Well, there is at least one sad aspect of Barney Frank’s upcoming retirement.  We won’t have the unhappy Massachusetts Democrat to kick around any more.  This guy is so ripe for ridicule.  It has been a lot of fun mocking his various statements, not to mention his juvenile reaction to the type of questions Republican politicians face on a daily basis.

“From his relatively petty transgressions related to his personal life,” write the editors of the National Review,

to his more consequential role in enabling Fannie and Freddie, Representative Frank personifies a great deal of what is wrong with American public life. Though a highly intelligent man, he made the wrong decisions at every turn, and compounded his policy errors with the petty and vindictive style of his politics.

Barney is, in short, an embarrassment. Now, I’m sure that if I scanned the various gay blogs, I would read numerous encomia to this prominent politician. Indeed, I received one such e-mail yesterday from a gay organization.

Instead of celebrating his career and lamenting his retirement, gay people should be cheering his departure.  Simply put, Barney is not a good role model for our community.  We should not want such a mean-spirited, petty man, wrong about so much, unwilling to admit his mistakes, childish in victory as a face of gay America.  That he will no longer be the most prominent gay politician is a good thing for gay America, a very good thing indeed.

RELATED: The Best Thing Barney Frank Could Do For Gay People . . .

UPDATE:  Indeed, even today, Barney demonstrates his juvenile inability to handle the type of questions Republicans face on a daily basis.   In the Washington Examiner, Charlie Spiering reports that the retiring Democrat “lashed out against the Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie this morning for asking ‘negative questions’ during an interview about his recent retirement announcement.”  (Read the whole thing — and watch the video.)

Interesting that Barney only gets tough questions from the MSM after he has announced his retirement.

This is the guy the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn once dubbed a “Minority Wit“?

In a thoughtful post over at his blog Canadian Rattlesnake, Naamloos, a young gay man, contends he lacks “any loyalty to the gay community,” contrasting sexuality to race:

Unlike race, sexuality is not hereditary.  My father is not gay.  Nor is my mother.  Most black people have at least one black biological parent.  I wasn’t born into the gay community.

I haven’t known that I have been gay for my entire life.  Some of my characteristics, however, I have known about, or have become aware of prior to my acknowledgement of my homosexuality.  Such as my conservative political views.

Although I do use the term “gay community” quite frequently, sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing.  With my fellow gay men, I share an attraction to our own sex.  And I do tend to get along well with lesbians, well, the ones like Ellen DeGeneres and Mary Cheney who don’t define themselves by their sexuality.  But, does that a community make?

I also tend to get along well with my fellow conservatives, but rarely hear the expression, “conservative community.”

So, let me leave you with a question, why should we have a community based on our sexuality, but not our ideological inclinations?

It seems that whenever I hear a TV show is well-written, I learn that a number of its writers are gay.  I would dare say that a number of those who helped provide the set-ups and dialogue for Lucille Ball’s pioneering physical comedy were guys like us.

The funny lady all but confirmed this in a 1980 interview from People magazine quoted in an Advocate article paying tribute yesterday to a woman one man called “the true gay icon”:

Ball was asked her thoughts on a number of subjects, including gay rights. “It’s perfectly all right with me,” she replied. “Some of the most gifted people I’ve ever met or read about are homosexual. How can you knock it?”

. . . , a friend of mine said tonight, that because I’m gay, I’m also a Democrat.

It does seem a lot of people make that assumption.

It has been nine months now since Tyler Clementi’s suicide dominated the news.  And I fear many of have forgotten that sensitive young man’s difficult transition to college life.

While it has become easier to come out America today (than it was twenty years ag0), it will always be difficult to be different, even if we do achieve the “full equality” to which many gay activists aspire.  To be sure, young gay people currently have a plethora of places to go for guidance and support.  Through the “It Gets Better” videos and other social (as well as traditional) media, they have testimony and images of older gay people who are open about and comfortable with their sexuality.

They still, however, face the challenge of being different at a period in life when many aspire to conform to their peers.

One concern I’ve had with those videos, the most enduring legacy of the suicide, is that they lack the personal contact that many young people need at difficult moments as they take their first steps on their path of adulthood.  They have just a face and voice on a screen and not a hand on their shoulder or a kind word directed to them personally.

It’s important that we always remember that for as much good as those videos may accomplish, we must also always pay attention to the personal.  We may feel good about recording our experiences for such a video, but we do better when we take the time to listen and respond to a young person in need.

