professional gay men in the ’50s who were determined to erase the image of the perverted homosexual, replacing it with the good, clean-living respectability. Among other things, they wanted the more “socially conscious homosexual” to provide leadership to the whole mass of social deviates. Niiiice. I prefer the Stonewall model: Drag queens and bull daggers taking to the streets, demanding to be accepted on their own terms. Note to all: Gay and lesbian people are not “just like” straight people any more than Jewish people are “just like” Catholic people. Our lived experiences are inherently different and those differences inform who we are. Does that mean we should have different laws? Hell, no. It means we should have laws that acknowledge and allow for those differences.

So, while I support 100% the right of ALL consenting adults to enter into a property contract and the right of all consenting adults to declare an emotional or religious contract in front of their loved ones, I do not support marriage as it is currently defined. In fact, I think we would all be a lot better off if ALL current marriages were declared invalid and couples were required to negotiate all of the details of their marriage contracts.

And just so no one gets the idea that I am supporting a windfall for attorneys, I am confident that a nation that can come up with financial aid forms, income tax forms and the current array of application forms requiring inordinate amounts of detail can come up with a standard property contract.

To Pee or Not to Pee

As if the average adult doesn’t have enough to worry about, consider the awkward, impersonal but strangely intimate space tucked away in most gathering spots, the public bathroom. They are the bane of my existence.

I, at first glance, look like the person in the women’s bathroom that your mother warned you about — a man. And a man in a women’s bathroom is, by definition, a threat.

As a result, when I enter a women’s bathroom, I expect to run into problems. Experience tells me that I will come face to face with another woman who will not recognize me as such, and she will respond accordingly, as if she is in danger. To avoid both scaring other women and being challenged on my gender, I go through all sorts of gyrations when visiting a restroom in public is unavoidable.

1) Decloak

First and foremost, I remove whatever outer clothing I have on that masks my breasts — coat, sweater, scarf, sweatshirt — you name it, it’s off.  I put my curves on display. You would think that being a 42C, I would be easy to code as female when the majority of barriers to boob visibility have been removed. But, it doesn’t seem to work that way. Somehow my short hair and masculine features erase my breasts.

Once while walking back to the car after a football game, my dad and I stopped the local Elks lodge to use the bathroom. It was an unseasonably warm fall day, and (out of character) I was wearing a form-fitting tank top so no de-cloaking required. Once in the door my dad and I split up, and I asked one of the club regulars, “Where’s the restroom?” “Down the stairs to the left,” he answered, smiling. I followed his instructions only to come face to face with my father entering the men’s restroom. A repeat of the question to another club member with the gender specified — “Which way to women’s restroom, please” — offered a new set of instructions. “Back up the stairs and to your right.” Three feet from my original location.

2) Avoid
If there is a choice, I avoid crowded bathrooms. We people are pretty much sheep, following the leader to the nearest thing that meets our need. Luckily for me, that means that there is usually some second-floor, around-the-corner, down-the-hall alternative bathroom that is virtually ignored. Of course, this technique doesn’t always work because other people are looking for hidden bathrooms, too.

The last time I climbed the stairs to use the “alternative” bathroom at a small regional airport, I walked in on a young woman in the middle of changing her clothes. It is one thing to think a man has walked in while you are washing your hands. It is an entirely other issue if “he” walks in when you are stripped down to your pretty little things. I didn’t even bother to point out that I had boobs and they were a lot bigger than hers. I just put up my hand to block my eyes and backed out.

3) Survey
At busy airports, malls and movie theaters, it is often difficult if not impossible to find a low-traffic bathroom. But with careful observation, I can usually get a read on who is going in and who is coming out. And with a little bit of math, I can guestimate how crowded the bathroom is and when I will most likely be able into a stall unseen. (Getting out again, is any entirely different problem.) At any rate, the survey method is, again, not foolproof.

Recently I made my way across the lobby of a theater toward what I had determined was a fairly empty bathroom, only to have a woman chase me down from 25 feet away. Determined to stop my imminent invasion, she wildly waved her arms. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” she yelled. “EXCUSE ME! You are going in the wrong bathroom!”

