(From Joe. My. God.)

Ah, McDonald’s started selling Water Light (50% less calories)? (From Popeater)

And I, my Lord, may I say nothing? (From Dlisted)

Rod 2.0 reports:

The only billboard in the Central Texas town of Gatesville (pop. approx. 15,000)  has become a lightning rod of controversy. A retired black minister rented the sign on Main Street that reads, “Gay Rights are Not Civil Rights”. The sign owner, Virginia Miller, tells the  Dallas Voice the pastor “wanted to get the message out to black people .. everything they fought for is being hijacked.” [...] Dollins repeats this popular talking point by anti-gay black Christians: “No gays are having to ride on the back of the bus. No gays are being enslaved. No gays are being prosecuted [sic] in any way.”

The Rev. Kevin E. Taylor, New Jersey-based pastor, black gay activist and author, scoffs at the “foolishness of trying to destroy the history and might of the movement.” Rev. Kev adds: “Civil rights are about freedom for all.  Dr. King said so masterfully: ‘Until all of us are free, then none of us are free and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere!’

The problem is two-fold. “Gays” and “blacks” are stereotyped as mutually exclusive because black LGBTs are often reluctant to come out?read hundreds of comments here, here or here?and continue to embrace the closets of the anti-gay black churches

So saying “no gays never had to sit on the back of the bus” would be true .. only if you believe all gays are white.

I can’t help feeling sad at this.

The winner of nine air medals for distinguished service in flight, including one for heroism the night U.S. forces captured Baghdad International Airport in 2003, Fehrenbach is in the process of getting kicked out of the military a year after an acquaintance told his bosses he was gay. [...] Obama “was someone who had experienced discrimination firsthand and that’s why I had a lot of faith,” Fehrenbach said. “I thought, OK I can fight this, and maybe by January Obama could be inaugurated and this won’t matter. That hasn’t happened.”

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group seeking equal treatment of gays in the military, estimates that more than 200 service members have been discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell” since Obama was sworn into office. [...] Most of the estimated 13,000 service members discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell” since the law was enacted in 1993 have opted to leave quietly and close the final chapter of their military careers in private. Groups calling for the repeal of the ban, however, say Fehrenbach is among a growing number who are going public with a newfound sense of urgency.

In September, Fehrenbach had decided to accept an honorable discharge and waive his right to a military hearing, where he would have to lie about being gay in order to stay in the Air Force. He refused. [...]

“I will fight this in uniform and I’ll fight it without,” Fehrenbach said. “I swore an oath to defend and support the Constitution, I’m going to speak out and fight this until the law is repealed because it is not constitutional.”

He said “don’t ask, don’t tell” denies American service members their constitutional right to privacy, due process and equal protection, and forces them to lie about who they are when honesty is part of the code they serve under. [...]

Obama’s top advisers want the president to move more slowly in overturning the policy than many gay-rights activists would like, citing other priorities including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We have a lot on our plate right now,” retired Marine Gen. James Jones, the White House’s national security adviser, said this month.

On the other side of the debate, the Michigan-based Center for Military Readiness gathered signatures earlier this year from more than 1,000 retired military officers urging the president and Congress to keep the ban. “It’s really not fair to the women and men of our armed forces to be part of this social experiment,” said center president Elaine Donnelly. “Military life is difficult enough without having this additional burden. This is harmful to good order and discipline and morale.”

Personally I couldn’t care less — the only interest I have in army related matters are certain movies I have, ahem, accidentally downloaded from torrent sites — but I applaud people like Lt. Col. Fehrenbach for no longer going away quietly. This is the only way to get DADT repelled, I believe — not voting for Obama, Clinton or McCain and hoping miracles will happen but actually showing America the people they lose. Translators from Arabic? Winners of medals for outstanding service? Who cares? They’re FAGS. What Ms. Donnelly doesn’t seem to realise is that — as the case of Victor Fehrenbach proves — gays ARE in the army. The fact that she can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. For 18 years Victor Fehrenbach kept his private life private; his straight colleagues didn’t have to do anything such. Now he is being fired — not for molesting anyone, for destroying the morals that Ms. Donnelly cares so much about, but for the simple fact of having been outed by someone. 18 years of service? Who gives a fuck. We have discipline and morale to protect! (And many more gay soldiers and officers to hurt by not allowing them to live in the open.)

