shaggylocks's Open Salon Blog

My letter to the Boy Scouts returning my Eagle Scout medal

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 15:07:36 -0400

It makes me a little sad to send back my Eagle Scout award, but it makes me sadder that young gay men are denied the opportunity to earn it at all.

July 24, 2012

BSA National Executive Board
1325 Walnut Hill Lane
PO Box 152079
Irving, TX 75015-2079

To Bob Mazzuca, Wayne Brock, Wayne Perry, and the BSA National Executive Board:

It is with great sadness that I return my Eagle Scout medal in protest of the Boy Scouts of America’s policy of discrimination against gay scouts and scouters. I attained the rank of Eagle in 1999 as a member of Troop 340 in Monroe, NY. Although there have been many great and notable accomplishments in my life since, I still consider my Eagle award to be my most challenging, rewarding, and meaningful personal achievement.

One of the core values taught by the Boy Scouts of America is citizenship. This value is so integral to the scouting experience that a scout must earn three citizenship merit badges—Citizenship in the Community, Citizenship in the Nation, and Citizenship in the World—before he can be considered for the rank of Eagle. But what are we teaching our young men about citizenship when we show them that certain people can (and should) be excluded based on their sexual orientation? What happens when those scouts graduate from the program and encounter a gay neighbor or classmate or coworker? (Because they will.) What are we telling the young, closeted gay men currently active in the Boy Scouts about their value as members of the organization and of their community? This discrimination is all the more deleterious because it originates from an organization respected by many as a model of good character.

For a long time after the 2000 Supreme Court ruling I defended the BSA to my friends and colleagues. “Sure,” I’d say, “they may be wrong on this particular issue, but no organization can be perfect, and the Boy Scouts do so much good that they shouldn’t be condemned for this one fault.” But as time passed that defense felt increasingly hollow. Gay rights is the defining civil rights issue of our generation, and by reaffirming your commitment to bigotry you have placed yourself decisively on the wrong side of history. It no longer matters how good your program may be: no one remembers how efficient the Montgomery public transit system was in 1955. All we remember about them now is their seating policy.

I earned the rank of Eagle a few months after Matthew Shepard was tortured and killed for being gay. The Supreme Court voted to protect your right to discriminate one week before two teens in West Virginia punched and kicked a man to death for being gay. Your recent reaffirmation of your discriminatory membership policy comes amidst a national epidemic of gay teen suicides. I’m not saying the BSA would ever condone violence against gay men—of course they wouldn’t—but your position does contribute to a culture of discrimination and ignores the dangerous realities faced by gay men and women in today’s America. This is not good citizenship.

I wholeheartedly urge you to reconsider this policy that excludes good, principled people from Scouting. Until you do I can no longer, in good conscience, take pride in this award.

The View From my Window, or So Begins Occupy Harvard

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:11:57 -0500

9:25am: I just arrived at work, so I'm still trying to figure out the details. I'll update with more pictures and information as the day goes on.

10:13am: The word “occupy” has a special connotation for deans and administrators at Harvard. On April 9, 1969, more than 200 students protesting the Vietnam War and the ROTC descended upon and occupied University Hall, the administrative nerve center of the College. Deans and other administration officials were forcibly removed from the building, slogans were spray-painted on the walls, and, in an unprecedented and controversial move by the administration, 400 state police officers were eventually called in to remove the demonstrators. Large groups of students gathered in Harvard Yard to either show their support of or opposition to the occupation, and several minor scuffles ensued. An effigy of an SDS member was burned. When the dust cleared, the ROTC had been kicked off campus and 23 students had been expelled.

State police outside University Hall, 1969

The situation today is quite different than the situation fifty years ago—the occupation of University Hall was one action in a chain of escalating student activism—but there's a lingering wariness of Occupy Harvard all the same. The Yard has not been sealed, per say, but the flow of people coming in has been reduced to a trickle, thanks to the police officers stationed at each gate, checking IDs. The student occupation may be peaceful, but the institutional memory of Harvard administration is long, and they’re preparing for the worst.

11:33pm: It just started raining.

1:20pm: Back from lunch, and back from a closer look at things.

While I was out one Harvard administrator who forgot his Harvard ID had to call a colleague to go out to the gates and escort him in. It's easy to enter the Yard if you have an ID, but apparently very hard if you don't--even if you're wearing tweeds and a bow tie.

Since no one is allowed in, the media have been setting up outside the Yard and talking to the students through the gates.

It's hard to ignore the fact that Harvard students may not make the best spokespeople for this movement. Unlike the student radicals of the 1960s, who could arguably serve as credible resistors to the war in Vietnam, I don't think most people are going to take a "Harvard students are the 99%" chant seriously. For most, Harvard is synonymous with the elite: it's where the elite go to learn how to be elite. An academy for the 1%. Despite the fact that Harvard's admissions policies have been changing radically the last couple of decades (as evidenced in small part by the dramatic increase in financial aid availability), the prevailing image of Harvard students is of the lounging Kennedy-esque preppie in blazers and loafers (see, for example, a recent Oscar-bait Hollywood production in which the exclusive Harvard clubs start their parties by reminding everyone in attendance just how exclusive they are--thanks, Aaron Sorkin!). And I don't think any of Harvard's efforts to create a more racially, culturally, and economically diverse campus with do much to dispel that pervasive stereotype. All that is to say that these Harvard student activists, in all likelihood, are going to be subject to ridicule and scorn. That may be brave, but are they helping the movement? Will they be taken seriously?

As one participant of the 1969 University Hall occupation said, "Like it or not, whatever goes on at Harvard gets a lot of attention."