I’ll admit that on this one, I wasn’t as gracious as I usually am. My parents were standing to the side watching it all. I was embarrassed. Letting my ego get the better of me, I turned toward her slowly, looked her dead in the eye and in a  low voice, snarled. “No. I am NOT.”

As is usually the case, the timbre of my voice combined with a closer look at my body eradicated her confusion, and she stood sputtering an apology. In the cosmic balance of things, her teenage daughter was completely mortified and was certainly much more affected than either my parents or I.

4) Look Down
Every once in a while, there is no getting out of it. I have to go into a crowded bathroom and wait in line for a stall. The first step is simply to lower my head and get in the line, then I wait out the first round of recoiling and gasping as the others in line absorb the evidence that I am actually supposed to be there. Unfortunately, the person who joins the line after me, more often than not, is sure that she has discovered what no one else has. THERE IS A MAN IN HERE.

I have had women tap me on the shoulder in a line of ten women in an airport bathroom, step to the head of the line and block my way to the stall in a packed concert hall bathroom, tell the other women that there is “a problem” in a football stadium bathroom.

I don’t expect this to change much. And, honestly, I consider it my responsibility to figure out how not to scare women, no matter how much of a hassle it is. The only thing I would change is the line police. I find them perplexing. Do they think all those other women are dumb? Do they think a man wouldn’t recognize that all the other people in line were not like him? Do they not know that the first thing in a men’s bathroom is a urinal. Trust me. If a man walks into a woman’s bathroom by mistake, he knows it immediately.

Old news, but I can’t help but wonder…

If conservative Christians believe homosexuality can be cured, why did they banish Ted Haggard? Why did the men who worked his miracle healing in the desert and announced that Haggard is 100% heterosexual then suggest it would be best that he move out of Colorado and seek a secular job? And why, in response, has Ted gone along with his church and begun taking courses on-line to get a master’s in psychology? Can anyone recall the last time those same leaders got press coverage of a newly hetero-ed ex-gay reclaiming at a “godly” life? Why not use Haggard’s making the “right choice” for all it’s worth? What kind of faith does this reveal in those who repent their sins in Jesus’ name?

The Ted Haggard scandal inspires these questions.

I know that most lgbt folks twitch at the word “choice,” but that’s the line they are selling. I grew up in those churches, and as a child I attended several of these denominations—Four Square, Assembly of God, and Faith Tabernacle. I learned one thing: whether a particular sin is minor or severe, that sin is the result of giving in to the temptations of Satan: a choice. In other words, in the world of the evangelical conservatives, there are no gay people, there are only straight people who are sinning. And, don’t forget, the ministerial mission in Bible-based churches is always to shame and thus mark as needing recovery—bringing back into the fold—the one who sinned. Getting right in the eyes of God.

So, following that logic (?) the conservative Christian movement has long held that homosexuality is curable, and the leaders of the faith have directed their sexuality-questioning flock toward “restoration.” That being the case, what is a church’s basis for depriving Haggard an ongoing personal connection with the people he failed? How else can Christians truly make informed decisions about a process their leaders have directed them to?

Ah, silly me, that assumes that deeper study is the goal. The true reason a church—in this case, the New Life Church—needs to remove and banish the homosexual sinner is to circumvent the congregation’s close observation, an observation that will reveal the fiction of restoration. Basically, the theology behind restoration, which insists that Christians who question its true allegiance to the Word are fallen away, has succeeding in blocking its godly citizenship from taking measure of its effectiveness.

I guess it’s worth noting that Focus on the Family’s James Dobson acknowledged on “Larry King” that the restoration process was intended to restore Haggard from being gay to not being gay. Far from the traditional assertion that those who indulge in homosexual desire are falling to temptation from Satan, Dobson seems to be acknowledging that someone is gay, but can quit acting on it. Not exactly a cure.

