JamesSavik

Here ya go Clay!

Xander- After the American Psychology Association and the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM as a disorder in 1973, the big Churches created their own "scientific" bodies to justify their discriminatory policies toward GLBT people. All of the big Christian Churches created and funded a proxy organization that it could use to create anti-gay propaganda and act as "experts" on the subject of homosexuality for the media, talk shows and other interested parties. The Catholic Church formed a pseudo-scientific organization called NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality). In the early eighties, NARTH recruited a University of Nebraska psychologist/researcher named Paul Cameron. They funded his own organization, Family Research Institute. As the organizations director, Cameron was immune from problems with the University which disassociated itself from his activities. Over the next few years, Cameron published a number of papers which make the case for some of the worst anti-gay propaganda that the churches and Ex-gay organizations use today. Among these are: people become gay though childhood sexual abuse, gays have outrageous numbers of sexual partners, gays have short lifespans, have numerous psychological problems, are a serious danger to molest children. Cameron's research was worthless. Most of his work was based on hear-say and secondary sources. Where Cameron actually did primary research, it was with prison inmates self-identified as homosexual (which were primarily drug addict prostitutes and sex offenders). Cameron's research and methods were so bad that the APA expelled him and other scientific organizations have condemned his activities and conclusions. Paul Cameron's work is the worst sort of scientific prostitution which starts with a premise and then finds the necessary evidence whether it exists or not. Although Cameron's lies and distortions have been refuted time after time, you still hear them quoted by a number of church sources which don't believe in science or objective truth in any case.

I'm not a slut.... Is the beginning of a one of those sentences that won't end well.

Back in the day, plain clothes cops could not sell drugs and then turn around and arrest a person for possessing drugs. It was called entrapment and its a cheap and easy way to make a lot of arrests and generate positive crime statistics that don't really mean anything. In the drug war hoopla the law was changed and now instead of entrapment, they call it a buy bust. In a similar manner, it wasn't legal for plain clothes cops to pose as prostitutes and then arrest Johns for proposition them. The law changed and now they call it a prostitution sting. In both cases, the police provide enticement (drugs, sexy would be hookers) and opportunity, key elements of the crime. Would a crime actually take place if the cops we're there? No drugs are waved under anyones nose, no sexy would-be hooker shakes their butt at some hungry mutt looking to score. This is NOT good police work. All you end up doing is busting a lot of people for minor drug or soliciting charges and ruining marriages and lives. No drugs are off the street and hookers just change corners. The Dateline NBC "To Catch A Predator" is the most crass type of sensationalism. Recently in my area the Perverted Justice people teamed up with the local DA and the TV news and caught about 20 people ages 20~45. None of the cases have gone to court yet. The DAs and Sheriff got a chance to be tough on crime in front of the camera. My thoughts on this sort of thing are that it is doing something for mere perception of taking positive action. I seriously doubt that the majority of the idiots they catch are serious predators. Most appear to be garden variety dumbasses.

I can't address this topic without swerving off into politics. I will try to stay in the middle of the road but if the mods kill this post I'll understand FUD= Fear, Uncertianty and Doubt Whenever politicians are slinging FUD, you can be sure they expect you to give up some freedoms. The FUD bandwagon is pounding the drums loudly about sexual predators. CNN and Fox both have hour long shows that talk about very little else. Politicians love to sign their names to tougher and tougher laws: life-long registration of sex offenders, life imprisionment for a first offense, mandatory minimum sentencing. We are told day after day that pedophiles are unredeemable and must be put away forever. This crime is such a horror- constution? We don't need no stinking constution. Illegal searches- don't matter. Due process? Entrapment? Forgetaboutit. The ends justify the means, right? Never mind the fact that up to 30% of sex crimes end up being false accusations. Many of them only come up when a divorce is in progress or there is some money or a grudge involved. Does any of this sound at all familiar? Remember the Drug War? How about the Patriot Act? Does it make you feel any safer that the goverenment can suspend constutional liberties and protections when they are inconvenient? Since those changes in the law have been made to fight drugs and terrorists, are we now more or less vulnerable to malicious manupulation and misuse of those laws? Are there less drugs and terrorists now? Are there grandstanding D.A.s just waiting to jump into the limelight with a spicy sex case like the prosecutor in the Duke Lacrosse rape case? You bet your ass there are. We don't have to worry about our country becoming a dictatorship. It is well on its way. Every constutional liberty that we relenquish out of fear is another nail in the coffin of liberty. If you think I'm being alarmist, where do you think sex laws came from? For generations, in a different form, sex laws (sodomy laws) were used as a legal club to beat homosexuals and run them out of town. It has only been since the seventies that sex laws have become about protecting women and children.