If my experience as an uncle has taught me anything, it’s that an older adult’s encouragement of and interest in a child, adolescent or young adult can help give them the strength to weather life’s storms.  And this applies most particularly to those who differ from the social norm.

RELATED: On Tyler Clementi & the Importance of Mentors

While, as you can guess, I quibble with the title of Cynthia Yockey’s post that Glenn linked earlier today, she offers something which bears consideration and conversation:

. . . in the name of family values, we are forced out of our own families. However, gays have responded to discrimination by becoming entrepreneurs and professionals, which makes gays a natural constituency of fiscal conservativism and explains why 31 percent of gay voters voted for Republicans in 2010 (including me). Gays are the most getable demographic in 2012 for Republicans because there’s no voting bloc Obama and the Democrats have screwed over more than gays and they are furious and looking for a new home.

(Read the whole thing.  While I don’t agree with everything she has to say, she does raise some important issues and make some thoughtful observations.)

Now, while I do believe gay people are a natural constituency for a fiscally conservative GOP, I wonder how many have become so politicized by our overly political (gay) culture that they can’t see how free market policies benefit creative types, particularly the creative entrepreneurial types.  And gay people do seem to succeed in such professions, in numbers disproportionate to our representation in society at large.

As I learned in my conversation with Palin-effigy hanger Mito Aviles, state and local regulations on small business place unusual burdens on creative small business folk.  Their desire to scale back intrusive regulations correspond with the very principles of the Tea Party movement.

The question is:  how do we break them from their prejudiced view of the GOP, particularly given how the media dwell on social conservatives’ (alleged) dominance of the movement — and the ignorance of many gay leaders of the underlying philosophy of the Republican Party as it has evolved since the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the election of Ronald Reagan sixteen years later.

I couldn’t agree more with this post from Matthew Yglesias:

Something that I think most people don’t realize is that for the vast majority of American history, the judicial branch has been a very conservative elite-dominated institution. Most people’s view of the matter is distorted by the historical aberration that occurred roughly between the Brown andRoe decisions, with a lot of good criminal justice decisions in between. Even there, one has to recall that with its landmark civil rights decisions, the Supreme Court was in large part just reversing what the late 19th century Supreme Court did by throwing out the civil rights legislation of the Grant administration.

Emphasis added.  Well said.  Read the whole thing.

There is much, much more to this, particularly as it pertains to gays.  I have always believed that social change comes from our communities, through private institutions and enterprises.  It is not the government’s role to foster social change nor to prevent it from happening organically.

Had I not chanced upon this piece a few minutes before bed, I might have more to say on it, but for now, I think it’s important to alert our readers to the post, especially because a liberal blogger is putting forward a view in sync with conservative legal scholars.

FROM THE COMMENTS:   Jim Hlavac offers:

Virtually all gains made by gay folks in the past 40 years towards our acceptance as decent people has been made without legislative or judicial help; and sometimes even despite laws and rulings against us. No court ruling is going to change anyone’s mind about us. Long before laws against us were removed we had already started the process of removing the negativism, person by person, mostly starting with our families and hetero friends. Even Bowers v. Hardwick did not dent the trend, nor did Lawrence push it. And the trend is still moving forward.

Exactly.  Read the whole thing!

One of the most heartening things about blogging is not just that it provides the means for gay conservatives (a minority within a minority, as we have been dubbed) to publish our ideas, but also for disgruntled gay liberals to make known their discontent with the gay establishment (or Gay, Inc as it has been dubbed).

In reading blogs like Pam’s House Blend, Queerty and Americablog, to name but a few, I have learned that many gays on the left do not march in lockstep with the Democratic partisans at HRC.  Nor, as we have learned in recent days, have they accepted the word of the increasingly partisan GLAAD as gay gospel.

While we here at GayPatriot have taken the ostensible media watchdog to task for honoring a man who spews the type of hate speech against one segment of gay people they would excoriate had he directed similar speech against all gay people, gay lefty bloggers (and blogresses) have faulted the organization for its “public statements supporting AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile” as well as their letter “to the FCC opposing possible net neutrality rules.”  GLAAD received money from AT & T.

Gay leftie bloggers are concerned about what one calls, “the corporate hijacking of our movement.”

Now, for the record, we here at GayPatriot oppose the FCC’s attempt to impose net neutrality rules, so we did not wade into the controversy.  Yet, what stood out to us (well, to me, at least) was these bloggers were using this new medium to criticize a gay group.

And now we see that, just as in federal legislation action on DADT repeal, their efforts have had a real world impact, “Jarrett Barrios,” as Pam Spaulding reports, “the executive director of GLAAD, has resigned.”  At that link and this, Pam has more on the controversy.

