Colorado Springs on Our Minds at Prism & Pen
Prism & Pen Weekly — November 27, 2022
by James Finn
Fascinating essays in P&P this week include Amethysta’s thoughts on Darwinian evolution in the transgender experience, and Jonathan Bateman’s take on David Beckham’s shocking support for the anti-LGBTQ Qatar regime hosting the FIFA World Cup. Our focus, though, is on the Club Q massacre in Colorado, starting with a grieved cri de coeur by queer Texan Henry Lee Butler.
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— Editor’s Picks —
Colorado Springs in My Head
We must take their will for our oblivion and meet it with our will to live free. We are not shut away for their comfort. We walk free in the open air, in the light of each morning. We are the uncle at their Thanksgiving table, the nurse caring for them, the teacher educating their children, the woman praying next to them. We are the children of every woman and every man who ever walked this earth. We are the face that looks back from their mirror.
I’m a Gay Man Who Knows Guns Can’t Protect Me (or You) from Mass Shootings
I’ve noticed an increasing number of queer and liberal people embracing the idea that we members of minorities must arm ourselves to stay safe.
I believe nothing could make us less safe.
I believe embracing gun culture will result in a more violent rather than less violent society. I believe random killings will increase as a direct function of the number of armed Americans.
Christian Post Writer is Very Angry at Respect for Marriage Act
Calling same-sex marriage and gay people “perverse” is just one example of hate speech that leads to massacres like in Colorado Springs. Here, Esther focuses on a screed in what some call the U.S. Christian publication of record— that appeared three days AFTER the Club Q killings.
Sey quotes infamous hate group Alliance Defending Freedom calling same-sex marriage “a false definition of marriage,” and praises them. However, Sey doesn’t think the ADF goes far enough, declaring, “the Respect for Marriage Act disrespects the institution of marriage in another way. By suggesting that gay marriage is the new interracial marriage, the Respect for Marriage Act suggests interracial marriage is perverse.”
— Essays and Creative Nonfiction —
David Beckham, the World Cup and the Metamorphosis of Our Obsession with Sports Superstars
If you aspire to be the next David Beckham, you should be careful about the next $100-million dollar deal you accept. That is because big homophobic spenders are on the prowl for the next a**hole on whose forehead they can tattoo the word “TOOL.” If he’s a hot dumb white man, all the better.
Just Another Transgender Experience
Out of the 300+ pieces I wrote there are a bakers dozen that I feel really capture the essence of my journey that started five years ago. Sparing you the painful experience of slogging through even a portion of them, I thought I would give you at least my short, more tolerable top bakers dozen.
LGBTQ+ Representation on Mainstream TV, My Grandma, and Me
I’ve been watching the current season of Dancing with the Stars, and one of the competitors is Shangela, the drag queen persona of a gay man who is paired with a male ballroom dance professional as his partner on the show.
My grandma loved Dancing with the Stars. She also was openly homophobic.
The Evolutionary Advantage to Transgender
Evolutionary psychiatry attempts to explain how human brain chemistry and psychology have evolved. The transgender experience so hotly debated today must represent an evolutionary adaptation that helped our species survive to the present. Otherwise, the trait would have evolved out of human behavior. What advantage could transgender provide to those who express it?
Silent With Grief: Club Q and Colorado Springs
I don’t know what to say. I know I can’t write about anything else until I write about the massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs, but the deaths and injuries — grievous losses to people I’ve never met — are almost too big to process.
I can grieve and mourn. I do. But can I write anything that illuminates, inspires, or helps?
Understanding the Far Right’s Reign of Terror
The only the thing that right-wing has in its advocacy is fearmongering. Right-wing ideology has nothing to actually benefit people in a material sense. They’re not going to raise wages or help out with healthcare, rent, or anything of that sort. The only way they can get people to support them is to fearmonger. Culture war drivel is literally the only thing they have.
I’m really not exaggerating.
The Club Q Slaughter: Simple Cause-and-Effect, Writes John Pavlovitz
My friend, author/spiritual leader John Pavlovitz pulled no punches in response to the Club Q slaughter in Colorado Springs. In his latest “Stuff That Needs to Be Said” blog, John called out homo-/trans-phobic, Second-Amendment extremist politicians for their manipulative, deceptive messaging and unabashed hypocrisy.
Without a doubt, John is saying stuff here that needs to be said…
The “I’s” of My Queer Here and Now
Old age makes for an easier time of living in the here and now. I didn’t say “perfect” but rather easier. As one gets older, I believe, it is easier to only do what you believe in, what you want to do.
I used to fault my elders for their inflexibility, their narrow mindedness, their inability to change with the times. At 77, now I am guardian of my beliefs, only doing what I want to do.
