Although looking at the map of the state of Massachusetts people will easily see the coastline, what they may not know is that  it is divided into sections.

From New Hampshire to the beginning of Boston’s northern border, it is the North Shore. It has its own topography and geology. Where did Cape Anne come from? Its rocks exist only there on this continent, and in ancient times it was valuable to the indigenous people on the East Coast who would travel hundreds of miles to get some.

Its major city had been Salem in the 1600s and the society that spread out from it had its own identity. There have been farmers like elsewhere but the soil, the rocks, the natural resources determined their methods of farming and what they produced was what could be grown. There was fishing as it was on the coast, but what the North Shore fished for was not as wide ranging or as lucrative as it was further south.

Starting at the southern border of Boston stretching down to the northern part of Cape Cod on the mainland side of the Canal is the South Shore. Plymouth is there, but with the arrival of the Puritans with their dislike of the Pilgrims, starting in 1630 Boston controlled and limited any competition to it and the South Shore with its own typography attracted a population among whom were farmers ad fishermen who approached each differently than on the North Shore. 

There is a different atmosphere and attitude in both places as the North Shore became more commercial in many ways and the South Shore overtime began to attract people looking for fancy homes in quiet areas away from the city and at one point became the Irish Riviera as it became the place for vacation homes of those of Irish descent in Boston who eventually became eligible to purchase summer homes by the sea.

For all intents and purposes, as far as the state is concerned, the only shores that count are the ones that are stopped by the city of Boston on one side and the Cape Cod Canal on the other with a pull toward Boston like a magnet as it was the place from which the suburbs grew.

The North and South Shores favor Boston and it favors them.

What lurks below the Cape is the states stepchild, the kid they send to the attic when guests come over, the South Coast that goes from Wareham on the mainland side of the Canal to Rhode Island and like Lawrence and Lowell had been industrial powerhouses for the state and one, New Bedford was the city that lit the world, first when it supplied the whale oil for lighting and then when its power plant had been used in the 1960s to jump start the East Coast electric power grid and end the huge blackout.

The needs of the South Coast are different than those of the other Shores and the Cape, but the state keeps referring to the area as the South Shore, which it certainly is not, assuming whatever they claim they have done for the South Shore should keep us happy. In reality, they have not only not addressed the local needs but they feel happy with themselves for having had when in reality they gave what they claim they gave us what the actually gave to someone else because they can’t even recognize their own kid. It is as if the South Coast asks for needed food but is supplied with the clothing the South Shore had asked for so it got it too. 

Statewide organizations as well as state government have this idea that if the totally different South Shore got something, the South Coast, being the same place got it too.

Working with state organizations, especially political ones and the state government is the same as having every package you are expecting from Amazon delivered to a wrong address and you are told that the package has been delivered and that is as far as you go in getting either the package or any satisfaction.

So, pay attention state people:

You have from north to south the North Shore, Boston, the South Shore, Cape Cod, and the South Coast in that order and in that entirety.

The needs of the South Coast demand attention be given to them.

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The Boomers began arriving for the meeting open to anyone who shared the concerns. 

Although Massachusetts is a rather liberal state, it is not immune to the attempts of some to make the very Blue state very Red. On the state’s South Coast, the area from Wareham, which is actually part of Cape Cod but on the mainland side of the canal, to Rhode Island, one county recently dethroned its long-reigning white supremacist, anti-immigrant, ultra-MAGA sheriff for one that was willing to do his job as sheriff and not use the position for personal and political gain. The former sheriff is now pushing the Christian Nationalist agenda in the state by having a position of some kind with the state’s Republican Party.

We were meeting to discuss and, perhaps, begin coming up with strategies to counter and head off any attempts to ban books or pass local and state laws that might feed into the removal of rights, long held or newly recognized ones, while those doing so invoke the names of America and religion, both of which are not beneficial to all because one point of view ignores that We the People of the United States, having decided to form a more perfect Union decided to establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to all of us and our posterity came up with a Constitution, not a Bible, in which there is not one mention of God or religion beyond banning the government from establishing a state one.

Books are being banned and women’s reproductive rights are also under attack, as is dealing honestly with race, gender, and history.

When the meeting began at the announced time, the dais was assumed by the leader of the meeting who was the chair of the local Democrat Town Committee that had called the meeting and had at the least notified all Dems on the South Coast of it, a local Native American with a PHD.  

Those facing him were Boomers, mostly obviously white. The only person of color I was aware of in the room beyond the man at the dais was my Cape Verdean friend who people assume is white because of her light skin tone. 

The women in the room were of an age that they had fought for the right to choose, equal pay, breaking the glass ceiling, attempting to pass the ERA, and to a varying degree had those rights recognized so that for whatever time still remained for them to be applicable, they could enjoy them.

They are of an age now where something like the right to choose is no longer an immediate consideration in their lives as opposed a won right that they had at least had the chance to have after its being won and they want available for their progeny.

If the right to choose goes, these women have enjoyed the right for the last 50 years so actually lose little personally as it is now one they cannot exercise. They may have the satisfaction of knowing they won the battle and benefited from that win assuming future generations would benefit from their work, but they know choosing whether or not to have an abortion is just not in their futures.

It was the women who saw that none of the beneficiaries and now future losers were present.

Among the participants, no one else came forward as Gay beyond myself, and as the topic was book banning I explained my experiences twenty years ago when the object of the religio-fascists was to ban “Gay themed books” without a specific definition of the term. The book banners eventually lost and for twenty years those who fought the bans and those who came after could freely enter a library and choose a book that was “Gay themed”.

Looking around the room, those present were people who have had the opportunity to read whatever book they so choose, other than me almost, and as all of those present were Straight save one, this was not an audience for the Gay books like “All Boys Aren’t Blue”, but one that was willing to fight to keep books like that from being banned but remain available to those who would read them for pleasure or need.

For all intents and purposes the loss of women’s reproductive freedom and book banning has no influence on the lives of the people in the room as they would not be exercising what a woman’s reproductive right to choose involves and have already read a lot. In the twenty years since we fought off book banning in Oklahoma I have been able to read whatever I want while the rest in the room had never faced such a condition where they couldn’t, and as most of the Gay books being banned are age related to people 60 years younger than myself, I would most likely never read them and so would not miss them.

Old people, the majority of whom have at best 20 years of life left if they are lucky and so would not suffer any losses being promoted by the present GOP, were there to plan the best way to preserve what is being threatened while no one who would be spending the majority of their futures under this repression was there.

The people of the age where reproductive rights are essential were not there.

The Gay community and the umbrella group that serves it provided you name names was not there.

Those who should be defending the rights of minorities, for CRT, and other race related concerns were not there.

Those whose lives will be affected by decisions being made now, who may lose the rights won for them and may have to learn to adjust to life without them, perhaps fighting to get them back, need to know as any good union member can tell those who were not there that when it comes to protections, you never get back what you give back.

Indifference is giving back.

We were there to defend the rights we had won and ones we only got to enjoy for a moment.

I fought for over 40 years for Gay rights on both coasts and in the middle, the Buckle of the Bible Belt to be precise. I have seen various degrees of bigotry. In each location I gained more rights than I had in the previous, but ones I should have always had not doled out to me, and when entering Oklahoma in 1993, I had to give up what rights I had fought for and start all over. At the age of 61 I moved home to Massachusetts and for the first time I had all my rights. After all those years of fighting I got to enjoy them for 12 years so far. I got them strangely, not because I had won every rights’ battle, but because I moved to a state that respects its citizens and Gay people have equal rights, the ones the Creator gave all of us.

The advantage I have is knowing I can survive and if each right is removed in steps, I am only gradually returning to days with which I am familiar and know I can survive, although not happily. I not only did not have, had, and will no longer have my rights, but I will also have the memories of the battles and those alongside whom and against whom I fought, and then die quietly with memories of it all and not in the fit of the battle redux  that could have been avoided.

I neither do now nor will have to worry later about banned books. As an old guy I can read what I want.

