Love, Loving, Lovers!
Happy New Year 2017
We made it!
Have yourself a… 2016
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Hey sex fans!
I’ve been away. Did ya miss me? Yeah, I’ll bet.
Last Sunday, 07/24, I woke up feeling a bit wonky. Couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was feelin’ out of sorts; I just was. But I had a swell outing planned for the day, so I couldn’t flake. A couple of friends and I were planning on taking the ferry to Bainbridge Island for lunch. The weather was perfect for our little cruise across Puget Sound.
My friends and I met at Pikes Market, a famous landmark here in The Emerald City, and we walked to the ferry from there. I walk about four miles every day so the 15-minute walk should have been a breeze for me. But something was wrong. I felt lethargic and winded.
The 35-minute ferry ride was magical, as always, but upon disembarking and walking to the restaurant I began to really hurt. Not one to spoil the fun I marshaled my resources and made it to lunch.
The walk back to the ferry was excruciating. I was lightheaded, slightly nauseous, and completely winded. My heart was pounding like it wanted out of my chest. My companions became as worried as I was.
Once we docked in Seattle I had to once again disembark then walk to public transportation and to home. I was in a panic. The crush of the crowd around added to my distress. I thought for sure I was gonna faint, or barf, or worse. I was certain that my lungs were gonna give out on me. After many stops to catch my breath and buckets of sweat from the effort I finally made it home.
I’ve been monitoring my blood pressure for several months. (Ya gotta do this when you’re old, like me.) So once at home, I took a reading. My blood pressure was normal, but my pulse was unusually low, a reading of 49 to be precise. A couple of hours later it was 45. This was odd. I had never experienced anything like that before. Mostly my pulse rate hovers in the upper 70s and low 80s.
I felt much better on Monday. But come Tuesday, I was a total wreck. The least bit of exertion left me exhausted and prostrate. I knew it; my lungs were finally giving out. I put in a call to my doctor and got an expedited appointment for the very next day.
Tuesday’s blood pressure readings were slightly elevated, which was great, but my pulse was way down. I took several readings and each was in the mid 30s never over 40. I still didn’t get it. (This is probably why I’m not a brain surgeon.)
Wednesday turned out to be a nightmare. Unbeknownst to me I was about to began a headlong descent into the maw of the medical industry.
My doctor’s appointment was at 10:30am. The doc took one look at me and ordered an electrocardiogram (EKG). “HOLY SHIT!” She exclaimed. (Or something to that effect.) “How is it that you’re still standing?”
Needless to say, this got my attention right quick. “What?” I inquired. “Although you are not having a heart attack you are this close to the pearly gates. Your pulse is about to flat line, you monkey!” My doctor stuttered. (Ok, maybe she didn’t mention the pearly gates, or call me a monkey, but that was her drift for damn sure.)
Maybe it was the stress or shock of it, but I started to laugh. My doctor asked; “What’s so funny?” I said; “Did you ever see the movie, Death Becomes Her? Remember the scene in the emergency room?”
Off I went.
I got to Swedish Hospital (First Hill) Emergency Reception just before noon. The guy behind the desk asked what was wrong with me. I said; “Basically, I’m having a heart attack.” Apparently those are the magic words because the team swung into action. I was admitted immediately, blood was drawn, another EKG, x-rays were taken, and I was hooked up to a heart monitor. Diagnosis: Bradycardia with second-degree heart block.
You need a pacemaker IMMEDIATELY!
We’ll get you a room on the cardiac ward at our Cherry Hill campus, which is just a mile away, as soon as one is available.”
“Oh, OK, I guess,” said I as the severity of the situation finally began to dawn on me. As you can see, I’m not the sharpest pencil in the box.
The fact is, I’m more versed in facing my mortality than the average person, what with the decades of death and dying work that I have done. But let me tell you, staring into the abyss is still daunting.
Back in the emergency room I was laying on a gurney with electrodes and wires sprouting from my chest and back. I lay there for hours listening to the cries, screams, and moans of my fellow emergency patients. Codes blue and grey are being called with regularity and I can just imagine the human misery that surrounds me.
At 5:00pm one of the emergency nurses tells me that a room at the cardiac ward will be available at 7:00pm. “But, 7:00pm is the changing of the shift. So the soonest we could get you there is 7:30pm.”
