Sunday, September 30, 2007

My Day Away
Let me tell you about my Saturday. I agreed to spend the day in Reynosa with my friend to help him keep his mind off of his recent break-up. Reynosa is a city of about a million people seven miles south of McAllen, Texas. There is a big parking lot next to the bridge and that is where we met and parked our cars. We walked across the bridge and took a taxi to the Mercado, which is a big shopping district in the Zona Centro of the city. It's really like a big cobblestone street where there are dozens, if not hundreds, of stores all selling basically the same thing-backpacks for kids with unauthorized Disney and Sesame Street images(Goofy and Miss Piggy holding hands on the same tote bag) counterfeited DVD's, clothes that Calvin Klein never even dreamed of, much less designed, dulcerias selling dulce de leche and pulpos de tamarindo covered in chili powder. There was a man with a crowd gathered around him and statues of Santissima Muerte (Saint Death) at his feet explaining how for 50 pesos he could cast a spell that would keep your lover faithful, and another man playing a version of three-card-monte using a ball of felt and bottle caps. I was standing behind him and could see him palm the felt ball before people picked the wrong bottle cap. We bought churros- delicious, hollow, tube-like pastries filled with strawberries and dusted with cinnamon and sugar. In Mexico, everyone is out on the street on a Sunday afternoon.
We made our way to our first stop on our little expedition. The Banos Colon is a bath house in the old sense of the word. You pay $7 to enter and you are given a ratty old towel and a bed sheet ripped in half length-wise to cover yourself. You proceed up one flight of stair to the changing room where you exchange a little numbered poker chip you have been given for a key, attached to a stretchy type cord which you wear around your wrist, to a wooden locker where you store you personal belongings. The bath area is lined with blue tiles and there is a dry sauna (Sauna Turko is written on the glass walls) and a steam sauna (Sauna Ruso). There were a dozen men milling around. Nobody talks (except me, and my English voice sounded so very loud) and there is a lot of pointed and deliberate eye contact made, but no one seems to ever follow up on anything. As I have often noticed when I am in Mexico, my foreignness, my Angloness, seems to cloak me in an invisible force field where I am free to observe, but am not required to interact with, whatever crowd in which I find myself. It's not a bad feeling, but it would be intolerable for a long period of time.
The main reason, for me at least, to go there is to get a massage. For $15 you can get the best massage anywhere. The masseuse takes you to a private room where you he covers you in a layer of soapy water. You are nude-it is sensual, but not sexual. He then massages, taps, and stretches every part of your body from the crown of your head to the tips of your toes. I was as pliable as a piece of warm taffy when he was done. Marvelous.
After our massages, we went to a restaurant specializing in Mexican seafood. I had Camarones de Mojo de Ajo-Shrimp with roasted bits of garlic. It was delicious. We sat by the window in the restaurant for nearly two hours watching the crowds go by. I counted three men dressed as clowns. There were plenty of older men wearing cowboy hats, pointy shoes and big belt buckles. There were younger people dressed like the goths you would see in an American mall, their Spanish seemingly out of place coming from their black lip-sticked mouths. There were abuelas dragging grandchildren home, and young men and women walking in groups just heading out for the night. It was very good people watching.
After we left the restaurant, we went to Farolito. Farolito (the little lamp) isn't so much a gay bar as it is a hustler bar. Most middle-class to upper-class gay Mexicans wouldn't be caught dead there. Drag queens, who were probably asked to leave home when they were twelve, go there, old men who seem to be content to buy beer for the three or four young men who sit with them and mock them behind their backs go there, people who can't afford the $10 cover at the upper class bar because that is what they make in a day, if they are lucky, go there. My friend and I sat at a table and drank Topo Chico, a brand of mineral water. A drag queen sat with us at the table for a moment and asked me in flawless English if I want to "be introduced" to someone and then whispered in my ear "he's cheap". When I declined, she fanned seven fingers in front of my face and said, "I have seven boys. When you come back, ask for Gemgirl." She then tottered off in her platform heels. At Farolito, my Angloness ceases to be a force field and becomes beacon attracting moth-like wisps of young men, street hustlers. It is then that my pidgin Spanish becomes useful. As they approach, like thin stilettos out of the disco lights, a big smile of greeting on their faces, I murmur, "No tengo dinero. Soy pobre." ("I have no money. I am poor.") They usually smile and move on. Sometimes they are more aggressive and my friend has to put on a stern face and act as if he is a jealous lover.
As the night wore on, the crowd became more animated and aggressive and we decided to go while the going was good. We walked back to the bridge, which is about 25 blocks (at least that is how it felt). When we got to the bridge, we had to take the pedestrian crossing, which involves climbing a ramp like structure to a height equal to a six-story building, walking over the automobile traffic crossing into Mexico and then walking back down. When we had finally crossed, I was exhausted and covered in sweat. It was a memorable day though, something out of the ordinary.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Cursed by Buddha

