outies

One of my housemates... let's call him "Bob"... came home Saturday afternoon with a new American flag for the house, which he promptly unpacked from its box and affixed at half mast to the included aluminum flag pole. He mounted it on the front of the house next to his bedroom window. When I saw it, I asked him who we were mourning. That's when he told me that Ronald Reagan had died.

"Bob" identifies himself as a gay Republican, by the way. This is a non-trivial detail.

That evening I had to endure the television news channels prattling on and on about Reagan and his legacy, while Bob watched the talking heads and gabbed on the phone for hours loudly to his friends about what a great man Reagan was. This made me angry and frustrated for a number of reasons, only some of which I was fully in touch with at the time. It's clear to me that Bob sees Reagan as a kind of father figure, above the simple adoration he holds for the man for political reasons. I just closed the door to my bedroom and played my music loud enough to drown out the idiot box.

I fell for Reagan's "Morning in America" feel-good campaign when I was a teenager. Hook, line, sinker. Later, after America reacted to the Iran-Contra scandal with a resounding "Who cares? What's on TV?", and when the Berlin Wall began to fall and everybody was crediting Reagan for the demise of Communism, I started getting really cynical about The Gipper. But he was fading rapidly from public view as his Alzheimer's worsened, and there seemed no point in further demonizing a man that most everyone clearly wanted to remain upon a pedestal.

So, it wasn't until I read this press release today that many of my fuzzy bad feelings about Reagan began to gel back together into identifiable forms. Bob would shrug this off and launch into the role of apologist if I even dared to bring it up, but I wouldn't. I find that I can't discuss politics with him for more than about three minutes, because his personal system of beliefs contradict his lifestyle choices so starkly that listening to his rationalizations makes me feel kind of sick. I'm lucky that I'm not filled with self loathing anymore. He reminds me all the time that some gay men don't ever get past that.

Anyway, I wanted to post this letter, so that you could read it. It's a press release and in the public domain, blah blah blah. I hope it makes you think. It didn't exactly make me angry, but it did remind me of one of the reasons why I have been feeling angry.

A Letter to My Best Friend, Steven Powsner, On the Death of Former President Ronald Reagan

Matt Foreman, Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

June 6, 2004

Dear Steven,

I so much wish you were here today to tell me what to do. You would know if it's right to comment on the death of former President Reagan, or if I should just let pass the endless paeans to his greatness. But you're not here. The policies of the Reagan administration saw to that.

Yes, Steven, I do feel for the family and friends of the former President. The death of a loved one is always a profoundly sad occasion, and Mr. Reagan was loved by many. I have tremendous empathy and respect for Mrs. Reagan, who lovingly cared for him through excruciating years of Alzheimer's.

Sorry, Steven, but even on this day I'm not able to set aside the shaking anger I feel over Reagan's non-response to the AIDS epidemic or for the continuing anti-gay legacy of his administration. Is it personal? Of course. AIDS was first reported in 1981, but President Reagan could not bring himself to address the plague until March 31, 1987, at which time there were 60,000 reported cases of full-blown AIDS and 30,000 deaths. I remember that day, Steven - you were staying round-the-clock in Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital caring for your dying partner of over 15 years, Bruce Cooper. It was another 41 days of utter agony for both of you before Bruce died. During those years of White House silence and inaction, how many other dear friends did we see sicken and die hideous deaths?

Is it personal? Yes, Steven. I know for a fact that you would be alive today if the Reagan administration had mounted even a tepid response to the epidemic. If protease inhibitors had been available in July of 1995 instead of December, you'd still be here.

I wouldn't feel so angry if the Reagan administration's failing was due to ignorance or bureaucratic ineptitude. No, Steven, we knew then it was deliberate. The government's response was dictated by the grip of evangelical Christian conservatives who saw gay people as sinners and AIDS as God's well-deserved punishment. Remember? The White House Director of Communications, Patrick Buchanan, once argued in print that AIDS is nature's revenge on gay men. Reagan's Secretary of Education, William Bennett, and his domestic policy adviser, Gary Bauer, made sure that science (and basic tenets of Christianity, for that matter) never got in the way of politics or what they saw as "God's" work.

