Wild Weather at Wildwood

Wild Weather at Wildwood

My lover Sarah and I were at Wildwood Resort for a yoga retreat. Wildwood is a rustic place on top of the hills above the Russian River. We had met there at another retreat a few years earlier. We had driven there from the Bay Area, blissfully unaware that there could be any problem with the weather. We were enjoying the views, the yoga and meditation sessions, mealtimes, and each other when soaking rainstorms parked themselves overhead.

I don’t remember which happened first, but the power went out and the buildings started leaking. The increasing cold, darkness, and wet made our stay less and less comfortable. We went to bed early to preserve power in the flashlights. Then the lack of refrigeration began to impair the quality of the food. Finally, we heard on the radio that flooding was expected along the Russian River, and we would need to leave for home a day early or we would be stuck there for several days until the waters subsided.

I panicked at the thought of being confined in increasingly unpleasant circumstances, and we fled as soon as we could. My intense need to leave rendered me deaf to all planning and advice. We were supposed to drive together as a caravan, but I pulled out as soon as we were packed. We were supposed to make a different turn at the bottom of the hill, but I forgot – until a passing Highway Patrol officer redirected us. I made another unwise turn that brought us into flooding on River Road, but I drove ahead despite the sign. As the water rose up the tires and the car started to lose traction on the roadway, I clenched the steering wheel and alternately prayed for help and urged the car forward.

My trusty car kept going, and we drove through drenching rain and heavy winds, on the largely deserted roads where we had been directed by another officer.

It seemed like hours, but we finally reached Santa Rosa, a bastion of civilization that had electricity and solid roofs. We settled into a restaurant for a hot meal, relaxed, and rejoiced.

Introvert-ish

Introvert-ish

I bill myself as an introvert. I’m usually quiet when in a group of people. When we’re eating, I chew my food so thoroughly that there are few times when my mouth is not full. So, unless I’m with people who also talk through food, I’m limited to comments I can come up with that fit into the conversation between bites. I’m happy listening to others while I chew, though, so that works out.

My definition of introvert focuses on my energy being drained when I spend time with two or more others. After an hour or two, I start looking for ways to make a graceful exit. If I need to stay with a group for an extended time, say at a party, the worst situation for me is to be standing with a small group of people. Eventually the others tire of our conversation and move towards other folks, and I am left alone, like a fish beached by the ebbing tide.

I do best at parties when I find a comfy place to sit and interesting people who stay seated near me. If they get up and go away, I’m OK if there’s something interesting to look at. My favorite party was a Bay Cruise celebrating our company’s 100^th anniversary. After we ate lunch, I toured the bridge and was allowed to steer the boat for a while Then I found a place on the foredeck and spent the rest of the cruise just watching the Bay go by.

On the other hand, I’m also a show-off. Given a script to read or sing from, I’m quite content to stand up in front of a large group of people. I’ve always been like this, from acting in children’s theater, delivering my high school valedictory address and competing in a televised quiz show, to performing in musical theater as an adult and delivering a Perspective on KQED radio. I may have a little stage fright, but I get up there and do it. What can I say? I like the sound of my own voice, and am happy to share it with the world.

Homosexuality

Homosexuality: nature or nurture?

Yes; both of them.

Why do we need to know what causes homosexuality? It matters because prevailing beliefs affect our lives. People who believe that homosexuality is not a choice are more likely to enact laws to protect gays’ civil rights. People who believe that homosexuality is chosen tend to favor criminal penalties and conversion therapy.

I believe gayness is a naturally occurring biological variation. This is backed up by research finding that same-sex pairings occur in similar amounts in all societies and all times. And they’re not limited to humans. Same-sex couplings have been observed throughout the animal kingdom: there are gay rams and lesbian monkeys.

I think gayness is like handedness. Both account for a small percentage of the population and run in families. You’re more likely to be left-handed if your parents were left-handed, but heredity does not explain everything. Both my parents were lefties, yet my brother and I are right-handed. This may be in part because we were mostly raised by a right-handed couple. My brother was a year and a half older when we came to live with them, so his right-handedness is more shallowly rooted than mine. He had trouble identifying his right hand as a child.