I never expected Obama to do wonders. There are voices already saying “we shouldn’t have voted for him”, which strike me as idiotic — as if McCain would have done much more. Perhaps Clinton would have. We don’t know that. But while the wait continues and White House “has other things on its plate”, the White House spokesman continues to not ask and not tell much about the policy and plans regarding it, lives get ruined and careers wasted. If the measure gets repelled sometime, I will cheer Obama for that. If it doesn’t… I think it might not be a good idea to campaign for the second term saying “but really this time we will, like, totally bring the change, just give me five more years”.

Finally an explanation HOW exactly gay marriage ruins straight families! (Maine Marriage Alliance through Joe. My. God.)

Legal recognition for openly non-monogamous gay unions would effectively destroy the taboo on adultery. The result is a continual downfall of families and society. Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at Stanford University explains: ?What we need to understand ? but do not ? is that gay marriage will undermine the structure of taboos that continue to protect heterosexual marriage ? and will do so far more profoundly than either the elimination of sodomy laws, or the general sexual loosening of the past thirty years. Above all, marriage is protected by the ethos of monogamy ? and by the associated taboo against adultery. The real danger of gay marriage is that it will undermine the taboo on adultery, thereby destroying the final bastion protecting marriage: the ethos of monogamy.?

I love the fact we have such a huge influence on heterosexuals. I mean, not only are they shit scared to become gay through “promotion”, but also if they hear too much about an open relationship between two gay people, they immediately feel the need to cheat on their spouses married in front of God AND IT WILL BE GAYERS FAULT. Amazing! (Also note: there exist no open relationships in heterosexual world, and the swingers clubs, hetero orgies and stories about raped women are lies and myths perpetrated by the homosexual mafia.)

Orson Scott Card just joined the somewhat silly NOM NOM organisation and had the following to say (to which I had to say a few bits, too):

If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools

Now, now, God forbid that children would be forced to attend schools!

where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn’t require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives

I always wonder if people who say shit like this have actually sat one time when they were younger, considered both options of homosexuality and heterosexuality, then decided that while they would love to be fucked in the arse from time to time they prefer to be in straight relationships because God would find that nicer.

then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government?

I SAY GET RID OF GOVERNMENT THAT DOESN’T DO EXACTLY WHAT I WANT IT TO! For starters, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY TAXES? I NO LIKES TAXES!

What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.

Oh but Mr Card, you really don’t have to gay-marry anyone if you don’t want to. We’ll consider that your personal act of disobedience against fascist homodictators.

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy.

I believe most married people aren’t as dramatic as Mr Card, so most probably he’ll have to wait quite a while.

I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage,

Now now, Mr Card, making statements like that might be punishable by law. Tsk, tsk.

and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

Unless they are filthy homosexuals in which case Mr Card hopes they die alone and suffering for their disgusting sinful “choices”.

I used to like Orson Scott Card, shame.

(Found on Joe. My. God.)

Last night I dreamt that my penis was skinned; the mass of raw meat pulped with something resembling a hammer; and then I was told this was good and I had to go home. I was mortified — strangely enough (well, it was a dream) I did not feel pain, but I was horrified with the thought of anybody ever seeing me naked again. I thought this was a punishment for my unspoken sins.

And then I woke up and realised what I dreamt of was, basically, my brain re-living the description of genital mutilation in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “The Caged Virgin”.

Unlike most, Hirsi Ali brands the female circumcision “genital mutilation” and does not escape giving very precise descriptions of the process, in which vulva is cut and the sides of the vagina are cut with a sharp object so they start to bleed; then they are pressed together to grow together and thus ensure that the girl remains a virgin until marriage. It is apparently a common practice among Muslim families, and in Ayaan’s case her father demanded that this is not done; what he did not know is that Ayaan’s grandmother arranged the practice to be performed anyway. After all, what worth would a girl be if she couldn’t prove she was a virgin? Ayaan’s grandmother, undoubtedly, believed she was doing the only right thing she could.

It is a strange feeling for a Pole to read this book. I recognise my countrymen in the Muslim fanatics far too often for comfort. No, Polish catholics do not commit acts of terror, but then, neither do a majority of Muslims. It is mostly the attitude towards sexuality that the two share.

In Poland, homosexuality is, at best, a sin, and at worst punished by removing the homosexual from their family, as the family decides the person has in fact never been their son, daughter, brother or daughter. A raped woman is more often than not declared to be guilty of her own plight, since “she must have been provocatorily dressed”. (By which they mean she wasn’t wearing a burqa, basically, even if they do not use the word.) In general, women are worth less, both to Catholics and Muslims; there is no such thing as a female Catholic priest, and an often voiced sentiment is that feminism is a bad thing because it made women lose their femininity — i.e. being weak feeble creatures needing being cared for, and mute objects unable to protest if their emperor/owner got bored with them — and so it repulses “real men”.