Even so, I think I could let go of this anger if this was just another overwhelmingly sad chapter in our nation's past. It is not. Steven, can you believe that the unholy pact President Reagan and the Republican Party entered with the forces of religious intolerance have not weakened, but grown exponentially stronger? Can you believe that the U.S. government is still bowing to right wing extremists and fighting condom distribution and explicit HIV education, even while AIDS is killing millions across the world? Or that "devout" Christians have forced the scrapping of AIDS prevention programs targeted at HIV-negative gay and bisexual men in favor of bullshit "abstinence only until marriage" initiatives? Or the shameless duplicity of these same forces seeking to forever outlaw even the hope of marriage for gay people? Or that Reagan stalwarts like Buchanan, Bennett and Bauer are still grinding their homophobic axes?

No, Steven, I do not presume to judge Ronald Reagan's soul or heart. He may very well have been a nice guy. In fact, I don't think that Reagan hated gay people -- I'm sure some of his and Nancy's best friends were gay. But I do know that the Reagan administration's policies on AIDS and anything gay-related resulted - and continue to result - in despair and death.

Oh, Steven, how I wish so much you were here.

Matt

(On November 20, 1995, Steven Powsner died of complications from AIDS at age 40. He had been President of the New York City Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center from 1992-1994.)

Founded in 1973, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is the oldest national organization working to eliminate prejudice, violence and injustice against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people at the local, state and national level. The Task Force trains activists and leaders and organizes broad-based campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT referenda and advance pro-LGBT legislation. The Task Force Policy Institute, the community's premiere think tank, researches and reports on critical policy issues. As part of a broader social justice movement for freedom, justice and equality, the Task Force is creating a world that respects and celebrates the diversity of human expression and identity where all people may fully participate in society.

Acronym used to refer to the entire sexual minority/queer community. Example of usage: "Lavender is the major GLBT magazine in the Twin Cities."

A neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C., centered on a traffic circle at the intersections of Connecticut Avenue, New Hampshire Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue, 19th Street NW, and P Street NW. In practice, the neighborhood is considered to extend from the P Street Bridge (into Georgetown) to 16th Street NW and from N Street NW to T Street NW.

In 1882, this intersection of avenues was designated as Dupont Circle by Congress in honor of Rear Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont, who, in the Civil War, captured the Confederate fort at Port Royal, South Carolina. A bronze statue of the admiral was erected in the circle at this time. In 1921, the present marble fountain replaced the bronze statue, which was moved to Delaware. The massive sculpture represents the allegorical figures of the sea, the wind, and the stars.

In 1949, the Connecticut Avenue trolley stop was built under Dupont Circle. In 1950, an automobile underpass was built which sends Connecticut Avenue underneath the circle. Trolley service ceased in 1962 and the tunnels were closed. (However, in 1995, an underground food court opened in the western trolley tunnel named Dupont Down Under. It closed in 1996.) As a part of the centennial improvements to the Capitol City, the Metro station was built in 1976 and opened in 1977. All of this excavation underneath the circle requires the D.C. Metro station to have the second longest escalator in the subway system. These can be ascended and descended at the south entrance to the station. It is rumored that the massive doors at the foot of the escalators would close to seal the station as a fallout shelter in the event of nuclear attack.

Dupont Circle is the neighborhood with the highest density of bookstores. While I favored Second Story Books on P Street and Kulturas on Connecticut, Kramerbooks is the place to be seen for Sunday brunch (George Stephanopoulos lived above the café and bookstore while he was with the Clinton administration). There is also an Olssons’ Books and Records down on 19th. Add a mystery bookstore up near Kulturas. And several others I cannot recall.