7:30pm comes and goes. “What’s up?” I ask. “We’re trying to locate transport for you.” Was their retort. “But the Cherry Hill campus is just a mile away. I could walk there from here.” I countered. “But you need a special ambulance, one with a nurse on board, one that can monitor your heart in transit.” “You gotta be kidding!” Said I. “Not at all. You could flat line on the way to Cherry Hill and we’d be liable. Don’t worry, Richard, we will surely have the transport by 10:00pm.”
The transport didn’t actually arrive till 12:30am. That was twelve and a half hours on a gurney in the ER! And the fun is just beginning.
I finally get to the Cherry Hill campus at 1:00am. I am ushered into a room where I am then interrogated for 45 minutes. (Are you now, or have you ever been…) They called it an intake, but a rose by any other name. I haven’t eaten since breakfast at 5:00am the previous day with only water to drink. Now, even the water was being withheld. I guess they anticipated I would have my procedure later that (Thursday) morning.
Not so fast there buckaroo!
Thursday dawns, but nothing happens. I’m confined to my bed (the second worse bed in the world. The first being the ER gurney I left yesterday) and am attached to a heart monitor. I am faint from hunger and more than a little dehydrated. By noon they decide they need to feed me lest the hunger and dehydration kill me before the arrhythmia.
I scarfed down my lunch like a dying man…mostly because I was.
Allow me to pause my narration for a moment and comment on the cardiac nursing staff. They are superb! And even that superlative leaves me wanting. These women are freakin’ rock stars in my book. One in particular, Nurse Jen, totally got me. We both had the same gallows humor. She is my hero.
Late Thursday afternoon Dr. Williams, a cardiac electrophysiologist, saunters into my room. He’s gonna be doing the cutting on me. He is a tall handsome black man with the most unassuming manner. He looks me in the eye and talks to me like I’m a human. I’m super impressed with his bedside manner. He tells me my blood work and enzymes are excellent. My x-rays show that my heart isn’t enlarged. (But wait! Every one tells me I have a huge heart.) And there’s no sign that I had a heart attack. We talk about the pacemaker and the procedure. He tells me it’s about the size of a silver dollar. (When I actually see the blasted thing the next day, just before they shove into my chest, I have to wonder where Dr. Williams gets his silver dollars.) The procedure is very routine; he tells me. “Yeah sure, for you maybe.” It’ll last approximately 45 minutes, during which I will be enjoying twilight anesthesia. “Twilight anesthesia, huh? That sounds delightful.” Better living through chemistry, I always say.
I get a sedative Thursday night to help me sleep in my little bed of torture. And nothing by mouth after midnight. (Oh no! Not that again.)
Friday morning my nurses prep me for surgery. First, they have to shave my manly chest, don’t cha know. Nurse Jen takes the lead with a maniacal gleam in her eye. This is more than a little awkward and also maybe a wee bit kinky.
Finally the fateful hour arrives. I get a second IV stent, because apparently one is not enough for these folks. Then I’m wheeled down to the bowels of the building where I disappear into one of the surgery suits.
Two hours later I’m back in my room dopey as all get-out, but still kickin’.
I’m home now, i’m happy to report. They liberated me on Saturday, 07/30, afternoon. And I am only slightly worse for the wear. I have a very distinctive slash across my left pectoral. There’s an unsightly bulge just below it. It looks like i’m growing a third breast. And a nasty purple and brown bruise that runs from my shoulder to my sternum and from my collarbone to my nipple. I sound like a real attractive guy, huh?
The End
Pride 2016
Happy Gay Pride Month!
It’s time, once again, to post my annual pride posting.
In my lifetime I’ve witnessed a most remarkable change in societal attitudes toward those of us on the sexual fringe. One only needs to go back 50 years in time. I was 15 years old then and I knew I was queer. When I looked out on the world around me this is what I saw. Homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder by the nation’s psychiatric authorities, and gay sex was a crime in every state but Illinois. Federal workers could be fired merely for being gay.
Today, gays serve openly in the military, work as TV news anchors and federal judges, win elections as big-city mayors and members of Congress. Popular TV shows have gay protagonists.
And now the gay-rights movement may be on the cusp of momentous legal breakthroughs. Later this month, a Supreme Court ruling could lead to legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the whole country.