Why I Won't Be Occupying Wall Street

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:10:25 -0400

Ah, Occupy Wall Street. The protests make feel like the kid who stares longingly out his window as the neighborhood kids play in the streets, knowing that he’ll not be able to finish his piano lesson in time to join them. As the Occupy Wall Street protests have been unfolding over the past few weeks, I’ve been following their progress online from my computer at work. But as much as I’d like to, I don’t think I’ll be able to join the protests. Because, well, I have a job.

That just sounds funny to me. It sounds like the sort of thing I’d expect to hear from an old man—which is, incidentally, what I am slowly becoming, day by day. It happens to all young men, eventually, whether they like it or not. We’re all subject to time’s indifferent march. But I don’t feel like an old man, and I certainly don’t think I talk like one. “I don’t have time for this nonsense; I have a job!” It’s the sort of thing I picture harried businessmen in suits shouting at the protesters as they walk by. “Get a job, longhairs! Why don’t you try being a contributing member of society, like me!”

Because that’s what the men in suits always shout at the hippies: “Go get a job!” That’s cliché, yes, but it’s also true: it’s what former Dick Cheney adviser Ron Christie had to say to the protesters during an appearance on Hardball this week. It’s an amazingly tone deaf thing to say, considering the astoundingly high unemployment rate that shows no sign of going down anytime soon. I’m sure many of the protesters would LOVE to go get a job, but the fact that they can’t is part of what motivated them to pitch a tent with the occupation in the first place.

The high moral ground of that old man with the suit is eroding away, as well. Whenever the protesters get too loud to be ignored, the man in the suit could always take refuge in his own superiority as a Contributing Member of Society. Except, well, the suits are doing their best to dry up those contributions to society, at least as far as taxes are concerned. Their preferred contributions are more nebulous and less quantifiable. “Job creation,” for instance. Because all rich people are job creators. You don’t want to place a burden on the job creators, do you? The very people we need to re-energize society? You do? For shame! Go get a job, longhair.

And then there’s the long hair. There’s something scary and polarizing about student radicals that never really occurred to me during my tenure as a student radical. Ten years ago I would have been right there at the epicenter of these protests, skipping classes if necessary. Me and my dreadlocked vegan-anarchist friends, with our homemade clothes built from duct tape and safety pins, linking arms and leading chants. Yikes.

The movement could probably use more folks like me: the folks who put on ties every morning, the folks who do the crossword and drink their coffee during their commute, the folks with (relatively) non-threatening hair. But as much as I support their aims, I can’t drop my day to day life to pitch a tent with them. Despite the fact that my fiancé and I are both well-educated and working unambiguously white-collar jobs, we’re also living paycheck to paycheck. Maybe thirty years ago two people in our position might have been able to put some money away into savings, and could have afforded to take some time off work to devote to a personal cause. But then what would those people be protesting? The erosion of middle class financial security is one of the symptoms of our national epidemic, but at least we have our jobs. At least we’re getting by, if only just.

And so we watch the protests unfolding, knowing that we support their aims, hoping the movement will continue to grow, but knowing that we’ll be unable to stand on the front lines. There is little I can do but show my support, walking past the protests each morning, balancing my coffee as I straighten my tie, raising my fist as I shout out, warmly, lovingly, laughingly, in solidarity: “Go get a job!”

Hi everyone. Remember me?

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 01:07:57 -0400

Probably not. I haven't been anywhere in the neighborhood of Open Salon in months. Years, really. And I'm sure by now the neighborhood has changed. New people have moved into some of my favorite cover spots. The Squirrels and Wonderhorses have been replaced by... well... I don't know. Other absurd animals, I guess. I'd probably know if I were still around here.

But the point is: you probably don't know who I am. Most of the folks who do are probably long gone. But I used to hang around this joint a lot. The editors seemed to like me, and were quite generous in promoting my tip-tap-typings. I got to be on the cover from time to time. But now, coming back to the old neighborhood, I'm a nobody. Just another face in the crowd.

And that's A-OK by me. The old have to die to make room for the new. That's the way it's always been and that's the way it always will be. Only fools try to fight it, and not the good kind of fool that does a lot of kissing and dancing and rushing in.

So that's why I thought it was odd to get two messages in my OS inbox about my hair in the past week. Two, in one week. I get a ton of spam in my OS inbox--I never even checked it when I blogged here regularly--but I recieved email alerts about these two messages, so I knew they were legit. And they were legit. They both referenced this old blog post from March of 2009. Twenty-eight months ago. My old blog posts are still getting traffic? I decided to check it out. And sure enough, my old blog posts are still getting traffic:

I can understand the Michael Jackson post getting 300 hits in the past month, since that post was built on a series of images comparing MJ to Elvis and always got a lot of traffic through Google image searches. But 200 hits this past month for a post about my outlandishly curly hair? Really? 140 hits for my open letter to the full frontal nudists at my gym? What are you people putting into your google searches?

So even though I'm gone, it looks like my old storefront on the corner is still here, waiting for me. Someone's been paying the utility bills. I few people are still trickling into my shop, and the AdSense pennies are still slowly piling up. But now I'm an antiques dealer. Can I interest you in a humorous Nancy Drew book review? It's vintage! Or how about a clever sonnet about malfunctioning technology? It's a classic, and if you like it, it's the first of a series! So step right up! Just leave your pennies on the counter.

Last Date

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 10:02:38 -0500

My worst Valentine's Day ever? Well, I guess that would be the one where I went out with the fast driving, smooth talking Dick York, the date that ended with me being so horribly disfigured that I'd never be able to get another date again. Well here, it's a hard story to explain; just see for yourself:

If the thought of "teenicide" doesn't scare you straight, well, then, I just don't know what will, sister.