Not Today Fred

Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder

I hope that most of you have heard the huge news that the Westboro Baptist Church was ordered to pay nearly $11 million to the father of a deceased US Marine, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder. Mr. Snyder witnessed his son’s funeral picketed by the hate group, who blamed his death on a gay tolerant America. This judgment, should it withstand possible appeals, should completely cripple the gay-hating group.

Some bloggers have argued that Westboro’s tactics, while deplorable, are protected under the First Amendment. I completely disagree. As the judge in the case stated in his instructions to the jury, the First Amendment has its limits, including the prohibition of vulgar, offensive and shocking statements. I believe that protesting at a soldier’s funeral, especially in the manner Westboro employs, does in fact go beyond the limits of the First Amendment. The jury agreed.

Westboro has been around a long time. It is run by a family of hate mongers and back as far as 1993, the church sent a photograph of a gay musician that died of AIDS to his parents. The caption read: “Kevin Oldham: Dead Fag.” Westboro uses Matt Shepard’s death throughout its website as propaganda and told his Mom, during his memorial service, that she would be joining him in Hell. Westboro doesn’t reserve its protests just to fallen soldiers. The group threatened to picket at the memorial of the Amish school attack and Virginia Tech attack but relented once they were given free, unrestricted airtime on a radio station. The group did protest at the Sago mine disaster memorial.

Even Jerry Fallwell, no friend of gays, called Fred Phelps, the leader of the group, “a first class nut.” In return, they protested at his funeral. Will gays protest at Phelps’ funeral?

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate watch group that sues hate groups, has classified Westboro as a hate group. The Anti-Defamation League claims that Westboro uses gay bashing as a cover for bashing other religions and minority groups.

I have not even scratched the surface of this group. Its messages are so disgusting I am not going to post them. In fact, I was going to post a picture of one of their protests, but they do not deserve it. Instead, you saw the picture of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder above.

Isn’t it amazing that a hero’s death, in a far away land, dealt the final blow to a homegrown terrorist group?

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Happy Halloween

If one drop of semen has more life than one drop of blood, then why doesn’t Dracula suck dick instead?

(Credit to Boston Guy for this joke.)

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Are Gay Neighborhoods Worth Saving?

An interesting question posed by the New York Times.

These are wrenching times for San Francisco’s historic gay village, with population shifts, booming development, and a waning sense of belonging that is also being felt in gay enclaves across the nation, from Key West, Fla., to West Hollywood, as they struggle to maintain cultural relevance in the face of gentrification.

Gentrification and development threaten the traditional gay neighborhoods across the country. The article quoted above notes that while most urban areas are growing, gays are moving to suburbia. With the rights movement making progress, especially in the suburbs of our larger cities, will gay neighborhoods exist in twenty years? Should they? I’m not sure they will but I believe they should.

The article goes on to mention the Internet as a reason for the decline in the gay community. One therapist recommends that his clients go to gay bars for social interaction. I found this interesting since I am almost certain that I have met more people from this blog that are and will remain friends than I would in a bar. Granted, these friends are scattered around the world.

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Much Ado About Nothing?

I heard from Boston Guy this morning after sending yet another text. He said he was away yesterday and and forgot his phone. I completely believe him but am not thrilled that when he received my texts and message this morning he still chose not to respond. All of this seems to be just a bad coincidence with the email that I sent him, which I do not even think he has read yet. We still need to discuss the email that I sent him but I am hoping that he will be open to improving communication and all will be okay.

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Very Disappointed

I sent the following email to Boston Guy Friday night. I haven’t heard one word since. He has really gone out of his way to ignore me. He is online but doesn’t return messages. He doesn’t answer texts or his phone. I guess what we had is coming to a close. I have so much more to say but I am so sad now I do not feel like blogging.

***

I am tired of being ignored. You sign on tonight, twice, and sign right off. I send texts and get nothing. I try to call and you do not answer. If you’re too tired to chat or whatever just say so. I’ll understand but not communicating is not working anymore.

We’re all busy. You need to make a decision as to whether you have the time to have me in your life. I have always respected your need to study. I think I probably respect that need more than some of your friends do. If you can’t chat or are going to be reading, say so. Don’t leave me hanging just sitting here waiting for you to reply to a message.

You know I needed an answer for our weekend visit today in an attempt to save money. You chose not to give me that answer last night or today.

You know how I feel about you. I cannot show any more emotion towards you. I conveyed that in person, certainly in my letter to you, in random texts and also on the blog. I do not even get a little of that back from you. I have to assume that you feel the same way and it causes me to be on an emotional roller coaster, which is just not fair.

I know you always say I am paranoid or I overreact. Fact is, that only happens with you and it happens too often because of your failure to reassure me or show me you care. You grabbed my hand at the airport so I know you had feelings for me. I am pretty good at reading people and I still believe we share similar feelings for one another.

We need to step things up, meaning a call a few times a week, planning our next visits, etc. I should not have to initiate everything and you should be just as excited about this stuff as I am or there is something wrong with us.