Kudos to these folks for standing up to their principles, even if it meant exposing a rift in the gay community.  We may not agree with them in their criticism of GLAAD, but we do agree that it is better for our community that Barrios no longer heads one of the leading gay organizations.  Now, if only they could be as successful in influencing the board of HRC. . .

UPDATE:   On Facebook, Scott Schmidt asks, “Why is it wrong for gay rights groups to side with corporations that support them but not wrong to side with labor unions?”

Good question. Do hope some of those left-of-center gay bloggers use their web-sites to ask it.

One again, the outspoken governor of New Jersey doesn’t mince words.

Now, I’m sure some folks will call this good man a “hater” for holding to the traditional definition of marriage. What stands out here is that he publicly dares to differ with the doctrine of his church and has come out clearly in favor of same-sex civil unions.

All that notwithstanding, he’ll still remain a folk hero to many straight conservatives.

(Via Jimmy LaSalvia on Facebook.)

Playing on the “Legalize LA” T-shirts and signs once ubiquitous in the Southland, some gay activists, in the wake of the passage of Prop. 8, created a “Legalize Gay” T-shirt, like this one seen at one of HRC’s two booths yesterday at LA Pride:

What makes this T-shirt so absurd is its suggestion that it’s not legal to be gay in America today. To be sure, we still need laws in more states recognizing our unions.

Even, however, without that recognition, gay people who enter into such relationships, even those who call such relationships, “marriage,” aren’t been hauled before federal magistrates (or state courts for that matter) and asked to disavow their romantic inclinations; they’re not being forced to live apart from their partner nor to move to another jurisdiction nor are they being incarernated for living openly with individuals of the same sex. And they’re not being forced to undergo “conversion therapy.”

Simply put, it’s not illegal today in American to be gay. People aren’t being arrested and threatened with a loss of liberty for freely expressing our sexuality. I mean, heck yesterday at Pride, the county sheriff was not closing down our celebration, but was instead helping facilitate it, guaranteeing our right to assemble peaceably.

Let’s not make things seem they are worse than they are — and acknowledge (as most of us do) how much progress we have made.  It’s not illegal to be gay in America.  Indeed, gay people in the United States — and other Western societies — are more free to live our lives openly than they have been at almost any point in human history.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Az Mo in NYC offers:

As far as the original post goes, I never thought I was illegal, or a second class citizen, until people started drilling it into my head that I was….people on the gay left. One day I said, “wait a minute,” looked around, saw wealthy gay men and women, homosexuals in congress, and on TV and realized that just wasn’t the case. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter what someone else thinks of me just as it shouldn’t matter to them what I think of them.

Every year at LA’s Gay Pride festival, a handful of unhappy extreme social conservatives religious fanatics protest the parade. This year, I counted six. Wrong as I believe them to be, I have always supported their right to assemble peacefully and express their grievances. We should be able to be strong enough to face their criticism.

This year, I was pleased to see some counter-protesters standing in front of them brandishing their own signs.

Ain’t free speech grand?

With that inside knowledge of conservatives’ governing philosophies prevalent among our critics, Sam, in commenting on my Herman Cain post, informs us that it is “naive and self-hating to think that a politician who says he thinks being gay is a sin will actually not push for legislation to limit our rights.”

He bases his knowledge not on any evidence of Mr. Cain’s past actions as CEO of a small corporation, but, well, on what must be some unique insight he possesses.  Another of our readers, Ted B. AKA Charging Rhino, actually took the time to learn a little about the Republican presidential candidate’s record, informing us that the company Cain once helmed, “Godfather’s Pizza does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Perhaps Cain’s critics should investigate the candidate to find out if when he helmed Godfather’s pizza — or in any of his corporate work, he advocated discriminatory policies or took discriminatory actions, that is, did he fire (or fail to promote) any employee because of his sexuality?

Yesterday, Stacy McCain sees this kerfuffle as part of Cain’s appeal:

Cain’s appeal is his plain-spoken nature and, when asked about homsexuality, he stated (a) his personal belief as a Christian, and (b) his libertarian understanding that people have to live their own lives according to their own choices.

So far the evidence indicates the former CEO was speaking honestly when he distinguished his personal views from his policy intentions.

Sometimes, when we face off against our adversaries in the blogosphere, we become less civil than we might be in the real world because here we’re just see words on the computer screen, whereas in person we can see an actual human being.  In blogs, it becomes easier to reduce each person to his political views (and sometimes views as misinterpreted by the critic).

