The Republic of T.

I’ve already mentioned my no-longer-secret celebrity crush on Lance Bass, but there are a couple of things still worth mentioning about his coming out. First of all, if you have a chance, go pick up People magazine and read the full interview with Bass. I read it while standing in line at the grocery store, and I think after reading it you come away from it feeling good about having read it.

Admittedly, it’s a sympathetic celebrity news piece, but it comes down to Lance coming out to his friends and family, some of whom struggled with it, but all of whom ended up embracing him. He’s also up front about his faith, that he still goes to church, and that he doesn’t feel conflicted about being gay and being a Christian. What’s more, he’s in a solid relationship and says he “definitely” wants to have kids. All in all, I say good for him.

Beyond the interview, though, the response to it from *NSYNC fans is even more interesting, and telling.

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And, after a long struggle, I have won. I know, I know. A few people advised me to wait until the next WWDC, in case any new iPods were announced. But to be honest, I couldn’t see going that long with no music on my commutes. Besides, as soon as I bought my fist iPod the photo and video iPods were announced. So there’s always going to be a new one around the corner.

But before my success, I spent four hours on the phone with Apple Care support and made a trip to the Genius Bar at the Apple store to get the new iPod working. And after all that I ended up solving the problem by doing some googling, and finding the one answer that none of the experts at Apple Care or the Genius Bar came up with. (And when they finally did, I found a much easier way to do it than they recommended.) I will now attempt to relate my experience here, and unfold the mystery a troublesome file named “iPodDriver.kext.” If nothing else maybe some other hapless person will come across it and be helped.

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As predicted earlier, Mel apologized.

The following is the complete text of Mel Gibson’s statement regarding his arrest for investigation of driving under the influence of alcohol:

“After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the L.A. County sheriff’s. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person.

“I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said and I apologize to anyone who I have offended.

“Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the deputies involved for my belligerent behavior. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry.

“I have battled the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health.”

Of course, there are a couple of things that still need saying.

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This reminds me of a saying I’ve heard from my mom a couple of times: A drunk man speaks a sober mind.

It’s not bad enough that Gibson, darling of religious right since he gave them their very own snuff film, was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. But according to one report he was also disorderly, and loudly anti-semetic during his arrest.

TMZ has four pages of the original report prepared by the arresting officer in the case, L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy James Mee. According to the report, Gibson became agitated after he was stopped on Pacific Coast Highway and told he was to be detained for drunk driving Friday morning in Malibu. The actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, “My life is f****d.”

… Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, “You mother f****r. I’m going to f*** you.” The report also says “Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he ‘owns Malibu’ and will spend all of his money to ‘get even’ with me.”

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: “F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Gibson then asked the deputy, “Are you a Jew?”

I’ll just wait for his christian nationalist cronies to line up and condemn his remarks. But I won’t hold my breath.

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As in “Opps, I forgot to post the Friday music meme!” With everything going on yesterday around moving the company to a new office, I completely forgot about doing the random ten.

Fortunately, even though my iPod is busted, iTunes still works. So…

1. Turn it (or your MP3 player) on.
2. Randomize your whole collection.
3. Post the first ten.

1. Pon de Replay (Pon De Club Play Version) from the album “Pon de Replay – EP” by Rihanna
2. Purple Rain from the album “All The Way” by Etta James
3. Popcorn (Diplo Remix) from the album “Verve Remixed 3″ by Diplo & Walter Wanderley
4. Keep Me In Your Heart from the album “The Wind” by Warren Zevon
5. Give It Up, Turn It Loose from the album “Best Of En Vogue” by En Vogue
6. I Feel for You from the album “Prince: The Hits 1″ by Prince
7. The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get from the album “The Best of Morrissey” by Morrissey
8. She Moves Through The Fair from the album “Spiritual Spiritual” by B-Tribe
9. Things Just Ain’t The Same (Hex Hector’s Club Mix) from the album “Things Just Ain’t The Same (CD5 Maxi-Single)” by Deborah Cox
10. 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover from the album “Negotiations and Love Songs: 1971-1986″ by Paul Simon

Whatcha got?

