The X Block

Stonewall: When the courageous stood up

2009-06-28T09:12:00.002-05:00

Although I said in my last post that I was not really an advocate of gay marriage, I'm not an opponent, either. I am an advocate of equal rights for the GLBT community, however, and that would include the right to be married.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the defining event that started the gay rights revolution.

The Stonewall Riots were all about gay rights, although I'm not sure the men and women who incited chaos in the early morning of June 28, 1969 thought they were necessarily making history at the time.

They were damn tired of being second-class citizens, however.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)kept lists of known homosexuals and their friends; the U.S. Postal Service kept track of addresses where material pertaining to homosexuality was mailed. In cities, bars catering to homosexuals were shut down by local police departments and customers were arrested and exposed in newspapers. Cities performed "witch hunts" to rid neighborhoods, parks, bars, and beaches of gays.

Very few places in the 1960s welcomed openly gay persons and those that did were often specialized bars that catered to an assortment of patrons. Raids by the police on these bars were very common in the 1960s. When the Stonewall Inn was raided by the cops, officers quickly lost control of the situation and attracted a crowd that was incited to riot.

In David Carter's book, Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, one anonymous subject he quoted said, "When did you ever see a fag fight back?... Now, times were a-changin'. Tuesday night was the last night for bullshit.... Predominantly, the theme (w)as, "this shit has got to stop!"

Protests against the New York City police by the gays of Greenwich Village continued into the next evening and several days after. Over the coming months, gay rights organizations sprouted in the city and two years after the Stonewall riots, the first Gay Pride parade was held in 1970.

Today, Gay Pride events are held annually throughout the world toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots.

Forty years later, for the most part, the harassment has stopped. With the exception of well-publicized incidents such as the Matthew Shepard murder, gays, for the most part, are no longer beaten in public, gay bars are not raided simply because patrons inside are known homosexual and the postal system is allowing gay and lesbian reading material to be delivered.

But has much changed?

Although our day to day existence isn't challenged, we are somewhat tolerated, but I think that is about all. Gay couples don't have the rights that straight couples do and, really, don't even have the right to be called "couple." Marriage between same-sex couples (at the time of this blogging) is still illegal in all but two states, and even that luxury is being challenged.

The gay community now stands where blacks stood in the 1950s. They did not have the right to a seat on the bus or to use the same water fountains and we don't have the right to marry the person we love, or to openly serve in the military, thanks to Clinton's (Defense of Marriage Act)DOMA and(Don't Ask Don't Tell) DADT.

Without a doubt, gay folks helped elect Barack Obama, our nations' first black man to office. While Obama declared June 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, citing the riots as a reason to "commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans," it remains to be seen whether he will come through for the gay community.

Obama himself is not a supporter of gay marriage.

As citizens of the land of opportunity, we need get up to speed on what happened at Stonewall 40 years ago, when courageous gays who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places.

We will weather the storm

2009-06-25T08:02:00.004-05:00

I have to admit, I am not an advocate of gay marriage. I actually liked the gay community better when things were more "underground." While I don't believe people should live in the closet, the clandestine life of queer people as we lived in the 70s and 80s holds more appeal for me than being on a level playing field with the straights.

That being said, I support the choices my brothers and sisters make in living their own lives. If they want to get married, they should have that right.

Genesis

2009-06-24T08:40:00.002-05:00

Time to rebuild the blog again.

For the past seven years (!) I have kept a blog for a few months, gotten bored with it, then deleted it.

A couple of acquaintances have suggested that I am afraid of committing myself to any particular project for very long. Maybe. I prefer to blame it on the fact that I am a Gemini and get bored and move on after a project loses its newness.

At any rate, here is the rebirth of my blog, with all new content.

I didn't move over any of the older stuff....maybe because I had read it too many times and was bored with it.

I'll try to make it a little more interesting this time around. If not for me, then for you, whomever you might be.

Publishing credits

2009-01-01T21:32:00.001-06:00

Anthologies
"Sweet Nothings", Sex by the Book, ed. by Kevin Bentley, Green Candy Press, 2007.
"A Matter of Pride," Quickies 3, ed. by James C. Johnstone, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2003.

Periodicals
Most mainstream non-fiction is currently appearing in newspapers in the state of Nebraska.

Gay short stories, erotica and non-fiction for the gay market is always in the works and making the rounds of submission desks. Here is a partial listing:

The Personal Trainer, Beau, May 2002.

A Brief Encounter, Blackmale, date unknown.

Indecent Secrets, Indulge, August 1996 (issue #9).

A Stable Lover, In Touch for Men, June 1996 (issue #230).

Return of the Healthy Salad, Beau, September 1994. Non-fiction food article.

The Candlestick Kid, Manscape, circa December 1993. Byline of Derek Braun.

Cool Your Meat, First Hand, July 1994. Non-fiction article on food safety and handling. Published with byline of Chad Braun.

Shrimply Delicious, Beau, April 1993. Non-fiction food article.

Vito’s Visit, Guys, circa September 1992. Non-fiction biography.

About

2009-01-01T21:30:00.001-06:00

I was born during the summer of the last year the United States made coins from real silver.

Being born into a Navy family, I was fortunate enough to live in many states including Alaska, Hawaii and Florida before we moved permanently to the town of Bend, Oregon in the summer of 1975.

I first started dating men when I was a senior at the University of Oregon in Eugene. My first boyfriend, at age 25, was an aggressive bottom that dumped me the first night that we attempted to have sex and he discovered that I was an inexperienced as a top, although I thought I had other great qualities at the time. We parted the next morning, saying the usual "We'll just be friends" and then never saw each other again. I didn't date for another three years.

After graduating I worked for a few years in Northern California for a Northwest based drugstore chain that was eventually bought out by another drug chain from back East. During the Nazi buyout, I re-examined my life and decided I missed Bend and my family (we are very close) and decided to return to Central Oregon. I worked as an office manager, a web page designer, a grocery store clerk and an insurance company representative before becoming a newspaper journalist in the Midwest.

Yes, it's true. Writers usually have to have a day job.

My writing career began after my first short story was published in The Lavender Network, a small (now defunct) magazine based in Eugene, Oregon. After that I began writing sporadically for such magazines as First Hand, Beau, Guys and In Touch for Men.

While working on my fiction I have also written video reviews for an online purveyor of all male videos.

People often ask me if I lead a life like the ones I write about. Let me say now that yes, porn writers not only have lots of sex, but we have big dicks, too.

When not writing, my time is spent cooking, reading, and hanging out anywhere I may catch a glimpse of a man in his underwear or jock. It's an unerotic life, but one that has its little rewards.