The Complimentary Spouse and I are at the Jobsite Theater tonight to see Lizzie, a rock musical about axe murderer Lizzie Borden.
I’d be neglecting my responsibilities as the world’s most cromulent Simpsons expert if I didn’t point out that the Simpsons did it first.
You may also remember that Lizzie was part of the Jury of the Damned.
A sharp axe and a sharp legal mind. What else do you need?
The hand-off was supposed to go down late at night on November 8, 2019, on Calle Compostela in the old part of Havana.
There he was, resting in a doorway, indifferent to his surroundings. The street wasn’t too busy or bright, so I didn’t have to worry about attracting attention. I dug into my pocket, pulled out a small Ziploc bag, selected one of the items inside, and gripped it carefully.
I didn’t expect what happened next.
I extended my hand and offered the item to him. He ignored me. I waved it under his nose, hoping the smell would convince him it was the good stuff from America. He didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in the slightest.
He didn’t even wag his tail.
Operation Treatos Para Perritos was off to a bad start.
A few weeks earlier, when the Complimentary Spouse and I were planning our third trip to Cuba, we were discussing the homeless dogs we’d seen on our previous visits. They were friendly and happy, but clearly weren’t getting much food.
We decided to put a box of Milk-Bones in our luggage for the dogs, along with gum, tennis balls, and other little presents we always bring to give to kids.
I named our plan Operation Treatos Para Perritos. We thought the dogs would love it. But, as we leaned quickly on Calle Compostela, they couldn’t care less.
We approached about 30 dogs over three days with Milk-Bones. They loved the attention from Britt and me, but had no enthusiasm for the treats. Just one accepted a treat, but only after a long period of confusion and uncertainty. Instead of eating it in front of us, he took it in his mouth and slowly walked away. I’d like to think he ate it, but it’s more likely that he spit it out.
The only taker for the Milk-Bones was a woman who saw what I was doing and asked for a few. I explained they were dog treats, and she said she had a dog at home. I gave her a handful.
About half an hour later, we saw her trying to sell the Milk-Bones to people in the street.
Free enterprise will always find a way.
So, what went wrong? At first, I thought the dogs didn’t like Milk-Bones — but I quickly realized that was a stupid idea.
Homeless dogs in Havana are not pampered pets like Lucy and Linus. They’re not holding out on the cheap treats because they know there’s leftover steak from Bern’s in the fridge.
No, the most likely explanation is that these dogs wouldn’t recognize any dog treats as real food — from ordinary Milk-Bones to the gourmet $5 biscuits at the dog boutique near our house.
If you were used to scavenging for scraps of leftover food, you’d probably be perplexed by prepackaged, processed, or custom-made dog treats too.
Accordingly, I’m adjusting my strategy for the next Operation Treatos Para Perritos. I’ll test out things like jerky, freeze-dried treats, and rawhide chews.
And, if that doesn’t work, I’ll round up all the dogs and take them home with me. I’ll just have to figure out how to convince Southwest Airlines that I need two dozen comfort animals.
This polite tirade started as a really short LinkedIn post but just kept growing.
Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which made marriage equality the law of the United States. Looking back at the joyous media coverage in 2015, you’d think the issue was about cake, confetti, and matching tuxedos.
Well, it was. But it really wasn’t. The real legacy of Obergefell is more meaningful — and less exciting — than you can imagine.
Yes, less exciting. Let me explain why:
My husband and I had been married seven years before Obergefell, but our marriage was only recognized in a few states. In our home state, just like at the national level, we had the legal status of roommates. It was confusing and degrading — and also unfair from an economic perspective.
For example, when we tried to add me as a second driver for a rental car in Las Vegas in 2011, the agent said there would be an additional charge. This rental company didn’t charge for spouses, so I said, “We’re married.” Loud enough for everyone to hear, she cruelly clapped back with, “Married? Not in Nevada, the hell you’re not.”1
I bring this up for two reasons:
The economic inequality same-sex couples faced was especially prominent and painful at tax time. Even though we were married, my husband and I couldn’t take advantage of hundreds of federal benefits for married people filing jointly.
For example, as the husband of a university professor, my MBA and other master’s degree should have cost nothing: Free tuition was a perk for spouses of employees. But even though I didn’t have to pay the school a penny for anything except books and parking, I had to pay federal income tax on the full imputed value of the courses I took. That added up to thousands of dollars that an opposite-sex spouse wouldn’t have to pay.
We also had to pay taxes on the healthcare benefits I received when I needed to switch to my husband’s plan. Opposite-sex spouses didn’t have to pay taxes on their healthcare benefits.
