City Collapses Over Sex-Change Operation
After 14 years, excellent performance ratings and another raise just
last year, the Largo, FL city manager was fired for announcing his
upcoming sex-change operation. The City Commission fired him because he
had "violated their trust" and "caused a major disruption."
What the City Commission members mean is, "Wow, you're confusing me!
Making me uncomfortable! Making it impossible to ignore my own sexual
beliefs! If you don't stop, we'll, we'll, we'll send you away so we can
zip our existential terror right back up."
These five men and women actually think they have the right to vote on
Steven Stanton's gender. They're demanding protection from their
discomfort with his personal choices. Of course, if they weren't so
obsessed with his personal choices, they wouldn't need quite so much
protection from their terror.
And these people are actually willing to sacrifice Stanton's
high-quality managerial services just so they can pretend the world is
never going to change. Do you know how hard it is to find a decent city
manager?
Well, Commissioners, you can ditch Stanton. But you really blew
it--Stanton was your chance to develop a little tolerance and
self-soothing before being challenged by someone you really care about:
your son coming out as bisexual. Your wife saying she's been faking
orgasms. Your fantasies about being spanked by both Barack Obama and
Condi Rice. It will be great sport to watch you squirm when it's your
grandkids or nieces or best friends challenging the dominant paradigm
about sexuality instead of a guy you can just send away to Fire Island.
Sexually, the world isn't really divided into gay and straight. It's
divided between people who can tolerate others' sexuality, and people
who can't. People who may think about others' sexuality, and people who
judge others' sexuality. That second group seems obsessed with others'
sexuality. Who else spends every waking moment thinking about
homosexuality, sex-change operations, prostitution, orgies, premarital
sex, and porn, porn, porn, porn, and porn?
You want a city manager you can "trust"? Try drug addict Rush Limbaugh,
extortionist Jack Abramoff, attempted child molester Tom Foley,
compulsive gambler Bill Bennett, or the unemployed Tom DeLay--all
eligible by virtue of keeping the gender they were born with. Ann
Coulter has no managerial experience, but she obviously loves being a
woman, so she's safe, too.
Oh, the Largo city motto? "To provide superior services that enhance
the quality of life and community pride." Well, In one gesture, the
city has
- gotten rid of the guy who coordinated the superior services,
- undermined the quality of life for all tolerant people, and
- smeared the community's pride with shame
Gay Or Irish? Parade Organizers Force Choice
"Buy some corned beef," my local butcher smiled on March 17.
"Today, everybody's Irish."
Well, apparently not everybody. In New York City--home to 2 million
Irish-Americans, half as many as in all of Ireland--organizers of the
huge Fifth Avenue parade have once again banned Irish-American gay
groups from marching. And so the city's most powerful Irish-American
politician, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, is boycotting the
parade.
As every Irish person, gay and straight, should. Unless, of course,
hatred, exclusion, and obsession with others' private lives is truly
what it means to be Irish.
How anti-Irish is being gay? Last year, John Dunleavy, a leader of the
Roman Catholic group behind the parade, actually compared the exclusion
of gays to barring the Ku Klux Klan from marching in Harlem, or Nazis
from joining an Israeli parade. I guess he forgot to add, ‘like
inviting child molesters to a cub scout camp.'
In one sentence Dunleavy managed to insult every living person. He
should be barred from singing or hearing Danny Boy for the rest of his
pathetic, frightened life.
Today, if anyone tells you they're proud to be Irish, ask them why.
People typically say it's the culture--the music, food, lust for life,
melancholy attachment to a rugged land, an old-world spirituality, a
tradition of surviving. Throw in some red hair and a couple of pints.
My butcher told me that even though I'm Jewish and have never set foot
on the Emerald Isle, today I'm Irish. Well, no thanks. I'm with
Christine Quinn. Who, by the way, is marching as a lesbian in the St.
Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin, Ireland, sporting a shamrock and pink
triangle.
Newt: Hypocrite, or Opportunistic Hypocrite?
Newt Gingrich now admits he was having an extramarital affair while
he led Congress in impeaching President Clinton for getting a few
blowjobs from a consenting adult.
Ho hum, another "family values" hypocrite. Ted Haggard, Ralph Reed,
Mark Foley, Lou Sheldon, Bill O'Reilly, Paul Crouch, Rush Limbaugh,
Randall Terry, Robert Livingston (who was supposed to succeed Gingrich
as Speaker of the House)--the list of "family values" leaders whose
family values include divorce, infidelity, gambling, and embezzlement
is getting so big, they could form their own political party. Oh
wait--they already have.
