fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
I don’t remember Roots too well. I was fairly young when it came out and, truth be told, at that time I was not yet ready to process the painful history that forms the backbone of the African American experience. But I remember one scene very well. Emancipation had occurred and one slave turned the…
Anderson Cooper came out. Jim Parsons came out. Ricky Martin came out. Neil Patrick Harris and George Takei are out all over the place. Each one of these celebrity outings has weakened the walls of the closet that much more. In his eloquent coming out statement, Mr. Cooper explains that he always wanted to keep…
In a move that surprised most, myself included, not only did the US Supreme Court uphold the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka Obamacare, pretty much intact, but it was Chief Justice John Roberts who provided the swing vote. The sticking part of the AHA was the individual mandate, the part of the law which requires everyone…
In conjunction with an exhibit on the life and music of Billy Strayhorn at the San Francisco Main Library, in May of 2009, there was a concert held one Saturday afternoon. The performance featured The Junius Courtney Big Band and singer Denise Perrier. They alternated between music and short stage vignettes that dramatized various milestones in…
In one of my Civil Rights History classes way back when, the professor explained why the NAACP very specifically took up the case of Rosa Parks as a means of challenging the Jim Crow era bus segregation laws. She had been a secretary for the organization for a number of years and had an unimpeachable…
As predicted, and feared, foes of marriage equality in the great state of Washington have filed more than enough signatures to put the issue on the November ballot. The Washington secretary of state office recommends those seeking to put an initiative on the ballot collect at least 150,000 signatures. The anti-marriage equality folks gathered over…
A friend in college hipped me to the Syracuse Cultural Workers’ Carry It On Peace Calendar. I’ve purchased them ever since. It features photos, art, and notable anniversaries from social movements both contemporary and historical. For June, they always do a nice spread for Gay Pride month. This year they are featuring the story of…
On Daily Kos appears a piece about a $20,000 reward for anyone who can provide a copy of President Obama’s college transcripts. The offer is being made by a Mr. Brooks Bayne over at a website called The Trenches. Quoted in the L.A. Times, The Trenches says: “We’re not convinced that Barack is as smart…
Some folks in the gay community have recently argued against a harsh sentence for the convicted Dharun Ravi, the man guilty of surreptitiously broadcasting over the internet his gay roommate, Tyler Clementi, while he was having a date — an act which led to Mr. Clementi’s suicide. Some feared a harsh sentence might cause a backlash. Others…
Some of you follow the gar spot via e-mail subscription or feed from Google’s Feedburner service. I discovered this past Saturday that Feedburner was unable to read the feed from the website since May 9. This means that all posts between May 9 and May 19 were not sent out. I fixed the problem late Saturday….