As to our sexuality. We may learn how to interact as a couple from our parents, but their example doesn’t seem to determine whom we as adults find attractive. Straight parents have gay kids and vice versa. Our father was gay, despite his marriage to our mother. My brother is straight, and I am gay. But any influence our father had on our sexuality must have been genetic; we never knew him to be gay while he was alive and we never lived with any gay couple.

Some researchers have thought that hormonal and other factors during gestation can affect one’s sexual orientation. For example, there’s a theory that a boy’s chance of being homosexual increases with each older brother he has. (See The Atlantic, How Older Brothers Influence Homosexuality, Olga Khazan, April 27, 2016) But that research is not very convincing, and has nothing to say about lesbians.

As to whether homosexuality is a choice. In a very few cases, maybe. Especially when there is no one of the opposite sex available or a person has been damaged by interactions with them. But in a culture where heterosexual bliss is held up as the supreme happiness, why would anyone choose to be part of a misunderstood and oppressed minority? And we have it really good in the United States. Gays are still likely to be beaten up, imprisoned, or killed in much of the world.

Having crushes on girls seemed natural when I was a girl. Falling into bed with my college roommate also felt right. When I converted to Christianity, though, their unwavering disapproval drove me away from her and into trying to be what the church expected of me. That didn’t work. So when I finally met gay Christians and other religious folk, I heaved a sigh of relief and gave up trying to be straight. I am proud to know who I am and I no longer try to be anything else.

Long Time No Post

I'm not quite sure why I've been silent for more than a year. Perhaps my time as co-leader of Openhouse's Queer Elders Writing Workshop has siphoned my creative energies away from this blog.
As it happens, though, the Coronavirus pandemic has suspended the workshop and all other Openhouse group activities for the next several weeks or months in hopes of spreading out the inevitable infections to stay within our hospitals' resources. And, as a person over 60 years old, I am advised to limit my exposure to groups of people.
So, I'm mostly at home for the next while, and sharing my accumulated writings of the past year, at the very least, seems like a good use of the time.

Religious Freedom to Discriminate?

Religious Freedom to Discriminate?

For centuries, people have used the belief that homosexual behavior is a sin to force gay people into abstinence or sham marriages; to criminalize same-sex conduct and imprison, torture, and kill gay men; and to condemn lesbians as witches and kill them. In America, fortunately, laws against homosexual conduct and laws barring same-sex marriage have been found unconstitutional. Nevertheless, even now, gay teens can be sent to “Christian” facilities to be brainwashed out of their God-given sexuality, as in the movie, Boy Erased.  Some enlightened states have banned this type of “therapy,” because it doesn’t work but instead causes depression and suicide. However, there is no federal prohibition against it.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 was designed to prevent government regulations from impinging on persons’ right to the free exercise of their religion. The law provides religious adherents with exemptions from general laws, for example, to allow them to wear religious haircuts or headgear despite laws or rules against them, or to allow them to observe their own religious holidays.

However, some Christians argue that their religious liberty gives them the right to discriminate against those who don’t share their rules. Thus, religious businesspeople wouldn’t be required to provide their services to all comers, so, no wedding cake for same-sex couples, or worse, no medical care for LGBT people. Religious employers seek to avoid the ACA’s mandate to pay for contraception.

In 2017, Trump signed an executive order directing the Attorney General to provide guidance to federal agencies in interpreting this law. The clear purpose of his order is to allow entities and people regulated by federal agencies to rely on their “religious views” to discriminate against women and LGBT people. For example, religious hospitals could refuse to provide abortions or could ban same-sex spouses from visiting their sick and dying partners, and Social Security employees could refuse to process benefits for a surviving same-sex spouse.

