Say you have two people who are interviewed for a job: a heterosexual African-American male and a gay Anglo-American (that’s white, non-Hispanic, non-Jewish, non-Native American) male. Now, let’s say the interviewer is prejudiced against both black people and gay people. As soon as the black man walks through the door, he’s got one strike against him with the interviewer. Now the white guy walks through the door. We know he’s gay, but he’s also very masculine, so the interviewer doesn’t realize he’s gay. It’s also considered inappropriate in most interview situations to ask about family and other personal subjects.

When the gay white guy gets the job, he doesn’t come out right away to his coworkers. Over time he starts to talk more and more about dating or his partner or going out to certain clubs or attending a certain church, but only to certain coworkers. As time goes by, all of his coworkers learn he is gay and some of them pull away from him because they don’t like gay people and don’t “approve” of homosexuality. Through the complex world of office politics, the “anti-gays” put pressure on the others until the gay employee is isolated and ostracized. Eventually he quits or is fired because his performance drops.

Now both the black guy and the gay guy have been discriminated against, it only took a little longer before the gay guy “got his.” The black guy never even got his foot in the door. The gay guy got in the door, but was shoved back out a little while later.

Some may argue that at least the gay guy was given the opportunity to prove himself. Others may point out that, due to the preconceived notions of his coworkers, he may have gotten to work but there was nothing he could do to prove himself. And a few may even point out that at least the black guy didn’t get fooled into thinking he stood a chance, so he didn’t waste his time in a business that wouldn’t have welcomed him.

What do you think? Is one form of discrimination “better” than another? Is it okay since the discrimination doesn’t surface until later? For me, it doesn’t matter: discrimination is discrimination no matter where it falls in a timeline.

Now, a letter that would be tragic if it weren’t so funny.

Dear Cary,

 

I am a 28-year-old man who is attracted to women, especially to those in my age group. I have been trying to come to terms with this attraction since my early teens. This issue had not bothered me significantly through my teens, but the problem has been worsening over the years. I have been in therapy twice a week (group and one-on-one) for several years now, but I still cannot come to terms with these feelings.

 

Over the years I’ve had several platonic friendships with women, and have been able to see beyond my physical and emotional desires for them. However, I lately find it increasingly difficult to interact rationally when I first meet a beautiful woman. Over the years, I have taken to indulging in masturbating to pornographic images a few times a week, but I find this behavior shameful and despicable. I often wonder why I am cursed with such feelings, and have grown to hate myself. Could you recommend a solution to this problem?

 

Attracted to Women

 

Dear Attracted to Women,

First, my friend: You are not alone. Living in secret, exchanging furtive glances of desire, it is easy to feel that you are alone. But many men have felt as you do and eventually found that they could live happily, sometimes even in the open, with a woman.

The second thing you must understand is that this attraction, however strange it may feel to you, this is not your fault. You were likely born this way. As you look back over your childhood, you may see something you overlooked at the time, a harbinger of things to come: a basketball, perhaps. Many men like you will recall happy afternoons on the front driveway dribbling a basketball and putting it through the hoop; later they will see, aha! That was a sign! I was turning hetero! Others will tell you privately that from their earliest days in school they were drawn to the wood shop, where they fantasized about women, risking loss of limb as they turned bedposts on a wood lathe or inserted dowels into carefully drilled holes for a fit so tight it squeaked when twisted. These kinds of things, clichéd as they may sound, do often precede the kind of heterosexual difference you are so bravely trying to accept and cope with.

Take heed: There is room for you in this world, however it may seem otherwise.

Believe me: It’s likely you were born this way. There is nothing wrong with you.

Throughout the ages many men like you — presidents, athletes, generals, even a few musical theater actors — have felt these same stirrings of attraction to the opposite sex and have dealt with them in various ways. Some repress them. Others corral them into narrow and strictly controlled practices known as “dating” and “marriage.” Those who succumb to marriage, “knocking up” innocent women, sometimes find they are unable to control their urges even in the usually sexless realm of marriage. Outwardly happy and well adjusted, they live secretly knowing that they really should be watching opera, traveling to Provence and studying — not just dabbling in! — the ancient and venerable arts of perfumery.

No matter what you decide to do, you have to get over your self-hatred. There is nothing wrong with you. You were probably born this way. It’s not your fault.

But where, you may ask, do you find others — men like yourself who are also attracted to women and find no shame in it, as well as those women themselves who see not some shameful obsession in your desirous gaze but instead are inwardly thrilled at the prospect of a man’s attentions and might, with proper coaxing, submit to your desires?

You could look in bars.

Naturally you would feel great shame about this. But it can be overcome. Look around you. Make a daily practice of it. Study your surroundings. See that couple in the supermarket, barely speaking to each other or looking at each other, furtively picking among the broccoli and asparagus, going about their lives? Likely that very couple is actually in heterosexual relationship, though they carefully disguise it with their apparent disdain for one another.

