Why the public option is a gay rights issue

Some of my gay friends are really, really mad at Obama for not prioritizing gay issues like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and gay marriage in his first year in office.

While I understand the impatience, I have to say that probably the most important gay issue in this country is our lack of universal health insurance.

If you are straight and married to an employed person, you probably have the option of getting on your spouse's health insurance plan. In some liberal states gays have this option with their partners.

But throughout most of the country, gays and gay families don't have this option. They are basically shit out of luck if they don't have a way to get health insurance for themselves.

I would love to see gays have the right to marry or serve in the military sooner than later.

But with a limited Congressional calendar and only so many laws that can be passed at one time, I would rather see them have access to doctors, dentists and hospitals.

"All Pornography is Homosexual Pornography"

If you pay any attention to liberal chit chat, you are now familiar with Michael Schwartz' assertion at the Values Voter Summit that "All pornography is homosexual pornography."

As batshit as it sounds, I've actually been making this argument for some time. If you think about it, it's true:

If you're a guy watching hetero porn, your looking at another dude's wang.
If you're a girl watching hetero porn, your seeing chicks naked.
If you're a guy or girl watching gay male porn, well, you're gay/bi or you're watching gay porn.
If you're a guy or girl watching girl-on-girl porn, you're gay/bi or watching something gay.

Any which way, all pornography is homosexual pornography. Nothing wrong with that.

Rhetorical Knots

So John Nolte (presumably Nick Nolte's less successful son and editor of, you guessed it, Big Hollywood) has his knickers in a twist today over some LA Times film critic claiming that long-dead (and largely forgotten) actor Randolph Scott was gay. The nerve!

Apparently Scott lived with (long-rumored light-in-the-loafers) Cary Grant for 12 years in Malibu, though both were very well-paid stars and could easily have afforded their own Malibu homes. But, hey, Nolte tells us, it was their bachelor pad. Okay, bro. He then goes on to "defend" Randolph Scott from this scurrilous accusation. Oh, and of course those of us on the left aren't allowed to question the idea that one's sexual orientation can be the basis of an "accusation":

Defending Scott against such charges can only mean one is anti-gay, right?

Well, how about pro-truth and pro-fairness?

The truth is that (according to Nolte's own post) Scott's and Grant's sexuality have been under dispute for years. Both men denied being gay repeatedly, which is not surprising considering that the alternative at that time was never working in Hollywood again. But, who knows, maybe they just liked having unnecessary roommates, like Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick.

But why is Nolte so worked up about an offhand assumption (which many people share) in some article about some early 20th Century actor?

Oh I'm sorry. I can't say that it's because Nolte thinks that being identified as gay is a bad thing. That would mean that I think that Nolte's "defending" against such "charges" is inherently anti-gay.

Yes, it would.

---

And by the way, at what point did the American right become sensitive about being called anti-gay? Wasn't that their official position for most of the 20th Century? What are you, a pansy?

Unemployment Blues

Fuck, I left my unemployment debit card at the straight trannie bar last night. Don't you hate when that happens?

Controversy time! An alternate view on gay marriage

Mark Simpson is a British gay contrarian who invented the term metrosexual. He is also very smart. His view is that the fight for gay marriage is largely an emotional and symbolic battle and that equal rights activists should let it go and focus on actual civil rights:

If Christians and traditionalists want to preserve the “sanctity” of marriage as something between a man and a woman, with all the mumbo jumbo that entails, let them. They only hasten the collapse of marriage. Instead of demanding gay marriage, in effect trying to modernise an increasingly moribund institution, maybe lesbian and gay people should push for civil partnerships to be opened to cross-sex couples, as they are in France - where they have proved very popular.

Let’s Be Civil: Gay Marriage Isn’t The End Of The Rainbow

Men who look like old lesbians

http://menwholooklikeoldlesbians.blogspot.com/

Men and Cats

Fans of this blog know that it started as pastime/chronicle of my summer off, then turned into a kitten blog about my beloved Dusty, and now it's just a bunch of random rants and political stuff.

Well, the NY Times has a piece about Men and Cats, and how there is a growing movement of men who ARE DEFINITELY NOT GAY who are obsessed with their cats. There's lots of Styles section pablum including quotes from professional upper middle class Manhattan women about how great cat-owning men that they've dated are, as well professional upper middle class Manhattan men with cats talking about how secure they are with their sexuality, and so on.

And of course there is now an obligatory blog about Men and Cats, Men and Cats.

Does every aspect of life need a blog? I guess so.

International Male revisited

For those of you not familiar with the now defunct clothing retailer International Male, it was a legendary over the top catalog retailer for men with highly flamboyant taste. At first glance you think, oh these clothes are supergay. Deeper investigation reveals that the aesthetic was way beyond gay, more like an alternate universe of dandyism so extreme that it demanded a gender and sexual identity of its own.

Anyway, I recently stumbled across an old Radar piece where they paid the writer to traipse around New York in International Male duds for a week and write about people's reactions. The results are hilarious (with more pictures):

Adventures of an International Male

Update: "Worst of" pics from the final IM catalog (via Jezebel)