Such regulations would be monstrous. Of course, religious groups have the right to set standards for their own adherents, but it stops there. Their free exercise of religion does not allow them to impose their standards on outsiders, nor does free exercise allow adherents of any faith to discriminate against members of another faith or to exclude Muslim immigrants from the country. It seems to me that allowing such discrimination would violate the First Amendment by establishing that brand of Christianity as the state religion. America with a state religion would be a theocracy. I don’t want to live in any theocracy, let alone one that denies my right to exist.

Technology

Technology

Most of my life, I’ve been thrilled to witness and use new means of technology. My manual typewriter became an electric one, which then became a word processor, and then a computer. Then came machines that scanned the world’s knowledge and art into digital format and made it accessible everywhere, via the World Wide Web. Any question that comes to mind can probably be answered within a few taps of a touchscreen. I can carry an entire library in my shirt pocket; telephone books have become obsolete; and I can instantly get reviews of everything from movies to restaurants to doctors.

The benefits I get from these new technologies are abundance and convenience. All the knowledge and entertainment I can imagine and more fit into my pocket and are but a few clicks and a credit card away. I’ve become so lazy that to decide if I need to wear a jacket when I leave the house, I don’t open the door to check the temperature, I open an app that tells me the current temperature in every neighborhood of San Francisco. If I’m planning to be out for several hours, I open another app that tells me how the temperature is expected to change over that time period.

My problems with the online world relate to the quality of the information there, and what is being done with information about me. We may never know how much the 2016 election was affected by the Russians’ strategic deployment of disinformation about Hillary and leaked emails stolen from the DNC to the precise voters who would be most affected by them.

None of us is immune to being fooled by fake news. A friend had to tell me that something I shared with her was a fabrication. Nowadays, when I read a quotation that seems too prescient or learn of a misdeed that seems too evil, I go to a fact-checking site to be sure I’m reading something real, before believing it and sharing it with friends.

Which brings me to my other problem with Facebook. We think we’re the customers when we use the service to communicate with our friends and the world, watch videos, shop, and read the latest news. Not so. We’re the inventory. Facebook’s actual product is information about users – what we’ve liked, who our contacts are, what we read, and what we buy. Facebook’s actual customers are the people and companies who pay them for our information, so they can slot us into precise demographics to tell us and sell us whatever they please.

It isn’t just people’s purchases and votes that are affected by these fabrications. In 2018, the largest mass-killer of Jewish people in American history was prompted by online reading of right-wing conspiracy theories about the central American caravan of migrants and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Hate speech is not just politically incorrect; it is extremely dangerous.

The internet as a technology is neutral, but it gives harmful speech vastly increased volume and reach. And pictures and words that appear on screens may seem more likely to be factual than spoken words. Let’s be careful out there. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can incite people to use assault rifles.

Pocket Watch

Pocket Watch

There was a time when I really wanted to own a pocket watch. I’d worn a wristwatch most of my adult life. I’d considered using a pendant watch or a watch that pinned to my clothing, and rejected them. Somehow I’d been enraptured by the image of a powerful, wealthy, handsome man who wore a pocket watch on the end of a gold chain, who fished it out of his pocket and clicked the button on top to flip the case open.

I eventually bought myself a pocket watch. The case is embossed with the Statue of Liberty and sailing ships in the harbor on one side, and an eagle flying in front of a mountain on the other side. I also bought a snazzy chain to connect the watch to a clip that hooks through a button hole or over my waistband.

I wore the pocket watch for a while, especially on state occasions. I felt pretty cool clicking open the case to read the time. But that gratification was outweighed by the hassle of fishing the watch out of my pocket, getting it right side up, and clicking it open to tell the time, as compared to the ease of simply turning my arm to see my wristwatch.

Nowadays, I find it even easier to press the button on the ipod touch that lives in my shirt pocket to check the time, in part because the large digital read-out is easier to read than the analog face of my smallish wristwatch.

So, since ease of use is such a strong value to me, why did I want to use a pocket watch? Somehow it acquired for me an air of sophistication, wealth, and, of course, male privilege. If I couldn’t have that privilege, at least I could have the proper accessory.