I will not have to worry about the loss of Marriage equality. I am too old to consider it. Remember, I was 61 before same sex marriage was legal for me, and I may not have aged so well nor garnered the riches that would have worked for my benefit in this regard now.  

I am retired so I cannot be fired, although under the old conditions I did face that.

I can’t be denied a lot of stuff because I am a senior citizen and that alone gets me stuff.

I am more protected by the rights of the aged than I am by Gay Rights, but considering it all, it sort of evens out.

During the days of questioning, discovery, and self-acceptance, I had all my rights. I thought I was Straight and lived accordingly. So I knew what having rights, even ones taken for granted, was like. When I accepted myself and came out, I lost quite a few of them. I fought to be equal to my former self, and to a degree became so.

If the rights I fought for are taken away by degree, it will not be like throwing me into a pot of water with other younger frogs to slowly kill us by gradually increasing the water temperature until we are boiled to death as statistically I have a better chance of dying of old age before the water gets to the temp to boil me to death than the younger frogs in the pot with me who have a better chance of living long enough and suffering the whole time until boiled to death.

Their concern being in the pot should be greater than mine. I am on borrowed time with my life behind me. Their lives could have been ahead of them.

So, where were they?

Where were the young women, the members of racial minorities, the Gay community?

Why was this a room of senior citizens, Boomers, discussing and planning the preservation of rights they can not exercise at their age and not one of the age groups that will be most affected and for the longest time.

The absence was noted by the women, the Cape Verdean, and the lone Gay man.

And so, a room filled with Boomers discussed the present situation, made suggestions about realistic approaches, came up with a way to organize and respond South Coast wide to an event at a moment’s notice whether it was to a school board meeting, city hall meeting, or an incident, and how we can head this all off at the pass so those who had inherited rights would not have to live the future without them, a short future for those in attendance.

Those whose future it is were not there.

This is where I am tempted to tell the young ones to stop deflecting and claiming all the ills in their lives are because of selfish Boomers while this meeting had the attendance it did.

You actually had to drive to a location, enter a building and then a room, and talk to real people face to face with no memes or platitudes about the cosmos manifesting itself. We were not there for the “likes” or to preach comfortably through a keyboard but were in the room to accomplish something, in this case saving rights others need to have after we are gone.

Granted, the weather outside was beautiful, springlike temperatures and a slight ocean breeze cooling the warmth of the sun. But our rights do not only get attacked when the weather is lousy, and the planning that needs to be done to remove them might have to be held when it is not convenient not only when it lacks competition.

But, avoiding the Paine quote about summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, I will not do that.

I will just say plainly.

The Boomers showed up to protect the rights of the young knowing full well that what they are preparing to fight for no longer affects them but the absent young.

That’s who Boomers are.

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While transcribing the log book of the whale ship Newport as it wintered on Herschel Island the winter of 1894-1895, I happened upon what was labeled a journal that was kept that winter by a captain’s wife who had accompanied him on the whale ship that year and the next. The “journal” had been transcribed by a professor at McGill university, and, as it was to turn out, was not a faithful and complete transcription but only a partial transcription and that because his attention was on the indigenous people and, as a doctor who worked with First Nations people, anything medically related to them. As a result there are instances where whole paragraphs were reduced to single summarizing sentence or two. 

Unaware of this I did become very familiar with what the Professor had transcribed as the details in the “Journal” were more specific about the daily life on the Island than the logs of the Newport and other wintering ships, so vague mentions of the crew “employed in ship’s duties” while generic in the logs were described in great detail in the “Journal” of Sophie Porter, wife of Captain William S. Porter of the Jesse H Freeman. 

Where a log might mention a crew member, Mrs. Porter would mention him by name.

Because I was constantly cross referencing, especially after the discovery of the log entry dealing with the steward being sent forward for sodomy and onanism looking for any parallel event Mrs. Porter might have mentioned, I became very familiar over the last six years with Mrs. Sophie Porter’s life on the island that winter.

The classic image of hunting for whales usually includes whales in the distance being approached by ships driven in the most romantic pictures at great speeds by the wind while in reality not so much with smaller boats out ahead chasing a whale. We assume that, knowing the migratory patterns of various whales, the ships in the Pacific would head out after them either from Hawai’i or later SanFrancisco and Washington after being fitted and rigged in preparation for the migration, chasing the whales around the Pacific and getting news of the best places to go from passing ships with their holds filled or close to being so.

We assume there was the constant “thrill of the chase” after long periods of nativity and boredom and it is the romantic view od this that added a of a cover up of the real event, slaughtering a species close to extinction for money when there was a cheaper land based source of fuel especially in 1895. We assume whalers were only practical to a certain degree when it came to their trade, but we too often ignore they also had a good deal of common sense and those who ran the business were doing quite well.

If every year from May to September Bowhead whales headed toward the arctic feeding grounds, wouldn’t it be better, rather than get behind them and chase the whales there, if the ships waited for them to show up. All it would take was a definite place to settle in for the wait.

The Bowhead whale was valued for its baleen which was used much the same way plastic, which replaced it, is used today, and that, along with their oil, brought these whales close to extinction. However, as long as the baleen and oil brought in money, the Bowheds were targets.

And, so it was that in the late 19th century whalers established a base in the Beaufort Sea on Herschel Island which lies at the northern edge of Canada about 600 miles East of Barrow, Alaska.

This community began as a place for whale ships to hug the land, have dirt and snow packed against their hulls to act as a cushion as ice shrunk, expanded, and thickened over the winter, get restructured into housing waiting for the spring thaw and the return of the whales reached its height in 1893 when the population totalled 1,500 residents, both permanent and transitory.

By the time Sophie Porter arrived and kept copious notes about the goings on at the settlement over the 1893-1984 wintering, permanent structures had been constructed for housing and social space, but as they had become quite proficient at making their ships into housing  most crews continued to stay on their ships. 

This was the winter that the Pacific Steam Whaling Company constructed a building called the Community House at Pauline Cove that had a recreation room, an office for the manager and storekeeper, and storage facilities. Although the Community House became the most prominent building on the island, with the crews remaining on their ships and with the arrival of Reverend Stringer to meet the needs of the Christian whalers and convert the locals, in 1896 the company offered the house to the Anglican church who used the building until 1906.

Living on the Island had its mixed reviews as Sophie Porter recounted many happy social events among the more depressing happenings, while Reverend Stringer’s wife was not vague in the reasons for her dislike to being there.

Although referred to as Sophie Porter’s Journal, it turns out that Sophie had been the log keeper of the Jesse H Freeman of which her husband, Wiliam S., was the captain. This would explain why, unlike most log books which are dry notations of facts related to ship and company business, the log book of the JH Freeman also includes descriptions of people, mentioning names when known, and other goings on aboard ship that would not usually be included in the very often poorly written and dry entries.

She may have fulfilled the obligation to include weather, climate, wind, ship directions and business related activities, but sitting still from October to early May eliminated the need to record this information as Latitude and Longitude would remain constant and the weather did not affect the progress of the hunt, freeing her to write of the colony’s social life.

As logs mention ships encountered, whether just in passing or joining when the whale population eliminated competition, Mrs. Porter not only listed the names of the ships wintering and their captains, but she also lists the names of the captains’ wives and children, specific members of the various ships that interacted with her husband, various crew members performing good and bad acts, and the names of the local indigenous people who brought meat and traded with the ships including births and deaths of those she had become familiar with. While other logs might describe crew members by such things as race or country of origin, one log book refers to some crew as “the Mexicans, Sophie would refer to people by name, no matter how inconsequential in the ship’s hierarchy.

It was at the height of Pauline Cove’s existence, 1893-94, that the incident with Scott, the steward, took place aboard the Newport, and with a population that winter of whalers alone having reached 1500 people, the odds that Mr. Scott was a one time event become unfavorable and would lead one to think that with no women but captain’s wives and their pre-teen daughters as well as  the few women among the indigenous people coming to the settlement, a six to seven month period of chastity would not be realistic.

