Alone and Unobserved

I’m not interested in investing, business or dailies, so even though IBD is displayed prominently on my floor at the library, until today I had barely spared it a passing glance. As I was pulling last Friday’s issue and replacing it with today’s, though, a small heading on the front page caught my eye.

Same-Sex Marriage
A judge creates a right that’s not found in the Constitution
Issues & Insights A12–13

Oh my, I thought. I’ve got to see what insights the editorial board of an investing newspaper has on that subject. I wasn’t disappointed! Here’s the title and blurb (and a link to the article):

Out of Thin Air
Same-Sex Marriage: A federal judge decides marriage is a constitutional right and overturns California’s Proposition 8 forbidding such unions. The issue is headed to a Supreme Court that Elena Kagan will be sitting on.

Well. “Decides marriage is a constitutional right” is an interesting way to characterize Judge Walker’s ruling. It also has no relationship with the facts. So after reading the rest of the editorial (holding my head firmly all the while to keep it from exploding) I sat down to write a point-by-point response.

The imperial judiciary has struck again with Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker striking down California’s Proposition 8, passed in November 2008 with 52% of the vote, on the grounds that the voter-approved law was a violation of gay couples’ civil rights. …

… In his decision, Judge Walker argues: “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.” Except Walker provides no rational basis for identifying marriage as a constitutional right.

This could be the answer to every single one of the erroneous points in this editorial so I’ll get it out of the way now: DID YOU EVEN READ THE RULING?? Walker spent an entire page (page 110, to be precise) quoting Supreme Court ruling after Supreme Court ruling in which marriage is established or accepted as a fundamental right. Years and years of decisions. In fact, according to Walker, “the parties [i.e. the plaintiffs and the defendants] do not dispute that the right to marry is fundamental.” Apparently the IBD editorial board disagrees with (or is unaware of?) not only years of Supreme Court precedent but also the Yes on 8 defendants whose side they pretend to be on.

Prop 8 supporters believe there’s no more a constitutional right to marriage than there is to a driver’s license. On the secular level, both are privileges granted by the state, which is entitled to define the ground rules for its secular reasons and purposes.

Indeed the state is “entitled” to define ground rules for the privileges it bestows on its citizens … as long as those rules are not unconstitutionally discriminatory. Denying driver licenses to homosexuals would be just as unconstitutional as denying marriage licenses is.

See also the “Conclusions of Law” section of the ruling (page 109), where Judge Walker discusses at length just why the State of California has no legitimate interest in preventing same-sex couples from marrying.

This country and healthy societies around the world and throughout history have given marriage between a man and a woman special legal protection because of the recognition that it is the one institution that ensures the society’s future through the orderly procreation and upbringing of children.

It is obvious that the IBD editorial board has not done its homework on the history of marriage, either, which really makes me wonder at their foolhardy bravery in writing on the subject at all. I suggest they take a look at Marriage, a History by Stephanie Coontz and A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom for some insight into the REAL reasons behind the institution of marriage throughout history. (Hint: they have far more to do with property, power and politics than procreation.) Heck, even über-conservative Supreme Court Justice Scalia disagrees with them! (Findings if Fact 21c)

Furthermore: No jurisdiction in the United States uses the ability or desire to procreate as the basis for issuing marriage licenses (FF 21); children are better off when their parents marry, including the children of same-sex couples (FF 56); children of same-sex couples show no difference in their development and adjustment than children of opposite-sex couples (FF 69–72).

Lacking a constitutional foundation, marriage is entitled to be defined by the people or their elected representatives.

As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said about the ruling: “In every state of the union—from California to Maine to Georgia—where people have had a chance to vote, they’ve affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.”

This should read: “Wherever the privileged majority has had the chance to vote on the rights of an oppressed minority, the majority has affirmed its own privilege at the expense of the minority.” This is not a valid argument in any sense.

Also, Newt, you have no room to talk, you moral cesspool you.

