Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Hampton Roads Pridefest 2019 - Reflections

Governor Northam addresses Pridefest 2019 in Norfolk.

Some years back I was on the board of directors of Hampton Roads Pride and was involved in putting on Pridefest, so I know what a huge undertaking it is to put on what now has become a massive event.  Yesterday's Pridefest in Town Point Park was over the top with by far the largest crowd ever in the history of the event.   The park was packed from the main stage all the way back to Nauticus. I have not seen any estimates of the crowd size - it's a free event, so there are no ticket sales to help determine the number of attendees - but it had to be 20,000 or even more. The photo above of Governor Ralph Northam addressing the crowd and pledging to push for equality for all Virginians regardless of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity shows part of the vast crowd.  The Governor simply said we are all Virginians and should be fully equal under the law.  Another first was the fact that there were many more vendors that ever before and included recruiting booths for all of the local police departments, the FBI and the CIA.  Trump supporters would likely have an aneurysm. The image below is of a banner at the Newport News Shipbuilding tent - the only company in America that can build our nation's nuclear carriers. 

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Yesterday's event kicked off with the Pride Boat Parade which had the largest number of boats ever - including one entry that had to be close to 100 feet in length.  The husband and I participated aboard the Americn Rover, a large schooner that does harbor cruises. As for the crowd, like the Block Party on Friday night, the crowd was very diverse - every race, old, young - indeed, a record number of children accompanied parents - and every subset of the LGBT community. One straight Democrat politician I know stated he was nothing less than amazed by the crowd sizes and the happy, laid back vibe of the crowd.   Pride events continue today in Virginia Beach at the Neptune Park area of the resort strip.  Things have changed radically since my first Pride in 2002 when the event involved perhaps 200-300 participants. Despite the efforts of the Trump/Pence regime and its Christofascist allies, we are NOT going backward in time. The fight will continue. 

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The Spirit of Norfolk flying the rainbow flag with the old Naval Hospital in the background.

Saturday Morning Male Beauty

The Next Step for Gay Pride

Hampton Roads Pridefest take place today in downtown Norfolk at Town Point Park.  Very large crowds are anticipated and the event is now Norfolk's largest festival event after Harbor Fest.  Sponsors include not only the City of Norfolk which not too many years ago treated the LGBT community as if it was radioactive, and Newport News Shipbuilding, currently Virginia's largest employer and the company that builds America's nuclear aircraft carriers.  

The event was preceded by events around the area virtually every day this past week - more events are tomorrow in Virginia Beach - including the "Block Party" held the last number of years in Scope, Norfolk's sports and concert arena.  Having attended and closed down the party, it was packed, with the area floor completely filled with hundreds, if not thousands dancing while and even larger number socializing.  The Block Party alone is far larger than Pridefest was for many, many years and the crowd covered a wide gamut of ages and every ethnic group was there, white, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific Islander. Trump supporters would have thoroughly hated seeing such a multi-racial crowd getting along and having fun together.  Things have come a long way since I came out going on 18 years ago.  

Yet much remains to be done - both here here in Virginia where, if the Democrats take control of the General Assembly in the November 2019 elections, LGBT Virginians will finally have non-discrimination protections - and in many parts of America where bigots and Christofascists hold sway, encouraged in their message of hate by the Trump/Pence regime, the Republican Party, and, of course, scamvangelists lining their pockets with money as they pervert the Gospel message.   To accomplish these needed changes, perhaps a new model is needed.  Self-proclaimed LGBT activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign ("HRC") and Equality Virginia ("EV") increasingly seem most focused on raising money to support ever higher salaries to their leadership and larger staffs.  Actually getting things done to benefit the wider array of the LGBT community has faded in importance despite lip service to the contrary. 

In a piece in New York Magazine, gay conservative Andrew Sullivan looks at where the LGBT community finds itself today both in terms of positive improvement and criticism of some gay activists and organizations like HRC and EV that have lost their way.  Some of what Sullivan says is on point, and some of it is out in the weeds due to his failure to let go of some aspects of conservatism and religion.   Here are excerpts:

There has never been a better time or place in the history of the world to be gay than in 2019 and in the West.