A Captain Levitt arrived at Herschel Island on one voyage and never left, having married an indigenous woman. He became a prominent person and has things named after him, so there is evidence of less advertised sexual activity beyond what the Captains and their wives obviously were able to engaged in.

I originally thought that needing something to do during the long hours with little activity, Sophie spent part of this time writing her journal. Its being a personal journal was bolstered by personal entries and things she wanted her friends back home to know such as how anyone could enjoy wintering on an island on the northern edge of the Yukon 60 miles East of Barrow, Alaska.

I read of her love of husband and child and the family things they did together. I read of parties and funerals, and of the motherly attitude she had toward the indigenous people and members of the crew. I basically spent a year with her from the beginning of the wintering in the fall to the resumption of whaling with the spring thaw.

While I was doing yet another cross referencing in preparing an article for the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology website in which I wanted to include links to whatever ship logs I could find for the other 11 ships beyond that of the Newport I had already transcribed, I found that what had been labeled a “journal” was actually a partial and targeted transcription of the log book of the whale ship Jesse H Freeman whose keeper was Mrs. Sophie Porter. Further research showed that there were a lot more entries and they and the ones already transcribed actually contained more information than assumed.

Although she may have mentioned the weather, the direction of the ship, the ports they entered, and the usual information that is included in a form of bullet points in the standard log book, her log was in a more narrative form with the business information mentioned where they fit in the story.

I am now transcribing the log book of the Jesse H Freeman which begins months before the wintering and with many more detailed entities than what has been available. I am relatively familiar with what the journal contains but have seen that  the original contains so much more than in the available transcription. While a transcribed entry on Herschel Island in the available version states that the steward was replaced, the actual extent entry explains that as the crew were suffering boredom the captain decided to shake things up and shuffled the positions of those more involved those whose duties had them close to the captain and his mates to keep them occupied by learning a new job. Obviously more interesting and complete than the one sentence summary.

After having transcribed some of the earlier entries in the actual log, I have found references to things that will become details of future events unknown to Sophie but, having already read about those future events previously, are known to me. One entry lists items obtained from trading with the “natives” and local merchants at Indian Point, Alaska, among which were 500 pairs of boots whose disposition I know as boots are referred to in an entry from months in the future. 

And I have had the privilege to know before she wilo how Sophie Porter’s attitude toward the Natives and she herself will change.

In early entry where the JH Freeman had stopped to get some clothing item that would be useful during the wintering and at which she encounters the “natives” for the first time, Sophie described the “Natives” as “pitiful”, “disgusting”, and “filthy”, noting that those who approached her daughter, Dorothy, frightened her, and Sophie herself wished they would stay away from her. 

If this is as far as you get, Sophie seems to have a huge White Privilege attitude which she very well might have had. However, the entries I have already encounter in the “Journal” and have yet to reach in the actual log reveal a woman whose attitude has become more enlightened as she speaks of the “natives” kindly and in a motherly fashion, mentioning many by name and recounting both happy and sad events in their lives and deeply mourning the loss of a child and her deep sympathy for the mother.

I have seen the woman this person becomes and now I get to see the voyage to get there.

Because of Sophie, we know what ships were present that winter, and we do not have to comb the record to find the list or comb the log to learn them because along with the expected log information, Mrs. Porter listed the ships, the captains, and their spouses and children they had with them. She left us the community’s roster. 

We know of at least one specific reference to Homosexual activity worded in such a way as to imply it was not the only one, and we have four extant logs of ships listed in Mrs. Sophie Porter’s log in which others might be included regardless how described or couched, and a fifth which hints of more as well.

And we know Mrs. Sophie Porter will become a better person.

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Living history once is usually enough. But here in a liberal state, home of John Adams, some of the craziness of the Red States is getting introduced, so history is repeating itself.

Because Oklahoma has term limits for its House and Senate members, Republican Representative Sally Kern’s time as a legislator came to an end.

Although I am no longer a resident of that state, my time there involved a connection with the representative.

Having taught a few doors down from her, and having had to deal with her bigoted and damaging statements during the time I was advocating for GLBT students, I thought I would share the story of my time with Sally Kern.

When I first transferred from the middle school across the street to the high school and was already involved in advocating for GLBT students, I was hoping to find an ally at my new school, and thought I had found one in Sally Kern because my first impression of her was, not unlike that of many, that she had to be a Lesbian, albeit a stereotypical one, as she was sporting khaki pants, a blue polo shirt, comfortable shoes, had her hair done in a style favored at the time by dip-stick Lesbians and old Portuguese women, and was leaning very non-femininely on a golf club.

Ashamed of my profiling her, I chose to hold off on any introduction until I got to know her better, and this turned out to have been a safe move.

She insists that she has made few, if any decisions in her life, so she bears no responsibility for things she has done because every major move in her life was undertaken because she was directed by God.

She had decided to remain a virgin and preach the Gospel as a missionary, and this very well could have been the last decision she was ever to make because God took over immediately afterward.

According to her own telling of her life story, God subsequently told her she was to get married, and made things easier for her by telling her who the husband was to be. This was before He handed that duty over to that Christian Mingle web site.

She was then told to have children and raise them while her husband preached, and this gave way to God then telling her that since her children were of an age that they could fend for themselves she was to become a teacher and bring Jesus into the classroom and restore God to public schools.

This would explain why her classes in Government took on the attributes of spreading the Gospel and showing how nothing happened in the United States that was not directed by God.

This allowed her to speak against certain people because, well, God told her He did not like them, even the ones that were sitting in her classroom.

She might have liked them, she has said she does not hate Gay people, but it seems God told her not to.

When she hadn’t been as successful in God’s school directive as one would think she would have been since an all-powerful deity had given her the assignment, and certainly would have helped her out, He told her to run for the State House of Representatives and bring God back state-wide.

But she has a dangerous obsession.

She hates Gay people with a passion that also envelopes Gay youth.

She pushed the perverted idea that being Gay is all about sex, as if she needs to make that assertion so she can think and talk about sex because God no longer wanted her to have any.

She tells children that they are going to grow up to be perverts and are no better than animals, and that God hates them.

She did it while she was a teacher.

During adolescence when students are looking for answers to what are to them major questions, her default  answer was to tell them that they will burn forever in hell and will be rejected by God and their families if they allow themselves to be who they are.

While Gay people want to love other Gay people, Sally Kern likes to dwell on the fantasy that, no, they want to love animals.

Gay people haven’t told her that. It is what she wants to believe.

And every year in her time as a state Rep, she has attempted to use her position to promote her perverse way of thinking, and has relished the chance to speak out loud  her own fantasies about who Gay people are.

She may not want to speak like an audio-porno magazine, but she has to in order to do God’s work. He makes her speak pornographically.

I taught down the hall from her. I never told her a thing about my personal life. Yet, she publicly told people that, while I might be a good teacher, my life-style was repulsive.

My life style, at the time, consisted of getting up in the morning, throwing on some clothes, walking the dog, arriving home to grab a cup of coffee, getting dressed, and going to work.

At the end of the school day I went to teacher staff development meetings, band practice, Union meetings, and school district educational committee, or community betterment meetings on different days.

By the time I got home, I would walk my dog, prepare supper for the both of us, correct papers and write lesson plans, and, perhaps, do some artwork. Sometimes I cleaned the house and did laundry.

I ended my day going to bed at a decent hour so I could get up the next day and do it all again.

My apologies for exposing readers to the repulsive details of my lifestyle, but I thought it necessary.

Once in a while I would date someone the old fashioned way, and on weekends I might go out for a night on the town with friends.

But according to Sally, in her mind anyway, it was perverted sex whenever I wasn’t doing all that other stuff.

Who could have found the time?

My relationship on campus was a professional one, and, in spite of our political differences, and her distaste for my assumed lifestyle, we were as friendly any the average co-worker, until she began her public library crusade.

It seems that after she was in the legislature she needed to come out of the clichéd gate running, and found her motivation.