The Obergefell decision was about dignity and equality. It’s easy to remember the parties, champagne, and wedding gifts, but I am most grateful for how Obergefell made our lives better in millions of small, mundane ways.
We feel the impact of Obergefell when we file taxes, sign paperwork, and apply for loans. We feel it when we go through customs and immigration at the airport and present our passports together, like any other married couple. We feel it when we’re shopping for auto insurance.
And trust me, we feel it every time we’re at the car rental counter in Las Vegas. Are we married in Nevada? Hell yes we are!
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1 I’m using a skosh of artistic license here. What she said probably wasn’t as loud or nasty, but it certainly made me feel terrible.
On a flight from Tampa to Chicago in 2011, the Complimentary Spouse and I sat in front of two men lamenting political correctness and the decline of religion in public life.
One said he hoped Michelle Bachman would enter the presidential race soon to put an end to this nonsense.
“Yeah, it’s getting bad,” the other guy agreed. “Kids can’t even play ‘smear the queer’ on the playground anymore.”
I snapped. I stood up (as much as one can stand up in seat 3E), turned around, and let them know in no uncertain terms that their bigotry robbed people of their dignity and deprived them of equal rights.
I also told them they were complicit in creating an environment so toxic that kids would rather kill themselves than endure the pain and humiliation. I quoted suicide statistics as proof.
Addressing the lack of religion, I said the man sitting next to me was raised in a Southern Baptist household in a religious community and knew more about the Bible than both of them combined.1 And he is my husband.
They shut up. I sat down. They didn’t say a word for the rest of the flight and wouldn’t make eye contact with us as we deplaned.2
I don’t know if Dr. Betty Berzon would applaud my behavior or be aghast at it.
Dr. Betty Berzon was a lesbian psychotherapist and activist who began fighting against discrimination and stigmatization in the medical community when homosexuality was still considered a mental illness. She’s also the author of “Setting Them Straight,” a handbook for confronting bigots and homophobes in personal and public interactions.3
“Setting Them Straight” was published in 1996, when discourse about LGBTQ issues was shifting away from the AIDS crisis and toward social issues like marriage equality and the military. In the ’90s:
I read “Setting Them Straight” in 1996. Berzon said the best way to confront bigots is not to try to reply tit-for-tat with whatever points they make. Instead, ask them why they feel that way. When you do that:
Berzon, a psychotherapist, came out in 1968 and began working with LGBTQ clients. She told people to be proud of their identity — nothing was wrong with them. It was a revolutionary message at the time. She pushed for the American Psychological Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness — and, in 1973, they did.
I care about who you are, who you have been, who you want to be. I open myself to you to listen and learn about you. I cherish you, not just my fantasy of who you are, not just who I need you to be, but who you really are…
Betty Berzon
So, let’s return to that encounter on the plane. If Berzon were there, I think she’d be proud that I called out bigotry but unhappy that I took a confrontational approach.
The next time I’m in 3E — or anywhere else I hear bigotry — I’ll remember to do better. Thanks, Betty.
____
1 This is an exaggeration. I know many LGBTQ people who had to overcome strict religious backgrounds, but they weren’t on the flight, so I used their experiences to pump up Britt’s religious resume. It’s easier to hit a point home when you have a living, breathing example of it sitting next to you.
2 Britt remembers this differently. He says:
Britt’s memory tends to be better than mine, but I’ll stick with my story because it makes me feel like more of a superhero. But Britt also takes poetic license in his retelling — he says it happened in 2008 as we were flying to San Francisco to get married.
3 This is actually one of her lesser-known books. She’s best known for “Positively Gay” (1979), “Permanent Partners” (1988), “The Intimacy Dance” (1996), and her autobiography, “Surviving Madness, a Therapist’s Own Story” (2002).4
4 So, why am I writing a whole blog post about this book and not one of the more famous ones? Well, it’s the only one I’ve read. I haven’t written about books I’ve not read since middle school.5
5 OK, high school.6
6 Fine, college. Are you happy now?
Depending on which expert you talk to, Americans see between 3,000 and 10,000 ads daily. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed a shift in the way these ads — well, some of them — speak to and interact with LGBTQ people.
That’s certainly true during Pride Month when pinkwashing is out of control. But it’s also evident year-round. Sometimes, LGBTQ inclusion is subtle — like a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it scene of a gay couple in a mainstream ad. At other times, it’s more overt.
Big Sea, a local advertising and marketing agency, has done a deep dive into LGBTQ history and its effect on advertising. Look here: “A History of LGBTQIA+ and Pride Month Marketing.”
