Better Know a Contributor

I'm a contributing writer over at The Bilerico Project and every week the gorgeous Serena Freewomyn does a feature called, "Better Know a Contributor." This week the Russian-Roulette gun of better know a contributor fell upon me and here is what I was asked and what I had to say. It's also on TBP:

This week we're spotlighting one of our more outspoken contributors, Eric Leven. Eric is one of a new generation of gay men using new media to agitate, educate and organize. He is, in the words of Joe Jervis, creator of the massively popular blog Joe.My.God., "one of the brightest stars of young gay activism in NYC." By day Eric works as a story producer for reality and documentary programs. On nights and weekends he blogs, writes and films with the goal of empowering gay men and creating a greater sense of community unity. He is creator of the blog KnuckleCrack.

1. How did you get involved with TBP?
I got involved with TBP when Bil Browning contacted me after a Safe Sex PSA I wrote, produced and directed hit the gay bloggosphere and was considered "controversial." I had already begun writing my blog, KnuckleCrack, which began as a journal during a brief time of unemployment but quickly evolved into my passions toward gay history, gay empowerment, safe sex, HIV/AIDS, equal rights and random anecdotes about being a twenty-something unapologetically gay hairy-man chasing New Yorker. Bil Browning welcomed me aboard. Michael Crawford slapped me a blogger-to-blogger high-five and I've been happy to be here since!

2. What was your coming out experience like?
My coming out experience may or may not have been much like any other upper-middle class suburban teenage Jew from New Jersey's: Tumultuous. Same-sex attraction or being gay was nothing I wanted nor wanted to be a part of. I was 14 and 15 years old realizing I was gay and stressed out to the point of a mouth pock-marked with canker sores, a mind full of unbearable depression and fantasies of suicide. Often times I'd come home from school, slam the door shut and beg my mind or god for a change of mindset through a face streaming with tears. Being gay, or the fate of being gay, was the first thought that left my mind as I drifted off to sleep and the first thought that visited me when I opened my eyes in the morning. The walls of my High School were finite and inescapable and I was already dealing with the Italian kids calling me "faggot" for no other reason than being short. Coming out was not a foreseeable option. It was the same story at home. Even though my parents are proud, creative, supportive free-thinking liberal democrats I was in no way prepared to bare the secret I so desperately clutched inside my thunder storming head. I had no want for them to carry the weight of my troubles. Not at least until I was out of their house and on my own feet.

Of course, though, this all happened during the emerging household use of a dial-up modem and what I think was AOL version 2 or 3.0. My parents both worked and every day after school I had at least an hour or an hour and a half to myself where I'd creep downstairs, flick on the computer and through shaking hands and a dry mouth look at pictures of naked men, masturbate and turn off the computer no sooner than my mind turned on a ravenous sense of guilt. Yet, after awhile, this practice became a routine, and the more I searched, the less guilty I felt. Through the computer screen and the dreadfully slow dial-up Internet I would learn that gay is anything from lithe, smooth and young to older, burly and hairy. I would learn that gay is anything from men who wear dresses to men who wear leather and absolutely everything in between. Somewhere within it all I soon found a sense of identity and what I now know of today as Pride. My confidence rebuilt itself around the idea and the fact that I wasn't alone and there were thousands like me. After the 10 or 15 minute uploads, I would look at pictures of men kissing, holding each other, having sex with one another or just simply cuddling with one another and it boggled my mind that two men, so obvious in their manhood could be so confident in their liking of one another and I thought that I, too, could be just like this. And so the days would follow as would the routine. Teachers, desks, teenagers, gym class, the sound of locker doors slamming, a 3 o'clock bell, a bus ride home and running downstairs to investigate my feelings. Sooner than later the daily torments ended, my mouth stopped being a canker sore mine field and I resigned to myself that I might be gay but that I would wait until I was in college, some place where I could be away from it all and take my time, my own time, to make my own decisions, without the pressure of others, and finally make advancements toward a life which drove a truth through my brain sharper and heavier than any hard metal railroad spike.

By winter break of my Freshman year of college I told my best straight friends as a group that I was gay. Their first reaction, God bless 'em was, "Why did you wait so long? Who did you think we were? We're your friends."

That summer I began telling my family.

And by 27, I've told everyone.