Oddly, as it happened this way in every place in America where the book was condemned, locally two parents picked up their very young children, whom they had left at the library unattended, and on the way home asked what books they had gotten. One of the children began to read from a book, King and King, the story of a prince whose mother, while attempting to marry him off to a princess, found he was actually in love with another prince and had no problem with it. After almost hitting a tree and potentially killing their own children in their horror, the parents called the new representative who then demanded that as the public library was tax funded this book be removed from all libraries, or those offending libraries which refused to do this would be denied funding from the state.

The bad parenting skills of the parents who simply dropped their children off unsupervised in a day and age when children were being abducted, or could be, was obvious. They had not supervised their children, nor helped them pick books out of the library that they intended to read at home, and, upon seeing their own failing, attempted to blind others to it by distraction.

Their obvious failure was somehow lost to the expediency of the moment.

Attracting some very disturbingly conservative people as allies, Sally went to a Metro Library Commission meeting in Oklahoma City demanding any book with a “Homosexual Theme”, or which might have spoken of Homosexuality as anything other than an abomination, be removed from the system. Her assumption, apparently, was that as a legislator she would speak, they would listen, and there would be no question.

I do not think she was aware that people would object to her attempted misuse of power, or that her wishes would not be so automatically obeyed.

A group of people, including legal people from the ACLU, local Gay organizations, library workers, and concerned citizens, myself included, went to the same meeting to argue that parents, after instilling in their children their own family values, should view what their children intend to read before they checked out a book at any library, rather than demand that, if they found something objectionable, no one should be allowed to read it.

I felt a little naked at that first of many meetings when, in attempting to prove her action was not based on bigotry, but a concern for children, Representative Kern tried that old chestnut that she only objected to certain things of a “Homosexual nature”, but she herself loved Gay people and knew many, and even worked with some very fine teachers who happened to be Gay. While making that last statement she swept her left arm in an all inclusive arcing motion declaring as she did so that I was a wonderful teacher with whom she had no problem, and mentioning me by name when he finger found me in the crowd. Although she knew I was open at school, she took the liberty, or acted on the assumption that there would be no harm in using me in so public a manner, and “outing” me to the public in the process.

The commission decided to take things under advisement, or avoidance if you will, and hold a few more meetings in libraries all around the city before any decision was made.

At one of these subsequent meetings, while again attempting to show her actions were based on genuine concern for children dropped off unattended by their parents at libraries and not GLBT animus, she told those in attendance that she knew Gay people, and even taught with them in her days as a teacher. She again pointed me out by name to those in attendance as a wonderful teacher, but expressed her objections to my constantly and obnoxiously pushing my “lifestyle” into people’s faces to show how militant Gay people were about their agenda and desire to recruit.

Depending on her need from that meeting on, I was either just a good teacher, or a good teacher who as obnoxiously Gay.

The media was mixed in their reaction to her move, but most often questioned it, and although the media tried mightily to report in a balanced, neutral way, some of her statements, which bordered on fanaticism, came across as quite bizarre.

As the meetings progressed and the foolishness of her demand became more and more apparent, she modified her demand from removing the books totally from libraries to placing them in a restricted area for books that were controversial in nature without actually describing who would do this, or on what the decision on what was controversial would be based.

The commission, for its part, knowing that as libraries are funded by all tax payers, was reluctant to choose and place books apart solely on the opinions and desires of any one group. Even the Bible had its unsavory parts, and fairy tales were rife with negative references to step-mothers that would certainly offend those families that had one. It was conceivable that quite a few originally unintended books with anything anyone might find objectionable would be put in a totally separate place apart from the other books. There just wasn‘t enough space in any library to accommodate all the books that might need to be moved.

Wherever Sally Kern went with her message, people from the other side of the argument were there too with the unified message that if any parent did not want his or her child to read something it was up to them to establish limits within their family and be with the child at the library. It was wrong for someone to force their own personal family values on others by deciding what other people‘s children should be able to read.

There were rallies in front of libraries, interviews in the various media, and a presence at all Library Commission meetings.

As we had not been unfriendly when we taught a few doors from each other, the legislator and I would have friendly conversations before the meetings where I filled her in on what was going on at school and any news about anyone with whom she had worked, only to retire to our sides to argue our points when the match began.

The final compromise of the Library Commission to the legislator‘s demand was far from a total seclusion of these books in a separate room. They would be placed on an easily findable shelf, but separated from other books. Instead of the desired effect of making them hard to find, these so called controversial books were made more easy to find because they were on a separate shelf in a section of the main library, and not mixed with other books where they would have blended in, like the enticing bawdy magazines are separated from sports and news magazines in a newspaper store, and are, therefore, made easier to find.

Her greatest threat of withholding public funds from non-cooperating libraries was shot down in the state legislature, and the matter died.

After a period of not hearing much from Sally Kern, just prior to the Gay Prom and a few weeks before graduation Kern wrote a letter to her constituents which stated she had been divinely placed in the legislature to return much needed reality to the state, and that Gay people were the biggest problem.

 “I ask for your prayers that God’s will be done. We, the Christian community, have set idly by for too long and let this perversion get out of hand. The homosexuals are wanting us to accept their behavior has normal and natural. It is not. It is sin and unless Believers stand up and be heard it will continue to spread like a cancer and destroy our society. I believe that with all my heart. I am not a particularly valiant person but God has put me in the position of State Representative for such a time as this.”

It was at her return to her public crusade that she warned her constituents at a meeting that Homosexuals were more of a treat to America than terrorists or Islam.

If this claim of divine anointing, and her attitude toward Homosexuals as stated above were brought into her Government classes, especially during the time she was a candidate for office what, other than the wording of school policy, could have protected Gay Students from her negative attitude toward them and Homosexuals in general?

So, recognizing it as nothing more than a form of name dropping, while either through total ignorance or willful self-service, especially as the principal at the time was a compliant Lesbian more concerned about her standing with the higher ups and the prospects of a higher paying, more prestigious position in the school district, I was disturbed when Sally Kern was invited to attend the graduation of the school in her legislative district at which she had taught in spite of her very public statements about GLBT people. Although I could see that as she was a former teacher it was nice to have invited her to attend the graduation of some of her former students, even the ones she held in extremely low esteem as they were Gay, or perhaps not Christian, I questioned why she sat up on the stage with administrators and honored students. I saw this as a little insensitive toward the Gay students who fell into her perversion category, and who may have been harmed by her words in class and in the legislature.

Again, without regard for our Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender students and family members, some sitting among the graduation class, and others either as siblings or parents in the audience, and ignoring the demeaning and dismissive attitude expressed in her email and comments made while she attempted to ban Gay books, and the damage done to our past and present students by the actions she had taken and the expressed reasons for them, she was given political advantage. Someone thought it would be a feather in the cap of the school if a Representative was an honored guest.

Her hurtful comments did not apply to majority of them while they were meekly accepted by at least one for expedience.

I was responsible for some segment of the education of those graduating, and I attempted to give them the best education I could, sometimes in spite of odd realities. To have me publicly described by the Representative as a pedophile, a lower form of creature, a sexual predator, a recruiter of youth into a condemned “life-style, pornographic by my very nature, a danger to the welfare of youth, and a cancer on society where such statements could be heard by my students, only to have her presented as a good and totally acceptable and honored role-model was extremely insensitive toward those to whom her ignorance was directed, again, some of whom were members of the honored graduates.

Having lost the Library crusade, it became Sally Ken’s modus operandi to introduce any number of anti-GLBT bills at the beginning of each legislative session while continuing her appearances at conferences and churches to spread lies about the GLBT Community, often presenting her cause as a defense of Christianity against the onslaught of Gay attacks.

While attempting to victimize others, she attempted to play the role of the victim when her attacks were rebuffed and her lies exposed.

She wrote a book, The Stoning of Sally Kern, that explained her victimhood.

Among her attacks she came up with a bill to allow unregulated conversion therapy, which is a bit of debunked quackery that attempts to make Gay kids straight by promoting a relationship with Jesus, her version of him anyway, and relies heavily on induced guilt and self-loathing. Regardless what is best for the kids, they could have been sent to conversion therapy for any reason a parent might choose even if it was only because of the embarrassment having a Gay child could cause a family, or because the preacher man saying being Gay is the devil’s work.

