Letters to the Editor
stevedew
Published Letters: 94 Editor's Choice: 6
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Why Perez Hilton is Right On
[Read the article: Perez Hilton's gay witch hunt]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Perez Hilton's blog follows a grand tradition of disruptive discourse and serves a completely legitimate purpose. What Perez gets that so many in the gay community don't is that every single closeted gay man and lesbian is not only living in a kind of self-imposed slavery but is also enforcing and reinforcing a cultural code: homos are second-class citizens. In other words, Lance Bass's closet is not about his privacy, it's about my right to privacy, and all the other thousands of rights, privileges and duties our government denies gays and lesbians through regulations and laws like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act.
The statement that a closeted celebrity--or anyone of prominence, whether that prominence is intra-familial, local, or international--makes by living a dual life is, quite simply, "What I truly am is shameful."
So Perez is pissed, and I don't blame him. Closeted celebrities are, by their very existence, destructive to our cause, insulting to those of us who've had the courage to come out, and just plain old ridiculous. Perez isn't conducting a gay witch hunt, he's going after the closet cases among us that are dragging us all down.
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What happens if al-Marri is overturned? Let's figure it out!
[Read the article: Imperial presidency declared null and void]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Everyone in this country needs to think seriously about what he or she will do if the full 4th Circuit or the Supreme Court overturns the three-judge panel's decision in the al-Marri case. I'm not convinced that well-meaning, intelligent people even know what's at stake here. After years of relentless public and sub rosa attack by the Bush administration, our most vital civil rights are on the brink of destruction. A reversal of al-Marri would deal the death blow.
So what are you going to do about it? Educating people seems to be a crucial first step. Letters to the editor? Senators and congressmen? What about in the event of an unfavorable decision on appeal? What do people typically do when their leaders illegally sieze absolute power?
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Seriously?
[Read the article: Obama's big blunder]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Walsh, get a grip. Ditto all the commenters so far re: the big picture unimportance of a pampered baseball millionaire breaking some record a) that many people don't care about b) in an ignoble/ignominious fashion ('roids anyone?). Other people have a country to run/care about. I thought Salon had other things on its mind.
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It's liberating to come out of the (wrong) closet!
[Read the article: Lost in space]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll tell you what, it took me awhile, but when a family member came out of the closet and told me he was gay, I was entirely liberated from all sorts of far less burdensome expectations of conformity on my own part. As much of a relief as it must have been to him to stop pretending he was other than he is, it made me realize that my constant pretense of knowing where I'm going was ridiculous and even dangerous. I am almost always lost, and I now simply refuse to apologize and am polite but insistent that someone assist me, if the situation is appropriate.
I have a terrible dread of any civic buildings, for instance, with their curious corridors and dead ends; hospitals do me in entirely, because I am instantly lost as soon as I cross the threshhold, and I've stopped making the absurdly exhausting effort to pretend I'm fine. I'm ambidexterous, cannot remember--ever--whether the sun comes up in the east or the west; I find it hard to believe that not all rivers in North America run south, and the only landmark that I can find in my small world of Western Massachusetts is the Amtrak station in Albany-Rennselear.
I was banned from driving at LSU, when I was briefly a student there over forty years ago, because I could not find the parking area "marked in purple on the map" where the freshmen had been instructed to park. I did find a parking space marked in purple paint, however, and parked in it for weeks until Campus Security plastered a large black 8-ball on the driver's side of my windshield. I was parking in the spot kept open for the president of the university (gold and purple are LSU's colors). Being banned from driving onto campus didn't really matter, though, because I couldn't find a single classroom and spent my very short college career in the Ladies' Agricultural Lounge, which I found entirely by mistake, but which was air-conditioned and had a big soft couch. I finally arrived there every day after a fruitless, panicky search for my classroom, and over the space of not quite a year had spent a wonderful but guilt-inducing amount of time reading all of Thomas Hardy, Dickens, and Tolstoy.
But why was I always too ashamed to simply ask for help? Come out, come out, wherever you are, and don't apologize for being unable to tell left from right. Don't agree to pick up someone at an airport knowing it will entirely ruin your day--your week--worrying that you will get hopelessly lost. If your friends scoff even after you've explained, then drop them. When people assure you that you would know where you were going if you would "just pay attention," drop them, too.
Really, life's too short to spend it apologizing for things you can't do and over which you have no control! It's too short to be ashamed of a condition or disability, or whatever it is that makes one person so utterly different from another. Thank you Ms. Crosley, for flinging open the door to your own closet...But I do know that you're wondering if you'll ever find the closet you've been looking for...