I worry about you. I worry about your self esteem. I worry when you say that you have the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. All of the drama that your friends and family put on you, coupled with school and work makes your life more stressful than it is most college seniors. I feel like I am just piling on. I want to help you but I cannot if we do not talk and I get one word answers when I ask questions. You are one of the most important people in my life and I want you to be happy. However, I need to be happy too.

I want a boyfriend. I want you to be my boyfriend. You said you wanted the same. If that is true, show me.

Love, Eliot

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I’m Not Sure I Like this Community

I have a beef with the gay community. I do not like how we treat one another.

I have this friend who started dating this guy. They really hit it off and started to spend lots of time together. Basically, my friend went out of his way and treated this guy like a king. They grew more fond of one another and had sex. This wasn’t a hookup, as my friend really had feelings for this guy, and thought the guy had similar feelings. They continued to see one another and everything was great.

Well, the other day, after a few weeks of this, my friend signs on aim and up pops the other guy who proceeds to dump my friend. He didn’t even call him to give him the news. Now, when I found out about this Wednesday morning, I was seething mad. I don’t know if it is because I am very loyal to my friends or because this friend is just a sweetheart and didn’t deserve this (who does?) or because of the total shittiness (yeah, that is a word now) and cowardliness of the way the guy handled the breakup.

I cannot understand why, when we get teased, discriminated against, threatened, or worse, we still find it acceptable to treat each other with disdain. The example above is oh so minor compared to what I have read about and know happens all of the time. My issue is not with what happened but how it happened. I know I am new to all of this but I truly think we need to make a concerted effort to treat each other better. To treat each other how we want to be treated. That is such a cliché but it is so true. It would make our world a better place.

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Lick Me Ryan

I’ve been in love with Ryan Carnes since I first saw him on Desperate Housewives a few years ago.

My favorite pic of the bunch.

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Site Update

I added many new blogs to my blogroll and I’ll feature them as I go along. Take a few minutes to check them out!

I also changed themes. The new theme is cleaner and the date doesn’t flow outside of the text box, as before. I am anal and that got on my nerves. Lastly, I uploaded a new header image. I took that pic in Maui last year.

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California Fires

I hope the Bush administration doesn’t completely screw up the federal response to the California fires. Hopefully some lessons were learned from Katrina, or maybe there are some executives employed by FEMA that now have common sense.

I feel terrible for those people. Christian, one of my closest blogger pals, lives in SoCal (and whose community I’ve seen on the news about the fires way too often) and left work early yesterday to pack up some things “just in case.” There was a woman on the news that had to evacuate her home so fast that she had to leave her cats behind. They ended up being okay, but can you imagine being in that position? I’ve certainly got my issues but I am safe and do not have to worry about my house burning down and I’m pretty damn thankful for that.

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Cast of Characters IV

This is a continuation of my cast of characters posts that I began a few weeks ago.

I met Military Guy in a chat room probably 18 or so months ago. I do not remember the details but we did ht it off. He and Boston Guy are the people that I have kept in touch with whom I originally met on Yahoo.

Military Guy is gorgeous and very intelligent. Tall, dark and handsome and he speaks four languages in addition to English. He joined the military, as an officer, to piss off his father and has hated it the entire time. While he did serve in Iraq, he retuned safely and is allegedly currently in a safe assignment.

Coincidentally, Military Guy was a local guy to me. He begged me numerous times to let him take me to dinner but I never would do it because of the commitment I had to Boston Guy. While I did not tell him that was the reason, he is well aware of Boston Guy and has been aware of him for a year or so. He is also aware that I met Boston Guy last weekend. He is supportive, and does not seem jealous, but I think he wishes he were stationed here now.

Military Guy has said that he witnessed the growth in me, over the time we have known one another, just in what I was willing to chat about. I found this remarkable but I guess it is true. Honestly, Military Guy played a part in that but it was mostly Boston Guy.

When things went south with Boston Guy, I emailed Military Guy. I really just needed someone to talk to and he was it. He did not respond. I knew that he had been sent to a European country but that was all I knew. Over the next few months, I tried several times to reach him. None was successful, so I just assumed that he did not want to communicate because he was irritated that I fell in love with this other guy after he had spent quite a bit of time pursuing me. I figured he had moved on.

I decided to email him one more time in August and he responded. Turns out he had been seriously injured in an accident on base. The cause of the accident appears to have been stupidity and had Military Guy not been at the right place at the right time, two soldiers may have been killed. Military Guy was awarded a medal for his bravery. The accident caused Military Guy to be hospitalized for a few weeks and was unable to type on a computer for several more.

Happily, Military Guy is almost recovered from the accident and we are able to chat occasionally. He is still in the European country, so the time difference has made chatting difficult but we try to make the best of it. He has gone out of his way to be there for me, at one point getting up at 3am his time in order to chat with me. He did this several times.

He is supposed to return to my area in January and I definitely want to meet him.

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