Perhaps the kid liked art more than God’s chosen sport, football.

She wanted kids to be the victims of the political or religious beliefs of the uninformed.

Her bill would have made it illegal for those who are trained and work impartially with children, like Child Welfare, the Oklahoma Commission on Youth, the Department of Mental Health, and the Health Department, to voice any objection.

The system of referrals and delivery of services would have been totally unregulated.

There would have been no oversight of services defined as Conversion Therapy, and without inspection and oversight, including the ability to investigate a complaint, children sent to conversion therapists could have been exposed to quackery, snake oil salesmen, religious charlatans, and even child abuse and molestation conveniently passed off as therapeutic techniques.

Thankfully there were enough intelligent people at the state house to kill that bill.

But she wasn’t done.

She wanted to make legitimate therapy more difficult to obtain

“No counselor, therapist, social worker, administrator, teacher
or other individual who provides counseling, guidance or
instructional services for a public school, public school district
or technology center school district may refer a student under the
age of eighteen (18) years to, nor provide the contact information,
business card, brochure or other informational materials of an
individual, organization or entity not employed by or under the
direct control of the school district in which that student is
enrolled if the referral or information provided pertains to human
sexuality without notifying the parents or legal guardians of the
student either by email, personal phone call or text message
at least twenty-four (24) hours prior to making the referral or
providing the information”.

This would have harmed more than GLBT kids, and considering that a very broad definition of “Human Sexuality” can be applied, and will be, if history and experience count for anything,  it could have applied to any positive GLBT information and the advertising of GLBT student friendly things like PFLAG, Community events, sources of information, or anything to do with safe spaces. It could be used to deny GLBT students necessary information not denied equally to religion, even though religion deals with human sexuality in many ways.

Students would have been forced into harmful silence as they may have feared having whomever they talked to call their parents and outing them, or, worse, avoid asking important questions as they might feel they would have been putting whoever the school related adult is in a terrible position and could have been responsible for any adverse action taken against that person by school administration.
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Sally was asking to be able to legally abuse students mentally and emotionally. She wanted to scar them for life and be excused for doing it.

This would have violated both Oklahoma City School policies on Bullying, Harassment, and Nondiscrimination, and those of any town in OK with similar policies, and even the Equal Access Act as Gay/Straight Alliances would have been deemed as dealing with human sexuality.

The assumption that GSAs are all about sex exists.

This woman would not be happy until she had gained control over the lives of children, and had forced her beliefs on people who otherwise would not accept them.

What she could not accomplish by preaching her interpretation of the Gospel, that would be bringing people closer to the God of her making, she attempted to do by legislation.

She wanted to ruin children’s lives and adversely affect their future all in the name of her god, using the state legislature to do it.

She wanted to legalize child abuse.

But time was not on her side as she now has to leave the legislature because of term limits.

However, she now has time to pursue her crusade, and it is beyond a doubt that she will.

Although I am no longer a member of the GLBT Community in Oklahoma, I was contacted by people dealing with Sally Kern’s ongoing aggression, and ask to do a series of cartoons for them. I was more than happy to do so, and did.

I am glad for the part I played to slow, if not stop, her crusade when I was a resident of her state, but I feel for those who may be spending more time than a person should dealing with the damage this person may decide to keep on attempting.

On Tuesday, May 24th, Freedom Oklahoma, an Oklahoma GLBT advocacy group will be sending Sally Kern off in style as they celebrate the end of her term in Oklahoma State House.

Oklahoma could have gone down the path of North Carolina and Mississippi, but Freedom Oklahoma, after the onslaught of 27 anti-GLBT bills faced in January, managed to defeat everyone of them.

Now, we have the opportunity to take the next step in securing protections for our community. We are saying goodbye to over 20 members of the Oklahoma legislature this term – including Rep. Sally Kern, and we need to find allies to replace them.

“We picked her for very obvious reasons,” Freedom Oklahoma Executive Director Troy Stevenson said. “She said some pretty atrocious things about the LGBT community. I don’t know that any legislator in this country has said worse.”

“I can tell you all LGBTQ Oklahomans look forward to Rep. Sally Kern’s last day in public office,” said Toby Jenkins, executive director of Oklahomans for Equality in Tulsa. “She has given 12 years of constant attack against gay, lesbian and transgender Oklahomans. She believes what she believes, and she is not even open to the idea that she might possibly be wrong.”

This happened recently, and it is a fine example of what the lack of historical knowledge can reap.

I had expressed my disappointment in a recent event on Facebook that those few in attendance had found disappointing as well. It was billed as a Tea Dance, but there was little advertisement and when I arrived, no DJ, but a very large radio playing country music with accompanying ads, and a bartender not sure if the dance was still happening since it was so dead and the establishment had not heard from the organization as usually happens before a scheduled event.

 I had sat reading a book for a good twenty minutes after the start time and was joined by a few people who had shown up because of a personal invite to get together with friends from a friend, not the organization. There was no visible organization presence beyond the small information table with the organization’s name on it. 

Other than that, you were in a bar that could be any bar on any day. There was nothing welcoming or community about the event, just a few people awkwardly first wondering if we had the right date and then filtering out as the drinks were expensive and the event for all intents and purposes an after thought that the organization wasn’t interested in.

Added to some previous occurrences, this appeared to me to be another example of an attitude I had seen before that if not dealt with could cause more damage than anticipated. It might not be a blind ignorance but, rather, a case of familiarity not noticing what fresh eyes can see.

Those at the event questioned why it was not more widely advertised, where the DJ for dancing was, why we were hearing ads at a Tea Dance, and where everyone was, especially members of the hosting organization. It came across as an event that was on the calendar and only happened for that reason whether anyone showed up or not.

Initially I received a defense and vacuous response ignoring the concern that was one of those non-apology, I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I? irrelevancies of a defense, “We’re sorry that yesterday’s Tea Dance – which was organized in large part by volunteers and offered our community free entertainment in a beautiful safe space – did not meet your standards, Joe”

The guilt trip attempted by mentioning volunteers was a nice try based on ignorance of my past that might have worked in my twenties, but not now.

A few days later I was asked to meet with two members of the organization to discuss my concerns. I did not ask for the meeting, but was asked to attend. So, as if it was just part of union and Gay Rights advocacy, I spent the days before the meeting preparing with emails and other documents to show my concerns were legit and were not just complaints to be ignored when I got to talk to the manager.

I have been in organizations for decades and have seen patterns, both good and bad, develop which in some cases can go against the purpose of the organization, undoing existing and potential good. As I did not call the meeting, I wanted to present my concerns logically as the meeting could only be to deal with them, and since it was basically coffee-with-friends to hear one friend’s concerns.

I had only gotten as far the first detail that was part of a larger concern when that which I feared happened. 

Instead of dealing with the whole picture, disagreement with one detail, one that could not be fully explained as the person objecting would not allow for clarification but seemed to demand we stick with his first false impression, had that detail become the one controlling detail from which we could not move. No matter what else was presented the response was consistently to that one detail that was only illustrative of a larger problem and not the substance.

Whether or not an event was on a Monday or a Tuesday, it is the event that is being discussed that is the point, not the day. In this case, it was as if nothing was legitimate because of the day mentioned, not the details.

At this point I am giving up. 

After perseverating on a single detail in the first concern apparently deemed important, one symptom being treated in a multi-symptom situation as if dismissing that is a complete cure,  when mentioning that of those present at a poorly promoted, attended, and carried off dance, the majority came because of a personal invite from a mutual friend asking we all meet up since circumstances have temporarily removed a community meeting place for the local Gay Community, the concern was not someone outside the organization having to be the one who had people show up and not the organization that had set up the event, but who this person was.