Many fine restaurants are scattered about the circle. City Lights Chinese restaurant, up on Connecticut is very fine. Also Pizza Paradiso, over on P Street, serves what might be called the "D.C.-gourmet style" of pizza. If the line there is too long, across the street is a nice sushi place, Sakana. If you have cash to spare, the $65 pris fixe dinner at Obelisk is rumored to be quite good (P Street again). Just avoid Nora's Restaurant, whose reputation for healthy gourmet fare (the Chez Panise of D.C., it is acclaimed) is not borne out by their conservative meat and potatoes menu.

Just south of the circle, on Connecticut is xando, a chain cafe. Better coffee can be found all the way over on 17th Street (and Q Street), at Java House, where the propriator roasts his own. (Actually, if anyone goes there from the Bay Area, would you maybe please get me a pound of Sumatra?) A very fine tea house with interesting asian inspired food, Teaism, can be found on R Street.

A few blocks east is the international headquarters of the Order of the Eastern Star.

Dupont Circle is the center of the male homosexual community in D.C. Evidently this has been true for most of the 20 th century, as a memo written in 1936 within the Park Police complains that the park "has become the favored nightly meeting place for all the homosexuals in the city. They are here in great numbers every night, filing in and out of the comfort station in a steady stream until it is closed at midnight." (This from "Dupont Circle, Washington, D. C.," by George J. Olszewski of the Division of History, Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, National Park Service.) The gay presence is out and friendly, good looking men may expect to be acknowledged, and the many cafes in the area would be an ideal place to meet people on summer nights.

Dupont (along with Adams Morgan) is one of the few areas in D.C. that has an evening presence. The downtown pretty much closes at 6pM. There is a single street of bars in the Capitol Hill area, but they all have political affiliations. Georgetown is also confined to a single strip after dark. However, Dupont Circle is always hopping with young clean men in the evenings.

It’s been a few years since I lived at 1744 1/2 Swann Street and did my shopping at the Soviet Safeway. Do /msg me with updates or corrections.

An example of phallocentrism manifests in the legal definition of sodomy in most US states. Sodomy must necessarily involve a penis or phallic object, and "to sodomize" means to insert a penis or penis-like (phallic) object into some orifice of another person, when such orifice is not a human vagina, (or, if the object being inserted is not in fact a penis, then even if the receptive orifice is a human vagina, it is sodomy). Sodomy is so called regardless of whether it is performed with permission; hence, sexual assault may or may not be occurring at the same time as sodomy. "Rape" is defined by most states as the insertion of a penis into a vagina without consent, but all other forcible sex acts, no matter how heinous, would be called "sexual assault".

The above example illustrates that the concept of sodomy -- the constructed group of ideas of different sexual acts -- focuses on a phallic object (whether a genuine penis or not), in order to define sodomy. Sex acts between females (if they do not involve sex toys), could not be considered sodomy because no penis is involved. The phallocentrism of the definition of sodomy has the consequence of suggesting that the sexual power in a sex act is actually located in the penis somehow. So, for example, if a woman is performing oral sex on a man, it is, by the definition of sodomy, he that is performing sodomy, not she.

The verb "fuck" has for a long time also retained a phallocentric concept, although that is changing somewhat now as awareness of phallocentrism increases. In popular American (college) culture, a person might say that, "Jimmy fucked Mary after homecoming." But it might sound a bit more odd to say that "Mary fucked Jimmy after homecoming," or odder still, "Mary fucked Jane after homecoming." The second example, that of Mary fucking Jimmy, might sound odd if one's concept of "fucking" centers on the phallus -- i.e., if it is phallocentric. Mary couldn't possibly be fucking Jimmy (by the phallocentric definition of "fucking"), because Jimmy is (presumably) the one with the penis. The third example, of two females, is even odder because no penis is (again, presumably) even present.

In fact, it is difficult to think of a use of the word phallocentric which exalts the concept, so it may be safe to assume that the word imports inherent disapproval of phallocentrism.