Last night, at the launch party for Outfest, I chanced upon (if chance it was) one of my initial internet sparring partners and found David Ehrenstein to be an excellent interlocutor.  We both sung the praises of the gay and lesbian film festival.  And that wasn’t the limit of our agreement. We also agreed that there has been a cultural shift resulting in an increasing social acceptance of gay people.  Whether or not it was the the TV series Will & Grace (as I suggested in a recent post) or some other cultural event, something else altogether or (more likely) a combination of these (& other) things, it’s a different world from the one men of his generation — and my own — knew when we came out.

Unlike some of his left-of-center confrères, he recognized that there has also been a change on my side of the political aisle.  He attributed it to Ken Mehlman’s coming out, I to Mary Cheney’s.

We also discussed the changes in culture as homosexuality becomes more socially acceptable, with him wistfully recalling the live of poet Frank O’Hara and sharing stories about gay Hollywood stars of the past — and their lovers.  It was a most delightful conversation.  And a reminder that you can often have the more civil of discussion with your ideological adversaries, something which alas this medium sometimes seems to discourage.

While many conservatives, including my co-blogger are enthusiastic about Herman Cain’s candidacy, I have some concerns which I expect to address in short order.  Despite those concerns, I do appreciate that enthusiasm; the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO has been saying all the right things about big government and small business and saying them well.

Saying the right things, however, does not, in itself, guarantee that Cain, or any candidate for that matter, would make a good chief executive.  And while he may have said the right things about free enterprise, he has not, alas, said the right things about gays.

In a blog post earlier today, our friend Chris Barron addressed those comments:

The bottom line is that Herman Cain’s personal position on whether being gay is a sin or a choice has no bearing on whether the policies he supports would be good for gay and lesbian Americans.

Chris, to be sure, makes an interesting point.  Even so, I’m still not likely to back this businessman for the GOP nomination.  That said, Chris is right to differentiate a politician’s personal positions from his public policy proposals.

If you believe, as I do, that social change comes not from government, but from the private sector (by which I mean not just private enterprise, but also other non-governmental institutions), you would want a leader who refuses, as apparently does Mr. Cain, to impose his personal beliefs on the rest of us.

We don’t expect government to make our lives better for us, but to leave us alone so that we, together with individuals and groups, with whom we choose to associate, can make it better on our own.

Last night, via this blog’s Facebook page, a reader alerted me to an article sure to cheer (momentarily) the hearts of all freedom-loving Americans:  a federal judge has ruled that a gay softball league can set its own standards for participation.

“It is not,” U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour wrote in his ruling, ”the role of the courts to scrutinize the content of an organization’s chosen expression.”  Nor should it be.

Three bisexual men filed a lawsuit in Washington state against the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association (NAGAA) after they had been kicked off the team for not being gay enough.  Now, when I initially blogged about this suit last April, I called NAGAA’s rule limiting the number of heterosexual players “stupid” and found it “disgusting that a gay organization would not just countenance, but also conduct a public interrogation into individuals’ private lives.”  (It did so to find out if they were gay enough.)

That said, it’s a private organization and private organizations should be allowed to set their own rules.  Allowing it to do so, the judge

. .  refused to enjoin enforcement of the two-player rule. “Plaintiffs have failed to argue that there is a compelling state interest in allowing heterosexuals to play gay softball,” Coughenour wrote.

“NAGAAA might very well believe that given the history of gay exclusion for sports, the only way to promote competition for all persons, and ensure that gay athletes have the same opportunities as straight athletes, is to create an exclusively gay community with exceptions for a small number of straight players,” the ruling states.

The ruling wasn’t entirely rosy though. “Coughenour also ruled that the athletic association failed to prove it should not be subjected to public-accommodation laws as ‘a distinctly private organization.”  So, now we’ve got a federal judge determining such matters.  That is a truly chilling thought.  Shouldn’t the simple question be whether or not the group takes state money.

Let NAGAA set its own rules.  Indeed, let all private athletic associations do the same.  If a group of gay guys want to play softball with a group consisting primarily of their fellow gays, then more power to them.  It’s their choice.  Isn’t this land of the free?  And isn’t that what freedom means?

UPDATE:   John Yoo gets it: (more…)

I always wondered why Anderson Cooper got more attention than Don Lemon.  The former always looks like he’s trying really, really, REALLY hard to be a serious news anchor, adopting his best Walter Cronkite/Edward R. Murrow pose while the latter just seems like a nice guy delivering the news.  He actually has the audacity to smile every now and again.