Today I had lunch with a friend at a restaurant named Dai Tung. Even though they weren't especially busy, our waitress appeared to be in a frantic rush. Often, she would not even allow us to finish our sentences before rushing off to place our order. In the right circumstances it could have been cute, even endearing, but I was very tired and found her to be very annoying. I had been seized by one of my compulsions the night before. I decided that I had to do all of my laundry and wash all of my clothes that night! I didn't get started until about 10:30 P.M. I was up until 4:00 A.M. finishing everything. I went to church this morning, and headed to McAllen to eat Chinese with my friend. To make the visit to Dai Tung even worse, as we paid our check, I noticed a plate of very white muffins next to the register in shrink-wrapped plastic. I held one up and asked the cashier what it was. She became very offended, and told me that it was an "offering to the Buddha" and that I shouldn't touch it. It was then that I noticed the little plastic fountain next to the plate, complete with water spurting from the Buddha's navel. Obviously, some venerable ancestor had purchased it at Big Lots. I was very sorry, and said that I thought it was for sale. She replied, "If it were for sale, it would a sign saying the price." I guess I was wrong to assume a plate of shrink-wrapped muffins in a restuarant was for sale. And why were they shrink-wrapped? I guess the Buddha likes his muffins moist.
The day perked up though when we went to JJ's party house, and I was able to purchase a pair of white angel wings for Halloween.

Sunday, September 16, 2007






Roosters


Because of my participation in a community play, I've recently come to know more than I ever really wanted to about "fighting cocks." The two fellows pictured above were my co-stars in the production. The brown rooster is you typical barnyard rooster. He has a proud red comb and the red, droopy wattles typical of his kind. The white-feathered rooster is a fighting rooster. His comb and wattles were removed when he was about 10 months old to give him an advantage in fighting. While it is difficult to see in these pictures, roosters (and hens) have naturally occurring spurs a couple of inches above where their feet hit the ground. The owners of fighting rooster attach blades, razors, and gaffs to the fighting rooster's spurs so that their kicks become deadly to their opponents. The spurs are sometimes sharpened, and sometime the gaffs are sealed on using wax. It seems very cruel, but I also think that as a society we are very hypocritical in our treatment of animals. The Michael Vick case is in the news and everybody is ready to jump on the bandwagon and label him a crazy killer. I'm not defending him, and I think he deserves whatever penalty the law decides for him. However, I often wonder "Where is the media outcry about the huge, multi-corporation hog farming and poultry farming operations?" Are all of those people who condemn Michael Vick so relentlessly in the media not eating their Christmas hams and their chicken nuggets? Unless you are a vegetarian, or have committed to eating free range beef, pork and chicken, you have no right to throw stones at Michael Vick. I attended a bull fight once in Mexico, and while I appreciated the pageantry, I didn't think the matadors were particulalry brave, and I sure didn't think the bull had even a 1 in 100 chance against the literally dozens of men and horses in the ring. What bothered me the most was that the meat of the animal was wasted (and it would probably be very tough) in a country where so many go hungry. We react emotionally to animals based on their cuteness. People who pamper their dogs with treats and clothes and special beds have no problem with laying out rat poison. If rats had big brown eyes, and could sit on their hind legs and beg, we would have no problem with them.