Once again we have unelected judges pulling rights out of the ether and thwarting the will of the people.

The whole point of the Bill of Rights is that the will of the majority sometimes needs to be thwarted.

The editorial goes on to piss and moan about how liberal and dangerous and activist Elena Kagan must also be, based on very little evidence, but that’s boring.

My conclusion: the editorial board of Investor’s Business Daily either did not read the ruling they are critiquing or have willfully decided to misrepresent it for ideological reasons. Which is a shame, because the ruling is a thorough, understandable piece of legal writing that basically speaks for itself.

Shame on you, IBD! You’ve never had any credibility with me since I never paid you any attention, but I certainly know to ignore you scrupulously in the future—unless I want to spend an entire day writing rebuttals to your nonsense.

Here is a list of things that Medieval Christians really believed about Jews: They murdered Christian babies. Both male and female Jews had periods, and they used Christian blood to replenish the losses. As punishment for murdering Jesus, they all suffered from hemorrhoids and open sores. Jews were all born blind, and they rubbed Christian blood over their eyes in order to see. Christian blood could protect one from leprosy. And so on.

No, really, there’s more.

Go read this post on Nervous Acid, then come back here. It’s long, but it’s worth it! I’ll wait.

Norman Brannon was unpacking the press release by Concerned Women for America in his post, but you have to remember—the Mormon church was behind the Prop 8 campaign and financed the spread of this blood libel, and, for all we know, continues to do so. And you know what’s different about the leaders of the Mormon church and a Christian peasant going on a pogrom in the fifteenth century? Mormon church leaders know they’re lying when they try to make people hate gays. When they cynically, calmly tell their followers that the homosexuals are out to force the Mormon church to perform deviant gay weddings in their sacred temples. When they paint themselves as the victims.

This is why they and their ilk deserve no pity, no civility, no quarter. They need to be exposed and vilified for who and what they are, and what they stand for.

They need to be openly castigated with the truth.

This is part of the Mormon church’s official response to Judge Walker’s decision ruling California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional:

“We recognize that this decision represents only the opening of a vigorous debate in the courts over the rights of the people to define and protect this most fundamental institution—marriage.

“There is no doubt that today’s ruling will add to the marriage debate in this country and we urge people on all sides of this issue to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different opinion.”

Listen, Mormon church. When you spent millions of dollars on a smear campaign against homosexuals and their families and roped as many of your faithful as possible into canvassing California neighborhoods and calling California homes to repeat the same lies and drum up the same groundless fears, and when you lied and prevaricated and covered up your involvement, the time for civility was long, long past.

And guess what! That was TWO YEARS AGO. So suck it up, you disgusting bigots, and lie down in the bed you made for yourselves. You deserve to be made into a laughingstock and a pariah for being the hate-mongering institution you are.

It tears me up inside that some of my family members and friends still buy into your lies. But I don’t. And until you stop threatening my right to live my life unhindered by your ruthless, coercive morality, I do not owe you any civility whatsoever—and neither does anyone else who is affected by your vicious, insidious lies and hate.

So go fuck yourselves. And prepare to continue losing this fight.

Gail Sweet, Director of the Burlington County Library System, is apparently guilty of that most vile of library crimes: censorship.

A New Jersey public library has ordered the removal of all copies of Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology (Alyson, 2000) from its shelves—despite the fact there was no formal book challenge—and its library director has referred to the title as “child pornography,” according to emails obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey through a Freedom of Information Act.

—Lauren Barack, “NJ Library, Citing Child Pornography, Removes GLBT Book,” July 27, 2010 (link)

“Copies need to totally disappear.”

—Gail Sweet, internal communication

What kind of anthology was this? What could be so awful about it that it needed to be so thoroughly purged? Child pornography is a serious charge (although one might wonder in what sense a printed work could reasonably fall under that heading) and should be backed up with specific details, which Ms. Sweet apparently has refused to do.