3. You seem to be very passionate about advocating for queer youth. What drives your advocacy?
See above.

4. What is your favorite part of living in New York?
Often times New Yorkers kind of forget that they live in New York, yet to live in New York is often the single reason many people move to New York! Everything! Being in the heart of it all! Intellectualism, inspiration around every corner. The endless opportunity for adventure, experiences, the what-happens-when, a feeling of connectivity, a sense of community, double-dutch jump roping concrete summers and hands-stuffed-in-pockets thick jacketed winters with hot coffee and brisk walks to destinations. Lights, towers, elevators, escalators, sidewalks, subways, cabs, parks, bars, clubs, people, people in your way, people in a rush, people without homes, people with millions, cafes, restaurants, delis, bodegas, vegan, vegetarian, veggie-light, burger joints, 5 star steakhouses and pizza at 4:30AM!

Geez, you know, I can type all that and yet even still, just 2 years after being a permanent New York resident I find comfort in "laying low" and not going out sometimes during the weekend. ;)

5. What are your favorite holiday traditions?
Ha! Reminding people that not everyone celebrates Christmas and having holiday break off from work and traveling. Definitely, dancing until the sun comes up on New Years Day.

6. During this holiday season, what are you most thankful for?
I always say the same three things: Hot water, shoes, and a wildly supportive family of parents, siblings and friends.

Bilerico Liveblogs with Anti-amendment Leaders

Thursday night Bilerico Project will be hosting a liveblog with Kate Kendell, Nadine Smith and Barbara McCullough-Jones.

These three women led the efforts to defeat marriage amendments in California, Florida and Arizona. Kate and Nadine are Bilerico Project contributors and Barbara is a frequent guest poster. They'll take your questions and comments about Prop 8, Amendment 2, and Prop 102, the recent protests and what went wrong. Best of all, they'll talk about where we go from here. Bil Browning from Bilerico will be hosting alongside Pam Spaulding of Pam's house blend.

Sign up below to get an e-mail reminder of the liveblog.

Reciting Vows

My friend Jay Blotcher whom I plan to see The Cockettes with on Monday hipped me to the these three wowing queer perspectives on same sex marriage issue. Articles are from The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Alternet & Bilerico Project.

Activists: Something Lost In Fight for Gay Marriage
By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 31, 2004; Page A03

NEW YORK -- Some days, as he watches gay men button their tuxes and lesbians slip into wedding gowns, gay rights activist William Dobbs feels like screaming.

"Some gay activist in California called for mass civil disobedience until we get the right to marry," Dobbs said, his voice growing louder. "God! What could be more dreary?"

Dobbs has marched on the front lines of the gay liberation movement for three decades, and has not a closeted bone in his body. He has been arrested and spat on. But he never imagined his battles for sexual liberation would shore up the most conservative of social institutions: marriage.

"Our movement has become about lusting for weddings and lavender picket fences," he said. "It's so embarrassing -- I feel like turning in my gay card."

The gay rights activists and theorists and feminists who critique the campaign from the left are the voices less often heard in the battle over gay marriage. These critics are not opposed to gay marriage -- none would deny the emotional tug of marriage for tens of thousands of gay couples. But they are mortified at the fate of a revolution pasteurized. They wonder what happened to championing sexual freedom and universal health care, and upending patriarchy?

As the gay revolution moves from leather bars and ACT UP sit-ins to the marriage registry at Bed Bath & Beyond, the middle-class makeover can be disorienting. Jim Eigo, a radical gay rights activist, framed the dilemma a few years back: "What's the use of being queer if you can't be different?"

James Wagner, 63, a bearded, retired insurance executive and longtime gay rights activist, rode the subway from his apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan down to City Hall a week back to wave a placard at a rally for gay marriage. He watched couples yearning to exchange vows, and he was undeniably moved -- and deeply uneasy.

"I thought to myself: 'This is right. This should be their right to express their love as they like,' " Wagner said from his apartment, which he shares with his partner of 12 years. "But marriage is the way that government exerts social control. I'm uncomfortable supporting it. I'm interested in changing society, not assimilation."

Against such arguments, however, falls the weight of political reality.