Well, I think it’s really and truly dead. I mentioned before that it was on life support. Well, I think it’s almost time to pull the plug. My attempts to resuscitate it this morning came to naught, and tonight I came home and tried everything suggested on this webpage. I reset it. I restored it. I reinstalled the software. I even reinstalled iTunes.Nothing.

At one point this evening, it seemed to work. After restoring it, iTunes started up and immediately recognized it. Soon, the iPod was updating and all the songs were being loaded. Since I had something like 14 to 15 GB of music, I figured it would take a while, so I went out to the grocery store. By the time I came back, iTunes had dropped the iPod again. They were back to not speaking to each other after a brief reconciliation. Nothing I could do would bring them back together.

So, it looks like I’ll be taking it to the nearest Apple Store tomorrow to see if there’s anything they can do for it. I’ve been holding off on getting a video iPod, but if they can’t resurrect this one, I may finally have an excuse. I’ll have to buy a new one, because I enjoy my commute a lot less without it. Instead of music, I listen to the roar of traffic, the groaning of the escalator, the droning of the recording announcing the closing of the subway doors, and the inane conversations going on around me. Plus, without earbuds in my ears, I might end up having to talk to someone I don’t want to. (The iPod is, after all, one half of the social shield of iPod+book/magazine.)

Besides, my commute is about the only time I get to listen to music anyway. And I’d like to be able to choose from my whole collection rather than having to pick a playlist and stick with it for the day. So, I may be doing some shopping this weekend. And with my luck I’ll get a video iPod and Apple will announce the next generation days later.

Before I get started with this week’s round-up, I have a confession to make, prompted by a bit of news this week. See, for a period of my life I was a boy band fan; a big gay boy ban fan. Celebrity crushes are a regular thing with me, and in this case I had one in every group. When a video came on, I’d park myself in front of the set hoping to catch my favorite.

I knew they were all straight, but a single gay man can dream, can’t he? And there was one I dreamt about more than the rest. He wasn’t a lead singer or anything like that, so I had to really pay attention to catch a glimpse of him, but my attention seemed to focus on him naturally. He had a certain something, but I didn’t know what it was. Now I do. That’s not the biggest news of the week, jut it rocked my world just a little. Anyway, that’s my confession. I’ve always been and remain a “Lance man.” Now for the round-up.

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Help. It started sometime a week ago, and I finally tried to do something about it tonight. A while ago, I noticed my iPod wasn’t showing up in iTunes anymore. It showed up in the Finder in Mac OS X, but not in iTunes. What’s more, iTunes began launching every time I start my computer, even though it doesn’t detect my iPod.

So, I looked around online for advice and tried some of the stuff I found here. Specifically, I got down to step 8 and tried reinstalling iTunes and the iPod firmware. That turned out to be a minor disaster because I couldn’t install iTunes. So I figured I had to uninstall it first. I dragged it to the trash, etc., and still couldn’t install. The installer said there was nothing to install.

So now I had no iTunes. At least not until I went here and found the info I needed. Voila. ITunes installed. So, I went back and started iTunes, and it announced that there was new software for my iPod and asked if I wanted to install it. Which I did. But it still doesn’t detect my iPod. It doesn’t show in iTunes and when I check iTunes preferences it says there’s no iPod attached. But the iPod does appear in the finder.

The only thing I haven’t done is restore my iPod. I guess I could back up my music collection and try that, but frankly it scares me. Who knows how that will turn out.

Any Mac whiz kids out there got any tips for me?

Imagine a troubled gay teenager contemplating suicide, dialing a suicide prevention line, and getting James Dobson on the other end. It could happen. Via a government agency, it looks like the Bush administration could trying to starve a suicide prevention line of funding in order to make that happen. Or it might just be payback.