Haggard wrote to his flock that for extended periods of time, he would “enjoy victory and rejoice in freedom.” At some point he would experience desires that were “contrary to everything [he] believed in” struggling with what he termed “repulsive and dark.”

People critical of the “ex-gay” movement, such as Wayne Beson, author of “Anything but Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Movement,” lay the blame for such repulsion at the feet of the very organizations that claim to want to heal by creating a culture that, overtly or not, makes people “hate themselves for being gay,” which maintains the existence of the ex-gay movement.

Here we go ’round the Mulberry bush…

There is a balm in Gilead

Knowing another human being is like looking through a microscope. What is placed directly under the lens defines our field of view and thus our understanding.

Today, in the midst of more snow and cold, away from the lesbian community I knew in Eugene, Ore., long gone from the radical dyke community of San Francisco, disconnected from a sense of what LGBT “means” and trying to navigate a landscape I don’t understand, I am just me, a complicated collection of experiences and their effects, more than any single lens can take in.

Behind me, on a desk just like the one this computer sits on, against a wall of photos of Oregon rivers, are the sculptures I make when I am overwhelmed with the impact of those experiences. They are the physical shape of my emotional world: a growing chorus, always singing.

The songs they sing are gospel: the music of my childhood. “Precious Lord.” “A Closer Walk,” “Blessed Assurance.” My connection to gospel music is admittedly uncomfortable for me, a heckler of religion, and unnerving to my friends. It doesn’t fit with what their lens perceives. I understand, but I see it a different way. While I find no “salvation” in the message, there is the soothing comfort of familiarity.

I came to sculpting as a way of releasing the maelstrom of responses I have to living in a world where I feel so dislocated. And oddly, gospel and clay make that possible.

My search for solace is the bass line of my adult life — a life that has played out in a time that revealed how brutal humanity can be and how easily we turn our backs, the suffering left to suffer.

There was a time when I did not believe that my country would leave its own to suffer. And it is a testament to how cynical I have become that my faith sounds so naive. In 1987, 41,027 people in the U.S. were dead of AIDS, 71,176 were diagnosed. The president, my president of my country, after years of silence, finally used the word “AIDS” in public. He sided with Education Secretary William Bennett, saying the government should not provide sex education. All around me, my community was dying, and my president said, “… let’s be honest with ourselves. AIDS information cannot be what some call ‘value neutral.’ After all, when it comes to preventing AIDS, don’t medicine and morality teach the same lesson.” We all knew what he meant. “Let the cocksuckers die. It’s what they deserve.”

In those years, I lost friends, but perhaps more devastating, I lost my sense of belonging. It has never fully returned. Which may be why my experience of being “queer” in America weaves its way through so much more than simply my sexuality.

My body, in its contradiction to my affect, has had me needing to use, but ordered out of women’s restrooms. My experience with drugs, short-lived but intense, has me tied inexorably to a circle of poor, emotionally brutalized dykes of color, most of whom were lost or buried by the time I caught a ticket out, because I had a place to go. My cousin’s murder by a serial killer, just one year after I returned to California to exorcise my demons, obliterated the last vestiges of security, as much a result of the random violence of her death as the culture’s nauseating fascination with the vicious murder of women. My past includes too many dead too young —of suicide, of overdose, of AIDS, of breast cancer, of murder— a mountain of losses to grieve. Experiences that, in part, make me who I am; a past that no one here, and so few others, can relate to.

Out here, in the middle of the pond, my past is out of the field of view. Here, I am just a middle-aged lesbian who looks too masculine for most people’s comfort. I teach journalism. I live in a 112-year-old Victorian with my partner and her two kids. I am a good cook. I am — according to the people who are in a position to assess — blunt, witty, and, at turns, cranky — even difficult. So much more pleasant than how I feel.

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them. — Annie Dillard “Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek”

I find Dillard’s words reassuring. The idea that I can find beauty in this “splintered wreck.”