I think it’s worth repeating that — especially in front of the younger generation — because it gives us critical perspective on where we are now and where we are headed. If you glance at media aimed at gays, lesbians, and transgender people, you might imagine we are living in a state of siege. Gay students arriving in college in 2019 will be told instantly that they are oppressed in countless ways, and trans students will be told that they can be oppressed by gay people, as well. Check out the website for the biggest gay lobbying group, the Human Rights Campaign, and you will find that gays and lesbians and transgender people “have been under constant attack” since Trump became president.

And, yes, there has been some blowback, as one might expect after an astonishing decade of faster progress than in any civil-rights movement in history. The impulsively renewed ban on transgender service members makes no sense, was enacted by presidential whim (a tweet, no less), defended with arguments that collapse upon scrutiny, and opposed by much of the military brass. With luck, law, and lobbying, it will fall. There has also been executive action to defend the religious freedom of those fundamentalist Christians who make up a core of the Trump base. But it says a huge amount that Christianists are this panicked. They keep losing both secular and theological arguments — along with many members, especially among the young.

And look at what remains: marriage equality, even in Alabama; corporate America competing to brand itself as pro-gay (sometimes to an excruciating degree); full integration of gay service members; a lesbian mayor of Chicago and, in Corey Johnson, a future gay mayor of New York; a married gay man among the main contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination; a cornucopia of media-affirming gay and trans equality; openly gay and lesbian figures in almost every sphere of American life; a preventative pill for HIV and a pill to all but eradicate it from the living; and explicit legal protection from discrimination for half of the gay people in the country.
 I’m not saying there isn’t more to be done — laws against discrimination in employment and public accommodations in those states that don’t yet have those protections, for example . . . 
 It is, I know, sometimes hard to take “yes” for an answer. It is also prudent, given human history, to be vigilant in defending the gains. But this level of openness and equality was unimaginable only a decade ago. Compared with the 1950s, when “sodomy” was illegal in every state, when the government hounded gay men and women in public service out of their jobs and demonized them as inherently treasonous, when gay people were barred from entering the country, and when psychiatrists believed them to be mentally ill, this is close to utopia. Compared with the 1980s and early 1990s, when gay men found themselves circling the drain of their own extinction, and witnessed horrors and pain and stigma as never before, this is incredible.
 Because gay men and women are almost always brought up by straight parents, this history is hard to pass on. And so perspectives can be warped. Those whose livelihoods are built on defending victims have an interest in sustaining a victim paradigm for gay America, in which they are the saviors. And victim narratives are comfortable. They allow us to avoid responsibility for our own problems, while transferring it to others. . . . They actually provide status among today’s elites — and can help you advance your own career solely on the basis of your orientation if you want to go to college or get a job at a major corporation.

I think it’s time to shuck off this narrative, because it is a crude simplification of the gay experience, because it is profoundly out of date, and because it focuses us on other people we cannot always change while ignoring things closer to home that we can. What we need now, I think, is a narrative more productive and constructive, less about the harm the world can do to us, and more about the good we can give back to the world.

It will mean earning a living, raising kids in some cases, pursuing careers, sustaining marriages, and everything every straight person does without thinking twice about it. Being gay is not a political act; it is about deeper things than politics: love, above all, but sex and relationships as well. . . . We seek, in this sense, a kind of irrelevance for our sexual orientation — a world in which the hetero and homo categories define none of us, straight or gay, and the category of human includes us all.

But there’s more to the souls of gay folk than just this kind of normalcy, it seems to me. Unlike straights, we remain a specific minority, with life experiences that do shape us differently, and a way of life that will always, in some ways, be a subculture, as well as a counterculture. Equality and virtual normalcy need not be seen as ends, but as platforms for something larger, just as they are for other enfranchised minorities. Integration is not the same as assimilation.