The transition over five decades has been far from smooth — replete with bitter protests, anti-gay violence, backlashes that inflicted many political setbacks, and AIDS. Unlike the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement, the campaign for gay rights unfolded without household-name leaders.
And yet, I sense that soon, if it hasn’t begun already, we will experience a backlash in the dominant culture. I don’t relish the idea, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. And when it comes, as I think it will, it won’t smart nearly as much if we know our history. And we should also remember the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”
In honor of gay pride month, a little sex history lesson — The Stonewall Riots
The confrontations between demonstrators and police at The Stonewall Inn, a mafia owned bar in Greenwich Village NYC over the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 are usually cited as the beginning of the modern Lesbian/Gay liberation Movement. What might have been just another routine police raid on
a bar patronized by homosexuals became the pivotal event that sparked the entire modern gay rights movement.
The Stonewall riots are now the stuff of myth. Many of the most commonly held beliefs are probably untrue. But here’s what we know for sure.
- In 1969, it was illegal to operate any business catering to homosexuals in New York City — as it still is today in many places in the world. The standard procedure was for New York City’s finest to raid these establishments on a regular basis. They’d arrest a few of the most obvious ‘types’ harass the others and shake down the owners for money, then they’d let the bar open as usual by the next day.
- Myth has it that the majority of the patrons at the Stonewall Inn were black and Hispanic drag queens. Actually, most of the patrons were probably young, college-age white guys lookin for a thrill and an evening out of the closet, along with the usual cadre of drag queens and hustlers. It was reasonably safe to socialize at the Stonewall Inn for them, because when it was raided the drag queens and bull-dykes were far more likely to be arrested then they were.
- After midnight June 27-28, 1969, the New York Tactical Police Force called a raid on The Stonewall Inn at 55 Christopher Street in NYC. Many of the patrons who escaped the raid stood around to witness the police herding the “usual suspects” into the waiting paddywagons. There had recently been several scuffles where similar groups of people resisted arrest in both Los Angeles and New York.
- Stonewall was unique because it was the first time gay people, as a group, realized that what threatened drag queens and bull-dykes threatened them all.
- Many of the onlookers who took on the police that night weren’t even homosexual. Greenwich Village was home to many left-leaning young people who had cut their political teeth in the civil rights, anti-war and women’s lib movements.
- As people tied to stop the arrests, the mêlée erupted. The police barricaded themselves inside the bar. The crowd outside attempted to burn it down. Eventually, police reinforcements arrived to disperse the crowd. But this just shattered the protesters into smaller groups that continued to mill around the streets of the village.
- A larger crowd assembled outside the Stonewall the following night. This time young gay men and women came to protest the raids that were commonplace in the city. They held hands, kissed and formed a mock chorus line singing; “We are the Stonewall Girls/We wear our hair in curls/We have no underwear/We show our pubic hair.” Don’t ‘cha just love it?
- Police successfully dispersed this group without incident. But the print media picked up the story. Articles appeared in the NY Post, Daily News and The Village Voice. Theses helped galvanize the community to rally and fight back.
- Within a few days, representatives of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis (two of the country’s first homophile rights groups) organized the city’s first ever “Gay Power” rally in Washington Square. Some give hundred protesters showed up; many of them gay and lesbians.
The riots led to calls for homosexual liberation. Fliers appeared with the message: “Do you think homosexuals are revolting? You bet your sweet ass we are!” And the rest, boys and girls, is as they say is history.
During the first year after Stonewall, a whole new generation of organizations emerged, many identifying themselves for the first time as “Gay.” This not only denoted sexual orientation, but a radical way to self-identify with a growing sense of open political activism. Older, more staid homophile groups soon began to make way for the more militant groups like the Gay Liberation Front.
The vast majority of these new activists were under thirty; dr dick’s generation, don’t cha know. We were new to political organizing and didn’t know that this was as ground-breaking as it was. Many groups formed on colleges campuses and in big cities around the world.
By the following summer, 1970, groups in at least eight American cities staged simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots on the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York to a parade with floats for 1200 in Los Angeles. Seven thousand showed up in San Francisco.
Happy New Year 2016
We made it!
Happy Winter Solstice 2015
Hey sex fans,
We begin our Winter Holiday Break today. So yay for that!
Postings and whatnot will resume the first week in January.
My Sex Positive Doctrine
Have you ever wondered about the term, sex positive?