Monday, September 10, 2007



Roosters

I recently took leave of my senses and agreed to play a part in a recent community theater production of a play called "Roosters". I play a Mexican-American ex-convict who raises fighting roosters. He's has just been released from jail and is coming home to reclain a particularly promising rooster from his son. It's full of symbolism and magical realism. I don't know why I do these community plays. I'm not an especially good actor, even for community theater, and I suffer quite a bit from stage fright. It must me the remnants of some teenage dream of superstardom.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Interesting Article

Thinking about Gay Male Brains.
Todd Murphy, 1999
There is one brain part, called the anterior commisure, that's bigger in gay men's brains than in those of heterosexual males. Most of my thoughts here are about looking at what that might mean, and how it might appear. ( Reference)
So, what's it do?
It connects two structures together. The amygdala on each side of the brain.
So, what does the amygdala do?
Its a very, very emotional structure. And it's fast. If you suddenly notice a bus heading toward you, and you feel a 'burst' of fear, that's your amygdala; the one on the right. If you feel a burst of elation when someone looks at you with attraction in their eyes, that's your amygdala, too; the one on the left.
A gay man's brain has more connections between the opposite emotional centers than other brains.
The amygdala does an important kind of recognition, too. It recognizes other people, or more importantly, how they're feeling. It responds to facial expressions, tones of voice, and, I'd guess, body language as well.
My guess is that its important in seeing potential mates, and so, its the part that knows who you're attracted to, gay, straight, transsexual, bisexual or whatever.
The gay male brain uses the same parts to be attracted to a man that I use to be attracted to a woman.
I cannot help but wonder if the extra connections might allow extra recognition skills, and a wider sense of what a person's meaning might be. When a male brain selects people of the same gender as the focus for sexual feelings, it gives its owner a set of concerns and needs in common with women. Men become the people they want to be with, forcing them to pay attention to men's needs, and women become the object of identification, at least in some ways. At the same time they ARE men, so they still have to identify there, too. As a straight man, an attractive woman 'means' something very different to me than she does to a gay man. And guess what? The amygdala mediates our experience of 'meaningfulness'.
Such a person would be able to empathize with a very large portion of the total population; larger than heterosexuals of either gender.
Most evolutionary biologists will agree that if a species preserves a trait, its because that trait helps that species survive, or at least did so when it first emerged.
One of the traits of the human species is that close 10 percent (the number changes according to who does the counting) of our populations are gay. If Darwin (and some others) are right, the our species needed gay males when we first appeared, and we might need them now.
What for?
Well, gay men do not compete with straight men for one thing, but they understand many, if not most, uniquely male concerns, because they are men.
And they share enough in common with women that they understand women's concerns, too. Many lesbians are a bit taken aback by how indifferent many gay men are to feminist political concerns, but those aren't the women's concerns I mean. I'm talking about such things as 'cognitive style', 'linguistic patterns' and other things that you need a special dictionary to get.
Gay males might have enhanced their tribe's ability to respond to danger quickly. Their voice in the councils of the first human tribes could have been a profound advantage.
There are two things that help an individual be heard in human cultures. One is to be the boss, and the other is to have as few conflicts with others as possible.
Gay males, being less interested in war than other males, do not conflict with their tribal neighbors.
They do not compete with straight males for sexual opportunities,
And, they do not compete with women over the resources for their young. A hundred thousand years ago, this was probably VERY important. It takes a decade to raise a child, at least. In a ten-year period, most of our young probably had to live through at least one lean season. When it was going on, the gay man only had to find food for one. But he was quite strong and intelligent to find food for several, just like anyone else, if it was to be had at all.
Our species arose 100,000 years ago, and we were hunters and gatherers. Most of these societies today are a loose kind of democracy, and the chiefs don't really have the power to command obedience from anybody. Decisions were and are made in councils. In our earliest history, these decisions were sometimes a matter of life and death. Making sure that our populations produced some individuals who had extra empathetic skills might have given us more intelligent leadership than otherwise. The larger anterior commisure implies that gay males might be more able to perceive meaningfulness, too. "Meaningfulness" is an amygdaloid function - innocuous things become omens, possibly selected because the event taken as the omen has some association with a concern among one's people. (Stimulate your amygdala - learn more here)
One example might be what a storm cloud means when its windy outside. The extra left/right connectivity in gay males would give them a greater sense of the nuances and subtle implications of events in their world. Being men, however, they would have a greater ability to articulate their subtler perceptions, because the male brain is more 'single-tasking' than the female brain; it is more likely to use one or two areas at a time - including the language centers.