Republicans really face a dilemma this Presidential season: three of
their four most prominent candidates are divorced. The fourth
is--gasp--Mormon. And you know how wild and liberal those desert
swingers are.
Serendipitously, Arizona Senator John (‘Jerry Falwell is intolerant
except when he's considering supporting me') McCain pleaded that
"gossip--‘family issues'--should not enter into this campaign." That
was in response to Rudy Giuliani asking for privacy as he apparently
deals with estrangement from his children.
In a better, more civilized world, of course our leaders' private lives
would be private. We wouldn't even know that Gingrich had had
extramarital sex with an employee 20 years his junior. And except for a
bit of schadenfreude, we wouldn't care.
But the "family values" crowd has relentlessly shrunk everyone's zone
of privacy. Your sex toy--illegal in 6 states. Your prescription
contraceptives--subject to a pharmacist's "moral refusal rights." Your
private, adults-only strip club, swing club, erotic bookstore--crippled
or closed in every state. And so this crowd deserves no privacy
whatsoever.
I personally don't care if a politician is divorced, bisexual, or
unfaithful--can any President cause more "immorality" than our current
non-drinking, monogamous, Church-going fool who brags about not reading
the newspaper? But these people have earned our complete contempt for
their private lives, their human struggles, their family dramas.
You know that cliché, live by the sword, die by the sword. Well, you
get votes by trashing others' private choices, you lose votes because
of your own.
And Newt? Now that he's acknowledged "There's certainly times when I've
fallen short of God's standards," will he do the Godly thing and stop
bashing other people's sexuality and lifestyle?
Sex Offenders? Torture & Hanging Are Next
Ohio wants to be the first state to require sex offenders and child
predators to have special fluorescent license plates.
The reason is the same old excuse behind the rest of the billion-dollar
let's-segregate-the-molesters industry: "helping families make informed
decisions for themselves and their children," as State Senator Keven
Coughlin of Cuyahoga Falls says.
Decisions about what? "Quick, change lanes, we don't want to be behind
a molester." "Honey, don't wear that belly blouse and mini-skirt
outside, there's a molester's car parked across the street."
I'm still trying to get data on other laws that publicly tag molesters
after they're released from jail. Megan's Law is the most
comprehensive, affecting every police and sheriff's department in the
nation. It's bad enough that laws like these soak up law enforcement
money that could actually be used to make communities safer, not to
mention money that might actually treat some of these offenders.
No, the worst thing about laws like these is that they reinforce the
public's terror and rage: terror about their ever-increasing sense of
vulnerability. Rage about their dreadful sense of powerlessness.
Result: a bloodthirsty desire to punish someone, someplace, for
destroying the pleasures of parenthood.
Predictable response: segregate the sex-offending bastards. Prevent
them from living anywhere reasonable, from getting a decent job, from
getting treatment.
I'm actually quite sympathetic about how people are desperate to feel
like they're doing something to make themselves and their families
safer. Given the constant reminders that the world is now too
treacherous to let kids out of the house--courtesy of Fox "News," Law
& Order, Amber Alert, and the NRA–every reasonable American is
scrambling to feel empowered. How can someone feel "I'm not gonna take
it anymore"? Mess with the lives of molesters.
There's no data to suggest that any of these programs actually make our
kids and communities safer. They certainly don't make anyone feel
safer--in fact, just the opposite. But they make people feel they're doing
something. Ohio will pass this law without actually researching whether
it will benefit anyone besides the company that makes frames for the
new license plates. Try it in one county for a year, then evaluate? Who
has time for thoughtfulness--we're in a crisis!
Today, any public policy that helps people feel less powerless is
perceived as good–even if it has no impact, or makes a problem worse
(for a case study, see abstinence-only, issues #42
& #62).
There is no science, no law enforcement data to show that tagging sex
offenders makes the rest of us safer. It just makes people feel less
impotent for a day, and more frightened into the open-ended future.
Why not simplify the problem and just execute sex offenders?
Actually, the Texas House of Representatives has just passed
that
law. Yes, really.
Fight the Anti-sex Religious Right, Not Capitalism
OK, let's agree that the major drug companies are in it for the
money. Or, if you prefer, that they're blood-sucking capitalists.
Exactly like the makers of cars, gameboys, and everything else we wear,
drive, eat, and use.
That agreed, the sudden vicious attack on Merck, maker of the HPV
vaccine Gardisil, is a classic example of progressive people shooting,
er, vaccine-ing themselves in the foot.
