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queerVOICE
DADT: Its End is Near
James Duggan
copyright 2009
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Servicemembers United (SU), in partnership with the Human Rights
Campaign, launched its national tour, "Voices of Honor: A Generation Under
'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" with a press conference lead by U.S.
Representative Patrick Murphy, primary sponsor of H.R.1283, legislation to
repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT). He was flanked by several former service
members in front of Independence Hall on July 28. The day concluded with
a town hall meeting at the studios of WHYY in Philadelphia.
According
to the SU website "this national tour highlights the discriminatory law (DADT)
that hurts military readiness and national security while putting American
soldiers fighting overseas at risk."
As
both a queer civil rights advocate and a gay military veteran, I eagerly
attended the town hall meeting but was saddened by the lack of attendance by
the many queer "activists" and community "leaders" from the Philadelphia region. The repeal of DADT
is of such major significance to our community I was dumbfounded at how little
interest our community seemed to have toward this event.
Those
who attended heard firsthand accounts by five former service members, one of
them heterosexual, on how DADT impacts the lives queer and hetero service
members alike, the readiness of the U.S. Military, and our national
security. All five speakers shared their personal stories of their
journey through the U.S. Military's policy on queers. (Read their stories here.)
One
speaker, Alex Nicholson told of how an invasion of his privacy revealed that he
was a gay man. He was a 19 year old
Human Intelligence Collector (aka, Interrogator) who is fluent in five
languages including Arabic who believed he was fully abiding by the DADT policy
until a fellow soldier in his unit found and read a private letter he had
written, in Portuguese, to a friend. Alex was discharged, in opposition to the
support from his Brigade Commander, six months after 9-11.
Another
speaker was Jarrod Chlapowski, who finished second in his class at the Defense
Language Institute at Goodfellow Air Force Base, where he trained as a Korean
linguist and cryptologic voice interceptor.
Chlapowski, a recipient of an Army Achievement Medal and the Army Commendation
Medal, came out to members of his unit after coming to terms with his own
sexuality while on active duty in Korea where he "experienced
widespread acceptance by his peers."
Overtime though he witnessed the "excessive burden" that DADT was
placing on queer service members and with the fear of own discharged hanging
over his head he chose not to re-enlist in the Army.
Stephen
Vossler, a heterosexual former servicemember on the tour, told us about his
fear of queers and how he was raised to believe it was unnatural. His roommate at the Defense Language
Institute was a service member who was being discharged under DADT. While watching his roommate struggle with all
the negative affects of being discharge under DADT Vossler became close friends
with Chlapowski and after six months discovered that Chlapowski was also a gay
man. His new found friendship with this queer service member led Vossler to see
just how unjust and ridiculous DADT really was.
Since
DADT was enacted in 1993 over 11,000 capable service members have been
discharged, including over 300 linguists, 49 nuclear, biological, and chemical
warfare specialists, 90 nuclear power engineers, 52 missile guidance and
control operators, 150 rocket, missile and other artillery specialists, and 340
infantrymen. This does not include the thousands who did not re-enlist because
of DADT.
Disturbingly,
queer service members who are returning from combat zones and seek counseling
for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are unable to fully participate in such counseling
sessions where speaking about personal relations is a part of the
process. Since there is no provider/patient confidentiality in the
military, there is the constant fear that they will be unjustly outed by their
counselor. Also troubling to service members who are discharge under DADT
is that the reason for their discharge, while honorable, is noted on the
individual's discharge papers (DD 214) and in a country where discrimination
against queers is still legal in most States, this fact could become a scarlet
letter while seeking a job.
As
a former service member, I understand the fear and pressure of hiding one's
sexuality from friends and commanders, but the reality is queer service members
are a fact of life. We have always been there and always will be. We
serve, we lead, and we command with distinction and honor.
For
those who make the claim that you or your children will not serve under a queer
commander, I would tell you that you already are. Those who would object
to serving side-by-side with queer service members I suspect you would have had
the same objections to serving with and under African-Americans and women in
the military when their integration into the military took place. Your
homophobia does not serve your country well.
DADT is
completely inconsistent with the ethical standards we have come to expect from
our military personnel and with those we trust with our security and whom we
rely upon to maintain our freedom.
DADT
will be repealed; there is no turning back now. I hope this time next year we
will be celebrating its complete repeal for a stronger and more ready military
force. God Bless America!