Because gay males have more communication between the hemispheres, they percieve non-verbal information (including the sort we call intuitive) more readily then straight males. Because they still possess male brains, their cognitive processes are more focused (less multitasking) than they would be in women, allowing them an advantage in getting non-verbal information into words, where it can be shared with others. An intuition becomes a channeled voice. A dream contains spoken instructions. A gay male, all other conditions being equal, was more able to go from a sense-that-something-is-wrong to seeing and describing a specific danger. They might also be better able to find ways to improve things, be more comfortable, and stay healthy.
Consider the stereotype that gay men are 'esthete' - they are gourmets when eating, film critics when seeing movies, interior designers at home, and fashion and grooming experts in front of mirrors. Nothing but the best. Now, imagine that same trait 100,000 years ago, and add to it the caveat that people acted for their tribe as much as for themselves, there being little one could claim as one's own. Nothing but the best and most sheltered campsite. Nothing but the clearest water. Everyone should be clean and attrective (by whatever standard his nation held) - as much as possible. With their extra emotional sensitivity, they would encourage people to be nice to one another. Further, freedom from many of the usual social obligations - like the need to let others save face - could allow gay males to be more vocal than other males might be. Someone demanding the best for himself in those days would have had to demand the best for the whole tribe.
I know I'm making many generalizations here, and many gay men do not fit the stereotype, but my point is that gay male traits, though held by only a few, can benefit many.
When a gay male had an opinion, a hundred thousand years ago, his people probably listened.
In our earliest evolutionary history, as hunter/gatherers, we were better able to survive our crises, and to avoid them when we could, by having a group with a different set of cognitive skills who tended to avoid the conflicts that were most pressing to everybody else. They probably were important peacemakers in our first cultures. And peace is one thing that we need to survive, and to raise our young.
One study found that women who were pregnant in Berlin at the end of World War Two delivered a slightly higher percentage of gay male children than others. Perhaps the response to war is to try and deliver more peacemakers.
That may be why our gene pool contains instructions for making our populations include 10 percent gay males.
So why should this man, and not that man, be gay?
There is a process that could create this difference. The emergence of a recessive, neotanous trait.
Neotany is the name used when an adult in a species retains a childhood trait. The best-know example is human curiosity. Other primate species are as curious as our children, but it stops with puberty. Our adults are capable of retaining the trait their whole lives.
Brains don't grow uniformly. They grow in steps. First one part grows outstrips the others, then another gets bigger. Then another. Then another.
My guess (speculation) is that there is a phase in the growth of every male brain when the anterior commisure has outstripped its neighboring structures. I also guess that there is a trigger that signals when its time for the anterior commisure to stop growing.
And that, in gay males, this trigger is absent. This kind of adaptation is called "Neoteny"
Some gay men say that they've 'always known' they were gay. Others have said that there was a single decisive sexual experience that brought it out.
Its possible that the anterior commisure has two growth spurts when it might be able to shed its 'stop growing' trigger. One during in the womb, and another after birth, but before puberty. Perhaps there are several such 'windows of opportunity' in the development of a man's brain. There isn't enough evidence at this point to prove or disprove the case. The simplest thing I can imagine is an environmental 'cue' of some sort, either in the womb or in the environment.
One more thing about the anterior commisure. Its in the limbic system, and the limbic system is now the strongest contender as the source, within the brain, of religious and mystic experiences. There are scores of studies to support this, most of them published in medical journals, and are still unknown in spiritual teachings.
Nevertheless, a conclusion appears: Gay men were probably our first spiritual leaders. Our Shamans. In that social position, they would have been free to expect that their words would be heard, they would have been able to exploit their cognitive skills to the maximum, and they would have been able to access many altered states of consciousness that would've been unavailable to others.
The trust and respect that a skilled gay shaman might have been able to command might allow him to induce the placebo effect in other during times of illness, too.
Gay men may once have healed their people, led them spirituality, soothed interpersonal conflicts, and help them anticipate and avoid threats to their survival.
Who knows? Perhaps gay male sexual preference is a by-product of a specific group of cognitive and emotional skills that helped us survive - skills that may be expensive for the individual gay man, but were essential for the population as a whole.
A 100 percent heterosexual population might have gone extinct.
But then, we don't have a 100 percent straight population, do we?