Here is an excerpt from the “Note from the Editor” at the beginning of my library’s copy of Revolutionary Voices.

Countering the Silence
I started this project in 1995, when I was 19, to create a venue for young queers to discuss the questions we are facing and the issues we are passionate about. I envisioned the project as a ‘zine, hoping to find grants to fund distribution and production. I 1996 I began circulating calls for submissions (through flyers, letters, E-mail, word of mouth), and over the next year I grew even more convinced of the need for a book in which we could respond to the world around us.

All around me I saw that marginalized communities were under attack. In 1996 conservative politicians waged war on affirmative action; its abolition in California led to a 50% decrease in the enrollment of students of color in the state’s top universities by 1997. This was also the year almost every major city in the United States welcomed the antigay, antifeminist Promise Keepers with open arms and money bags. This was the year I met Krista Absalom and learned that being gang raped while unconscious is not considered rape in New York State. This was the year I first heard about Brandon Teena, a 21-year-old who was brutally raped and murdered for being transgendered. Across the country young queers continued to take their own lives, young women starved themselves for a Kate Moss figure, and the United States continued to build more prisons than schools. Our communities were being pitted against one another. And we were failing to see the connections between these attacks, and further, our responsibility to act as allies to one another. As young queers from divergent backgrounds, we lacked a space and a common language with which to understand one another’s stories.

And it did not stop in 1996. Over the past four years I have met and worked with queer youth from all over the world, and by all accounts, the attacks have increased. Some have even made headlines. Matthew Shepard has become a queer community icon, his murder a cornerstone in legislation against hate crimes in the United States. But why was his the only story about hate violence to dominate the news that year? Why was there no significant media coverage about the murders of trans queers of color such as Marsha P. Johnson or Tyra Hunter? Why no media martyrdom for James Byrd Jr., a black, differently abled man in Texas who was dragged behind a truck by three white men? Why does the bombing of a gay bar in London make international news, while violent attacks against queers and queer organizations in Zimbabwe receive no mention?

These are the politics of the world we live in—under a system that dictates whose lives matter and whose don’t. Presenting the work of more than 50 individuals, Revolutionary Voices retaliates against these mandates. We speak to counter the silencing imposed on us; we speak to break the silence we have internalized. It was with this in mind that I sought a publisher who could help distribute this collection as widely as possible. We have created a family here. And standing in solidarity, we say, “We matter. Our survival is news too.”

—Amy Sonnie, in Revolutionary Voices, pp. xii–xiii

Apparently to Gail Sweet, speaking out against a culture of pervasive violence, discrimination and silencing is “child pornography.”

I can think of a few reasons for removing/weeding the book. For one thing, it is now ten years old, and the target age group (presumably youth from 16 to 21) would not identify well with the writers, who came into their queer identities in the ’90s. On the other hand, youth writing about their experiences as youth can in no way be described as “child pornography,” no matter how explicit those experiences and those recollections are.

I looked for the Burlington County Library’s collection development policy on their website, and when I couldn’t find it I initiated a chat through their Meebo widget asking for help.

[12:58] meeboguest890985: Hey, do you have a copy of your collection development policy on your website?
[13:03] meeboguest890985: Alternatively, is there an electronic copy of your collection dev policy that you could email me?
[13:04] askbcls: Hold a minute…
[13:04] meeboguest890985: Thanks.
[13:07] askbcls: We don’t have it on the website. Hold a minute for more….
[13:10] askbcls: What is your email address. I will take your email address and we will see if we can forward the document to you.
[13:10] meeboguest890985: All right. my email is sean@aloneandunobserved.com
[13:10] meeboguest890985: Thanks!
[13:11] askbcls: OK, bye for now.

We’ll see if they ever send me the collection development policy, and if so, whether it supports Ms. Sweet’s actions. Stay tuned!

