When Is It Our Fault?

Two weeks ago, President Obama gladly signed the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill.
The following day, he announced that the HIV travel ban is lifted as of Jan 1st, 2010.
The President has also publicly called for the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell & the Defense of Marriage Act.

Yet nationally known gay rights groups and gay activists, many of whom haven't accomplished a thing in years, now complain about how the President is "not keeping his word to us."

Bullshit. Like most of our straight allies, Mr. Obama has done far more to advance LGBT equality than our own good for nothing activists.

When I needed the community's help, scores of gay activists, gay journalists, and every gay rights group that I called, told me to "get over it."
Oh, there was a trickle of support here & there, but not enough to make a difference.

Over at http://www.queerty.com/, I see that about 500 comments per week are being posted by other LGBTs from all over the country who also say that they're tired of our do nothing gay rights groups. They're just us tired as I of the "bitchy queen" back stabbing that passes for our social norm.
What I find so disturbing is that many of those who behave this way justify their actions by hurling false accusations of homophobia at other LGBTs who refuse support gay on gay hate.

In her new book, The Ties That Bind, lesbian author Sarah Shulmann argues that negative, anti-gay reinforcement from our birth families and society in general can and is causing a lot of dysfunctional behavior in LGBT relationships. Dr. Alan Downs, who is also openly gay, makes similar arguments in his book The Velvet Rage.

I completely agree with both authors.

But where dos our own culpability begin?
When is our own behavior our own fault?
When is the lack of support for each other that one finds in the LGBT community, or the rampant bitchy queen/angry dyke nastiness the fault of the perpetrators?
When is it OK to tell those who behave this way to act like adults and accept responsibility for their actions?

And when are our gay rights organizations, who ask for our money, ignore our cries for help, and get nothing done, ever. When do they get held accountable?

When does it become OK for me as a gay man to demand a real community?

David Alex Nahmod
SF CA
Nov 2009

In Defense of NG, part two

A follow-up to this post:
http://davidsopenforum.blogspot.com/2009/10/in-defense-of-ng.html

When a nationally known gay activist "warned" me not to associate with Nelson Garcia, the blogger know as NG, here was the proof I was offered:

http://americansfortruth.com/news/nelson-garcia-aka-ng-blog-boy-lover-with-criminal-child-porn-conviction-blasts-aftah.html

The website is Americans For Truth About Homosexuality. It's run by Peter La Barbera, a conservative "Christian" hatemonger who has also called for all people with HIV to be locked up in internment camps.

If NG really is a "dangerous pedophile", then I want to see actual proof, not the rantings
of a Jesus freak whose only goal is to take rights away from LGBT people.
That a gay activist would consider La Barbera's anti-gay hate as "proof" of another gay man's "guilt" is not only shocking, it's typical of how some of our more famous "activists", and many of our gay rights groups, have conducted themselves for the better part of 30 years.

And that's why we still don't have full equality.
No wonder NG & I sometimes get so angry: look what we have to put up with from our "own people".


David Alex Nahmod
SF CA
Nov 2009

President Obama: A True Friend

I'm so proud of our President today: he signed the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I never doubted your word for a second.

Once again I wish to say that I'm sorry about how much anger I allowed to spill out into this blog in earlier posts.
I was one angry dude~~maybe I still am.
There's just been so little unity in the movement, so much grudge holding, and so much back stabbing. It's been holding us back for years~~I yearn and ache for something better, for a real LGBT community.

It's my fervent hope that the signing of this bill will be the first step towards true LGBT equality in the USA~~and maybe a first step towards healing a fragmented community.

David Alex Nahmod
Oct 2009
SF CA

In Defense of NG

Like me, the blogger known as NG, who I thanked in my last post, has put up with a lot of shit. Both of us have had to contend with simultaneous abuse from anti-gay "Christians" and from self-appointed gay "leaders" who actively seek to crush other LGBT voices.

I can't honestly say that I agree with everything NG says, but that's OK. No two people can agree on everything, but that's no reason to turn against each other, a concept that appears to be lost on much of the gay movement's leadership.
NG is clearly someone who cares deeply about LGBT equality, and about justice.
That makes him OK in my book.

There's a particularly nasty Wiki page, about NG, that's floating around cyberspace.
The page accuses him of all manner of "perversions". Several anti-gay "Christian" groups take credit for having posted this~~they offer no documentation whatsoever as to their claims.

Several gay activists have since "warned" me about NG on the basis of this Wiki page.
As this page offers no documentation, these activists should know better, especially since it comes from a group that identifes itself as anti-gay.

Maybe I'm being simplistic and idealistic, but I expect higher standards from the gay rights movement, which claims to stand for equality and justice.
NG deserves better~~and so do the rest of us.

David Alex Nahmod
Oct 2009
SF CA

Thanks, NG

My recent interview with Judy Shepard, Matt Shepard's Mom, continues to be quite a guiding force for me.
Here's that interview from Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco:
http://ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=books&article=480

I also wrote versions of the Shepard interview for ON Magazine in San Jose CA & Q Notes in North & South Carolina.

My encounter with Judy Shepard's quiet grace & dignity will forever be my role model for dealing with issues that are important
to me. The lack of unity within the LGBT community, the callous disregard that LGBTs
routinely inflict on each other (even when such behavior impedes our fight for equality) continues to be a major bone of contention with me.
I will never again allow myself to express this with anger~~that's what I got from Judy Shepard.