The differences are also very obvious, of course. It is a punishable offense in Poland to offend the Pope or God himself (this is called “offending religious feelings”; the most famous cases being those of an artist who used a symbol resembling crucifix in her work combining it with a flaccid penis, and of Jerzy Urban, former spokesperson of a Communist regime, currently an owner of a left-wing weekly, who dared to declare John Paul II an “aged minor god”, “living corpse” and “Brezhnev of Vatican”). But in Poland it is punishable by monetary fees, community work or at worst up to two years in prison (up to my knowledge the prison punishment has never been applied), and among Muslims it is more than often punishable by death. In Poland a homosexual couple may expect to be thrown stones at for holding hands; in Iran they will hang. A raped woman in Poland may expect to be ridiculed and bullied; in Somalia she will be killed for staining the family honor. In Poland a gay parade may be forbidden by authorities, attacked with sticks and stones by God-loving good people and attract more police than supporters; this is still quite a step forward from Iran. And so on.

It is difficult to say which way will Poles go; the Western or the Eastern. Both sides of the conflict seem to become more radical with time; the bishops are no longer content with abortion being illegal, now they call in vitro “an elaborate murder” and want to outlaw it too. (This discussion started with the government trying to decide whether in vitro should be reimbursed, and if yes — then if just to married couples or to unmarried ones as well; now it is a discussion about murdering innocent little children, by which they mean the fact that sometimes out of 8 impregnated cells only 2-3 are planted in the mother’s womb. This means 5 little innocent children die.) The left-wing — I do not talk about myself here, I talk about Polish left-wing, which translates to moderate right-wing everywhere in the West — dare to utter words such as “positive discrimination”, “protecting minorities” and “abortion” sometimes and not even in negative context.

I am quite a pessimist when looking at the processes forming, because I have read the diaries of Witold Gombrowicz, written in the 60s. He describes a society so narrow-minded, blinded by catholicism and ready to condemn anyone slightly different that I can’t help but think: yes, this is how I felt in Poland. (Gombrowicz fled Poland and moved to Argentina.) It feels like these 40 years haven’t really changed much. Worse, it feels like the 2.5 years since I moved away from Warsaw changed one thing — myself. I wouldn’t be ready to cope with the bullshit anymore. I used to convince myself that this was my country, those were my countrymen, and perhaps I should try to understand them. Now I am on Hirsi Ali’s side; there’s nothing to understand in relentless bullying with religious justifications. And while my genitals remain intact, mentally I may never grow to be fully at peace with myself because of what I have gone through — and let me just tell you I’ve been among the lucky ones.

This isn’t my first blog.

That’s a bit of an understatement. My blog (in Polish) about my depression can still be found somewhere in the depths of the internet. My political blog (in Polish) used to attract hundreds of readers. My comedy political blog (in Polish) became so popular it got quoted by Polish press, except they haven’t noticed it was meant to be a joke; when I was accused of spreading hate-speech, I closed it down. I’ve had a blog on my portfolio site but I could never decide what to write about there, so it died a quiet death.

I still have three blogs, two of them in Polish. One is more or less on extended hiatus. Another, heteroseksualisci.blox.pl is me being really nasty towards poor little Polish heterosexuals and their funny problems. (Most of them along the lines of “is it normal if my husband sits down when he’s taking a pee” and “can I get infected with homosexuality if I saw Elton John on the telly”.) And now this one. Yes, I do have the attention span of a fruit fly and yes, I am a multiple dater. How did you know?

*

I decided to come out, so to say, and show myself as the author of this blog because my friend, Trekker, has been asked by a Polish paper to be featured in a webcast about a gay portal he is co-authoring and found the decision very difficult. Of course, I realise that living in Poland makes being out somehow more difficult (see part I of this post). On the other hand, the journalist writing the article was being understanding, so he offered to film Trekker in a dark room, with his voice electronically altered and face pixellated. The idea sounded awful. Yet I couldn’t really condemn him, because I remembered myself being interviewed by Newsweek Poland about being gay and not wanting my face to be shown next to the article either; at the end they picked up a photo where my eyes were obscured by a hat I was wearing. People from my old job recognised me… and congratulated me on being so brave. But was I really?

For the entire week the issue remained on the newstands I was constantly afraid of being recognised on the street and having shit beaten out of me. Nothing such has happened; the photograph was at least partly obscured and people who didn’t know me personally didn’t care who was on the picture. But I’ve had reasons to be afraid.