Update:

I received this email in response to my informal request for the Burlington County Library System collection development policy:

Hello,

Earlier today you requested a copy of the library system’s collection development policy. As this is an internal document, the method for obtaining a copy is to request it via the “Request for Access to Government Records” form. This form is available at http://www.co.burlington.nj.us/upload/Public_Info/
Images/request_gov_recs.pdf
Please mail or fax the completed form to Ralph Shrom, Public Information Officer/Custodian of Public Records, County Administration Building, 49 Rancocas Rd., First Floor, Mount Holly, NJ 08060. Thank you.

Regards,
Marge
BCLS Reference Desk

This is very interesting, because Margaret “Marge” Delaney, the assistant director of the system, is also directly implicated in this censorship case, and probably should lose her job as well for violating professional ethics. It is also extremely interesting since at my library system our collection development policy is almost aggressively public—our explicit policy is to provide a copy to anyone who asks for it, especially where a book challenge is concerned. Apparently not at BCLS! Fortunately the ACLU has gotten a copy of the document, which apparently “states that patrons must fill out a Request for Reconsideration form, and then a ‘committee of staff selectors as designated by the Library Director will review the material in question’” (link)—except there was no formal request filed. Worse: it’s clear from emails obtained by ACLU that this book actually circulated at the Burlington County Library System—i.e., there was demand for the book among the library system’s patrons—which makes suppressing it even more unconscionable and even more clearly censorship.

The Burlington County Library System should be the target of an aggressive lawsuit. Gail Sweet and Marge Delaney should be fired, and the library commissioners who allegedly supported Sweet’s censorship (per another email obtained by the ACLU) should step down or be removed.

There is no place in the professional library world for conduct such as this.

How many of you have used “The Rule” to decide whether or not to see a movie? Also known as the Bechdel Test, The Rule goes like this:

1. The movie must have at least two women
2. who talk with each other
3. about something other than a man.

The Rule isn’t a litmus test for feminism, but it certainly is astonishing how few movies pass it, even in our day and age.

Adam Lee and Hemant Mehta have suggested a similar test for religions. Does your religion (or a particular faith you are considering)

1. have at least one woman in a position of authority
2. who plays a formal, recognized role in shaping doctrine or practice
3. that is binding on male members of that religion?

Mormonism sure as hell doesn’t. Let’s examine this.

The Mormon church (by which I mean The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) bars women from its hierarchy altogether. All bishops, stake presidents, mission presidents, general authorities, apostles and prophets are men, by definition. The only positions of responsibility open to women are those in auxiliaries that contain only women and/or children—i.e., the Relief Society (the women’s auxiliary), the Young Women’s program, and the Primary program (the children’s auxiliary)—so women in these positions not only have no authority over men but are also not allowed to set policy or practice without getting permission from the male hierarchy. This isn’t an accident—it is by design.

It’s possible for a misogynistic movie to pass The Rule, just as it’s possible for a misogynistic religion to pass this new rule. But while it’s possible for a movie that fails The Rule to be feminist in other ways, I would argue that it is not possible for a religion that fails this new rule to not be patriarchal, oppressive and sexist.

Mormonism fails this new rule because it is founded on sexist, patriarchal, oppressive principles, most of which are handily spelled out in the revered document “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” Go read it for fun feminist times!

What similar questions would you guys pose of a religion to assess its acceptance of gays, lesbians and transgendered people?

I don’t know how many times I’ve told my deconversion story, in whole or in part, on this blog or elsewhere, but my impression has been—for years at this point; yes, I’ve been an ex-Mormon atheist for that long now and it blows my mind—that the fundamental seed of my apostasy, the moment I first broke from the faith, was when I was about twenty-two and finally began to accept myself as a gay man.

In fact, I’ve found myself defending this position several times, when people have implicitly and explicitly accused me of leaving Mormonism so I could go “sin” and “be gay.” I’ve been forced to say repeatedly that my being okay with being gay, as the first point of doctrine I disagreed with my church on, was a (perhaps the) deciding factor, the first step in my journey away from religion, but wasn’t the REASON I ended up leaving. After all, I pointed out, there are any number of practicing Mormons who are also okay with gays or with being gay and they haven’t felt the need to leave. I left the Mormon church because I disagreed with virtually every point of doctrine, including the existence of deity.