I recently became aquanited with a woman who embodies the very best of what we can be. You may know Molly Mc Kay from her many appearences CNN, MSNBC, etc.
She's a co-founder of Marriage Equality USA, and she's conducted interviews in a wedding dress. It's her shtick, but it works!

Molly doesn't just talk about equality and unity, she lives it. You get no attitude from her. In addition to her activism, she works full time as an attorney~~yet she always has a moment to offer someone a kind word.

In my quest to make things better withn the LGBT community, I interviewed Molly.
Molly's elegant, eloquent words were as wonderfully uplifting and moving as Judy Shepard's.

I'm sorry to say that a man who runs a widely read gay news blog, someone I thought was a friend, now refuses to post either my Judy Shepard or my Molly Mc Kay interviews, because, as he puts it, I'm a bigot.
For daring to speak the truth, for demanding something better, I'm a bigot.
Well, shame on him.

Judy & Molly are putting out messages of love, hope and inclusion~~it's been a long time since I heard these kinds of things spoken of by gay activists who mean it and live it. I don't see how anyone can justify
silencing either of them.
We can't always agree on every talking point, but that shouldn't make enemies: we're all fighting for the same rights and we need each other.
Shutting each other out accomplishes nothing, other than to hold us back.

Last night, Nelson over at NG blog posted my Molly Mc Kay interview.
Though it will appear next month in several print zines, Nelson was the first to publish it. As he put it, we're working towards a common goal.

Right on dude.
Thanks.

Here, from NG Blog, is my interview with Molly Mc Kay:
http://nlsngrc.blogspot.com/2009/10/david-alex-nahmod-molly-mckay-could.html

Erase Hate!

David Alex Nahmod
SF CA
Oct 2009

An Englishman in New York

I don't watch Logo, the MTV owned gay channel, often.
Most of what they show, movies, reruns of Queer as Folk and L Word, are edited for content.
They had a halfway decent news show but canned it.

But the other night I watched An Englishman in New York, the first feature film produced by and for the network.
The film details the last 18 years in the life of the great gay wit/actor/writer Quentin Crisp (1908-1999), who lived out the final, and happiest chapter of his life, in New York City. John Hurt, who played Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant (1976), reprises the role.

Quentin Crisp was one of the 20th Century's greatest gay figures. In 1931 he said "I wish to live in the world, not in a closet", coining the phrase "coming out of the closet". The film Naked Civil Servant, based on his memoir, told the story of his courageous life as an out gay man in the London of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, where he endured many beatings and false arrests. He never lost his dignity or his sense of humor.
The book Naked Civil Servant and the subsequent film made him a celebrity and an icon~~during his New York years he published many other books, was an in demand public speaker and a cult film star.

During my New York years, I knew the real Quentin Crisp rather well, so I can attest to how brilliant John Hurt's performances are in both the first film and this new one.

An Englishman in New York touches upon the themes that have recently been the main subject of this blog: what Nelson at NG Blog calls gay on gay hate.
In one brief but unforgettable scene, Crisp and his friend Mr. Steele (Dennis O'Hare) are thrown out of a gay bar because they don't "play the game": i.e. they're not young and buffed.
In another scene, Crisp and his friend, performance artist Penny Arcade (Cynthia Nixon) sit in a bar and watch the gay male parade of arrogant, buffed gym bunnies.
Arcade comments on being "cast out by the outcasts."
Both scenes are an honest look at an accepted, but shameful gay subculture in which anyone over 30 and with a less than perfect body ceases to be human.

In a beautifully done 20 minute subplot, Crisp befriends and mentors the late gay artist Patrick Angus (a scene stealing Jonathan Tucker). Angus, who died of AIDS in 1992, has been beaten down and emotionally destroyed by the aforementioned gay subculture. One of the film's most powerful scenes entails Angus being laughed at and called a "freak" for doing nothing more than smiling at another gay man. Actor Tucker captures Angus' pain and anguish magnificently.

It's a scene that's played all too often in the gay community~~it's how we've been treating each other for decades. It's become our social norm to hurt & reject each other.
And make no mistake about it: a lot of us are hurting from this.

Yet anyone who stands up and demands something better, as I'm trying to do, is labeled an "anti-gay bigot" by the self-appointed "gay elite".

Well, the truth is the truth.
Those who call me a bigot can add the late Quentin Crisp, the Logo Network, and the entire cast and crew of An Englishman in New York to their list of "bigots".
I, however, tip my hat to the filmmakers for telling the truth: by re-enacting these scenes they show the behavior for what it is. In their own way, they've asked for something better.

David Alex Nahmod
Oct 2009
SF CA

What's Wrong With This Picture?

A few posts back, I posted the story of Ken, a gay man wth AIDS who was taunted for being "gross". This happened to Ken in the middle of San Francisco's Castro district, a gay "safe haven" Ken's tormenter was another gay man.

Two days ago I shared the story of a gay man who feels so rejected by the gay community
that he's cutting the community out of his life.

I've since been told that I'm a "homophobic bigot" for posting these stories and for speaking
out against an LGBT community that gives such behavior a free pass.
Of all the people who have told me this, not even one will say that they're sorry that two gay men have been treated so poorly within the gay community.

I'm being told that I'm a bigot by gay men who don't seem to care that a gay man with AIDS was told that he was "gross".

What's wrong with this picture?
Where's the compassion for our own people?

David Alex Nahmod
SF CA
Oct 2009