I had meant to blog earlier about the latter coming out, but spaced it.  It seems he also has an interesting story to tell:

In the two-plus weeks since Don Lemon announced he is gay in tandem with the release of his new memoir, ‘Transparent,’ the CNN anchor has received both kudos and criticism.

The praise is geared toward the courage it took to openly embrace his homosexuality as a public figure. The criticism lies mainly with the language Lemon used in his announcement. Lemon told the ‘New York Times’, where the news of his announcement first broke: “It’s quite different for an African-American male…It’s about the worst thing you can be in black culture. You’re taught you have to be a man; you have to be masculine. In the black community they think you can pray the gay away.” Lemon also mentioned black women specifically, expressing his concern “that black women will say the same things [about me being gay] as they do about how black men should be dating black women.

This is actually a book I might read.  Lemon seems the most telegenic of the CNN anchors and reporters; most seem out of place delivering and commenting on the news.

I hope for Lemon’s continued success — and not just because he comes across as such a nice guy, but also because it would signal that Americans recognize that one’s sexuality doesn’t compromise one’s objectivity in the newsroom.

Perhaps he’ll become for TV journalism what Ellen has become for day-time talk shows.  And we’ll see that one’s sexuality is increasingly incidental to one’s success.

When, twelve years ago, I moved out here to write screenplays, I hoped to used the medium of film to promote a better understanding of gay people.  I believed then (as I do today) that images were very often a more powerful means of promoting understanding of our fellow human beings than arguments, no matter how carefully and how eloquently made.

Yes, great orators have been able to change minds — and even the course of a war — with a well-delivered speech, but could words alone help people overcome prejudice?  Would Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest orators of the last century, have been as effective, as transformative a figure, if not for the televised imagery of police brutally beating people peacefully protesting, petitioning the government for a redress of their grievances against Jim Crow?   When Andrew Young, then Mayor of Atlanta, spoke to us at Williams, said that the television made the difference in winning people’s hearts and minds.

Young had worked with Dr. King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

What the then-Mayor of Atlanta said about TV and the Civil Rights Movement got me thinking of the changes that have taken place just since I moved to Los Angeles, changes in attitudes more than anything else.  If there were a battle for the social acceptance of gay people, it has been won.  I’m not quite sure when nor I am entirely sure how.  But, if now that I have finished my graduate work and I decided again to try my luck at the entertainment industry, any efforts I would attempt to promote a better understanding of gay people would seem almost superfluous.  People may still object to state recognition of same-sex marriage, but most do so not out of animosity against gay people, but because of a belief that sexual difference is a defining aspect of the institution.

Only in remote sections of America now do people suffer from acknowledging their sexuality.  This is not to say that all hurdles have been overcome.  Same-sex couples still do not enjoy the benefits of recognition in an overwhelming majority of states.  Yet, it is far easier to come out now than it was a decade ago. (more…)

Just got a second fund-raising letter on behalf of President Obama’s reelection effort. This is the first piece I’ve seen to indicate he’ll be running with Joe Biden, but only on the back flap of the envelope.

Now, I’m just wondering what gay group sold my name to the Democratic Party.*  Just another piece of evidence that these organizations which style themselves as gay advocacy groups are little more than shills for the president’s party.

Here’s a clue:  my name and address as they appear on the envelope from BarackObama.com is exactly the same as it appears on that of LA’s Gay & Lesbian Center.

* (more…)

Via Glenn:

CHANGE: Same-Sex Couples in CA, NV & WA Reap Big Federal Tax Bonuses: “Thanks to a 1996 federal law aimed at preserving traditional marriage, thousands of same-sex couples in California, Nevada, and Washington state could get big tax bonuses on their federal returns starting this year. The bonuses are off-limits to heterosexual married couples—a sharp reminder of the ‘marriage penalty’ that often dings two-earner couples.” Sounds like somebody in Congress, or the Clinton Administration, should have thought that whole “Defense of Marriage Act” thing through a bit more.

Via e-mail, reader Peter Hughes alerted me to a looming victory for gay rights in the most unlikely of places, the Lone Star State.  According to the Houston Chronicle,

Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms.

More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he’s in favor of the idea.

This is great news for gay people whom many believe are more vulnerable than straights for harassment based on our sexuality.  If a potential bashers know that gay students might be packing, they’ll be less likely to attack.  And if they do attack, gay people will better be able to defend themselves.

Kudos to Texas legislators for considering providing gay men and lesbians with an important tool to protect against ourselves against those who would do us harm.  Let’s hope gay organizations in Texas and nationwide push the legislature to act speedily on this important gay rights measure.