I realized today that I’ve been fundamentally wrong this whole time. Not about Mormonism being full of shit, or about the existence of deity, or about religion being a net negative in today’s world, but about when I felt the first disconnect with religion.

It all comes back to patriarchy. You see, I was a feminist long before I realized I was a gay man. I was a feminist in the making before I started kindergarten. Why? Because when I was a kid I wanted to be a girl. When I was REALLY young I very nearly thought I was a girl. I had no interest in the “boy” things other boys were obsessed with—I wanted a Barbie and a My Little Pony and a Rainbow Brite and pretty dresses and I wanted to be a princess AND a sorceress AND an enchantress and forget that moron He-Man, I wanted to be SHE-RA.

I identified strongly with my mom over my dad, and, especially when I was super-little I had trouble accepting that my (one-year-older) sister and I were not functionally the same person. (I mean, we did everything together, and we always would, right?) So when I found out what the Mormon patriarchy expected of young women, I took it very personally.

My mom had her own visible struggles with patriarchy as well. She told us how her father was a Scoutmaster when she was a tween and she fought long and hard for the right of going on campouts with him and her brothers without success, and I watched her do her best to turn the local Young Women’s camping program into something resembling an actual outdoors exploration course.

It upset me that my mom, who was so smart and capable and (let’s face it) ambitious, especially when compared with my go-with-the-flow dad, was expected to accept a background role and take orders from all the stupid MEN around her just because she was a woman. My mom tried to be philosophical about her lot; denying her natural gifts was God’s way of teaching her to be patient, and a better person, and what-the-fuck-ever-else, but I didn’t, couldn’t buy it.

Polygamy bothered me for a similar reason. Why had men been “given” (yes, that’s right—GIVEN) more than one wife, but women were only allowed to marry one man?

Why were there so few independent females in the scriptures, which were otherwise crowded with independent men? Why were there vanishingly few female prophets?

I’m sad to say I learned fairly quickly that voicing concerns about this got me labeled as weird and girly, and I learned even quicker that these were “bad” things to be. As I got older and became more convinced that I actually was male I found myself participating in the patriarchy, both overtly by becoming a deacon at age twelve just like all the other guys, and by laughing uncomfortably at my friends’ sexist jokes. But I was still never comfortable with the whole thing, just like I was never entirely comfortable being male.

Another thing I’ve often said is that I was a “true believer” back before I started explicitly questioning Mormon doctrine when I was in my early twenties. But I’ve been wrong about that, too. I certainly tried hard enough to be a true believer—doing everything I could think of to convince myself and everyone else that I believed. Hypnotizing myself into suppressing my doubts. Testifying to others with passion, zeal and throbbing sincerity that I not only believed, I knew that the Mormon church was the true church of Jesus Christ on the earth.

But the seed had already been planted. The seed of feminism, of fairness, of this isn’t right, this can’t possibly be right, because it contradicts everything that makes sense. And once I took that next step of acknowledging that I was gay, and accepting myself for who I was, it couldn’t be held back any longer. Because if I was gay, then not fitting into the straight male paradigm was completely irrelevant! I could be as girly or as feminine as I liked. Everything else in my ex-religious journey, I’m convinced, followed from there.

The Mormon church, like almost every other existing religious sect, is fundamentally patriarchal. It is anti-feminist, anti-fairness. Anti-sense. Not just because its doctrines are not true, but in its philosophy, organization, culture and outlook. It pains me to say this, because so many people I love and value are still part of it, and have defended and will continue to defend its destructiveness to me and to others. I just hope that if enough people point out the reality of religion and Mormonism that we can make a difference in the future of girls, women, boys and men everywhere.