This is the kind of thing that won’t register on most people’s radar, but it’s important and once it was brought to my attention I wanted to do everything I could to let others know about it to. The suicide prevention program 1-800-Suicide is in trouble. It’s in danger of being shut off, or falling into the hands of the federal government.To put it another way, and underscore the importance, it’s in danger of falling into the hands of the George W. Bush administration. That’s something that should concern a lot of people, especially the gay community, because there are some pretty serious — even deadly— implications for LGBT youth. But first, sere’s the vital info:

1-800-SUICIDE is in danger of being shut off or worse falling into the hands of the Federal Government. With teenage suicide being the 3rd leading cause of death between 18 to 24 year olds – our government should not be duplicating prevention efforts but helping fund the many local organizations and non-profits with proven track records on prevention. In addition our government should not be in the business having access to this private and sensitive information!

Despite the fact that almost 2 million callers have reached help and hope over the last 8 years, and a government funded evaluation stating the benefits of 1-800-SUICIDE, the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), a division of Health & Human Services, has decided to create their own government run system where they would have direct access to confidential data on individuals in crisis.

To protect the callers to suicide crisis hotlines the management of 1-800-SUICIDE has refused to turn over the control of the National Hopeline Network to the SAMHSA. As a result it is in danger of being completely shut off to the almost 2,000 individuals in crisis who reach out daily because our government has not only ended all funding but also continues to owe $266,000 in overdue bills to the Hopeline from 2 years ago. (This is not new funds – but money that was already allocated!).

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

The Bush administration ignoring human services and running up bills is nothing new, but there’s more to this story than meets the eye, and the outcome could be detrimental to LGBT youth in our communities.

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A couple of months ago I posted about study claiming that children learn racism by the time their three years old. I was reminded of that post when, via Damn Straight, I came across this article about nursery schools in the UK teaching about same sex relationships, which included the idea that kids learn homophobia as early as they learn racism.

Many gay parents of nursery school children are reluctant to "come out" for fear that their children might become the target of homophobic bullying, said the union.

Young boys at primary school are also bullied and called "gay" if they do not conform to perceived male stereotypes – reflecting the union's belief that homophobic prejudice should be addressed at an early age when children are in nursery school.

The NUT said: "It is particularly important to begin to make three to five-year-olds aware of the range of families that exist in the UK today". That would includes families with single parents or those with "two mums" or "two dads", the union said.

The union added: "There will be parents who are gay or lesbian who will want to be reassured that that their children will be safe in the setting."

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I'm on a business trip today, so posting will be slow and I'll probably be otherwise occupied when the Washignton State Supreme Court rules on marriage.

And, by the way, thanks for giving me a reason to agree wit Gay Patriot on something. I don’t honestly care what you were doing in the bushes with that guy or how you get your rocks off. But do me a favor, please, and in the future leave the rest of us, and gay culture out of it.

In a sweat, the ashen-faced singer declared: “Are you gay? No? Then f*** off! This is my culture!”

Then he claimed: “I’m not doing anything illegal. The police don’t even come up here any more.

“I’m a free man, I can do whatever I want. I’m not harming anyone.”

And according to Queerty, you’ve made similar claims.

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I’ve posted many times about the particular brand of homophobia found in some black churches. So much, in fact, that probably some readers here have grown weary of hearing about it, and at least one has told me that my anger regarding the subject is a sign of “self-hatred.” I’d probably say that my anger stems from my own experience of the phenomenon.

I’ve written about black ministers like Willie Wilson, Alfred Owens, and Eddie Long spewing anti-gay hatred from the pulpit, black ministers in Indiana praying for more discrimination against gay people, another black minister who announced he’d ride with the Klan as long as they opposed marriage equality, and about how another black minister turned his back when Dwan Prince’s mother asked for help in the wake of a gay bashing that left her son in a coma and in a wheelchair afterwards. And I’ve written about how all of the above effect the HIV/AIDS epidemic in black communities.

So, yes, I’ve beaten that drum a lot. Maybe too much, but as a black gay man it’s something affects me — even as a non-christian — and thus it’s something I can’t not talk about. But maybe it’s to much coming from me, as I admit my own pain and anger related to the subject are still rather raw. So I was interested to see Andrew Sullivan take up the subject with a post to Billy Porter’s column about his own experience with the black church as a gay man.