Allen & Gorski, "Sexual Orientation and the size of the Anterior Commisure in the Human Brain"
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 89, 7199-7202, August 1992"

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Gay Republican Hypocrisy

Tap-tap- You're Busted! A Brief History of the Hypocrisy of Republican Gay-Bashers
By Tracy Dove, Ph.DEditor, The Russia News Service
August 30, 2007
America loves a sex scandal, especially when the victim deserves it. This week yet another gay-bashing Republican has turned out to be a toilet pervert, giving homosexuality a bad name by associating his dirty men's room habits with the honorable choice of sexual preference. This time it was Larry Edwin Craig- an Idaho congressmen who- when not harassing men in bathroom stalls- stood behind the Christian Republicans in fighting to ban gay marriage, gay rights and homosexuality in the military. We commonly call such people hypocrites, and the origin of the word says a lot of what is really going on in some circles of the Republican party. It comes to us from far-away Greek- and it means literally "stage actor", which is a fitting label for exactly the way these politicians have publicly claimed to champion the moral high ground while reaching an all-time low of criminal behavior in their own sordid private lives.It is particularly disturbing to listen to the right-wing preachers of moral certitude crow about the evils of homosexuality in fire-and-brimstone Technicolor, only to catch them with their pants down in lavatories while tapping impatiently in $200 loafers to get some attention from the guy next door in a public restroom. The blogosphere is naturally having a ball with this one- but how many gay Republican sex scandals have their really been? The answer is quite a few, and they are all entertaining for their hypocritical nature of how the Republican Party has mutated over the years.And the best part is that we don't need to look back any later than 2006 for some ugly examples; we can start with Glenn Murphy Jr., who was the rising star in the Republican Party and headed the Young Republicans' morality division in drumming up support for anti-homosexual legislation. This facade quickly shattered when it was revealed that Murphy had an unusual fetish for masturbating while giving sleeping men oral sex against their will. Then there is Bob Allen, who could be considered a card-carrying member of the toilet creep genre, since he was busted for offering to pay an undercover policeman $20 to give him oral sex. Mark Foley is another, and on the surface he was a crusader against child pornography and wore his morality on his sleeve in Congress until 2006, when it was discovered that he was sending young boys SMS requests to see them naked. Naturally Foley denied the charges, but he also made pains to mention that he had been abused by a gay priest as a child, which of course excuses his desire- in his own words- to "caress" other men in saunas, although for him there was nothing sexual about this whatsoever. But the perverts aren't limited to the beltway elite at all; there is James E. West- the former mayor of Spokane Washington- who, as a Boy Scout leader, is accused of molesting young boys and later surfing on websites to coax high school boys into taking special political assignments in his office. He certainly comes in as runner-up in the Republican hypocrisy awards, since he had voted against gay rights and favored forbidding homosexuals from working in high schools and other public sector positions. But the prize winner of today's contest goes to Ted Arthur Haggard, the reverend who misled 30 million fundamental Christians into following him on a deluded family values crusade in sync with the Bush administration. Preaching against homosexuality as a crime against God, it turned out that "Reverend Ted" had been employing a male prostitute for 3 years and preferred having sex with him after snorting crystal meth. And the list goes on...Haggard finally admitted to his failures and entered drug rehabilitation under the supervision of 4 ministers. Like in an exorcism, Haggard went through hell and back- returning as a cured heterosexual and is now trying to earn a degree in psychology. He was eventually forgiven by his obedient flock, since to forgive is a Christian value, but these Christians never considered forgiving Bill Clinton.This is hypocrisy at its most absurd height; it is true that Clinton's extra-marital affair may not have been becoming of a president, but at least toilets, boy scouts and sleeping men weren't part of his digression. Bill Clinton is guilty of lying under oath; the question as to whether it was ethical behavior requires a brief look back at how other presidents enjoyed their privileges of office. The biggest playboy of this century to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was certainly John F. Kennedy- who was incidentally Clinton's hero- and his Secret Service detail had a special clause in their job description that required sneaking girls in and out of the White House while Jackie re-designed the First Bedroom. Lyndon Johnson, his Vice President and later successor to the presidency- didn't especially like living in the shadow of Kennedy's rooster-like reputation. The anecdote goes that during a White House dinner Johnson was asked about Kennedy's numerous indiscretions and what the president thought about it, but Johnson felt the remark was an attack at his own sexuality. Already tipsy on bourbon, he responded that "I've fucked more women by accident than Kennedy ever did on purpose," which was unfortunate, because Ladybird Johnson happened to be in earshot of the remark.Homosexuality is first and foremost a private affair and people have the right to engage in whatever sexual activity they want as long as no one's rights are being abused. And that goes for heterosexuals too, but the Christian Republicans don't see it this way. The best explanation for this would be to look back at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as it existed under Stalin; as long as you towed the "party line", all mediocrity in political life was excusable. And so it is today in the Republican party, where party loyalty takes precedence over service, common sense and real family values.