[I]f you’re like me, you see it all over the place, especially on sex-related sites. I confess I use it way more often than I should. It’s become one of those industry buzzwords that has, over time, become so fuzzy around the edges that it’s now virtually meaningless. In fact, if the truth be known, I believe the term sex positive has been taken over by the sex Taliban who have made it a cover for their strict code of political correctness. Oddly enough, this is the very antithesis of its original meaning.
If you want to shame someone in the sex field—be it a sex worker, blogger or adult product manufacturer—you label that person as sex-negative. You may not know anything about that person other than you were offended by something they did, said or made. But still, you hurl the epithet as if you were exorcising a heretic. This is a very powerful tool for keeping people in my industry in line. But I’ve begun to wonder, who is setting themselves up as the arbiter of what is and what is not sex positive? I have to ask: What is the agenda? I mean, could compulsory ideological purity of some artificial standards of thought or behavior be “positive” anything? I say, no!
Like all good ideas that have gone bad due to overuse—or worse, sloppy use—the sex positive concept once had meaning that was life-affirming and enriching. Sex positive has been in the lexicon at least since the mid-1950s. It frequently appears in journals and research papers to describe a movement that examines and advocates for all the other beneficial aspects of sex beyond reproduction.
I’ve been using the term since 1981 when I opened my practice in Clinical Sexology and Sexual Health Care. The opening words of my mission statement read: “I affirm the fundamental goodness of sexuality in human life, both as a personal need and as an interpersonal bond.” Way back then, I was flush with my quixotic pursuit to stand steadfast against all the cultural pressures to negate or denigrate sexuality and pleasure. I dedicated myself to spreading the gospel that healthy attitudes toward sex not only affect a person’s sex life, but his/her ability to relate well with others.
This came relatively easy for me, because I’d learned something very important about evangelization in my life as a Catholic priest. (Another quixotic pursuit, but we’ll have to save the details of that misadventure for another time. Or you could read about it HERE!) One of the first things one learns in seminary is how to proselytize, to sow the seeds of a creed, and then nurture them taking root by endless repetition of the articles of faith. Of course there is a downside to this, too. Repetition fosters mindlessness, stifles creative thought, and worse makes things boring.
But the creed statements of the world’s three great monotheistic religions are masterful works of theological art.
- Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam!
- Allaahu Akbar!
- In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
Each contains the most profound kernel of religious truth the believer needs to know, but all are easy enough for a child to learn. And like I said, the secret is in the repetition. For the true devotee, these creedal statements are uttered dozens of times a day and to great effect.
Early on in my career as a sexologist, I decided to put the principles I learned in the Church into disseminating my new belief system. First, keep the message simple! I settled on: “Sex is Good—and Good Sex is Even Better.” This has been my mantra for decades. It contains everything you need to know about being sex positive, but it’s easy enough for a child to learn. Even now it soothes me to hear myself say these words. And it comforts me in the same way blessing myself did in my priestly days.
Despite my apprehensions, I continue to be an apostle of the sex positive doctrine. I know that even though my industry has corrupted the concept, others have yet to hear the good news. And there’s something almost spiritual about seeing someone grasp the idea for the first time. Let me tell you about one such instance. Some time ago I was asked to address a group of doctors on the topic Health Care Concerns Of Sexually Diverse Populations. Unfortunately, just a handful of doctors attended the workshop—which was pretty disconcerting, considering all the work I’d put into the presentation. I guess that’s why kinksters and pervs, as well as your run-of-the-mill queer folk, are often frustrated in their search for sensitive and lifestyle-attuned healing and helping professionals.
Since the group of doctors attending was so small, I decided to ask them to pull their chairs in a circle so that our time together could be a bit more informal and intimate. Frankly, I’ve never found it easy talking to doctors about sex; and discussing kinky sex was surely going to be very tricky. So, I decided to start off as gently as I could. My opening remarks included the phrases “sex positive” and “kink positive.”
Sitting as close to my audience as I was, I could see at once that these fundamental concepts weren’t registering with them. I was astonished. Here was a group of physicians, each with a large urban practice. Could they really be this out of touch? I quickly checked in with them to see if my perception was correct. I was right! None of them had heard the term, sex positive. The two who hazarded a guess at its meaning thought it had something to do with being HIV+. I had my work cut out for me.