As an amateur LGBTQ historian, I was really impressed with the blog post. I reposted it on LinkedIn and shared my thoughts. Here’s what I wrote:
Big Sea — a great agency here in the Tampa Bay area — has done a tremendous job here of guiding readers through LGBTQ history and showing how marketing messages evolved in response to cultural and political changes.
These types of campaigns and ads are only successful when there are LGBTQ people involved at all levels — leadership, creative, research, media buying, human resources, and so on. Market reserarch and audience data is no match for the experience, input, and insight of LGBTQ people on your team.
Consider the Subaru ads in the ‘90s that winked at lesbian buyers. Market research may have identified or validated the the market opportunity, but only a lesbian would know themes, language, and cultural references that would resonate with the audience. Who else would think to sneak a reference to Xena the Warrior Princess into the ads? I assure you it wasn’t a straight cisgender guy!
Companies that build meaningful and profitable relationships with LGBTQ customers don’t just slap a rainbow on their logos in June. They hire, empower, and listen to LGBTQ professionals. They have LGBTQ people in leadership roles. They provide development and advancement opportunities.
We’re seeing some pushback now against LGBTQ marketing, but I hope it’s just a blip and we’re back on the path to progress soon.
David Simanoff on LinkedIn
Thanks for the great history lesson and insight, Big Sea!
By the way, I posted something else on LinkedIn a while ago about Subaru’s LGBTQ outreach. Check it out here.
Drag was around for a long, long time before RuPaul smeared some Vaseline on a low-resolution camera and launched Drag Race in 2009.1
Men have been dressing as women for entertainment for centuries — what, you didn’t learn about Shakespeare? And women have been dressing as men for just as long — the most famous “trouser role” in opera is Cheribino from The Marriage of Figaro, which I forced the Complementary Spouse to endure in 2018 and will be his Exhibit A if he files for divorce. (Calm down, sweetie. A little culture never hurts anyone.)
Drag, as we think of it today, has existed for more than a century. “Legendary Children,” a 2020 book by Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez, explains how the conventions of Drag Race (reading, celebrity impersonations, fashion, comedy, singing) have deep cultural, societal, and entertainment roots.
Like all drag queens backstage, the queens on Drag Race share tips and techniques from time to time — when they’re not engaging in that age-old drag technique of simply stealing from or copying each other. Drag is an old art form, and quite a bit of what you see the queens do in that Werk Room is born out of decades of men and women perfecting the form and passing on their technical expertise to the next generation.
— “Legendary Children” by Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez
Here in the Tampa Bay area, drag has been around for 125 years. As the Tampa Bay Times reports, the shows were considered family entertainment, drew large crowds, and even offered discounts for children’s tickets.
How is drag both timely and timeless? How is drag both part of our culture and a commentary on it? It’s because it’s all about invention and re-invention. Just ask Mama Ru:
Drag really is all about dipping into pop culture and then reshaping it into something else.
RuPaul
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1 Go watch that first season. You’d think it was shot through cheesecloth in an abandoned shack with a ten-dollar decorating budget. The production values were terrible.
Music doesn’t lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.
Jimi Hendrix
Yesterday, I wrote about dance music. Today, let’s talk about music in general.
For LGBTQ people, music reflects the full spectrum of our experiences, from angst, loneliness, and anger to exuberance and celebration.
Luke Howard, a DJ in London, told Gay Times:1
Maybe as children we feel a little isolated, so we find listening to music a way of connecting with the wider world. So when we discover clubs and we’re in a room of like-minded people, we start to feel safe and we don’t feel so anxious about being who we are. That’s a wonderful way to experience freedom.”
Luke Howard
I created a Super Pride Playlist a few years ago and update it yearly for Pride Month. Check it out:
A few songs you might not know:
Enjoy the music!
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1 This would have been a good article to cite yesterday, as it’s primarily about dance music.
2 I don’t know if “living reincarnation” is a thing, but it should be.
What do gay men enjoy more than a dance song? The extended dance remix of the same dance song!
OK, there’s a bit of stereotyping going on there, but lots of gay men go gaga for Gaga, wanna be Madonna1, and are crazy for Kylie.
My theory — more like an informed guess — is that this love for dance music goes back to the days of disco. Here’s why:
Disco got gay men on the dance floor, and we’ve been shaking our groove things ever since. Just ask the Complementary Spouse and me:
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1 Here’s Madonna’s “Finally Enough Love,” a collection of 50 remixes. I have played this album, approximately, 1,000 times.
Let’s jump into a recent controversy to kick off Gayskool ’23.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have been in the news because they were invited, disinvited, and re-invited to the L.A. Dodgers Pride Night planned for June 16. (As Daily Dave readers know, the Dodgers were one of the first baseball teams to have a Pride event, although it wasn’t official.)