This does indeed require pride in what we have that is distinct, a pride that is worth celebrating once a year. We have as gay people, it seems to me, a gift in our sometimes hidden sexual and emotional difference, a gift that teaches us at quite a young age not to judge a book by its dust-jacket, or to dismiss the different because they make us, at first, uncomfortable. The suffering that will always accompany gay and lesbian teens — the suffering that is a function of being so different at such a crucial age — can be deployed as adults, if we so choose, to see and alleviate the suffering of others.
 [G]ay people’s lopsided contribution to the arts, fashion, design, and aesthetics are ways in which we can reflect society back to itself with greater depth and beauty.
 These gay gifts can be shared. They always have been, of course, but under acute duress, and often silenced or unknown. What I’m emphasizing here is embracing these roles more explicitly as our charism, defining ourselves more clearly as human society’s indispensable regenerators, pillars, and buttresses. Gay male friendships can inform straight male ones — and surely for the better. Gay teachers can be a special boon to kids whose own family may not be engaged or supportive. We can be gay uncles and aunts, an often invaluable resource — financially and otherwise — for our siblings’ kids. 

Gay scholars and aesthetes can protect and preserve our common inheritance. Gay entrepreneurs can invigorate decaying neighborhoods and innovate new ways of living. Gay writers can become, as they often are, the strongest champions of free speech — because, for so long, it was the only right we had, the indispensable resource to let each other know that we existed.

As the long night of persecution gives way to the dawning of integration, let’s take a moment both to remember the legions of human souls who knew nothing but darkness, to acknowledge the vast numbers of gay people around the world for whom such freedom still doesn’t exist — but also to recognize this unique and pivotal chance for renewal and reinvention in the West. We should indeed have pride in our past, our selves, and our lives as survivors. But as we peer into the future, and to what we can still bring to the world, let us also know joy.

One of the most powerful forms of activism is simply living one's life openly and proudly. Yes, if one lives in rural areas of red states, that can be difficult and perhaps life threatening.  But the more of us that do this and demonstrate our normalcy to the straight world, the more positive change there will be.  Demonstrate daily that we are not the "other" to be feared but rather friends, neighbors and positive participants in our communities.  Yes, it can be scary, especially for those of older generations who grew up living in fear, but it is the way forward.  It is something the husband and I try to do every day be it at work, social gatherings, participating in a sailing regatta, . . . the list goes on and on.

Friday Morning Male Beauty

More Storms and Rising Seas: Which U.S. Cities Should Be Saved First?

Flooding area in Norfolk, VA.

While the Trump/Pence regime continues to insist that climate change is not real and, worse yet, is undoing Obama era policies and regulations that sought to slow global warming, communities and those living on the coast can see first hand that the sea levels are rising. Here in Southeast Virginia, every community south/southeast of Williamsburg has areas threatened by rising sea levels and most have not seriously begun to face the financial burden that will be involved to build sea walls and other infrastructure modifications.  As the New York Times reports, the potential partial cost the Virginia Beach is $1.7 billion.  Meanwhile, the city of Norfolk (estimated to need 69 miles of sea walls) is devising a plan where neighborhoods could establish themselves as special tax districts to raise funds to make the needed improvements to face rising waters. The overall problem is staggering and Republicans sticking their heads in the sand is not a solution. Small communities could potentially cease to exist in the future.  For the city of Hampton, the price tag for 68 miles of sea walls is $642.9 million - the fourth most costly in Virginia (look up your city here).  Here are highlights from the Times article:

WASHINGTON — As disaster costs keep rising nationwide, a troubling new debate has become urgent: If there’s not enough money to protect every coastal community from the effects of human-caused global warming, how should we decide which ones to save first?

After three years of brutal flooding and hurricanes in the United States, there is growing consensus among policymakers and scientists that coastal areas will require significant spending to ride out future storms and rising sea levels — not in decades, but now and in the very near future. There is also a growing realization that some communities, even sizable ones, will be left behind.

By 2040, simply providing basic storm-surge protection in the form of sea walls for all coastal cities with more than 25,000 residents will require at least $42 billion, according to new estimates from the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental advocacy group. Expanding the list to include communities smaller than 25,000 people would increase that cost to more than $400 billion.

“Once you get into it, you realize we’re just not going to protect a lot of these places,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the group, which wants oil and gas companies to pay some of the cost of climate adaptation. “This is the next wave of climate denial — denying the costs that we’re all facing.”