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Wow. I’m not sure what I said when I got the news, but it was loud enough to get coworkers coming to my desk to see what was wrong. My hometown newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle, just dropped Anne Coulter like a hot rock. The announcement includes this statement.

But biting commentary is one thing. A personal attack is another – such as when she slammed several 9-11 widows for backing Democrats and allegedly milking the tragedy for political purposes. That charge alone isn’t necessarily unfair, but to suggest they were “enjoying” their husbands’ deaths and calling them “witches” – well, that’s where stridency crosses a line.

Moreover, in the weeks since, Coulter herself had become the issue, rather than the topics she was writing about, which is an unhealthy circumstance for a journalist, even a columnist.

This editorial page stands for many things, and we make no bones about it. But one of the things we stand for is civility. Pulling Ann Coulter’s column hurts; she’s one of the clearest thinkers around. But you’ve got to stand by your principles, even – especially – when it’s painful.

I don’t want to oversell this but let me explain what this means. The Augusta Chronicle is a very conservative paper. I’m talking really, really conservative. It makes the Washington Times look vaguely like the Village Voice, or at least like the New York Times. If a paper that conservative is joining the others that have dropped Coulter, it can only mean she’s truly crossed a line that even the reddest of red states can’t ignore.

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I’ve come across a few items lately that have me rethinking free speech and religious expression in some contexts. while I’m not sure what I think of it all. Like Via Preemptive Karma, I learned about a christian group in Chicago that filed suit after being kicked off the Navy Pier, where they were preaching and handing our fliers, after being told they would have to do their preaching in the designated free speech zone.

A Philadelphia-based evangelical Christian organization filed suit in federal court Tuesday seeking an emergency restraining order to allow them to preach and hand out their literature at Navy Pier.

The plaintiffs are five members of the group Repent America, which, according to the suit, seeks “to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in the public square.”

… According to the suit, the plaintiffs were doing just this on Saturday, July 15, at Navy Pier, when a police officer told them “they must leave or be arrested. Another officer informed plaintiffs that they must stand in designated ‘free speech zones.’”

On Sunday, the plaintiffs returned to Navy Pier, and were told they could hold their demonstration across the street from the Pier. They were then told they could not stay in the park across from Navy Pier and were arrested, the suit says. The suit alleges that following their arrest, a police officer told one of the plaintiffs, as he was picking up his box of “gospel tracts,” to “get this s**t our [sic] of here. Nobody wants to hear your bulls**t.”

While I’m sure I probably wouldn’t want to hear their bullshit either if I happened to be around the Navy Pier, now that free speech zones are being used to curtail religious speech as as well as political speech maybe something will finally be done about them. After all, securing Repent America’s right to free speech ensures the same right for groups that want to counter them.

SoI tend to agree with Becky that the ACLU should take up this case as a matter of freedom of speech. No word on whether the ACLU of Illinois has taken up the case, but it’s one they should get involved in given who else the ACLU is defending right now.

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Since posting that bit about James Dobson’s childhood, it’s been in the back of my mind to post a bit more about it based on some things I’ve read since then. In particular this post from The Carpetbagger caught my eye as it recounted Dobson’s penchant for torturing animals as a child.

Even more alarming, Dobson admits in one of his books that as a child he arranged a fight between two mismatched dogs. The battle involved a tenacious bulldog and a “sweet, passive Scottie named Baby,” and Dobson provoked it by throwing a tennis ball toward Baby. He writes what happened next: “The bulldog went straight for Baby’s throat and hung on. It was an awful scene. Neighbors came running from everywhere as the Scottie screamed in terror. It took ten minutes and a garden hose for the adults to pry loose the bulldog’s grip. By then Baby was almost dead. He spent two weeks in the animal hospital, and I spent two weeks in the doghouse. I was hated by the entire town.”

As any child psychologist will tell you, this type of cruelty toward animals is a sign of a serious psychological disturbance.

Don’t take my word for it. Read it for yourself. But keep in mind this is a man who guides the selection of judges under this administration, and who may thus influence American life in ways we can’t yet measure, and for several generations.