Happy b-day hug Dio! Have a great year pal!

The Beast from the X-men has been a long time favorite of mine. I relate to him because he is big and could be quite dangerous but is actually cultured, smart and quite gentle. I started out with the X-men Generations Beast. I love the smirk. When I heard that Kelsey Grammer was going to be the Beast in the X3 movie, I thought that I was going to hate it. It turned out to be my favorite Beast yet. Another avatar that I occasionally us is Wiley Coyote. He too is smart and technically adept but has really bad luck. He makes up for the bad luck by never quitting and being physically very tough. Honorable Mentions: Who doesn't love the Simpson's? Here are Homer, Barney and Snowball. Calvin and Hobbes are old favorites. Grr is cool even if his head is full of lose nuts and bolts! Angel is hot!

A big birthday hug for Vance and a scratch behind the ears for his big, friendly kitty!

In my own work, I don't think so. I try to put up some big red signs around dangerous places that read "thar be dragons here". There are several issues that do concern me. First- I fear that some young people will be motivated to come out who shouldn't and it will lead them to disaster. Coming out can be, and usually is, a good experience for most people. However, there is a sizable minority of kids with fundamentalist or otherwise nutty parents who would be opening the gates of hell for themselves if they came out. They could be exposing themselves to quack therapy and all sorts of abuse at the hands of intolerant or otherwise ignorant parents without any recourse since they are under 18. Some stories paint too rosy a picture of gay life: everybody gets the guy of their dreams, gets rich and live happily ever after. While I'm not opposed to happy endings, I am afraid that they are few and far between in the real world. Second- I wouldn't want my work or anyone else's to inspire any young people to enter into sexual relationships before they are emotionally read. In many stories, the hero finds the love of his life in seventh grade. In the real world, kids that start out that young are in for a lot of challenges. The very people who are supposed to protect teens from harm, the law, labels adolescents having sex as delinquents. While teenagers have been having sex since there have been teenagers, American society is entirely too neurotic about sex in general to handle str8 kids having sex. The very idea of gay teens having gay sex makes ordinarily sane people nuts. Finally- our community faces many serious challenges: AIDS, discrimination, bigotry, homophobia, discriminatory laws, our relationships are not recognized by law and our communities rate of chemical dependency is triple the national average. I know that a lot of people are reading for escapism but as writers, we don't do ourselves or our community any favors by failing to acknowledge the pack of 800 pound gorillas that assail us. It isn't necessary to write all depressing and sad stories per see. I believe that a good writer can write a good story while acknowledging those challeges that we all face as individuals and as a community. Those problems and challenges that we face provide an endless well of drama if we have the imagination and courage to face them.

How did I miss this thread? Happy B-day Kurt!

Way back in the late ninties we had one of the first school shootings about 20 minutes down the road from here. Luke Woodham was by all accounts a nerd. He hung with nerds. He dressed like a nerd. He played D&D and spent hours behind his computer. My kind of people. Problem was that he lived in Pearl Mississippi where anyone who plays D&D, fails to wear the latest fashions from All-be-crummy and Bitch and isn't a member of the first baptist church then life is going to be like a never ending Korn song. I won't excuse Luke Woodham or anybody else for shooting people at random. There is no reason or excuse for that. Every pain has a name and if you are going for some pay back, there is no good reason to go after innocent people. Give it to the guilty. I ALMOST did it myself once. I had my old scoutmaster's head in the crosshairs of scope and a round in the chamber. Then I saw his kids and couldn't pull the trigger. It is Something that I've had mixed feelings about ever since. All of the lives that bastard destroyed, all the pain, all the destruction he caused and when the moment of truth arrived, I couldn't pull the trigger.