The research is limited in that it considers only sea walls, and not other methods for minimizing flood risk that may be more practical in some places, such as moving homes and shops away from the most flood-prone areas. The figures also don’t include the additional and costlier steps that will be required even with sea walls, such as revamping sewers, storm water and drinking water infrastructure.

Still, the data provides a powerful financial measuring stick for the tough decisions that countless communities — large and small — are starting to confront.

The cities that are quick to adapt to climate risks “are going to attract the jobs and the factories of the future,” said Eric Smith, president and chief executive officer for the Americas at Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies. “There’s going to be communities that I think will be left way, way behind.”
 The new research identifies 241 cities of 25,000 people or more that will require at least $10 million worth of sea walls by 2040 just to protect against a typical annual storm.

Total cost of adding sea walls1. Jacksonville, Fla. $3.5 billion2. New York City $2.0 billion3. Virginia Beach $1.7 billion4. Galveston, Tex. $1.1 billion5. Charleston, S.C. $1.0 billion6. Tampa, Fla. $938.4 million7. Barnstable Town, Mass. $889.2 million8. Corpus Christi, Tex. $861.1 million9. St. Petersburg, Fla. $751.4 million10. New Orleans $725.1 million

Many cities, especially small ones, will not be able to meet the costs facing them.  Those that can’t will depend on federal funding. . . . So experts have proposed ways of focusing federal money where it can do the most good — even if that means some places are left out.

One approach would be for the federal government to spend the money based simply on where it would most reduce the future cost of damages, according to Craig Fugate, who ran FEMA during the Obama administration.

He acknowledged that Congress would probably object to that approach, since it would likely mean FEMA would concentrate its resilient-infrastructure funds in just a handful of states.
 Another option would be for the federal government to distribute climate protection money based on a city’s property value, its historical and cultural importance, and how much it contributes to the national economy, said Harriet Tregoning, who was in charge of the housing department’s Office of Community Planning and Development during the Obama administration.

Cities could increase their chances of getting money by reducing their exposure to disasters, perhaps by retrofitting their buildings, implementing aggressive building codes and zoning restrictions, and helping residents leave the most vulnerable neighborhoods, Ms. Tregoning said. And there could be extra points for cities that take in people forced to flee other parts of the country.

Mr. Smith, of Swiss Re, said that cities should take responsibility for protecting themselves from the rising toll of disasters, rather than waiting for the federal government.

In his view, the chief obstacle is the refusal by some local officials to acknowledge what is happening. “The challenge is, we’re fighting about whether or not there’s climate change,” Mr. Smith said. “They don’t want to embrace what’s right in front of us.”

Virginia Republicans have been denying for years what is actually happening choosing to use the euphemism "repetitive flooding" rather than admit sea level rise.

More Thursday Male Beauty

Is SCOTUS Putting Self-Preservation Ahead of Ruling for the Far Right?

Some recent actions by the U.S. Supreme Court must be disturbing to the ugly underbelly of the Republican Party that thought the appointment of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Court assured them of victory on a number of issues not popular with the larger public.  Some have viewed the Court's actions as a way to preserve its popular respect and legitimacy even if some of the issues will likely come back before it in the future. How the Court rules on the Trump/Pence regime effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census - which is designed to cause an under count of non-citizens in mostly blue states - will be telling as to whether self-preservation remains the Courts guiding hallmark.  A column in the Washington Post looks at recent rulings that in the wake of the Virginia redistricting decision against Virginia Republicans have avoided hot button issues and punted them back to the lower courts.  Here are column excerpts:

The justices of the Supreme Court know how to keep out of trouble. That’s the takeaway from the order the court issued on Monday, sending back to the lower court a new case about another baker who wouldn’t bake a wedding cake.

The case, Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, was a near-exact replica of last year’s Masterpiece Cakeshop case. Like the owner of that Colorado bakery, the husband and wife owners of Sweetcakes by Melissa in Gresham, Ore., claimed that their religion prohibited them from designing and baking a cake to be used in celebrating a same-sex marriage. To do so, the owners explained in their petition to the Supreme Court, would amount to “complicity in sin.” In fact, they said, the very reason they baked wedding cakes was to “celebrate weddings between one man and one woman.”