Who the person was is not the point unless dismissing the person or making an ad hominem assessment is the planned approach, perhaps, somehow getting the person to water down the story or be the victim of a form of character assassination so the onus would be placed on his shortcomings not that of the organization. The name of the person is irrelevant while the person’s having to do what should been done by the organization is what should concern them.

In passing on other comments made at the event by people who showed up and then left to have a good time elsewhere, comments made by those people who, although supportive of the organization were disappointed and freely expressed this over drinks after the event, I was asked to name the people who had concerns which I refused to do first because the names were irrelevant and, second, I did not have anyone’s permission to use their names. This being an informal gathering over coffee anyway, I thought, letting people who are friends know, but may not be aware, that they had a PR problem in the community and there were ways to undo this was why I had been asked to meet.

However, it was made clear that unless I attached a name to a concern, that concern would not be heard.

Two messages were sent.

While I was attempting to be helpful at a meeting I was asked to attend and did not have to, not only with concerns but cautions and suggestions, I was told I would no be listened to unless I gave the names of the person sending the invite and those responsible for some of those things I was passing on, apparently, although we were friends, and I thought my opinions and person were respected by them, it was obvious there was a surprisingly lack of trust that made even a conversation over coffee require verification of things I said rather than just accept them as what a friend was offering to be helpful at a meeting he was called to for that.

The second message was more direct. An old Gay man was told by a younger Gay man and head of an LGBT support organization that he would be ignored and the concerns unheard unless he named names.

No names=no attention to concerns.

Yes, I could have given the names of the people who have expressed concerns and disappointment. I know them. However, in the past I have been asked to name names and I know what would have happened to those so named.

This was an informal meeting over coffee and not some formal legal setting.

Take the concerns now and if you decide to address them those unnamed can decide if they would come forward into the light and make their concerns more formally. Considering the concerns without names can be done.

History is rife with examples of the negative consequences from being required to name names.

Long and short is that the meeting was a waste of time as nothing was accepted and consequently nothing discussed after the refusal to name names, except for one detail, the attempt to have a dismissive non-apology be accepted as sufficient while all else was ignored.

You do not tell an old Gay man to name names if he expects to be listened to.

Whatever concerns could have been addressed and then considered for the purpose of improving the organization’s reputation among those who are not members but seem to be paying a lot of cover charges to support them were swept aside, along with any benefits to the community because I did not name names.

World War II was a fight against fascism and before and during it there had been those who colluded with the enemy. In the aftermath, having just defeated a major threat, it was important, too important to some, to establish who were real Americans and who were enemies of the people.

This led to a great degree of paranoia and let those with warped values take control.

Think MAGA if you do not know this sort of thing happened,

The major actors in establishing patriotism and exposing the enemy was the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) that had been established just before World War II, in 1938, to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having ties to the enemy and its philosophy. There was a war coming and this was a way to have some control over events, at least domestic ones.

It became a permanent committee in 1945 when the war ended because, obviously, those who had aided the enemy were still around and needed to be found to face consequences, was renamed the House Committee on Internal Security in 1969, and finally abolished in 1975. It is now the House Judiciary Committee and watching Jim Jordan run a hearing gives a good idea how they had been conducted in their 1950s Communist hunting days.

Although he was not a member of this committee because he was a senator, Joseph McCarthy was the chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate.

Because Klan activity was on the rise after the War HUAC was considering opening investigations into the Klu Klux Klan but, because “After all, the KKK is an old American institution”, according to a Mississippi Senator, it chose to go after Communists in the government. 

Getting right to the point without a full summation of all aspects and consequences of HUAC, there was one procedure of the committee that caused the most problems for the most people.

If someone was accused of being a Communist, by giving over names of “fellow Travelers” a person could gain freedom from the charge, but not its consequences. You quietly lost your job and the public didn’t know why.

You could buy your innocence by turning in names.

The list a person handed over could have been a legitimate list insofar as the people on it had been known to attend meetings, but it also allowed the unscrupulous to include names of those whose higher position might go to the person presenting the list while being totally innocent. A person might want revenge for some work or off-hours slight. A person could have just been scared and presented a list of random names to be let off without any idea of the damage this list would cause to innocent people, or a person, feeling patriotic, went overboard in spying on his neighbors to force the Pinkos out.

It may be a Constitutional thing that a person is innocent until proven guilty, but in this case, the accusation was enough.

I remember as a child, the FBI came to my house to talk to my father. The man down the street who had been a drill sergeant in the army during and after the war was hit by a speeding car when directing convoy traffic and had to leave the army, taking a job as a salesman for a company that turned out to have a few government contracts. The FBI was interviewing the male adults in the neighborhood about Charlie’s allegiance to the country. No Commies could work on government projects if at all. A veteran who had to be discharged because of the accident, who had fought in both WWII and the Korean War, remained to train troops after both, and here the FBI was asking my father and the other men if they had seen any un-american activity on his part. My father refused to answer questions that impugned this man as did the other men questioned.

This was one major reason why, when the FBI would show up to surveil the home of a famous Boston gangster who had moved to the ‘burbs for invisibiity, and did so by being one of the nicest people in the neighborhood who was really good to the kids, the kids in the neighborhood let everyone know the FIBBY were here. Punchy might have been a gangster in the truest, Sopranos sense, but he was to us a much better person than the FBI that questioned Charlie’s allegiance to the United States.

In 1947, HUAC went after the movie industry to weed out Communist propaganda and influence in Hollywood. Eventually, more than 300 artists, directors, radio commentators, actors, and screenwriters were boycotted by the studios either because their names were on someone’s list or they refused to name names.

This became the famous Blacklist from which 90% of those accused never recovered.

Part of this panic was The Lavender Scare which, equating Homosexuals with Communists, led to their mass dismissal from government service during the mid-20th century and continues today, although to a lesser and more subtle degree.

Gays and Lesbians were said to be a national security risk and communist sympathizers, which called for their being weeded out of government service not based on performance but bigotry.

This was justified with a logic loop. 

Since Gay people could lose their jobs because they were Gay, they might do everything to keep their “perversion” secret to keep their jobs, even betray the country. This made us susceptible to being manipulated and easily blackmailed to reveal secrets.

Of course, if you removed this artificial deterrent to keeping your job, this would not happen. They created an easily blackmailed segment of the population, put them in a position to be blackmailed, and held them responsible for the creation.

It was similar to the logical fallacies used to oppose Gay Marriage claiming that gays should not be allowed to get married because they are incapable of it. How would you know that unless you allowed for marriage and judged from that?

Otherwise it is just your parent keeping the good dessert for himself claiming you wouldn’t like it anyway.

.The Lavender scare normalized persecution of Gays through bureaucratic institutionalization of homophobia. 

A person “accused” of being a homosexual whether true or not, could get the charge dropped if they handed over the names of other homosexuals. Like with the HUAC hearings these lists could be true, and horrible to have assembled, or, again, there could be an advantage to ruining someone whether it was social or work related. 

Naming other Gay people, especially without their permission and knowledge became a common practice since the government sanctioned it.

It became common practice that, if a Gay person felt threatened, they could collude, or if an employer just did not like the employee, an accusation about homosexuality was all that would be needed to fire them..

One of the worst things to do and one of the worst positions to put a Gay person in is to require they hand over names before anything will be considered and done.

In the early years of this millennium while advocating for the inclusion of Gay students in school policy, the administration saw no need to deal with Gay kids in school as there weren’t any. They became Gay later as a result of poor decisions and recruitment after a very confusing adolescence, so there was no need to accept they existed when in high school. 

I was told that I would have to give the name of one Gay and one Lesbian student as proof that there were Gay kids in the school and so the principal could talk to them. I had to explain the dangers of outing others without their knowledge or permission, disregarding where they are on the scary passage to coming out. I was being told I would have to subject a student to the consequences of being outed before prepared and then dealing with the reactions of others that a kid is not prepared for yet, especially as the forced coming out would have happened in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.

Naming names often has very negative consequences.

During the advocacy, no names were given.

The advocacy was successful.

Needless to say that at the recent meeting no further concerns were passed on, and the status quo can continue.