RELATED STORIES: Servicemembers United Executive Director on NPR's 'Fresh
Air / Alex Nicholson: Talking About 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
Recommended Reading:
Unfriendly
Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, By
Nathaniel Frank (Purchase here)  |
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What It Looks Like From Here
Thom Cardwell
copyright 2009 |
Part II
So, you've been eerily silent on the subject of the
gay generation gap. Why is that? Are you totally in denial?
(You're nothing but a bunch of denial queens!) You don't buy an iota of
the argument and don't believe any such "great divide" exists. Or, better yet,
you're completely apathetic about it and don't give one fig about it!
Who cares? So what? Let's move on.
Move on--to what? Your issue with the word "queer" and how it applies to
each and every one of us? Or, so you like to think, not you, not me, and not,
for damn sure, to most other self respecting homosexuals in your world if not
the entire country. You don't like it because it connotes and denotes at the
same time negative meaning. Hey, I also get it, finally, that you just don't
like it. Queer isn't something that you wish to be--or ever, to become.
But is the gay generation gap real or imagined? Something founded in
fact, like scientifically, or an interesting ploy created by the media so that
queers can be talked about in a new and exciting and dynamic light?
Queer journalist Mark Harris in "The Gay Generation Gap" (New York, June
29-July 6, 2009) observes: "For gay men who came of age 25 years ago in a
tougher environment, knowing your (sub)cultural iconography was not only a way
of connecting to past generations but a means of defiantly reorganizing the world,
of asserting your right to literally see, hear and perceive things differently.
The need to hide yourself was thus transformed into the privilege of joining a
private club with a private language. But to many younger gay men who grew up
with gay public figures, fictional characters, and references, it's a dead
language--a calcified gallery of Judy Garland references and "All About Eve"
bon mots that excludes them as much as it does the straight world."
 While the tradition of the older generation pointing fingers at the younger
generations, criticizing them for not appreciating what they have, and where
they are, with complete disregard for where they would be if it wasn't the
sacrifice of their elders, it's not only infuriating, insulting, demeaning and
alienating between the two classes.
Harris pulls out some hard data to focus upon the divide and what it might mean
to us all. "According to a 2005 report by the Institute for Gay and Lesbian
Strategic Studies, our 'emphasis on suffering reflects not the current reality
of many LGBT adolescents so much as recollections of previous generations' own
'horror . . . LGBT adults' residual fears and pain may be acting to magnify the
real difficulties of LGBT teens."
 He further admits, including himself, in the older generation of gay men, "we
talk too much, telling nightmare stories about AIDS and the Reagan
administration when we should be listening--and then we get angry that they're
not listening to us."
The classic communication's breakdown ultimately leads to a profound
generational gap, the entire social and cultural fabric falls apart and the
center can not hold together.
A colleague of Harris' tells it like it is. "We're just like our parents. We
fought really hard so that our children would have things easier than we did,
and now we resent them for it and sit around complaining that they lack
character because they had everything too easy."
Truth or Dare?
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Colin's Queer Walk on the Qt!
My Grace
Colin McCullough
copyright 2009
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I was introduced to the NBC smash hit, Will and
Grace, when I was entering high school and very much in the closet. It gave me encouragement to know that once I
passed the awkwardness of adolescences that I could one day be a confident gay
man. After coming out and accepting and,
eventually, celebrating my sexual orientation, my praise of the sitcom turned
into complaints. How can a good looking
gay lawyer living in Chelsea
never have a  boyfriend? He comes home every
night to his ever-present best straight friend, Grace, and handles the crazy
mischief caused by their two mutual friends, Jack (gay) and Karen (straight). First there is the flamboyantly aimless Jack
and then there is the boozy pill-popping, wealthy, self-indulgent Karen.
The four characters have little chance of
consummation; the relationship between the two leads makes for the perfect recipe
for a hilarious sitcom. Missing from
this equation for the first five seasons is any romance for my confident queer
idol. Toward the end of the show's run,
Will did start to see Vince, the
sexy, almost "straight acting," rough-around-the edges cop. By then, however, the ratings were not what
they once were. The show's writing was not as witty and clever.
Once I begin to analyze my great expectations for
such a high profile, cutting edge network sitcom, I have to stop and think of
what the show has accomplished. I find
that I can't generate too much frustration over this one comedy. It is the nature of network television maybe to
once in a while push the envelop, but never alienate. What it means to push the envelope and how
not to alienate the country will surely be a topic of discussion for queer
artists for many years to come. I mean
not to add to this ongoing debate but want to thank the show's creators for
another reason.
I have spent a considerable amount of academic time
focusing on the lack of romance in Will's life.