When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, and President Bush voiced support for a proposed constitutional amendment barring such marriages, the battle lines joined. As rank-and-file gay couples descended by the thousands on city halls in San Francisco; New Paltz, N.Y.; and Portland, Ore., to take their marriage vows and toss bouquets into the air, the leaders could trot into the chapel after them -- or get out of their way.

"There is the shock of finding ourselves arguing for something that the gay revolution was an attack on," said the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tony Kushner, whose play "Homebody/Kabul" is being performed in the District. "But enfranchisement of citizens is an enormous part of what we struggled for when we took to the streets 35 years ago."

Richard Goldstein, an executive editor of the Village Voice, has a partner of 24 years. Like many of his out-of-the-closet-and-into-the-streets 1960s contemporaries, he harbors no deep desire to get hitched. But he insists that this should be his decision, not the government's.

"A lot of gay people grew up wanting middle-class lives, including marriage and children," Goldstein said. "They had to make a painful choice to acknowledge being gay and letting go all those hopes and desires. Now they realize they can have it all and that's very moving to watch."

The gay liberation movement came of age in the late 1960s as gay men and lesbians protested police brutality and the raids on their bars and public baths. Its ethos of sexual freedom and experimentation transformed a culture. The revolution's second act came in the 1980s, when AIDS descended. Militants formed ACT UP and their demands for more research and affordable medications led to support of universal health care and expanded legal rights.

But as doors opened, gays with more conservative cultural politics and desires stepped through. This is an old radical narrative. Left-wing labor organizers in the 1930s watched three decades later as unionized workers marched in support of the Vietnam War. Aging black liberationists watch the ascension of such conservatives as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

"It's the tension between the liberationists and the assimilationists," said Alisa Solomon, a professor at New York's Baruch College and writer for the Village Voice. "Our side made it possible for more conservative gays to come out of the closet, and when they did they brought a more conservative politics and culture to our movement."

Solomon, like many gay rights activists, argues for redefining all marriages -- homosexual, heterosexual -- as civil unions. This would provide the legal protections that come with marriage, from health care to taxes to adoption, without the emotional and cultural freight. "The queer marriage movement needs a divestment campaign," Solomon wrote in the Village Voice. "The only way we will win is if the state's authority to pronounce is stripped from the ministers, rabbis, imams and priests."

But other ACT UP veterans argue for seizing the day. Jay Blotcher, who once served as the group's spokesman, drove from his Upstate New York home to New Paltz to marry his partner. He says gay rights activists should stop worrying and take credit for forcing the cultural opening that led to gay marriage.

"We'll breathe new life into marriage -- God knows it needs rejuvenation," he said. "We're here for the queer makeover."

For now, however, the gay establishment has taken a Hallmark Cards approach to the marriage campaign, framing it in middle-class terms. The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund's "Freedom to Marry" guide advises that gays are "very much like everyone else. They grow up, fall in love, form families . . . they mow their laws, shop for groceries."

Dobbs said he reads this stuff and thinks: What a yawn.

He leafed through the photos of the gay marriages these past weeks. There wasn't a nose-pierced, pink-haired, breast-tattooed transgressive transgender queen to be seen. He has a nightmare vision of what the future holds.

"We're going to just put the photo of our spouse on our desk at the law firm and represent some Fortune 500 corporation," Dobbs said. "We're not going to threaten to rearrange your finances or change your world in any way. That's not my gay movement."

California Bliss

Why an L.A. same-sex marriage will matter in New York.
By Bob Morris

The day we tied the knot, three years ago, City Hall was crowded with brides and grooms waiting their turn in the municipal chapel. But we, two grooms, were there for a domestic partnership, and our only officiant was the brusque woman who took our money. I called us “as married as gays can be in New York,” and at the time, it was true. Later, I recount our vague nuptials for a friend. “So basically,” she replied, “it’s like getting a parking permit.” Well, yes. But now things are looking better here—thanks to the California Supreme Court.