Debunking Anti-Transgender Talking Points
When I come across anti-transgender rhetoric online these days, most people are parroting the same rhetoric that conservative media pundits like Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson have been spewing. Many of these points are false or misleading, so I want to go through the most common ones and clarify the truth behind them.
The Importance of Little Things in LGBT Allyship
Two weeks ago, my wife and I got married in NYC. We stayed at an Airbnb in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where we had a complete ground-floor apartment to ourselves. The owners, a lovely older couple, live upstairs, and one of them was there to greet us when we arrived.
We’ve only used Airbnb a couple of times, and the previous time had not been a good experience at all —
On Aging as an Older Gay Man
Most people experience these things in very personal ways but perhaps since the Gay Culture is a Youth Culture, it is not talked about often enough. There seems to be a general, all-pervasive heaviness to my life nowadays. Is it the COVID? Is it being 77 headed towards my 80s? Is it the continued grief at the loss of the physicality of my love Gregory? Is it the unexpected passing of my sister last year? Is it due to so much more past to contemplate than future available to anticipate?
A Message for Straight Allies in the Wake of The Colorado Shooting
In the wake of the horrific shooting at the Q Club of Colorado Springs, the reactions we’ve seen from people have been for the most part pretty horrific. The right have been openly celebrating the attack with some like Tim Pool openly calling for more violence against the queer community.
Something else that has also been disturbing or frustrating for me is the liberal response. Don’t get me wrong, it has been markedly better than what we have seen from the right, but it is still a bad response to a massacre and to the growing anti-LGBT climate in the US.
Baby’s First Transgender Black Friday
The implication that I did not know my inner feminine until my “egg cracked” is ludicrous. Most of us knew since we were children that our biology did not match our psychology, yet this “baby / egg” idea is perpetuated in the transgender community. I have more to say on that topic in the next week.
The above notwithstanding, the title struck my funny bone. After all, this is the first honest-to-Goddess Black Friday since I began hormone therapy.
LGBTQ People Are Not BENT, but UNBROKEN and UNBOWED
The first time I heard the word bent in a gay context was in the early nineties when I went to see the devastating 1979 play by Martin Sherman bearing that title. The play, which has seen productions worldwide ever since, is about the Nazi persecution of gay men during WWII. Some online research reveals that bent is 1950s British/European slang for gay. Bent is also quite obviously “not straight.”
How Being Trans Affected My Health
I am a transgender woman. I have been on hormones for a month shy of four years. I spent a very long time in the closet. It was not really that difficult when the children were young, but after they were grown and moved out, it became much more difficult.
I went for about 30 years without seeing a doctor. Something had to be really wrong for me to care. I actually thought that if I got cancer or had a heart attack, I could have a guilt-free death.
The Gay Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present With a Look to the Future
For some reason, the beginning of the Christmas season always gets off to a sad start. I usually have my “Christmas Cry” early in the season, missing all those people with whom I spent the holiday over the years and who made the holiday very important to me but who are no longer with us.
Even though I pare down my decorations each year, I continue to need to purchase a few new, glorious decorations each year and I do allow myself that.
— Fiction Series —
The Salt Fork Murders
David Wade Chambers and Court Atchinson
It looks like Dine City’s latest murder wasn’t committed by a serial killer targeting gay people, but this penultimate chapter of the Salt Fork Murders, part of the Prairie Death Tales Project universe of stories, leaves one critical detail hanging. What about the dead man’s son and his vow of revenge?
Murphy walked Jesse Perkins out to McLaren’s Land Rover. They checked the gas and tires.
“You’ll be alright? Need anything?” Zaanzibar asked Jesse.
Perkins grasped him, forearm to forearm. “I’ll be fine. A little walk, that’s all. Someday, I’d like to come back — I like it here.”
Read Chapter 17: J.J. Meets Mr. Wright
— Poetry Picks —
A Not So Gay Drama Expressed Through Poetry
I have written many pieces of poetry,
For the most part with favorable feedback,
Chronicling the Dementia path traveled with Gregory,
My life partner of over forty-one years,
Diagnosed with young onset Alzheimer’s Disease,
More than twelve years ago when he was fifty-five years old.
My Younger Desires. Fountain of Youth, River of Love
loved like words
like river over stone
dammed up river
dammed up desire
floating bodies
down the river
of desire …
Thanksgiving 2022 from a Trans Woman’s Perspective
I get so tired,
listening to the voices, the words, so many times —
Maybe if you were not quite
so weird,
quite so queer —
and so many times we explain,
and so many times are unheard.But I hear …
That’s Prism & Pen for this week. Let us hope the next few weeks of the holiday season prove less traumatizing and painful than last week, the traditional beginning of the holidays for Americans. Left grasping for thankfulness instead of celebrating it, queer people here and around the world share stories in hope, faith, and determination to overcome.
See you next Sunday.
Jim