Like Colorado, Oregon has a public accommodations law that bars business from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. Acting on the complaint of a lesbian couple, the official in charge of enforcing that law imposed a $135,000 fine to be paid to the couple as “compensatory damages for emotional, mental and physical suffering.” The Oregon Court of Appeals upheld the order, and the Oregon Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal.

On Monday, instead of adding the case to their docket, the justices vacated the lower-court decision and told the Oregon Court of Appeals to reconsider the case “in light of” last June’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Objectively, that disposition makes little sense. The Supreme Court didn’t actually decide the constitutional issues in Masterpiece Cakeshop. . . . The decision was, in other words, a punt. It has no “light” to shed on the Oregon dispute.

I think that what finally prevailed was an institutional instinct for self-preservation. Why re-enter this battle at this moment? Cases granted this spring will be argued in the fall, to be decided next spring with the political season at its height and the court itself under a bright election-year spotlight. The court already has plenty to do next term, with three cases granted on whether federal law protects gay and transgender people against discrimination on the job. The conflict between private conscience and public duty is age-old. The court has time to resolve it in future cases. In fact, another such case will soon be on the way to the Supreme Court. This month, the Washington State Supreme Court reinstated a ruling against a flower shop owner who, because of her “relationship with Jesus Christ,” told a gay couple, longtime customers, that she could not design a flower arrangement for their wedding. The justices had vacated that ruling and sent the case back to the state court last summer for reconsideration in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop. The state court, deeming Masterpiece Cakeshop irrelevant, reissued its original opinion almost word for word.

What I discern as the Supreme Court’s instinct for self-preservation was also on display last month in an abortion case from Indiana. The state was appealing a ruling that invalidated its law banning abortions for reasons of the race, sex or disability of the fetus, a law enacted in deliberate and flagrant violation of existing abortion precedents. The state’s appeal, Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, went to conference an astonishing 15 times over five months. Ultimately, the court denied the appeal, noting in an unsigned opinion that because the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is the only court to have considered such a law, “we follow our ordinary practice of denying petitions insofar as they raise legal issues that have not been considered by additional Courts of Appeals.”

On a court deeply divided on the subject of abortion, that disposition was unanimous. . . . If I read that message correctly, we can expect the same outcome when the states that are now busy banning abortion appeal to the Supreme Court from the lower-court rulings that will inevitably strike down the new laws. (But to be precise, my prediction holds only until Election Day 2020, when the justices will be free from whatever constraint they now feel about taking a step likely to incite a public backlash against the Republican Party.)

These reflections on the court’s instinct for self-preservation lead me to a final question: What to do about the census case? As the world knows, the deeply contested question of the validity of the Trump administration’s plan to ask about citizenship has become even more fraught with revelations from the computer files of a recently deceased Republican redistricting specialist, Thomas Hofeller. The documents appear to validate the conclusion reached by Federal District Judge Jesse Furman, whose ruling against the Trump administration is before the justices, that the administration’s purported good-government reason for adding the citizenship question was a pretext. The real reason, the documents indicate, was to provide a statistical basis for entrenching Republican power by disregarding noncitizens in the population counts for future redistricting.

Those plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, have now asked the justices for a “limited remand” that would send the case back to the District Court “to allow exploration of where the truth lies.”

But there is another option, suggested by the plaintiffs in a final footnote to their latest brief: Just dismiss the appeal. The procedure is known as a DIG: “dismissed as improvidently granted.” The justices use it once or twice a term, usually when a case turns out, on further reflection, not to be what they thought it was when they granted it.
For the time being, it’s a reminder that the court knows how to get itself out of a tight spot when it needs to. A DIG requires no explanation. Its effect is to wipe the Supreme Court slate clean, as if the appeal had never even reached the court. A DIG here would leave Judge Furman’s opinion in place and would enable the professionals in the Census Bureau, who strongly objected to adding the citizenship question, free to go about their business counting us — all of us. If I’m right about these recent signals that the court knows how to save itself, now is the time.

The out come of the census case will be telling and clearly signal whether the Court puts its own legitimacy ahead of all else. 