I asked the question, "What of Will's dating life?" In exploring this topic and expecting NBC to
produce a gay romantic sitcom, I was missing the central point of the
show. Will and Grace is about Will and
Grace. Will and Grace is about
friendship. As I am
becoming more of a confident gay man, I recently compared my
life to this ground-breaking sitcom. I
am single and don't have a Will. But I
do have a Grace.
 I met my Grace in a high school English class. Unlike Will's Grace, my Grace knew I was queer
before I told her and never tried to date me.
She has though always loved me--unconditionally. We attended different colleges and have
different career goals. We have
different tastes in men. Mainly, she
likes guys who sleep with women and I like guys who sleep with men. She prefers the suburbs and I love the
city. She likes The Daily Show and I
like Will and Grace. But I have a bond
with my Grace that may be more valuable than I'll ever have with a Will. In a truly great platonic friendship, there is
no power struggle, no jealousy and no sexual complications. Maybe one day I will have a truly great
relationship with a guy, but for right now I am single. Although I may not have a Will, I am very
fortunate to not have just one Grace, but four really close girl friends. I guess that you could say that Graces rule!
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Thom's Table on the Qt!
Thom Cardwell
copyright 2009
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 I'm all about seafood
and crab it's definitely among my favorites. Every Tuesday throughout the month
of August, The Blue Crab Feast is
being featured at the Oyster House, 1516 Sansom Street, Philadelphia,
with a traditional summer meal that includes three jumbo hard shell blue crabs,
corn on the cob and coleslaw for only $19 per person.
"An old-fashioned crab boil is one
of summer's great luxuries," explained the third-generation restaurateur Sam Mink. "It doesn't get much better
than fresh seafood in a beautiful setting, surrounded by family or friends. This
is a special meal, perfect for sharing on a special occasion or just as a
late-summer treat." He said that "blue crabs are a regional specialty,
available all summer long from the waters of the mid-Atlantic coast and prized
for their sweet, delicately flavored
meat."
The recently reopened seafood house is open for lunch, Monday to Friday, 11:30
am to 2:30 pm and until 3 pm on Saturday. Dinner is served Monday to
Saturday, 5 to 11 pm.
For more
information, call 215.567.7683; visit oysterhousephilly.com
 Okay, it's about time that we all return to having lunch--with great food and
style! I'm pleased to announce that Chef Jose Garces recently debuted an exciting Saturday lunch menu at Chifa,
707 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, expanding the restaurant's
lunch hours, 11:30 am to 2:30 pm, and from five to six days a week.
"The cuisine at Chifa is enormously
diverse, which makes it appropriate for any time of day," says Garces of
his Latin-Asian restaurant, "Our new
lunch menu is a celebration of fresh flavors and fascinating preparations that
can be enjoyed slowly, a la carte, or as our Hiram Bingham Express, for those
whose lunch hour is more limited."
We can all indulge with Chifa's Hiram
Bingham Express, a two-course meal, including a nonalcoholic beverage,
comprised of one first- and one second-course option from the lunch menu for
just $18. All lunch items are also available a la carte.
Highlights of the menu will include:
Chef Garces' signature Ecuadorian Ceviche, fresh shrimp with yellow tomato gel
and avocado; Solterito Arequipeno, edamame salad with queso fresco, tomato,
toasted garlic dressing and plantain chips; Lomo Saltado, seared skirt steak
with potatoes and stir-fried vegetables; and Red Curry Del General, jasmine
rice with coconut, crab, tofu and eggplant. A la carte menu items will range in
price from $7 to $15. For more information, call 215.925.5555; or visit chifarestaurant.com
 These days a stylish, gourmet lunch isn't confined to the city. I'll now
venture out into the suburbs. It's worth the trip to enjoy lunch at Blackfish
in Conshohocken, 119
Fayette Street, serving from 11:30 am to 2 pm, Tuesday
to Friday.
Chef Chip Roman has assembled an
affordable menu of items, including farm fresh salads, sandwiches, seafood and
pasta. As well as, the Big
"Burb" Burger!
If you'd rather do dinner then taste the seafood
centered, progressive American
cuisine with French influences at Blackfish. Roman is also currently featuring the "After 8
Special: 3 Courses for $40" plus tax and gratuity. This special menu is available to diners with
reservations, beginning at 8 pm, every Wednesday and Thursday, now through
Labor Day.
Roman will change the offerings each
week to create a unique and different chef's selections so diners can
literally return again.
His sample midweek menu will include
such dishes as first course: chilled pea soup, lobster, mint or sautéed Hudson
Valley foie gras, compressed rhubarb, grains of paradise, candied ginger;
second course: Cape may skate wing, Swiss chard, cherry tomato or agnolotti
(meat stuffed pasta dumpling), toasted butter, sage; and third course: warm
chocolate cake with house made ice cream or vanilla crème brulee.
