I was catching up on email when I came across this article about a Christian music performer who just came out as gay (and proceeded to open a can of worms). It wafted into my inbox via the LGBTPOC listserve.
Famed Christian music singer Ray Boltz has publicly announced he’s living a homosexual lifestyle according to Gospel News Wire. He also believes that God made him that way.
“If this is the way God made me, then this is the way I’m going to live … I really feel closer to God because I no longer hate myself,” Boltz said in an interview with the Washington Blade about his decision to engage in homosexuality.
Boltz, a father of four who was married for 33 years before officially divorcing his wife this year, is well-known for his widely acclaimed songs “Thank You” and “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb.”
Of course, you know someone had to sound off on that. And ignorantly, at that.
The hubby and I took what I call a “marriage health day” yesterday. It’s when we take the day off from work, drop the kids off at daycare, and head into the city for a “daylight date.” We usually have breakfast, take in a movie, and grab lunch. We just spend time, y’know, being a couple, and taking a few minutes to remember what brought us together eight years ago in the first place. By then it’s usually time to go get the kids. This time, the movie had special resonance for us.
As soon as we heard that Meryl Streep had agreed to star in Mama Mia! we knew it would be our next “date movie.” (Normally, we have entirely different tastes in movies. I tend toward darker, dramatic fare, and documentaries. He prefers comedies and light fare.) We’d gone to see the stage version at the National Theater when we were dating. Later on, the Abba song from which the show and movie borrowed their title became part of a special memory for our family.
I’ve written before about Amy Winehouse’s sad, scary, and very public struggle with addiction. In fact, I as I discussed with a co-worker an article I read an on Friday that suggest to me a parallel with another a similar celebrity story; one that turns out to be ongoing.
I wasn’t tagged for this, but after coming across Jill’s post, I couldn’t resist.
Julian has tagged me with a meme: The five most embarrassing tracks on my iPod. His are pretty great/horrendous (I too remember feeling like a super-hardcore 7th grader for loving “NIN,” and I too went to several “DMB” concerts). But here’s the thing: I have tons of embarrassing music on my iPod, but the most embarrassing of the embarrassing comes from this dude who I’m currently hanging out with who has the worst taste in music possibly ever (he’s pretty sweet in just about every way, but looking at his iTunes makes me want to weep). So he may or may not have sent me songs not only by Hilary Duff, but also by JoJo and Jordin Sparks. Yeah. I also may or may not have put both songs on repeat and muted my computer so that it would look like I listened to both of them when I haven’t.
Oh boy. I have something like something like over 4,000 songs on my 30 GB video iPod. There’s plenty of embarrassing stuff there.
Only at a gay pride event (NYC Gay Price, to be specific) would this song become an audience participation number. Pardon me while I have an “Effie Moment.”
This is a note to Hillary Clinton’s gay friends. (And she’s talked about you guys, so I know you’re out there.) It may be a bit stereotypical, but as gay men we have a special duty to our female friends, to sit them down from time to time and — gently — tell them the truth for their own good. It may be something as trivial as the wrong dress, or an outdated hairstyle. Or it may be something as serious as the need to get out of an unfortunate entanglement with a boyfriend who should be an ex>-boyfriend.
Well, guys, from the sound of things you haven’t done your job, or haven’t done it very effectively. So, here’s what needs to happen.
I’ll admit, I’ve never been a huge fan of Rap. Yes, I have a playlist on my iPod, but it’s mostly the “old” stuff, starting with the Sugarhill Gang and proceeding chronologically through most of the stuff I grew up with. But most of what’s out today as far as rap is concerned, I can’t say I’ve listened to most of it. Maybe I come across the occasional Kanye West video on YouTube, but that’s it.
But there’s one exception. An L.L. Cool J video will stop me dead in my tracks. Every. Time. So, I was amused to read via Rod that evidently men have a hard time admitting they like L.L.
LL: You know, you have certain guys that are uncomfortable admitting they like LL ’cause they feel like it’s some type of ego issue with LL. “I can’t say that, you know? That’s for you: I can’t.” You know, all that frontin’ and all that.
S2S: Men can’t say that another man looks good or something like that?
It’s official. I’m an old fart. Or, well, at least I’m not as young as I used to be. But it didn’t completely gel for me until I read this article about the dearth of decent anti-war songs in today’s popular music scene.
An unpopular president, an unpopular war, a restless young generation eager for change — all the elements of a mass protest culture would seem to be present in this election year.
But one thing is missing: a mass culture.
The Vietnam era produced an entire genre of anti-war and cultural protest songs, the best-known of which became anthems of the age.
Iraq and the Bush presidency have inspired lots of music in this tradition, but nothing that has gained a large popular audience or is vying to be a generational anthem.
That I turned 19. I’m celebrating the anniversary of that birthday. Do the math and you’ll figure out that today I inch ever closer to aging out of yet another demographic. No special plans today, other than doing some writing, treating myself to lunch, and maybe getting to bed early and squeezing in a little extra sleep.
I did fire up the iPod on the way to work today and try to find something that spoke to where I find myself on this, my thirty-ninth, birthday.
I have to agree with Auguste, this is perhaps the best time waster ever. I won’t say how long I spent playing with it last night after everyone went to bed. It was time I probably should have spent sleeping. But it was the most undirected, unfocused time—time that’s not dedicated to doing what someone else needs or wants me to do—that I’ve had in a couple of months.
I’m taking a blog break until sometime after the holiday, and just spending that focusing on my family. I’ll be back here sometime between Dec. 26th and New Year’s Day.
In the meantime, I don’t have any eloquent holiday/year-end message. So I’ll leave you with my favorite song this time of year, which pretty much says it all.
May you and yours have a happy and safe holiday, and enter the new year with renewed hope. And so may we all.
If you haven't yet, take the time to stop by Box Turtle Bulletin, where they have been doing a great series of day-by-day posts on the Matthew Shepard murder. Today's post is a particularly heartbreaking one, about the moment ten years ago when Dennis and Judy Shepard walked into their son's intensive care room and saw him for the first time since the attack. It also links to the earlier posts in the series.
Its sounds like a joke, but it's true. You know the economy has gone South when folks around in Macon (or anywhere else in the south) are going to restaurants and not ordering sweet tea.
Big news. Clay Aiken is gay. Bigger news. So is Lindsey Lohan. Or, at least, she's been dating a woman "for a really long time." I don't know what counts as "a really long time" for Lohan. But kudos to Aiken, at least, for finally coming out. The closet is no place to raise a kid.
See, stuff like this is the reason I don't use Google Ads already. I tried it for a while, but I kept getting advertisements for James Dobsons' books on my posts, and I never found an easy way to block them other than entering the URL into the Google Ads filter every time I discovered one. No thanks.
If you want just one reason to vote for Obama instead of John McCain — and you're someone who cares about reproductive freedom or the right to privacy — the words "Supreme Court" should be enough. If not, consider that George W. Bush appointed more than 300 federal judges during his term, and ask yourself how many more like these you want to see on the bench.
Watching: "Constantine's Sword (2007)", about the evangelical takeover of the United States Air Force Academy, and wondering... ( http:/ ... 1 week ago
Reading: A guy who got 10 years in a mortgage scam that sounds an awful lot like what some financial firms were doing. Difference? Nobod ... 1 week ago
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