Birdie! I hope that all is well and you have a GREAT year ahead! James

Pardon me but I want to express a different opinion about the day of silence. Although non-violent passive resistance is extolled as a power tool of social change, IT NEVER WORKS WITHOUT THE USE OF FORCE. Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King did NOTHING to advance the civil rights movement except to act as martyrs for their cause. Real change did not take place until the sitting president showed the moral and political will to use force to implement policy. In LBJ's case, force was to mobilize the national guard at key confrontations and task the FBI to put pressure on local law enforcement and racist organizations and politicians. Passive resistance often ends in disaster: many, many peaceful protestors in our country, which is fairly tolerant of dissent, are maced, beaten and jailed. At Beijing in the early 90s, protesters were run over with tanks. At Kent State and Jackson State in the 70s, national guard troops poorly trained for crowd control shot scores of college kids. In other countries "Dirty Wars" make "un-people" of student protesters without regard to how peaceful they are. The grandfather of passive resistance himself, Gandhi was shot in the head. Yes: the day of silence is useful to raise awareness. However- don't harbor any illusions about its impact. Real change without the power and force of law behind it simply will not happen.

English Dogwood (white), Azalea (red & pink) Louisannia Iris Red Azalea Hibiscus Dogwood Blue-eyed Grass- a wildflower that appears if you don't mow your grass too soon

WTF??? Somebody really screwed the pooch to let this thing get so out of hand. Where were the campus police? Giving out tickets and running from the serious shit apparently. Where were the police/sheriff's dept? Hiding behind a big assed Oak tree. Heroes- I mean ZEROS- every one.

Vonnegut's books have made cameo appearences in Freethinker's stories.

Gay, str8, bi- it doesn't matter. Dennis is the sort of punk that'll do you in the dark and 'dis you the next day. I hope that somehow he ends up with Aaron Keslin from Desert Dropping. Together their reign of terror would be an epic horror story and a sure sign of the apocalypse.

Good dialogue is something of an oxymoron: it is something synthetic that must appear natural to be considered any good. There are a few classic mistakes of dialogue that are usually disused: too much dialogue, too little dialogue, uncharacteristic dialogue. unnatural language in dialogue, overuse of dialect and "tell-all" dialogue. The author must use their own judgment in regard to what is too much or too little dialogue. Unnatural language in dialogue is a common mistake. Remember WHO you are writing about: are a group of middle school kids very likely to speak the queens English? What is their vocabulary likely to be like? While it is unnecessary to be as profane as real middle schoolers, portraying them as wide-eyed innocents is lame. Some of todays middle schoolers can tell stories that would make a sailor blush. [i'm not making a value judgment on this state of affairs, I'm just calling it like I see it.] Overuse of dialect can be very annoying to the reader. While the use of dialect adds some regional flavor to the story, a little goes a very long way. Be careful to use dialect that is not too obscure or you'll be sending your readers to the dictionary. You don't want to do this as it interupts the flow and breaks the spell of the story you are trying to tell. While dialogue may be used to reveal character, take care to keep a character's dialogue in character. I hate characters that talk like a gangsta in one scene and a rocket scientist in another. Tell-all dialogue is horribly annoying. For an example of this sort of abomination just listen to 7th grade girls talking on the phone. [be VERY careful doing this as it can cause shooting sprees.]

Trevor- I'm sorry that you had to deal with that ass-hat. He is clearly in his element in the trailer park. JS

Oh the horror.

This is a reminder that there are ignorant savages out there that think that gay people can be "cured" with an exorcism. Why is it that every quack in the country feels comfortable doing what amounts to psycological experiments on gay people in the name of a cure? I want to try curing fundamentalism with a lobotomy. Let's see how that works out.

Word to the great one: I never left.

Bah... you should try out to be an A&F model Ian. I bet you would make it.

Are you a bad writer? Of course you're not a bad writer. I never see you at the meetings.

As cats are carnivores and often eat things that aren't exactly thrilled about being eaten, injuries to the mouth and tongue are common. Mice, squirrels and other rodents with piercing teeth often get in one last bite or claw before they go off to the great beyond. Mouth injuries from fighting other cats are far less common. They can get scratches almost anywhere but they avoid getting their paws near enemy teeth. Bite injuries are most common on the ears, back of the head, neck and back. I suggest that any serious cat people get a copy of: The Cornell Books of Cats: The Comprehensive and Authoritative Medical Reference for Every Cat and Kitten Mordecai Siegal: Villard:1997. ISBN 0679449531 It is written for vets as a reference for felis catus and their associated problems but contains a wealth of valuable information for any cat owner. It is especially helpful when you can speak the language when you are talking to the vet which saves time and improves understanding.