Summer hours of operation at the BYOB
are: 11:30 am to 2 pm, lunch, Tuesday to Friday; 5-10 pm, dinner, Tuesday to
Friday. For more information, call 610.397.0888, or visit blackfishrestaurant.com
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What They Said:
copyrighted 2009 |
 I've always adored the Pet Shop Boys. Now they're
back in the news, ten albums later, and still following their own style of
being, well, the Pet Shop Boys and out Neil Tennant and Chris Love. Journalist Andrew Sullivan interviewed
them in OUT (June/July 2009). "We've
maintained that the Pet Shop Boys are always an alternative to what's going on.
It's 1992, it's all about Nirvana, but there's still the Pet Shop Boys. It's 2009,
it's all about the Pussycat dolls or something, but there's still the Pet shop
Boys. And I imagine that people in America hear a song of ours and think, 'Oh,
the Pet Shop Boys,' and they buy a song and suddenly find themselves drawn into
the world of the Pet shop Boys and the records with their one-word titles and
their designs and their videos and the recordings with Liza Minelli and Dusty
Springfield and the remixes with Madonna. It's our way of not really competing--and
it's why I'm not really bothered about success in America because we really try to
exist in our world."
_________________
 It's the 40th anniversary of "Woodstock,"
the live outdoor concert and "happening" in 1969. There's, of course, been
"Woodstock," the documentary/concert movie, and next month, "Woodstock
Remembered," directed by Ang Lee with a who's who of Hollywood appearing in the
film, opens in theaters nationwide. The event is one of the few of its kind
that people still talk about, pointed out folk singer/songwriter Arlo Guthrie,
a national treasure in his own right of "Alice Restaurant,"
and the son of American legendary singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie of "This Land
is Your Land." In The New York Times (July 26, 2009), he talked with Deborah
Solomon about being an iconic figure of the 1960s counterculture (he's now a
grandfather and a registered Republican because he believes in the need for
"loyal opposition" in our nation's Democratically dominated political world), why
he won't be performing his classic song for the reunion concert ("Most of the
audience that follows me is already sick of hearing it [Alice's Restaurant],"
and the importance of folk music despite it unpopularity today ("Folk music is
music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make
their own music"). What of "Woodstock"
as event itself? Guthrie recalls that it wasn't just white kids from the
suburbs discovering camping and smoking pot in the rain. "If it had been just that, that would have been fun enough, but the
truth is it wasn't that. There were all colors of kids and varieties of kids,
and these were the very same kids who had been brought up to believe in grade
school that when you see the big white mushroom cloud, be sure to get under the
desk quickly." In the age of flower power and free love, there must
have been at least a few queer ones in the crowd. Were you there?
_________________
 Queer pop film director John Waters and classic American queer
playwright Tennessee Williams seem an unlikely pair but in a return to evaluating
"The Memoirs" from the author of award-winning plays, "Streetcar Named Desire"
and "The Glass Menagerie and "One Arm," an amazing collection of short stories,
among others, the ever-surprising Waters recounts the influence of the former
upon the latter (The New York Times Book Review, November 19, 2006). "Years later, Tennessee Williams saved my life. The first
time I went to a gay bar I was 17 years old. It was called the Hut . . . in Washington, D.C.
Some referred to it as The Chicken Hut, and it was filled with early 1960s gay
men in fluffy sweaters, who cruised each other by calling table-to-table on
phones provided by the bar. 'I may be queer but I ain't this.' I remember
thinking. . . Tennessee
never seemed 'gayly-correct' even then, and sexual ambiguity and confusion were
always made appealing and exciting in his work . . . [he] didn't fit into his
own minority, so I had confidence not to either. Gay was not enough."
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Events on the Qt! |
July 30 - August 2 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
Other Events
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Economy got you down?
Freelance Job Busters!
Looking for extra income?
Commission for Sales!
BUCKmonkey is seeking people-oriented, sales-driven, freelancers to sell advertising and sponsorships for online, print and special events (some annual, well-established, corporate and nonprofit, and some one-time only, niche marketing for LGBT and mainstream) on a lucrative commission-only tiered basis. Individuals must be personable, professional and be motivated to make money through sales. Experience good but not required if willing to learn, positive attitude and highly motivated. Start immediately. Must be willing to work some evenings and some weekends. Home office encouraged. Send one-page resume, with references to Thom.Cardwell@BUCKmonkey.net
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