Gay GOP misery.
Crossfireby Michael Crowley Post date 10.13.06 Issue date 10.23.06

In the bars and clubs frequented by Washington's gay men, a new character has recently cropped up: the hammered gay Republican. Until recently, says one gay Republican lobbyist, his counterparts on the Hill "had reached a point where you come to your work, you do a good job, you don't cause problems for your boss, and you go home." But then along came the Mark Foley scandal, with its rightwing anti-gay moralizing, liberal snickers about closeted hypocrisy, and a merciless wave of Internet gossip and "outings." The lobbyist says he assumes every gay Republican staffer is "terrified right now." And that has been enough to drive some of them to the bottle. One gay Washingtonian recalls running into an aide to a senior House Republican at a gay bar soon after FoleyGate broke: "He went out to get shitfaced, because he was so stressed out." Chris Crain, a blogger and former editor of the Washington Blade, a gay weekly in Washington, D.C., also says such encounters have become typical. "This weekend, I noticed that the gay Republicans I saw were notably more inebriated than usual. I think they were self-medicating--and I can't blame them."
Not at all. You'd probably drink hard, too, were you in such a socially and politically impossible position. For the dozens of gay Republicans on Capitol Hill--including senior aides to some of the most powerful and moralistic members of the House and Senate--the past few weeks have been a nightmare. On the right, gay Republicans face the likes of Tony Perkins and Pat Buchanan implying that the so-called "velvet mafia" enabled Foley's depredations and claiming linkage between pedophilia and homosexuality. On the left, meanwhile, are gay liberals furious over the Bush-era GOP's gay-baiting and increasingly willing to "out" the Republican regime's closeted enablers--with the help of their tell-all blogs. (Gay political circles have recently been abuzz with talk about "The List," a roster of allegedly gay GOP staffers that has circulated among political journalists and activists.) "These people feel under siege in their own party and also under siege in the gay community," says Crain. The Foley story will blow over eventually, but, given the de facto left-right alliance against them, gay Republicans might be knocking them back for a while to come.

Not that gay Republicans have ever had it easy, of course. For decades, they tended to be closeted entirely--some in the tragically warped model of Joseph McCarthy's henchman, Roy Cohn, who bashed deviants by day and slept with them at night. Or Terry Dolan, co-founder of the vituperative National Conservative Political Action Committee, who, like Cohn, died of aids. By the 1990s, gay Republicans had evolved into a defined party interest group, complete with their own lobbying arm in the Log Cabin Republicans. But the GOP establishment was slow to accept the change. In 1995, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole actually returned a $1,000 contribution to his campaign from the Log Cabin Republicans. During a debate over gay marriage the following year, then-Representative (and now Senator) Tom Coburn of Oklahoma seemed to speak for his party's religious-conservative wing when he said that homosexuality is "immoral ... based on perversion ... based on lust."
Even if conservatives never quite embraced the gay politicos within their ranks, however, they rarely turned the screws on them. Rather than eat their own, conservatives smeared Democrats, as when the GOP spread baseless rumors that then-Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley was gay. "We hear it's little boys," an aide to Newt Gingrich whispered to the New York Daily News. (Sorry, wrong Foley!) Instead, "outing" became the pastime of a gay left furious over the aids epidemic. One early victim was the closeted Wisconsin Republican Representative Steve Gunderson, whose voting record drew the aids activists' ire. At a bar one night in 1991, Gunderson was confronted by the activist Michael Petrelis, who furiously demanded, "When are you going to come out?" Petrelis then dumped a Coke on Gunderson before being dragged away. Under relentless pressure from other gay activists (and a few pile-ons from Republicans like Bob Dornan), Gunderson eventually outed himself. Likewise, Jim Kolbe, a gay representative from Arizona who is retiring this year, outed himself in 1996 to preempt the gay newsmagazine Advocate from doing it for him. And, when Arthur Finkelstein--a GOP consultant who produced savage ads for anti-gay candidates like Jesse Helms--was outed the same year, the deed was done by Boston magazine, hardly a right-wing outlet.
After a lull, the liberal outing machine sprang back into action a couple of years ago, as the Bush-DeLay GOP whipped its base into a frenzy over the specter of gay marriage. By then, the outing technology had surpassed dumping drinks on an offender's head; one gay activist with a blog could single-handedly out dozens of Republicans. That's just what a D.C.-based blogger named Michael Rogers began doing around the time of the 2004 congressional gay marriage debate. One early casualty was Virginia GOP Representative Ed Schrock, a rock-ribbed Navy veteran who had co-sponsored the Federal Marriage Amendment. Days after Rogers, working from his apartment in Washington's gay-friendly Adams Morgan neighborhood, posted messages allegedly recorded on a gay phone-sex line by the representative, Schrock retired. Rogers also targeted a slew of congressional staffers, including Robert Traynham, communications director to Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who had bizarrely lumped gay marriage with "man-on-dog" sex. Santorum was ultimately forced to release a statement saying he stands by Traynham, whom he described as a target of partisan-based bigotry.
Rogers also zeroed in on a staffer for Oklahoma right-winger Jim Inhofe, who has said he does not hire openly gay or lesbian staffers and once declared himself "really proud" that his recorded family history included no gay relationships. But, as Rogers gleefully revealed, the staffer had posed for a fleshy photo spread in a local gay weekly in which he mused about finding a man with "six-pack abs you could eat chip and dip off of." (In response, Inhofe's office drew a distinction between the senator's personal staff and his committee staff, on which the man worked.) Another senior party operative, Rogers revealed, had posted an online personal ad declaring him to be "just looking for good sex, whether with one or several." Rogers and other gay media outlets had also chronicled Mark Foley's sexuality, a likely reason Foley never tried to run for Senate in Florida.