You might not believe it but such people can be found in most any medium-sized town, in bars and hotels, lounging about freely in restaurants. It takes some careful observing but after a while you will notice here and there groups of men quietly eyeing women and women quietly eyeing men. In such society you may find at long last release from your shame and isolation.

But what would you say to a woman if she did show interest? And what would you do, Lord help you, if things reached that stage where you felt compelled to ask, with a shiver of disgust, “I’m going to put this in there?”

Yes, it may seem at first rather disgusting, if not anatomically impossible. But do not let your initial feelings of disgust fool you. You will find that the actual act is not all that awful or unsanitary. You may even, after a time, begin to enjoy it. Remember: You may be different, but you were born different. It’s not your fault. Enjoy it. And always wear a condom — even while bathing.

Now some of you have heard about someone hacking into Sarah Palin’s email account. If not, well, now you have.Check out this story for more details: FBI Searches Apartment in Palin Hacking Case.

Readers, I have advised you before to read between the lines and to ask questions. Well, after reading the story and re-reading the story, here are a few of mine:

Palin used “gov.sarah” in one of her Yahoo e-mail addresses she sometimes uses to conduct state business. The hacker targeted her separate “gov.palin” account.

She uses a Yahoo! email account to conduct state business!?!?!? What’s up with that? As many of you know, I have family in Alaska, and two of my family members are employed by the state of Alaska. Their work emails end in “alaska.gov.” If my family can get government email accounts for their government jobs, why can’t the governor? Of course maybe she was communicating something outside of official channels and didn’t want it to be discovered. Forget it. That’s another topic of discussion.

The FBI obtained logs Saturday establishing the connection from Gabriel Ramuglia of Athens, Ga., who operates an Internet anonymity service used by the hacker.

Ramuglia told the AP the FBI asked him to confirm the address appeared in his records, and it did. Ramuglia said his logs showed the hacker visiting Yahoo’s mail service.

Remind me not to use his anonymity service. Doesn’t appear very anonymous.

Experts said the hacker apparently left an easy trail for investigators.

“He might as well have taken a picture of his house and uploaded it,” said Ken Pfeil, an Internet security expert. “He should have just set up a big beacon that said, ‘Here’s my house,’ or confessed. If they can’t catch this guy based on all the information posted on the Web then all bets are off.”

So the perpetrator made it incredibly easy to trace and pin on the son of Democratic legislator in Tennessee. Hhmm! Either his son is incredibly stupid, or there is a set-up. I can’t say for sure, but this will be an interesting case.

The hacker described guessing correctly that Alaska’s governor had met her husband in high school, and knew Palin’s date of birth and home Zip code. Using those details, the hacker tricked Yahoo’s service into assigning a new password, “popcorn,” for Palin’s e-mail account.

Birthdate and home ZIP code. That’s easy. I can find most people’s birthdates and ZIP codes in less than five minutes. The way she met her husband would be a little more difficult, but given that she is a public figure and someone who was probably asked that question repeatedly over the course of her brief political career, it shouldn’t take too long to learn either.

In the current presidential election, a major percentage of voters are already committed to “their candidate”; new arguments and evidence fall on deaf ears. And yet, if we, as a country, truly want change, we must be open-minded, flexible and willing to revise our opinions when new evidence warrants it. Most important, we must be able to recognize and acknowledge when we are wrong.

Referring to a study completed in 1999 at Cornell:

The article’s conclusion should be posted as a caveat under every political speech of those seeking office. And it should serve as the epitaph for the Bush administration: “People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s.”

And another studied completed at Emory:

Westen asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate negative (defamatory) information about their 2004 presidential choice. Areas of the brain (prefrontal cortex) normally engaged during reasoning failed to show increased activation. Instead, the limbic system — the center for emotional processing — lit up dramatically. According to Westen, both Republicans and Democrats “reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted” (cognitive dissonance).

What always amazes me is how often scientific studies confirm common sense.

The Advocate: Where do gay rights fall in terms of priorities for Log Cabin Republicans as an organization?
Patrick Sammon: We’re a gay rights organization working from inside the Republican Party, and so we’re completely focused on how do we advance equality for LGBT people. And the fact is, doing so will require votes and support from Republicans, and so we made this endorsement of Senator McCain with the very clear focus on how this decision will impact and benefit our community. The fact is, even those who disagree with our decision should realize there’s a 50% chance that Senator McCain wins this election, and I ask those people, do they really want our community sitting on the sidelines for the next four years? I say no. I say that Senator McCain, in the totality of his record, is someone who has demonstrated that he can be a maverick, that has demonstrated he’s an inclusive Republican, and I believe that if he’s elected, as a community we will make progress on some of the issues that are so important to all.

From this I conclude that the Log Cabin organization wants to make sure the door to his office remains open in the event John McCain becomes president. If they were to refuse to endorse Senator McCain, then why would he ever take the time to talk to them about any issues that are important. Interesting.