It is no wonder that sitting here in the flat, cold prairie and looking for solace, I squeeze a chorus of lament out of clay. It makes sense that the music of my childhood cuts through the political, social and spiritual complications that surround it and eases my sense of loss. If I did not know how to pull beauty out of cultural muck, I would have been finished long ago.

“There is a balm in Gilead.”

While the breast parade passes by…

Did you hear the one about the dyke who went into the library to find Playboy magazine?
She was reading it for the interviews.

No, really.

I’m a college professor. I was teaching class on interviewing. It may be a cliché at this point, but Playboy really did have good articles. And superb interviews. I wanted a copy of the Martin Luther King interview. (It’s from 1965, but I didn’t know the month at the time.)

Because I do not have a collection of vintage Playboys and no one I know would admit to owning them and my uncle whose stash I used to snoop at all the time is dead, I needed a library. Lucky me. Universities have libraries.

Problem #1

• At the time, I was teaching a public policy research course. People in the library knew me. Combine this with the fact that I am, well, visibly queer, and you get the picture. Walking in and asking where to find the Playboys is not the typical path to maintaining a professional image.

Solution:

• I teach a public policy research course. I know how to find stuff without a librarian’s help.

Problem #2

• As I cruised casually through the stacks, I learned that the only Playboys in the bound magazine section did not include the year I needed. Strangely, the collection includes only the late ‘60s through the early ‘70s. Maybe those girls didn’t have what the average college boy likes because according to the librarian the rest of the years aren’t there because they have been ripped off or ripped up by library patrons. The campus was one of the hotbeds of ’60s radicalism so maybe guys (and the occasional gal no doubt) were just too busy changing the world to get spend time stealing pictures of girls’ boobies. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t doing me any good.

Solution:

• The year I wanted was available on microfiche. Getting the little boxes of film was no big deal though I did have an urge to casually drape my hand over the typed white label that seemed to scream PLAYBOY!!! I resisted, but it might have had something to do with my distractions with what I knew was coming.

Problem #3

• The microfiche machines sit out in front of god and everybody, which puts me and my “streaming video” of naked girls on display. Of course, this was the day, the student worker decides to “help” me get the microfiche hooked up and rolling. I try to persuade her that I have got it all figured out, but she just keeps insisting and rolling the film forward until a decidedly nude blond is filling up the screen. She says, “oh” like a teenager does when she walks in on her parents kissing. Somewhere between adult politeness and eeeeewwwwwww. I consider telling her that I am looking for an article, but it seems just too pathetic to say out loud. Instead I nod, I mumble and begin scrolling as quickly as humanly possible through a sea of boobs to find the interview.

Solution:

• Student workers usually ignore library patrons so it is unlikely I will ever see her again.

Problem #4

• The research librarian’s office is next to the microfiche machines. I teach a course in public policy research. When I am in the library and he is in the library and our paths cross, we carry on conversation. He sees me. We of course speak. I see him read the box label so I explain how many problems I had finding the necessary issues of the magazine, adding a self-deprecating, “Yeah right, I’m just looking for the articles.” He laughs.

• I keep running the microfiche. We glance occasionally at the pages rushing by. A whirring tableau of Tits and Ass.

• The librarian and I talk about how bizarre it is that people still steal pictures from the magazine. He tells me they keep the current issues behind the counter in the periodicals room. I can’t help but wonder who has the guts to go ask for it and why they need to. Wouldn’t it be less uncomfortable to fork over the cash at local 7-11? Do they not have computers?

Salvation:

• I find the article relatively quickly. The interviews are not surrounded by nudes so at least when the page is cued up for printing, I can relax.

The Conundrum

• I am not a prude. I am not closeted at all. No need to go into details, but I’ve been around the block a time or two. So why does being seen in the vicinity of Playboy embarrass me? I’d like to say it’s some kind of feminist response to the objectification of women, but it’s just not true. I am perfectly happy to objectify breasts when I want to.

I think it’s some leftover developing sexuality thing. I sneaked more than a few looks at Playboy when I was a confused teen, and I felt the same way then — like I needed to get the heck out of Dodge before someone saw what I was up to.