Tonight as Jews around the world celebrate Shavu’ot, a holiday honoring the giving of the Torah, my congregation, Kol-Ami, will be holding a special study session at 7:30 PM to discuss Judaism and sexual ethics. Please join us at 1200 N. La Brea for what promises to be a fascinating and insightful discussion about an issue I believe we gay people should discuss with greater frequency.

On this holiday, many Jews engage in all-night study sessions, considering the meaning of Scripture and its various commentaries, often relating those lessons to struggles we face in our daily lives. Thus, this discussion fits right into this ancient Jewish tradition.

As those who regularly read this blog know, I have occasionally weighed in on the struggle gay people (particularly gay men) have in trying to draw the boundary dividing appropriate from inappropriate sexual behavior. It seems that all too often all too many believe that sex is okay provided we play safe, that the conversation ends there.

But, I believe sex should be more than that, more than just pleasuring ourselves with another as we satisfy this natural human instinct. It should serve as a means to connect us in a deeper way to our fellows. Note the use of “should” in this paragraph. This is my idealistic notion of sexuality, my recognition of its potential.

As part of the category I created, (Gay) Male Sexuality & the Monogamous Ideal, I penned a series of posts last year (here and here for example) encouraging gay men to engage in a serious conversation on sexuality and sexual ethics.

I offer further thoughts on this topic (in many ways just rehashing points I have made previously) below the jump: (more…)

Dan sent me this YouTube video about a month ago.  We both had various reasons not to post it at time.  Dan’s were more charitable reasons than mine.

But the time is right, our moment has come, we will look back at this moment and realize posting this video altered the orbit and healed the Earth.  (Ooops, getting carried away with myself).

Just watch!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Welcome Instapundit Readers!

UPDATE:  Please note that I have changed this piece slightly to include the name of my source, the woman who translated the articles, once I received her permission to do so.

Within thirty-six hours of my posting on the April gay bashing in Amsterdam, a variety of websites, conservative, libertarian and gay, picked up on the story, including the blog of a leading Australian newspaper and the website of (the self-proclaimed) “largest gay news service” in Europe. That latter used language identical to that in the translations we provided, suggesting our post was their source.

We believe we were the first English-language source to cover this.

The publication (in the original sense of the term, “making public) of this story shows how powerful and necessary the blogosphere has become. Had I not met a Evelyn Markus, a Dutch Jewish lesbian, last weekend at the Santa Barbara Retreat of the Horowitz Freedom Center, few in the English-speaking world would have known about this event, yet another in a series of attacks on gay people n the Dutch capital.

Learning I was a blogger, Evelyn alerted me to the incident and asked me to write about it. I told I could do so only with evidence, i.e., links to other articles or a police report. She told me about the articles and then (on her own dime) offered to translate them for me.

We are particularly grateful for her efforts. They have helped making people increasingly aware of what Mark Steyn called (in linking this post) a “Dutch gay-bashing spree.”

All to many gay news sites seem indifferent to this phenomenon. If it weren’t for that chance meeting, this story might not have come out.

No wonder the MSM is in decline. When news outlets paid to cover this thing don’t uncover such stories, especially given that they’re part of a disturbing trend, we’re dependent on unpaid bloggers (and other regular citizens) to make public such information.

Where we would be without the blogosphere is beyond me.

This weekend is Los Angeles Gay Pride (or officially just LA Pride). Given how crazy busy I have been these past weeks, I had intended to spend a quiet day at home, reading and taking it easy, but having been invited to several parties (especially given the hostess of the earlier one), I decided I’ll step out tomorrow and join in the festivities.

Three years ago when I had also resolved to spend a quiet day at home instead of partaking in those festivities, I wondered if Pride were “passé:”

the purpose of Pride has changed since the first parades of the 1970s. Back then it was a chance for gay people to be more visible. They called it “Pride” to counter the sense that, having not been open about our difference, we were ashamed of our sexuality. Today, as gay people becoming increasingly visible, it’s beginning to seem that “Pride” is passé. Pride now seems to be merely the name of the gay & lesbian street festival where people gather to have a good time one spring weekend.

Today at a brunch for my synagogue, I talked with a gay man nearly a generation older than me and shared my ambivalence about “Pride.” He sort of shared my attitude, but offered an understanding observation, “That’s because you’re younger” and pointed out how much more the visibility, the public declaration of pride, mattered when he was coming of age as a gay man in the 1970s.

Pride was once a sometimes transformational event, allowing gay individuals to find validation and recognition in the public square. Now, it’s just become primarily a community celebration similar to those of other groups organize at various times during the year. Pride just happens to be the name we assign it, the word today having more historical than social or political significance as it once did.

As I wrote three years ago, I’m neither proud nor ashamed to be gay. “I just am gay.” That word has neither positive nor negative connotations. It is merely descriptive. But, we’ve come a long way to make it so. Perhaps the whole notion of pride was necessary to help erase its negative connotations.

One of the great things about Barack Obama’s success in this year’s contest for the White House is that less than a half-century after the height of the Civil Rights’ Movement, an African-American has become a serious contender for the highest office in the land.

It will be a great day indeed when race no longer plays a factor in how we evaluate an individual, when we have realized Martin Luther King’s dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

In the way he answered Geraldo Rivera’s question whether he considered himself a “person of color” Saturday night on FoxNews, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a man of Indian heritage, took a big step toward realizing that dream. He didn’t respond directly to Rivera’s query. When Rivera pressed him, noting the governor’s “non-response,” the Bayou State Republican replied, “the only color that matters is red, white and blue.”

Sounds like a man who could truly bring us together.