A couple days ago I posted the following status to my Twitter and Facebook accounts:

I’m amazed at how many straight men who claim to support gay rights & not to be homophobic will still use “gay” as an insult w/ each other.

I got a lot of responses (all supportive), but the main common thread was… everyone misunderstood what I was going for. And it was my fault! In trying to cram my idea into 140 characters, I left out everything I really meant to say. It happens; some ideas just aren’t concise enough for Twitter. So here’s the blog-length version.

First, some preliminaries: I have no problem with people using “gay” as a purely descriptive term to mean “homosexual.” I actually prefer “gay” to “homosexual,” since the only people who seem to use the latter term anymore are gay-hating homophobic fundamentalist Christians.

I’m not a fan of people using the word “gay” to mean “worthless” or “shitty,” as in “The iPad is so gay. It doesn’t even have Flash on it.” I’m gay, and I find it offensive when people equate that with “worthless piece of shit.”

But that’s not where I was going with my tweet. Or rather, that’s exactly what my tweet meant, but it’s not what I intended for it to mean. A better tweet would’ve been

I’m amazed at how many str8 men who claim to support gay rights & not to be homophobic are still offended if someone assumes they’re gay.

I don’t hang around or even associate with people who are openly homophobic. In fact, I don’t usually associate with people who aren’t willing to openly disavow homophobia and champion gay rights when the occasion presents itself. So it always surprises and disturbs me how negatively some of my straight friends react when someone mistakenly assumes they are gay because they are hanging out with me and my gay friends.

It comes down to this: if you are offended by being called “gay,” or having someone imply that you are homosexual, or that you like taking it up the ass (if you’re a guy), or that you like eating pussy (if you’re a girl), then you need to accept the fact that, in this sense, you are homophobic. You may be pro-gay-rights, you may be pro-marriage-equality, you may have tons of gay friends, but if you become angry when someone calls you gay, then you need to examine that feeling very carefully and recognize it for what it is: deep-down, visceral bias.

Similarly, when someone calls the library and I answer and say “Hi, this is Sean, how can I help you,” and they spend the next five minutes of the telephone conversation calling me “ma’am,” and I get pissed off, I need to confront my own sexism. Because being called a girl or a woman, or even having someone assume or imply that I’m female, is still apparently offensive to me. And what does that say about my real feelings towards women and their value and worth if being equated with them offends and angers me?

I’ve talked about bias and privilege here before, and about how easy it is to recognize others’ bias and privilege and how hard it is to recognize our own. Well, here’s a fun exercise: What ethnic group are you offended to be mistakenly included in? What sex, gender, sexual orientation or sexual preference are you offended to be mistakenly conflated with? What group do you violently disclaim any membership in? I submit that the root of all of these reactions is likely to be some kind of bias. But that’s a good thing! Because it’s so much easier to get over your bias and prejudice once you’ve recognized it.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? What was your reaction to this post? Let me and my other readers know in the comments.

[Note: I'm not singling out anyone in particular with this post. Trust me: if you think it's about you, it probably is—but it's also about a lot of other people, too.]

It’s always tiresome when a former Mormon acquaintance finds out I’m a heathen gay atheist and tries to argue with me about it—as if I hadn’t spent YEARS agonizing over my choices. (And as if they weren’t years too late at this point.) Come on. Give me some credit and assume I’m an adult and that I didn’t decide to throw away the religious doctrines and practices I grew up with and believed in firmly for twenty-odd years on some immature whim.

Or, if your own belief is so fragile you can’t accept the idea that someone might reject your religion after logical study and reasoned exploration, at least do me the favor of trying to conceal that fact from me, as frankly it’s a condescending and offensive attitude. And in return I’ll do my best to pretend I don’t think you’re a credulous idiot who hasn’t subjected your faith to critical examination.

And then maybe if we can’t be friends at least we won’t part ways as enemies.