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

Hate Group Leader Will Now Lead a Major U.S. Religious Freedom Body

Perkins addressing a white supremacy group before moving to FRC.

The Trump/Pence regime and its self-prostituting GOP allies are continuing its efforts to make far right evangelical Christianity the preferred religion in the United States.  While Pence is a true believer and, in my view down right frightening given his fanaticism, Trump has zero moral compunctions and it's all about keeping the now dominant Christofascist/white supremacist base of the GOP loyal through the 2020 elections.  Molded out of the same moral vacuum is Mitch McConnell who appointed a leading hate merchant/professional Christian who has helped rally evangelicals to Trump's support and the GOP's support is Tony Perkins - head of the certified hate group, Family Research Council ("FRC") - to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.  McConnell, like Trump, faces a potentially difficult re-election campaign in 2020 and is willing to sell his soul (if he has one) to secure Christofascist support. Sadly, in Perkins' world view, only his fellow evangelicals deserve religious freedom. The rest of us simply do not matter or are deemed deserving of marginalization.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at Perkins' ugly record and agenda, but sadly omits Perkins' strong and documented white supremacist ties (Perkins hails from Mississippi, perhaps the most racist state in America).   Here are article highlights:

One of the most vitriolic anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim activists in the U.S. will now lead the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Tony Perkins, who was first named to USCIRF by Senator Mitch McConnell in 2018, will head the group for a year. Perkins is also the president of the Family Research Council, a far-right organization that lobbied against marriage equality and continues to work against anti-discrimination laws that cover LGBT people.

Established by the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, USCIRF is a bipartisan body. Commissioners are appointed by members of Congress and serve limited terms. As the commission explains on its website, it’s charged with tracking the status of religious freedom around the world, advocating for prisoners of conscience, and producing reports that contain policy prescriptions. . . . But Perkins’s chairmanship will likely undermine USCIRF’s mission, and his hostility toward LGBT people and Muslims mirrors the Trump administration’s positions in the worst possible ways.

Like USCIRF itself, Perkins isn’t much of a household name. But he has for years worked toward a definition of religious freedom that maximizes First Amendment rights for conservative Christians, while minimizing the rights of Muslims, nontheists, and members of other minority traditions.

At various points in his prolific career, Perkins has argued [lied] that there is “a disproportionate overlap” between homosexuality and pedophilia and that the legalization of same-sex marriage will lead inexorably to the persecution of conservative Christians. In a column on the Family Research Council’s website, Perkins linked the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas — which found sodomy bans unconstitutional — to a host of other supposed evils, including marriage equality, rights for trans people, and the alleged mainstreaming of polygamy and pedophilia.

Same-sex relationships remain illegal in much of the world, and LGBT people can face violence and death, meted out either by vigilantes or courts. They won’t have an advocate in Perkins, nor, for that matter, will many religious minorities.

Perkins has also shown particular antipathy toward Islam. . . . The Trump administration shares Perkins’s animus toward Islam. Its ban on immigration from some majority-Muslim countries indicated early the depth of its hostility for Muslims. As HuffPost reported after March’s mosque shootings in New Zealand, Trump once floated a national database to track Muslims, and has repeatedly and wrongly insisted that Muslims in Jersey City celebrated the September 11th attacks. The Trump administration isn’t any more tolerant of LGBT people. Trans people are among its favorite targets . . .

At the same time, the administration has consistently defended a definition of religious freedom that allows people of faith extreme leeway to discriminate. If the administration’s idiosyncratic definition of religious freedom has ever bothered Perkins, it’s not visible; as president of the Family Research Council, Perkins has committed himself wholly to the defense of Trump and his policy priorities.

Perkins’s term as chairman ends in 2020, but the rest of USCIRF’s membership tilts to the right as well. Of its nine commissioners, five have links to right-wing groups; at least one, Gary Bauer, has also worked for the Family Research Council. Though Perkins won’t be around for long, his tenure as chairman marks a grim turn in USCIRF’s history.

Virginians need to be aware that The Family Foundation, Virginia leading hate group, is closely aligned with FRC and its antecedents likewise trace to white supremacists.