Fast forward to… yesterday, November 26, 2008. A gay couple — the first celebrity gay couple in Poland — gets an award for “Couple of the year” from Polish edition of Gala. Polish TV transmits the ceremony live. After the show a famous Polish journalist, Wojciech Reszczynski publishes an article in which he writes that showing a gay couple and giving them an award (voted by the readers of Gala) is against the law which states that programs broadcasted by Polish public TV need to respect the Christian value system. The executive director of the TVP2 channel is asked to explain the “promotion of deviations” in front of the director board of the Polish TV.

I’ll keep you posted about who gets fired and for what — and about Trekker becoming famous (or not).

*

Last night, for the first time in my life, I did something that straight people normally practise every other day starting from the age of 13: I made out with a boy on a busy tram stop. For 10 minutes we kissed (mmm, tongue piercings are… interesting). Most people ignored us; some boys beeped a car horn and whistled. Nobody called us names (unless they did it very quietly and only in languages I do not speak).

Most of my Polish gay friends will never see what the appeal of kissing in public is; mostly because in Poland you’d have to be suicidal to try that. I’ve had wood planks and beer cans thrown at me for holding hands with another guy; once my partner texted me, at 1am, 45 minutes after we split and went our separate ways, “don’t be nervous, everything is OK, but I got beaten up”. A group of football hooligans followed us when we walked through the city holding hands; they picked him as their target because my bus arrived first and I got in.

Yes, you might say that I am not proud to be Polish. And that for the first year here I felt like I was a political asylum seeker.

*

I am changing. It is a process which has started when I changed my name legally in May 2006. Then I decided to move to the Netherlands, found a job, moved here (this sounds so much simpler than it actually was), rented an apartment in the Red Light District (quite an eye-opening experience, that). Split with my boyfriend. Got a knee injury which kept me out of more or less any action for three months. Recovered. Dated. Broke hearts. Got heartbroken. Met people who were so fucked up I started feeling positively normal in comparison. Met people whose sex lives made me feel virginal and Victorian. Met people who became my friends.

The journey continues.

And I will be writing about it, but in much shorter posts, I promise.

Taking a short break from writing this post at my hotel room, Nov 2008

(Originally written on November 19, 2008.)

I used to idolise flying completely and utterly. My stepfather used to work at the Warsaw Airport and he was a demigod in my eyes when he would bring a napkin with the LOT logo or plastic spoons or a pen. I thought, beaming with pride: this is my daddy and he works with PLANES. They FLY. By association I almost expected him to be able to fly as well, and without the need to use an actual aeroplane for that.

Then when I was on my first flight — Warsaw-Amsterdam if I recall correctly (see? I can’t even recall what flight it was so blase I became) I was ecstatic. I was about 21, and about to take off from the ground. Before the start I overheard a conversation; apparently the day before a flight from the US was so turbulent the people talking about it were certain they would die. That didn’t make me feel much more calm, as you probably imagine. But the flight went — just like all my subsequent flights — without any troubles.

The most exciting stuff I have ever encountered on a plane was the stewardess telling us to sit down (everybody was sitting anyway) and lock our seatbelts due to turbulences. A moment later we flew into a thunderstorm. Rain and thunders hit the wings (at least that’s how it looked) and… not much happened really. There was a bit of turbulence, not enough to spill my coffee. And that was it.

Nowadays I am bored with flying before I even leave for the airport. The excitement reaches about as far as making sure my passport hasn’t jumped out of the bag, but this time I was so blase about it I only checked once instead of the five times required by law. Despite that I arrived safe and sound. On the plane I had a conversation with my neighbour, a lovely lady around 40, back from her trip to Ecuador. I thought about whether it would be a sensible thing to tell her I don’t actually believe planes can fly, but decided not to.

Confession: yes, I meant what I just said — I do not believe planes can actually fly, despite having flown at least 30 times (I lost count). They’re too big and too heavy, and they have loads of people inside. They can’t fly. I studied mathematics (this is the moment when my degree should get revoked) and it’s just logical that planes can’t fly. Now teleportation — THAT seems perfectly plausible. If we can access wireless internet through 3G more or less everywhere in order to check if there are new articles on dlisted.com, I can’t see why we wouldn’t be able to teleport. (Duh.)

*

I am at a four star hotel in Birmingham. I’ve heard nothing but bad things about the city and what I have seen so far looks fantastic. (I know that this is because I have only seen the city centre, but I’m going to stay here for two days and I’m here for a training course, not to write a book about all hidden mysteries of Birmingham.) The hotel, in particular… There is a major difference in what 110 pounds a day gives you in London and Birmingham. My room is HUGE. In London the room was more of a closet size, this room would acomodate at least five guests if I found it fitting to have a small party. The bed, in particular, is GIANT, very very very comfy and it’s almost a shame I decided not to look for any man to man action here, as it would, no doubt, have been reeeeeally good.