And yes, by the way, this type of cruelty towards animals is a sign of serious psychological disturbance. How serious? Let’s see.

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I found myself doing a lot of thinking this weekend about the split-up between Julie and Hillary Goodridge — the couple who lent their name to the case that grought same-sex marriage to Massachusetts — and I’ve come to the conclusion that contrary to the inevitable conventional wisdom is doesn’t prove anything and it doesn’t hurt the movement.

Just two years ago Julie and Hillary Goodridge – with their girl-next-door good looks and adorable child – became the perfect poster family for gay marriage in Massachusetts. They were the lead plaintiffs, in fact, in the case Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health.

But now the couple so publicly wed is separating. And that private, personal decision has become, like their decision to marry, a subject of contentious public debate.

Alex Westerhoff is tough and critical. With his spouse, Tom Lang, he publishes names of anti-gay-marriage citizens on their Web site, Know thy Neighbor.org. Westerhoff called the separation “irresponsible. It hurts the cause, especially since the decision was named after them.”

Please, people. Everybody just calm down. We’ve been through this before. Even though they didn’t have the benefit of marriage, we went through it with Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche. We went through it with Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cipher. And ya know what? It didn’t prove anything then, except that relationships aren’t any easier for us than they are for heterosexuals, and it doesn’t prove anything now.

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It’s been a weird week for me, blogwise. With the president muttering curses and copping a feel in Europe while all hell breaks loose in the Middle East, I’ve been a little distracted from writing about gay issues. At another point this week the news caused me to remember my brief encounter with Ralph Reed. But the more I thought about that, the more I wanted not to think about it.

Like I said, it was a weird week; one in which I actually didn’t do much blogging about gay issues. But that doesn’t mean no one else did. In fact, there was plenty of great stuff happening in the diaries and on the blogs, as well as important news. (Like the House taking up the Federal Marriage Amendment.) Let’s review, shall we?

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This will go in the QueerlyKos roundp-up this evening, but it important enough to warrant a spotlight of it's own. Or at least it should be. Today is 14th Amendment day.

What's better than a patriotic holiday in July? Pop a brew tonight, then, and let's celebrate our heritage of democracy and equal rights. We owe these freedoms not so much to the events commemorated every July 4, but to those of July 21.

On this day in 1868, after a bruising ratification struggle, Congress passed a resolution proclaiming that the 14th Amendment was part of the Constitution. More than the Declaration of Independence, more than the original Constitution, more than even the Bill of Rights, it is the 14th Amendment that makes America a democratic country.

But, as the beer commercials say, celebrate responsibly: Our current toxic immigration debate shows that, more than a century later, genuine democracy has powerful enemies. In 2006, the anti-immigrant movement is attacking the amendment's central meaning of equal protection of the law for all.

Please don't feel bad if the words "14th Amendment" don't immediately call to mind a list of rights. Most literate citizens — and even many lawyers — have trouble focusing on the radical changes this massive post-Civil War reform made in the original Constitution. The 14th Amendment is such a giant presence in our lives today that it's hard to see it as a single thing.

But consider this. Until the 14th Amendment, the idea of human equality, extolled in the Declaration of Independence, appeared nowhere in the Constitution. The word "equal," when written in the original document, referred mostly to voting privileges for the states. In addition, the Constitution contained no definition of American citizenship, seemingly leaving the matter to the states.

The day will probably go unnoticed by most people in most places across the country, but if nothing else the amendment deserves a reading today. But I'll stick to Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The author of the Salon piece says the anti-immigrant movement is attacking meaning of equal protection under the law. I'm not saying he's wrong, but I can think of at least one other movement that's waging war on the same concept.

While pondering the presidential potty-mouth earlier this week, I made mention of some of his constituents.

And, no, I’m even not talking about the usual “pie in the sky” crowd who seek to speed up armageddon one way or another, who actually refer to Iraq as New Babylon and and to whom an all out war in the Middle East would be just ducky.

Well, just in case you thought I was exaggerating, the folks over at Harper’s Magazine did some eavesdropping in Rapture Ready/End Times Chat, and posted some of the chatter.

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