ven without the likes of Rogers, gay Republicans had been ostracized in Washington's mostly liberal gay community. "After the marriage amendment, that changed everything," a liberal gay activist explains. He recounts a recent night when a stranger began chatting up his friend in a bar. The ensuing conversation went something like this:
"Where do you work?"
"In the government."
"Where in the government?"
"In the Senate."
"Oh. Who do you work for?"
The answer came: a highly conservative senator who had championed the 2004 Federal Marriage Amendment. "You gotta be kidding me!" the activist snapped in disgust, breaking off the encounter.
Still, it's not likely that this poor scorned Republican is in danger of an outing. In the wake of the Foley scandal, even some gay Democratic partisans think it's best to ease up the public pressure on their GOP counterparts. "Politically, I think [outing] is a stupid idea right now," says John Aravosis, a prominent D.C.-based gay blogger who has supported outing in the past. "The Republicans are imploding--we don't need to draw attention to ourselves. And this story is already in enough danger of becoming a 'gay story.' We don't need to help it." Crain adds that, whatever frustrations gay liberals might have with their GOP counterparts, their cause benefits if senators like Santorum have regular contact with gays and lesbians--coming to know them as real people and not the perverted caricatures of James Dobson books.
But gay Republicans are hardly off the hook. In the private sphere, their lives are more perilous than ever. For pure vitriol, it would be hard to top an episode that occurred late last month at a Washington dinner party. The gathering included both well-connected Bush administration and congressional GOP staffers and several Democrats--all gay. Inevitably, politics came up. One Democrat in attendance, a former Clinton White House aide, couldn't contain his revulsion at the gay men working in the service of the enemy. "I ripped into this one guy" who works for the Bush administration, the Democrat says. "I said, 'What you do for a living is hurting me, and my family, and my daughter I have with two lesbians. I personally view Bush as the most corrupt, vile politician in the world, and if you're working for him, to me you're one and the same.' People were horrified." But, he adds, "I refuse to be cordial or friendly or polite to these people. I think they are our mortal enemy. They ask the gay community to indulge them when they want a social life, but when they punch the clock they are trying to tear apart our families. They want it both ways." Even a few weeks later, says another gay Washingtonian who was not present at the dinner, the former Clinton aide's "little screed is legendary."
And there are still lone liberal gunmen like Michael Rogers. His goal is to touch off an internal war within the GOP that ultimately brings down the party. He has vowed to out several more GOP staffers between now and Election Day, and says at least one influential conservative leader has cheered him on via e-mail. When I spoke to him this week, he boasted that he had just gotten off the phone with an official at a leading conservative organization, one of whose other senior officials he was about to out. "I think the Foley story ultimately brings to light the fact that the far right wing in America has been duped by the leadership of the GOP," he says, noting that he's communicated directly on the subject with some Christian conservative leaders. With bizarre bedfellows like that, you can't blame a gay Capitol Hill Republican for hitting the bars--and making it a double.
Michael Crowley is a senior editor at The New Republic.