When we see a man kissing another man, the preconceived associations in the hidden brain tell most Americans that this is not what men do. Of course, we can quickly shush our hidden brain and act blasé. But when we are juggling many things, when we are under pressure, or when we are simply busy doing something else, it becomes difficult to suppress the automatic associations of the hidden brain. At such times, the hidden brain’s rapid conclusions about the world become especially powerful. If we are asked to make a judgment about these men in some other context—their job performance, for example—we may get the feeling they are not quite right for the job without knowing how we leaped to that conclusion.

When I say “we” have automatic biases about gay people, I really do mean everyone—straight people and gay people. Just as black children tend to have positive associations with white faces rather than black faces, gay people can unconsciously harbor the same associations as straight people. This should not be cause for surprise: Gays usually see many more straight families than gay families in real life, on TV, and in books. If the hidden brain learns through repetition, why would the unconscious associations of gay people be much different from the unconscious associations of straight people?
(Shankar Vedantam, The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives, p. 74)

We have a long, long way to go.

As you may or may not know, I use Goodreads to keep track of the books I read, and to rate and review them when I have the inclination. I recently read a book of poetry that completely blew me away, and my reaction to it turned out more like a blog entry than a review. So I thought I would cross-post it here.

The First Risk by Charles Jensen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t remember finding out about Matthew Shepard’s slaying. I was seventeen when it happened, a self-hating closeted gay Mormon, halfway through my first semester at Brigham Young University. Did I think he deserved it, the way I thought gays deserved to die of AIDS for their sins? I hope not, but I’m afraid to remember too well.

I am the failure of the body to remain a boy,
I am the remains of a boy, the body of his failure. (“I Am the Boy Who Is Tied Down”, p. 7)

The first section—”Safe”—interweaves various viewpoints on Matthew Shepard’s last moments with three poems describing Venus’s grief at the death of Adonis. The language is brutal, visceral, and the tone moves from cold and dissociated to immediate and passionate. Reading this section, it was like I was hearing about the killing for the first time. And this time, at least, I know I didn’t think he deserved it.

When I finally came out to myself as a gay man, and began to accept myself and to stop blaming myself for who and what I was, I took an entire summer to watch what I saw as the “gay canon,” films I had been too afraid to watch until that point. One of the first of these was Almodóvar’s masterpiece, All About My Mother.

I tell you, chica,

If you want something done,
Do it with a knife. (“La Agrado Explains Plastic Surgery”, p. 25)

The second section—”City of the Sad Divas”—is a collection of poems associated with All About My Mother and its characters: Manuela, who has lost her son; La Agrado and the other transsexual hookers; Huma Rojo and her heroin-addicted lover, Nina; and the city of Barcelona itself, where much of the action takes place. In these poems, the reader does not relive the film; rather, the violence and passion and filth of the film are held at arms length, looked over with a dark and dubious eye, considered, and then let go.

I’ve always hated Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, although it is often gorgeous to watch, because I never believed for a minute that any of it was happening. All of the characters annoy me, the plot annoys me, and Scottie’s obsession and eventual unraveling annoy me.

To be golden-haired means
you are destined to be idolized;

brunettes have less fun
but keep better secrets. (“Hair and Make-Up Notes, Scene 92″, p. 50)

The fourth section—”The Double Bind: A Critical Text”—presents a critical analysis of Vertigo, and includes all kind of tantalizing details about the cast, director and the narrative and directorial choices in the film. I have no idea if any of these details are true; that is not the point: they are simply too delicious to resist. Each snippet, naturally, is accompanied by an associated poem. One thing that must be said in Vertigo‘s favor is that it is beautifully shot, composed and scored. Unlike the previous collection, these silky little poems do much more to evoke the actual feel of parts of the film.One result of reading this section is that I have the sudden desire to see Vera Miles play the Kim Novak role (and, really, anyone else play the Jimmy Stewart role).

I’ve already reviewed the fourth section, “The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon,” on Goodreads. I have nothing to add to that review except this:

This is good poetry.

View all my reviews on Goodreads >>