It was bad enough when this was done by non-Gay people to use ourselves against our selves, but to see that Animal Farm has reached this city as a Gay supportive organization refused to deal with real identifiable problems because the names of other Gay people were not put forward by the one they asked to attend a “friendly” meeting, is beyond the pale.

Have we so lost touch with our own history, that we have comfortably taken on the tools used against us in the past and using them against ourselves now?

Because I, a Gay man, did not give names, I was not listened to even though what I had to say was important and beneficial. 

But they would not know that because they went with the farmer not the animals.

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For those who seem complacent about things, this is some recent 2017 history.

Since it seems with the executive order allowing government contractors to hire or fire GLBT people  merely based on Sexual Orientation, and that they do not have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, or Title VII of the Civil Rights Act;

Since it would appear that the Civil Rights of GLBT people are of little consequence, especially regarding our Transgender brothers and sisters with the appointment of the anti-GLBT  Roger Severino to lead the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights;

Since it is plain that with the removal of GLBT people from the 2020 census we as people do not count and without acknowledging our existence, laws important to us as a Community  of citizens will not be considered worth enacting, and since there are proposed massive cuts in the budget regarding research, prevention and the treatment of HIV/AIDS, a situation whose results many of us are all too familiar with, I have decided that since I live on one end of my block and there is a federal building at the other, I will be taking a folding chair, a good book, with my mini IPAD which has the Nook and Kindle apps along with some downloaded  books I will have choices, an appropriate sign expressing my displeasure at the attempt to erase me , probably a large version of this cartoon, and, if I can find mine or can buy a new one, a pride flag,  and on Monday, the weather is supposed to be seasonal, will plant myself on the corner in front of that building for a few hours.

I checked the city ordinances regarding the use of sidewalks, and as I am not intending to dig it up, build some sort of progress impeding construction, resurface it, light a bonfire (yes, that has its own section), or pile a bunch of trash that people can’t easily get around, I seem to not be in danger of violating anything.

Besides, one block further down some homeless people ans a few sketchy characters are usually hanging out at the corner using the post office steps as seats on a daily basis and they are not moved along.

The front of the building is at such an angle that the one way traffic will have me facing in an “after-thought” visual position to traffic, so I may have to move to the other corner as I will be better seen by approaching traffic. It will be an aesthetics versus effectiveness choice. Plus the front corner gets sun while the other is usually mostly in the shade.

If anyone local wants to join me for the whole time or just a part, come join me. I have decided to set up my chair around 11:00 a.m., after the second episode of Dr. Who, and stay for a few hours.

Of course, if anyone yells anything negative, if my in and out ear congestion situation has me hard of hearing Monday, while I am smiling and waving with a pleasant smile, you will have to bear the brunt of what you hear that I can’t.

To make sure my message would not be drown out by unnecessary distraction, I consulted the city of New Bedford’s rules on sidewalk usage, and as I was not building a structural obstruction, resurfacing the concrete, piling trash so as to obstruct pedestrian progress, digging a ditch, or building a bonfire, as my footprint would be only the size of a folding chair and I would be neither yelling nor marching, I was going to be lawful and would most likely not have to deal with even the slightest harassment.

I arrived as I had planned, at 11:00 a.m., set up my chair, put the Pride Flag on the end of the bicycle warning flag stick, sat down, unfolded my sign, took out my e-reader, and sat down for I wasn’t sure how long.

I wasn’t sure what to expect as time went on as I had never before just set up a chair on a downtown sidewalk with a sign that supported a particular point of view on a subject on which there would be two opposing sides, and since, in my most recent past, the almost comical conservatism of the majority of the population where I had been living was often expressed in the rudest of terms, I steeled myself for the worst.

Obviously I was going to meet, for better or worse, people I would not otherwise really get to encounter other than that nano-second it takes to pass someone as I am dashing to get somewhere. I was going to potentially converse with anyone who was on that street during my time at my post, so I was going to encounter a cross section of the city’s population, most of whom would not be where I usually would be.

I was going to meet, for a short time, whoever was to pass by me, and I had no control over who those people would be.

A young security guard from the federal building approached me during his perimeter check, and asked what I was doing.

“Reading”, I replied, and I was not lying.

He looked at my sign, and then continued his rounds.

At his next perimeter check he was accompanied by his supervisor which was certainly understandable. I had prepared a defense of my action in my head complete with references to the city sidewalk code in the event I was told to move because of some supposed violation, but the supervisor merely asked what I was doing, accepted my answer, and asked who had drawn the cartoon. He gave what I took to be a neutral nod, and walked away.

It is probably petty of me, but I always put the G first because it began as the Gay Liberation movement, and then, as was only correct, the Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement. But when Elizabeth Birch, deciding that her organization spoke for all Gay people, even without our permission, and she for her organization, decided to put the L first and notified the press that that was the correct order, I chose to ignore her and stick with history. Besides I saw the ladies before gentlemen concept to be a throwback to the pre-feminist days.

So my sign read, “Mr. Trump, GLBT people will not be erased.”

A passerby looked long at my sign and asked if I would be offended by a comment. When I told her I would not be, she told me I had spelled “LGBT” wrong.

I got a few beeps and many “thumbs up”. Passers-by made supportive comment s, and a few had some negative things to say about Mr. Trump.

Across the street from my apartment building parking lot there is a small church. I think it is evangelical only because I get that vibe. Anyway their van came down the street, and as it turned the corner it pulled close to the curb and the driver invited me to his church. Obviously a Gay man was being offered salvation. I thanked him, but politely declined. I didn’t get angry because I was doing my thing and he was just doing his. A meeting of causes.

A woman stopped to ask how far the court house was, and I asked which court she was looking for as the Juvenile Court was just across the street while the County Court was more of a drive than a short walk. She wanted Juvenile, and as I pointed out how close she was to it, she looked carefully at my sign, and then made some agreeable comments before pointing out that the topic was a concern to her because in GLBT, she was a T.

Later as she was leaving the court, she gestured to the people she had been walking with to wait as she ran across the street to tell me she had just won custody of her grandchild, and then practically skipped back across the street.

In the four hours I sat there, there was only one negative moment. A woman about my age, a hard looking woman in an old beat up van, slowed to a crawl and got close to the curb so she could yell “faggot!” at me. She sat there for a while staring at me as if she was expecting a response, but I had made up my mind from the moment I decided to do this that I would not engage, nor would I allow anyone to rile me, but would, instead, if someone wanted a discussion, hand them the pamphlet I had printed up and tell them that until they read it, a discussion would be as useless as a troll on the internet.

Not getting what she wanted, she shook her head, gave a rather generic hand gesture, and drove off.

A group of teenagers passed by and politely asked if they could take pictures of my sign.

Most people paused long enough to read the sign if they approached from behind me, and

many made a small swerve if they were coming from in front to get a better look, give a thumbs up, make a comment, or just laugh.

As I was preparing to get up and leave, an angry looking woman came running across the street followed by a younger man I assumed to be her son, came right up to the sign, and in a very thick accent told me Trump was a horrible man who wanted to hurt people like her, an immigrant who was now a citizen, but could still be arrested in a sweep.

So the day began with a Transgender woman who had won custody of her grandchild, and ended with a woman, an immigrant, who, in spite of her initial scary appearance, thanked me for publicly making a statement against the man she could not stand.

I folded my sign, took down my pride flag, folded the chair, checked to make sure the area was as clean as when I first arrived, and then walked to my apartment at the other end of the block.

The four hours flew, and because it was as good an experience as it was, but being realistic enough to acknowledge it could be totally different the next time, after my set up sat by my back door ready for the next non-rainy day, which could be tomorrow or the next, I used it four more days that week and 18 additional times over the next few ears in response to the attacks on Drag Queens and Transgender people.

Sadly, I sat alone each time in spite of multiple open invites to join me.

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I had attended a nearby Equality March for Unity and Pride whose purpose was to mobilize the LGBTQ+ communities, our loved ones, and our allies in the fight to affirm and protect our rights, our safety, and our full humanity. It was to give voice to our concerns, and to support, uplift, and bring attention to those in our communities who are targeted due to immigration status, ethnicity, religion, skin color, gender, and disability.