(Oh, and this time I do have a bathtub. I could spend the evening watching The L Word, but I forgot to copy the DVDs to my DVD-less laptop, so it’s not quite going to happen.)

I love the contrast between the way I look, the way I live and the way I am treated right now; it must almost look like some kind of fashion shoot, one of those far too contrived, ironic sessions, when I lie on this giant bed, surrounded by plushy curtains, in my giant room, wearing boxers and socks and nothing else; the punky tattooed boy with his nipple piercings, stuck in the luxury he doesn’t feel he belongs at, listening to Saint Etienne from his iphone, drinking coffee and a protein shake simultaneously. There is something so fundamentally wrong with this picture. And yet it is, indeed, me; far, far away from Poland, from the boy who got his first job as an assistant of a designer, paid pennies under the table so his boss could avoid taxes, doing amazing tasks such as cleaning the cat pee, carrying disks to a print shop and back, calling couriers and sending spam mails to hundreds of companies suggesting that perhaps they would like to get a new website.

I am 31 and I do not regret any step in the journey that brought me here.

*

I feel so international.

I get this strange confused feeling when I travel to England because at home English is used everywhere but as a second language, and here it is the main, first language, and somehow that makes me feel as if everybody was a tourist, including hotel clerks. Then I go back home, where I am working with people from 27 or so nationalities and dating and befriending people of all races from all continents. In a way, this is the life I have dreamt of.

In Warsaw everybody looks, acts and talks the same, and my friends were recruited from the small group of outcasts and weirdos that didn’t fit. Strangely, about half of my friends in Poland suffered from depression, including, well, myself. (As I wrote this sentence, I wondered if the “strangely” bit at the beginning isn’t just me being a hypocrite. I know damn well why they suffered; I know why I suffered.) I would sit at home wishing that I could meet people I saw in the movies; people that didn’t look so… Polish. People who were not catholics or homophobes; people who spoke English. I started associating English with sexiness and found out that I prefer to have sex in English, so to say.

I was extremely excited when I travelled abroad for the first time. I was, of course, dead scared as well; I had no idea if I’d be able to communicate with my internet friends in real life, I didn’t know if my English was good enough, I was scared to get lost at the airport. Nothing such happened. Then we went on our way from the airport and I couldn’t stop myself from gasping at the sight of everything and everyone; people of all races, nationalities, speaking more than one language (none of them being Polish). I was in heaven. (Coincidentally, is anyone really surprised that I fancy black men? We simply don’t get those in Poland.)

The thing that I love about Amsterdam the most is the incredible variety; it’s the whole melting pot of humans that is the sexiest thing about the city. You never know who you are going to meet next. You never know what they’re going to show you or talk to you about; where they took their holiday snaps; what are their hidden abilities they might share with you. The cultural differences, that most people dread, are — to me — the stuff that dreams are made of. I crave them. Whenever I find out that someone acts different to what I expected (unless that someone is someone I am dating and they’re lying to me, but I don’t think any culture is free of that kind of, erm, difference) I am thrilled. In that aspect I am the perfect fodder for the Stuff White People Like blog; I like discovering food, drinks, thoughts, rituals, dances, melodies, spices, kisses…

The things that I miss about Warsaw are, mostly, my family and friends. Yes, I am making new friends here, but it does take a while — and I don’t make friends too easily. As for family, well, what can I say. They’re in Poland. I am here. But, at risk of sounding heartless, I don’t miss them enough to even consider going back. It would kill my soul. It almost did. I suffered from depression for two years.

I remember listening to a radio show somewhere in 2005; the topic of discussion was the discrimination of heterosexuals. They were, you see, repressed in Poland because they couldn’t beat up gays. That was the public radio, with callers on the air, working in cooperation with one of the biggest weeklies in the country. I remember playing fussball with my coworkers, giving my “teammate” a hug at the end and then finding out that after I went home he’s been asking everyone nervously whether I am gay — as if that hug could have infected him somehow. (He wasn’t even my type. His flatmate, on the other hand, oooh, I would.) I remember writing an article which was later published by the international Lambda magazine about the gay parade in Poznan which was declared illegal, then the people who gathered anyway were beaten up by the police and arrested. That wasn’t in the sixties. That was three years ago.

Resolution: continue travelling.