I decided to share my creed with them. “Sex is Good—and Good Sex is Even Better.” I asked them repeat it with me as if I were teaching a catechism to children. Surprisingly, they did so without resistance. After we repeated the mantra a couple more times, I exposed them to the sex positive doctrine unencumbered by political correctness.
- Sex Is Good! Sex is a positive force in human development; the pursuit of pleasure, including sexual pleasure, is at the very foundation of a harmonious society.
- And Good Sex Is Even Better! The individual makes that determination. For example, what I decide is good sex for me, may be boring sex to someone else. And their good sex may be hair-raising to me. In other words, consensual sexual expression is a basic human right regardless of the form that expression takes. And it’s not appropriate for me, or anyone else, to call into question someone else’s consensual affectional choices.
- Sex Is Good! Everyone has a right to clear, unambiguous sexual health information. It must be presented in a nonjudgmental way, particularly from his or her health care providers. And sexual health encompasses a lot more then just disease prevention, and contraception.
- And Good Sex Is Even Better! The focus is on the affirmative aspects of sexuality, like sexual pleasure. Sexual wellbeing is more than simply being able to perform. It also means taking responsibility for one’s eroticism as an integral part of one’s personality and involvement with others.
- Sex Is Good! Each person is unique and that must be respected. Our aim as healing and helping professionals is to provide information and guidance that will help the individual approach his/her unique sexuality in a realistic and responsible manner. This will foster his/her independent growth, personal integrity, as well as provide a more joyful experience of living.
- And Good Sex Is Even Better! Between the extremes of total sexual repression and relentless sexual pursuit, a person can find that unique place, where he/she is free to live a life of self-respect, enjoyment and love.
Finally I told them they ought to think creatively how they could adapt this concept to their own practice. It was up to each of them to make this creed their own. As it turned out, this primer was just the thing to open my planned discussion of health care for kinksters.
In a way this experience was a bit of a spiritual reawakening for me, too. Despite my misgivings about the contamination of the sex positive doctrine by malicious people bent on using it as a weapon against those they disagree with. I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to watch these sex positive novices hear, and then embrace, the message for the first time. It was nothing short of a religious experience.
Because Jesus says so!
And now a message from above…
Happy Halloween, 2015!
A Farewell to a great man
Dear sex fans,
I realize this is a bit off topic for this blog, but I want to acknowledge the death of famed British neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks.
In February, he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times revealing that he was in the late stages of terminal cancer, after earlier melanoma in his eye spread to his liver.
“It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me,” he wrote. “I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.”
Earlier this summer I read Dr Sacks’s memoir, On the Move. I love it. It’s an interesting memoir by a fascinating personality. And while reading I discovered that we had a dear friend in common, Thom Gunn. What a small world! So I decided to send him a note.
Dear Dr Sacks,
I just finished reading your memoir, On The Move. What an amazing life you’ve lived.
Of all the marvelous things you’ve done and all the fascinating people you mentioned in your book nothing surprised me more than your close friendship with Thom Gunn. I was a friend of Thom too and I lived directly across Cole Street from him. I moved to the flat at 1207 Cole Street in 1979. At the time I was working on my doctorate in clinical sexology at the Institute For The Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.
I didn’t know Thom well at first. However, I would regularly see him walking both in our neighborhood and elsewhere in town. He was always in his leathers, rain or shine, and used to think to myself, “What a mensch!”
It finally dawned on me that he lived across the street from me.
Once he saw me in my roman collar. (I was ordained a catholic priest in 1975 at the age of 25 in Oakland, CA. I had come out to my local superiors; I was a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, before I was ordained. Like I said, I was working on my doctorate to become a sex therapist and prepare for an upfront gay ministry.) Thom smiled at me when he saw me; I blushed and told him what I just told you. He was fascinated, but I also believe he thought I was a twit. He probably was right.
I knew nothing about Thom other than he was my neighbor. Then one day I was in a bookstore on Haight Street and there was a photo of Thom in the window advertising a reading. That’s when I started asking around about him. Despite his cult status within the gay community, he was the most unassuming person. I was honored to have a personal connection with him.
I finished my doctorate in 1981. My dissertation, Gay Catholic Priests; A Study of Cognitive and Affective Dissonance was directed by Wardell Pomeroy. A firestorm of media attention followed. The media branded me as THE gay priest, as if. I think Thom read about me in the New York Times because next time he saw me he clapped me on the back and said, “Well done.”