Although New York’s top court, the Court of Appeals, ruled against same-sex marriages in 2006, three months ago, an appellate court in western New York said that New York State must respect valid marriages performed elsewhere. On May 6, the Court of Appeals let that ruling stand, meaning current law says that while I can’t get married in New York, if I get married someplace else, it’s binding here. Canada, Spain, Belgium, and Holland will all let me get married, except that other than Canada, those countries require residency for a marriage to be valid. And Massachusetts quickly tightened its 2004 welcome policy, dredging up an old law stating that if you can’t get married legally in your state, you can’t do it in theirs. It’s a great little trick: New York will honor my Spanish, Belgian, Dutch, or Bostonian wedding, but Spain, Belgium, Holland, and Boston will only let me be legally married if I live there, not in New York. But California has no residency requirement. I can live here, get married there, and still have it count when I land at JFK.

This will mean more travel for Jay Blotcher. He and his partner, Brook Garrett, got a domestic partnership at City Hall in 2000. Then they were civilly united on a hillside in Vermont during the foliage season that year—a step up from the grotty City Hall registration but carrying no weight on this side of Lake Champlain. Their last wedding was in New Paltz, where their participation in Mayor Jason West’s mass-marriage event of 2004 got them on CNN but no more formally wed. “It’s a marriage marathon,” says Blotcher. “And California is next.” Blotcher and Garrett are planning a trip to Santa Monica for sometime after June 14, when the California ruling takes effect.

But Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, is still going to wait for a legal New York wedding, which he thinks could happen within a year. “It’s terrific they’re doing it in California,” Van Capelle says. “But I love this state so much, I think it owes me a marriage license.”

I’m with him. And a parking permit would be nice, too.

Why One Queer Person Is Not Celebrating California's Historic Gay Marriage Decision
By Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, AlterNet
Posted on May 28, 2008, Printed on May 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/86574/

Editor's Note: To read a different take on the California Supreme Court decision, read Greta Christina's story, Why I Fought for the Right to Say 'I Do'.

Though I am a queer person living in San Francisco, I will not be celebrating the California Supreme Court decision overturning the ban on same-sex marriage. Nor will I join those who say, "I would never choose to get married, but I think everyone should have the right." Sorry, honey -- marriage is depressing, period. That means gay marriage, too. And here's why.

Gay marriage does nothing to address fundamental problems of inequality. What is needed is universal access to basic necessities like housing, health care, food, and the benefits now obtained through citizenship (like the right to stay in this country). Legalized gay marriage means only that certain people in a specific type of long-term, monogamous relationship sanctioned by a state contract might be able to access benefits. While marriage could confer inclusion under a spouse's health-care policy, it does nothing to provide such a policy. Marriage might ensure hospital visitation rights, but not for anyone without a spouse. Marriage may allow for inheritance rights between spouses, but what if there is nothing to inherit?

For a long time, queers have married straight friends for citizenship or health care, but this has never been enshrined as "progress." The majority of queers -- single or coupled (but not desiring marriage), monogamous or polyamorous, jobless or marginally employed -- would remain excluded from the much-touted benefits of legalized gay marriage.

And let's not forget the history of marriage as a legal method for keeping property within specific dynasties (property that originally included women and slaves). In fact, marriage still exists as a central venue for spousal and child abuse -- there's a reason divorce is so popular, and suicide attempts among queer teens so prevalent. If social change is on the agenda, then the privileges associated with marriage need to be challenged, not embraced.

In fact, the push for gay marriage has shifted advocacy away from essential services like HIV education, AIDS health care, drug treatment, domestic violence prevention, and homeless care -- all crucial needs for far more queers than marriage could ever be. And this pattern will undoubtedly continue, as millions of dollars will be spent fighting an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment proposed for the November ballot, at a time when social services are being scrapped across the country, and especially in California.

The spectacle around gay marriage draws attention away from critical issues -- like ending U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country, and challenging the never-ending assault on anyone living outside of conventional norms.

While many straight people are reaping the benefits of gay liberation and discovering new ways of loving, lusting for and caring for one another, the gay marriage movement is busy fighting for a 1950s model of white-picket fence "we're just like you" normalcy. And that's no reason to celebrate.

Editor's Note: For an opposing viewpoint, check out Greta Christina's article "Why I Fought for the Right to Say 'I Do'".

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is most recently the editor of an expanded second edition of That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull Press)

Blog Awards!

Yo,
The site for which I am a contributing writer, The Bilerico Project, is up for best LGBTQ Blogsite.

Click here to vote for us!
and click here to check us out: www.bilerico.com

Also in the running is my Blog Daddy and friend, Joe.My.God.