As we wrote last year (issue #77),
here's a vaccine that could wipe out most cervical cancer
in our lifetime; all we'd have to do is vaccinate girls before
they become sexually active. Sex-phobic groups like the Abstinence
Clearinghouse and Family Research Council immediately jumped
on this, glowering that it would:
- increase 'promiscuity' ("c'mon Kevin, I can't get cervical cancer–let's do it!"), and
- send the 'wrong message.' Yes, that awful message of "we care more about your health than about our obsessive need to deny that you're a sexual being with an actual vagina."
But the drug is distributed by, er, a drug company. And so a group of otherwise progressive people are suspicious. They don't like the high price (every drug starts this way), want a 100% guarantee that the drug won't cause side effects in one single person (there is no such drug), want access to pharmaceutical company records, and are generally being a pain in the ass. The worst sin they see is that Merck has spent millions promoting the drug, creating groups to market it and lobby state legislatures to require it.
There's a shock--a profit-making company spending money to shape the legislative environment in which it competes. As if that hasn't been done with "green" cars, biodegradable diapers, and even the non-smokers' movement--not to mention more traditional products like TVs, furniture, and pop-tarts. Tariffs or tax relief anyone?
The Religious Right is rubbing its hands in glee as so-called feminists, self-identified "health activists" and other anti-capitalists do the dirty work of undermining the sexual health of teenagers and adults. Now the Right can save their medieval "promiscuity" argument for the next advance in sexual health, education, or entertainment.
Meanwhile, the idea that Merck is in it for the money--the huge money--is good. It's why they invented the drug, it's why they were able to get the drug approved, and it's how they could successfully lobby for its mandate in Texas, the country's largest school system. You and I couldn't have done it. What we can do is support efforts to make the vaccine mandatory in our own locale. Until capitalism is overthrown and everything is free, that is.
Correspondence: Porn? "That's Just Like A Man"
A reader named Janet has sent a vitriolic response to my
criticism of the concept "victims of porn" (issue #64).
She says, "You totally missed the real victims…there is no
pornography without the object of lust…this sends so many girls down a
path of self-destruction, eventual shame and abuse in the porno
world…where their self-esteem is forever damaged. They typically end up
like Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole…confused, sad, and powerless to
end their own misery."
This is a great example of the confusion and sex-negativity in the
anti-porn world. They believe that lust is dangerous; that working in
pornography is shameful; that no one could make a rational decision to
participate in it; and that doing so somehow robs women of their
adulthood. Oh, and that there's always a great alternative to being in
porn. What would Anna Nicole be if there were no porn--Secretary of
Agriculture? Professor of astrophysics? Or just one more average jane,
working the nightshift at 7-Eleven and hating her life?
But the real highlight of Janet's nastygram is this: “I am not
surprised that you arrogantly only see this from a man's point of view.
Why not call your website
Womenarenothingmorethanabodyformyselfindulgentpleasure.org."
Ah--now she gets to the problem: I'm a man. And so I can't possibly
enjoy, respect, or like women. I'm a man, and so I can't be thoughtful
about sex and gender. I'm a man, so my desire for pleasure is obviously
selfish and aggressive. Janet, I'm sorry you live in such a terrible
world.
But Janet, I'm afraid that you're no feminist, and you seem,
well, too lazy to think. What you've done is just as bad as
dismissing a woman's opinion as "just a woman being emotional,"
or "women just don't get it," or "she's just premenstrual."
If we want to get beyond "women only think with their
hormones," we have to get past "men only think with their
penises."
Since you don't know me, and obviously haven't bothered to read my
work, maybe you've missed my actual blind spot--if I desire the
victimization of women, maybe it's because I'm Christian, left-handed,
or an Aquarius. And if my piece were written by a woman--how would you
account for the attitudes you find so appalling?
We live in a time where science is considered just one more opinion,
and having strong feelings is equated with being well-informed. Put the
two together, and meaningful discourse is impossible. The result is
public policy that makes things worse: abstinence ed, Amber Alert, the
battle over Emergency Contraception.
By dismissing someone's well-researched thoughts as merely the
predictable artifact of their gender, you dishonor women, men, and
thinkers. You disqualify yourself from any important conversation.
You're just talking about your fear and anger.
Some of us are having a serious discussion about the fate of the world.
Please don't change the subject.
America's War On Sex
Bloggin'!
In response to many, many requests, I've started a blog.
It covers the same subjects you enjoy in the monthly emailed
version: sexual politics, culture, the media, sexual rights
and perversions of justice and, well, America's war on sex.
Check it out at www.SexualIntelligence.wordpress.com.
Special thanks to Marc Randazza and Gene Gonzales for helping
to make it happen.