No sooner did I complete my doctorate, and because of the media attention my public coming out caused, the leadership of my religious community in Rome began a process of dismissal against me. I was devastated and lost. I was even getting death threats. Thom was always so supportive and encouraging.
I fought the church for the next thirteen years in an effort to save my priesthood and ministry. Alas, the writing was on the wall back in 1981 and it was only a matter of time till they had their way with me. I wrote about the travail in a book that was published in 2011, Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex In The Catholic Church: The Systematic Destruction of an Oblate Priest.
Thom was always so solicitous about my wellbeing. He knew how difficult life had become for me. And both of us found ourselves on the forefront of caring for friends who were dying of AIDS. One of my landlords died in 1986.
Thom introduced my housemate and I to Augie Kleinzahler and his girlfriend, Caroline Lander, who lived only a few blocks from us in Cole Valley. We all became great friends and copious amounts of strong drink were consumed. I wonder, do you know Augie?
When Thom turned sixty I surprised him with a homemade German chocolate cake. I told him he was the oldest person I knew. This made him laugh and he called me a whippersnapper.
In 1992 the surviving landlord sold the Cole Street duplex and I and my housemate moved to Oak and Ashbury. Sadly, I didn’t get to see Thom as much as before. I move up here to Seattle in 1999 because I could no longer afford to live in SF. I was deeply saddened to learn of Thom’s death in 2004. He was such a great guy, what a marvelous soul.
Again, thank you for your memoir; it was grand getting to know you on a personal level. I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat when it came out in the mid-eighties and loved it. But I never guessed you and Thom knew each other or that you actually visited him when I lived across the street from him. What a small world. I wish I had known you back then.
Anyhow, thank you for the bringing me this unexpected flood of memories of Thom. I wonder what he would have made of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision (Obergefell v. Hodges). I contend that we got marriage equality only because we walked through AIDS first. I think Thom would have agreed with me.
All the best,
richardRichard Wagner, M.Div., Ph.D., ACS
To my astonishment, Oliver wrote back; I mean that literally, a handwritten note. Apparently, he never used a computer.
Dear Dr. Wagner (can I say Richard?), 6/60/15
I am greatly interested and greatly moved, by your letter — your courage in being honest and forthright, at a time and on a subject bound, sooner or later, to cause your ejection from the priesthood. In another few years perhaps, with Pope Francis at the helm, these last bastions of Catholic bigotry may have fallen.
I like to think of you as living across the street when I visited Thom, and glad to know that he appreciated you and your works. I still miss him deeply — there were not too many people with whim I could be entirely open — and I like to think that his ghost is pleased that my title came from his poem. (I find it a huge relief being open now to all and sundry {Oliver came out earlier this year} — I am so glad I completed my book before I became ill).
And what a liberation, an affirmation for us all that the Supreme Court voted as it did. I suspect that Ruth Bader Ginsberg, quite ill now, stayed on to ensure the 5/4 decision.
Thanks for your letter and my very best wishes,
Oliver
Click on this link to see a copy of Oliver Sacks’s note.
Thank you Dr Sacks and farewell!
I need a break
Hey sex fans,
I’m gonna take a little break. It’s beastly hot here in the Emerald City, and I just don’t feel like working. And since I’m the boss of this whole operation, I say screw it! I’ll be back next week with more of my scintillating sex advice. In the meantime, you won’t have to go without. Use either the Search Function or the CATEGORY pull-down menu, in the sidebar to your right, and look for some cool and smutty shit. And don’t forget there’s always the PODCAST ARCHIVE where you will find a variety of extraordinarily informative, enriching and entertaining shows — interesting interviews, enlightening Q&A and even some fun product reviews.
See ya at the beach.
Pride 2015
Happy Gay Pride Month!
It’s time, once again, to post my annual pride posting.
In my lifetime I’ve witnessed a most remarkable change in societal attitudes toward those of us on the sexual fringe. One only needs to go back 50 years in time. I was 15 years old then and I knew I was queer. When I looked out on the world around me this is what I saw. Homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder by the nation’s psychiatric authorities, and gay sex was a crime in every state but Illinois. Federal workers could be fired merely for being gay.
Today, gays serve openly in the military, work as TV news anchors and federal judges, win elections as big-city mayors and members of Congress. Popular TV shows have gay protagonists.