The organizers also stated that the gathering was to affirm and celebrate that we are a mix of diverse communities, and that a lack of unity has caused many of our needs to be neglected or ignored. They hoped to learn from prior mistakes and come together through common belief in inalienable human rights and dignity for all with a particular focus on those who have been actively silenced and neglected.

However, there was an underlying thread of irony woven throughout the event.

Speaker after speaker got up rousing the crowd to be proud of the progress made within the community since the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

They spoke of the scourge of the initial AIDS days and recent attempts to curtail addressing it, the legacy of the Stonewall rebellion, and the years before Marriage Equality.

But the irony was that not one of the speakers was alive back in the days of which they spoke, and if they had been alive, they would have been too young to have been aware of those days in any meaningful way, while in the crowd there were people who were.

There was not one senior member of the GLBT community who spoke and could have brought a personal perspective.

Those who spoke of Stonewall romanticized it giving into the mythologizing of the event, assigning the instigation of the riot to those with whom they identified. While those who were actually there cannot point to any one individual as the person who threw the first rock, or even if a thrown rock or brick had actually started the riot as opposed to any thrown rock being simply part of what was happening much as with the use of the parking meter ripped out of the sidewalk as a battering ram against the bolted shut door of the Stonewall Inn. There is no recollection of the crowd on the street standing waiting for some single sign before beginning acting out their anger toward this one too many bit of oppression.

But the story persists and is modify depending on the speaker or the crowd being addressed.

For a number of years it was claimed that it all began when a young Lesbian threw the first punch at a police officer, but this has now become it having begun with a rock thrown by a Transgender person of Color, and even this wavers between it having been an African American or a Latinx.

All that participants and witnesses can attest to and have is that something got it all going, but what that was is unclear. Each time a new instigator is chosen, the real nameless, anonymous person is further erased from the history as is the spontaneous act of a group

A myth is created to address a need.

Marsha Johnson was one of many Trans people, and the Trans people were one group of the many who were there, and who could just as easily claim the position of instigator. She was prominent because she took the action of pulling people out of the police wagon while the riot was happening, but that does not equal credit for having thrown any rocks.

They credit Marsha for a role that does not jibe with the role witnessed by many participants and eye witnesses. And for most of the first night of the riot, the drag queen given most of the leadership credit was among the first group of people to be arrested and brought to the Station of the 6^th Precinct where he spent the night in a cell. Why he was singled for arrest is a much more important story than the myth, but even that history is ignored,

There were many active street kids who were the main players, but speakers at pride events have frozen them in time and ignore they have grown old and in the intervening years they had more work to do and grew old and weary doing it.

There are very few left, so their accounts should be heard before they are gone instead of the story passed on from person to person like that game of Telephone Line where the final person receives a message that is only remotely related to what the first person in line told the second.

They are in the 60s now, heading toward their 70s, and can be so easily overlooked because of their years.

Even Marsha Johnson is frozen into her role at Stonewall with no acknowledgement of what she had done after until her untimely death under suspicious circumstances in 1992.

A true admirer would include that as it is important to who she was and what was done after that weekend in June of 1969.

But myths like to freeze people into one major moment.

Those who spoke on AIDS were children in the first 8 years of the 80s and, although they may be able to recount what they have learned those times were all about to a crowd appreciative of what they are hearing, but there were people in the crowd who were there and had dealt with it who could have told of experiences like being denied medical care, losing jobs and housing, and being denied any visitations once their loved one entered the hospital and were often not told the person had died nor were they allowed at the funeral.

They could have told of the hurt of knowing the person they loved was unnecessarily dying alone, and there would never be that all important final good-bye and that needed final caress.

This, this could have brought home the need to be vigilant of what negative plans politicians have when it comes to AIDS funding for research and support.

When history was spoken of, the only people spoken of were dead people, people who had died of old age, murder, or the results of having been attacked. Not mentioned, even though they were right there in the crowd, were those who stayed alive and continued to fight and are still fighting.

If the younger people are to really learn they should hear from the senior GLBT people who lived through what these kids do not want to live through, and shouldn’t have to.

They need to know that as much as they bemoan oppression, it had been really worse in the past, and the old guys could tell them that, not from an intellectual historical point of view but an experiential one. They need to learn what it was actually like so that they can be as ready as necessary to prevent a return.

They do not need the surprise of things being worse than what someone who read a book might be able to tell them.

Who knows better than those who actually live it what conditions will be like if the Community does not stay vigilant and the present administration brings back the old days?

While those who spoke at the rally can imagine, those at the rally who went unacknowledged could describe the reality in which they had lived and the effort and sweat it took to change things.

We might compliment someone who loses 100 pounds, but we cannot know what it took for them to lose it if we don’t ask, and don’t allow them the chance to tell us.

There was mention in passing of the repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, but no one spoke who had been affected by it and the time before that flawed compromise. Yet, they were in the crowd.

Understandably the shooting at the Pulse night club, being as it was just a few years before this event, and to the majority in attendance the worst attack on a GLBT safe place, and, to an extent, presumably unique because of its being so recent. Meanwhile some on the grass, while not wanting to minimize that horror were very aware of the arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge that took place on June 24, 1973 in New Orleans, where Thirty-two people died as a result of fire or smoke inhalation. The reaction to the Pulse attack ranged from respectful horror to at least one political candidate using it for an attempt to have the GLBT Community throw its support toward his extreme and political Islamophobia. In the case of the UpStairs Lounge the reaction included jokes on talk radio about the patrons, little coverage in the media, no mention of it by the local government, and a weak and easily dismissed investigation on the part of law enforcement..

It happened on an early Gay Pride weekend within four years of the Stonewall Rebellion, and yet people were not cowered, but instead kept up the fight for equality.

There was talk against White Privilege that in itself exhibited a form of discriminatory privilege, as, when naming the various groups of people present at the Stonewall Rebellion there was an obvious omission of the presence of White Gay Males, as if it was important to the cause to leave them out because they were guilty by association, somehow, with those who oppressed the GLBT Community.

And while some speakers decried “Privilege” they described the progress and state of the community within their own narrow experience, listing all the positive changes and what needed to be defended, while seemingly turning a blind eye to the fact that in a large area of the country members of the GLBT Community still face the conditions the old guys sitting on the lawn had experienced even here on the Eat Coast many years ago.

Horrors like that which happened to Matthew Shepherd are well known because they are so out of line with the experiences of the modern GLBT Community in privileged places, while the burning out of a Gay man’s eyes with cigarettes before he was placed alive on a pile  of burning tires,  a crime that received a very mild punishment in relation to its severity because the defendant claimed that in spite of his picking up the victim in a Gay bar, he panicked when sitting at home and the Gay man came on to him. His defense was, and his punishment hinged on the use of Gay Panic, which allows someone to react with any, even the most extreme degree action, if they feel a Gay man was hitting on them.

Yes, in some places that is still a thing.

I was disturbed by the string of limited knowledge that was passed on as being informed.

The most ignored resource in the GLBT community are the seniors with the lived histories that the younger generation is repeatedly insulated from in the name of romanticized history and mythology.

I was also disturbed that an event that was to address the importance of supporting the marginalized, was marginalizing the Community’s senior members.

People seemed unconscious of the fact that sitting on the lawn in front of the speakers was a resource that was not tapped, but ignored.

It is one thing to pass on history as you heard it, another to pass it on because you lived it.

By the time I left I came to realize I was no longer a part of the Stonewall story and that of the years of battling after because I was a White Gay Man, and I was never mentioned by a speaker, although other groups were included in the litany of members of the community and the only mention of White men was as the privileged oppressor.

I was marginalized because my story and the story of people like me were told to us by those who have heard about them while we were kept silent because, I have to assume, we don’t have famous names, don’t possess the “cute factor”, are assumed to be dead.

This too shall pass.

I hope

 

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