The New York Times has the story here: Groups Return to Pride Night After Dodgers Reverse Course. If you can’t get past the paid firewall, here’s what the Dodgers said:
After much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Los Angeles Dodgers would like to offer our sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and families.
I’ve seen the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence somewhere. They roller-skated past the Complementary Spouse and me on roller skates — a blur of nuns’ habits, white face paint, and glitter. I can’t remember where this happened, but if I were a betting man, I’d say it was the Russian River Valley near San Francisco. Britt believes it was Provincetown. It may have been the Castro. One thing is certain, though: It wasn’t Branson, Mo.
The Sisters describe themselves as a “leading edge Order of queer and trans nuns” who “believe all people have a right to express their unique joy and beauty.” According to their website:
We use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit.
So, who went apoplectic when the Dodgers asked the Sisters to join the festivities at Dodgers Stadium? Well, let’s ask Homer:
The Dodgers’ knee-jerk reaction was to disinvite the Sisters, and the response from the LGBTQ community was swift and forceful. Many groups, including LA Pride and the ACLU, backed out of the event. Forced to decide between caving to bigots or standing by their commitment to diversity and inclusion, the Dodgers decided to do the right thing.
Here is the Sisters’ statement:
A full apology and explanation was given to us by the Dodgers staff which we accept. We believe the apology is sincere because the Dodgers have worked for 10 years with our community and as well they have asked us to continue an ongoing relationship with them. In the future, if similar pressures from outside our community arise, our two organizations will consult and assist each other in responding, alongside our colleagues at the Los Angeles LGBT Center and others from the LGBTOIA2S community, now more closely tied with the LA Dodgers than ever before.
Someone asked me yesterday what I thought about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. I said I thought of them as a protest group: They fight against oppression by assuming their oppressors’ language, garb, and traditions. Creativity is one of the most powerful tools LGBTQ people have to fight bigotry.
As for the people who feel offended? Let me be direct: These bigots have used their twisted interpretation of religion to ostracize, demonize, and dehumanize LGBTQ people for millennia. They have done serious harm — it’s not hyperbole to say their actions have a body count. How has a bunch of men wearing makeup and nuns’ habits affected their lives in any real way? Their feelings are hurt? World’s tiniest violin. They’re not victims.
I asked Siri to summarize that last paragraph. Her response: “Duck them.”
Sadly, I think we’ll see many more stories like this in the news. Organizations committed to LGBTQ equality and inclusion are under attack from increasingly rabid and empowered extremists.1
We’ll soon learn which organizations have been paying us lip service and which ones will live up to their word.
At a fundraiser at the Portico Cafe1 Friday night, the Complimentary Spouse noticed something out of the corner of his eye and pointed at it.
“There are somebody’s ashes on that shelf.”
I looked and didn’t see an urn. “Where?” I asked.
“Right there.”
I looked again and saw what he was pointing at. It wasn’t an urn. It was a jar of dirt with a label on it. I recognized it instantly.
“Remember when we went to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery? They had a bunch of jars because they were collecting soil from every lynching site,” I said. “I’m sure that’s one of them.”
“Oh yeah,” Britt said. “I remember that.”
We moved closer. The label said:
Lewis Jackson
Hillsborough County, Florida
December 4, 1903
I asked the barista at the Portico Cafe if the jar was indeed part of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Soil Collection Project. She said yes, and added that a historical marker had just been put up at the actual site.
(The Soil Collection Project and Community Historical Market Project are two parts of EJI’s Community Remembrance Project. The Legacy Museum is just a few miles away from another EJI project, the iconic and moving National Memorial for Peace and Justice.2)
Seeing that soil filled me with sorrow, as it was a tangible reminder of our history of bigotry and violence. One hundred and twenty years later, our society is still cursed with those plagues, and a lot of the progress that has been made is being eroded.
But that jar also made me hopeful. It shows that people — well, not all people — don’t want to hide from the shame of the past. That leads to dialogue, and dialogue can lead to change.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.
Errol Morris, filmmaker
These jars might make people uncomfortable, but discomfort is the only way we’ll evolve on these issues.
There’s pain in that soil, but without soil, nothing can grow.
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1 The Portico Cafe is a coffee shop founded by a local Methodist church. It helps recovering addicts, people who were in jail, and others get second chances by giving them meaningful jobs. The revenue goes toward local homelessness initiatives.
2 This monument is powerful, disturbing, and essential. It records the individual victims of lynching while conveying the enormity of the violence.