And now the gay-rights movement may be on the cusp of momentous legal breakthroughs. Later this month, a Supreme Court ruling could lead to legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the whole country.
The transition over five decades has been far from smooth — replete with bitter protests, anti-gay violence, backlashes that inflicted many political setbacks, and AIDS. Unlike the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement, the campaign for gay rights unfolded without household-name leaders.
And yet, I sense that soon, if it hasn’t begun already, we will experience a backlash in the dominant culture. I don’t relish the idea, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. And when it comes, as I think it will, it won’t smart nearly as much if we know our history. And we should also remember the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”
In honor of gay pride month, a little sex history lesson — The Stonewall Riots
The confrontations between demonstrators and police at The Stonewall Inn, a mafia owned bar in Greenwich Village NYC over the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 are usually cited as the beginning of the modern Lesbian/Gay liberation Movement. What might have been just another routine police raid on a bar patronized by homosexuals became the pivotal event that sparked the entire modern gay rights movement.
The Stonewall riots are now the stuff of myth. Many of the most commonly held beliefs are probably untrue. But here’s what we know for sure.
- In 1969, it was illegal to operate any business catering to homosexuals in New York City — as it still is today in many places in the world. The standard procedure was for New York City’s finest to raid these establishments on a regular basis. They’d arrest a few of the most obvious ‘types’ harass the others and shake down the owners for money, then they’d let the bar open as usual by the next day.
- Myth has it that the majority of the patrons at the Stonewall Inn were black and Hispanic drag queens. Actually, most of the patrons were probably young, college-age white guys lookin for a thrill and an evening out of the closet, along with the usual cadre of drag queens and hustlers. It was reasonably safe to socialize at the Stonewall Inn for them, because when it was raided the drag queens and bull-dykes were far more likely to be arrested then they were.
- After midnight June 27-28, 1969, the New York Tactical Police Force called a raid on The Stonewall Inn at 55 Christopher Street in NYC. Many of the patrons who escaped the raid stood around to witness the police herding the “usual suspects” into the waiting paddywagons. There had recently been several scuffles where similar groups of people resisted arrest in both Los Angeles and New York.
- Stonewall was unique because it was the first time gay people, as a group, realized that what threatened drag queens and bull-dykes threatened them all.
- Many of the onlookers who took on the police that night weren’t even homosexual. Greenwich Village was home to many left-leaning young people who had cut their political teeth in the civil rights, anti-war and women’s lib movements.
- As people tied to stop the arrests, the mêlée erupted. The police barricaded themselves inside the bar. The crowd outside attempted to burn it down. Eventually, police reinforcements arrived to disperse the crowd. But this just shattered the protesters into smaller groups that continued to mill around the streets of the village.
- A larger crowd assembled outside the Stonewall the following night. This time young gay men and women came to protest the raids that were commonplace in the city. They held hands, kissed and formed a mock chorus line singing; “We are the Stonewall Girls/We wear our hair in curls/We have no underwear/We show our pubic hair.” Don’t ‘cha just love it?
- Police successfully dispersed this group without incident. But the print media picked up the story. Articles appeared in the NY Post, Daily News and The Village Voice. Theses helped galvanize the community to rally and fight back.
- Within a few days, representatives of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis (two of the country’s first homophile rights groups) organized the city’s first ever “Gay Power” rally in Washington Square. Some give hundred protesters showed up; many of them gay and lesbians.
The riots led to calls for homosexual liberation. Fliers appeared with the message: “Do you think homosexuals are revolting? You bet your sweet ass we are!” And the rest, boys and girls, is as they say is history.
During the first year after Stonewall, a whole new generation of organizations emerged, many identifying themselves for the first time as “Gay.” This not only denoted sexual orientation, but a radical way to self-identify with a growing sense of open political activism. Older, more staid homophile groups soon began to make way for the more militant groups like the Gay Liberation Front.
The vast majority of these new activists were under thirty; dr dick’s generation, don’t cha know. We were new to political organizing and didn’t know that this was as ground-breaking as it was. Many groups formed on colleges campuses and in big cities around the world.
By the following summer, 1970, groups in at least eight American cities staged simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots on the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York to a parade with floats for 1200 in Los Angeles. Seven thousand showed up in San Francisco.
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