BuggBlog

The Tale of Two Closets

Michael Triplett raises some good questions about my Metro Weekly op-ed comparing Jose Antonio Vargas’s life in the “undocumented immigrant” closet to life in the gay closet, and specifically my argument that the telling of lies necessitated by either closet don’t necessarily imply some sort of serial mendacity once someone comes out of the closet. I said, “By [Slate’s Jack] Shafer’s logic, formerly closeted gay journalists are no more than confessed liars who can’t be trusted.” 

At NLGJA’s Re:Act blog, Triplett counters:

It’s a fascinating argument, although I’m not sure it completely holds up.  Admittedly, it’s the lawyer in me (who has written about immigration issues in the workplace) that bristles at the suggestion that being “in the closet” about your immigration status is comparable to being “in the closet” about your sexual orientation.  Lying about who you are dating doesn’t put your employer in jeopardy for violating a host of federal laws.  Lying about who your gender identity doesn’t represent a fraud that can result in your being permanently removed from the country.

What I was really focusing on in my argument is the case of undocumented immigrants such as Vargas, who were brought or sent to the U.S. when young and have as adults become, in every way but legal, Americans. The choices they have to make — lie and stay in their home nation or “come out” and risk be deported to an essentially foreign nation — are morally comparable to the closet LGBT people face. And while the closet certainly exacts a psychological price on all of us who experience it, it’s beyond the pale for Shafer and others to claim that the closet has converted those who come out into pathological liars. (And, just a legalistic nitpick: While it may not result in deportation, lying about your gender identity could certainly have some “fraud” implications depending on which U.S. state you happen to be in.)

This is why the characterization of Shafer’s anti-Vargas argument as “Let them pick fruit,” has some truth. It’s okay for undocumented workers to skirt the system to farm midwestern fields or nurse upper-class infants, but to lie to the Washington Post? Well, that just a step too far.

Pardon, but bullshit. It would be easy to make a sarcastic call for an investigation of the child rearing, lawn care and home improvement labor employed by the management of our major media outlets, but it would miss the point. There simply is no one in the D.C. metro area — or any other metropolitan area — whose daily life isn’t touched in some way by an undocumented worker.

Of course, I’m really focusing on immigrants who come here as children — those the DREAM Act would provide a legal path to citizenship — because that’s Vargas’s story, and it’s the story of other people in my life I care about. Those are also the stories where the two closets, undocumented and gay, most closely correlate.

I admit my argument breaks down if you’re looking at, say, undocumented immigrants who came here as adults — that’s a choice made by adults, and choice is what takes it out of the realm of the closet. (There is a counter to that counter: Gay and lesbian adults staying in the country illegally because they can’t get citizenship through marriage in the same way that heterosexual couples can — although that’s getting a little deep in the weeds for this particular argument.)

But the core truth, and the one I was trying to get at, is that all of us as LGBT people start out in a closet not of our choice or design. Undocumented immigrants who are brought or sent here as kids are put into a closet not of their choice. It’s the lack of choice that’s key and why Shafer’s argument is so wrong-headed and dismissive. 

 

Why I will buy an iPad (and why someone you love probably will, too)

Yesterday morning, as I was digging my way out of deadline and eagerly awaiting the start of Apple's holy tablet presentation, I got a panicked call from my mother. She had some important legal documents she needed to print and sign, but she couldn't get them to open. The Word format documents were trying to open in Word, naturally, but Word was a trial version -- the docs should have been opening in Pages. Somehow, perhaps during the OS upgrade, the defaults had gotten reset.

So I did my tech support thing, slowly walking her through the steps to fix the problem (her connection is too slow and intermittent for me just to take control of her screen remotely). It's easy to forget from my semi-nerdy little enclave with ScanSnaps and terabyte drives and specialized applications that just because it's a MacBook doesn't mean it's instantly understandable to anyone.

Though I do take great comfort that my family is now completely off Windows, although those panicked calls to me for help were easier to handle: "I dunno."

Anyway, when I read some of the underwhelmed reactions to the iPad yesterday, I was already primed to see what they were missing. Sure, for a geeky person, the lack of multi-tasking is a pain -- hell, I wish my damn iPhone would implement some limited multi-tasking so I could keep my time management system running constantly, rather than having to fire it up repeatedly after making a call or checking in with another app. But for someone like my mom, who can sometimes still gets flustered and frustrated by applications that move and hide and disappear and reappear, the one-thing-at-a-time approach of the iPad and its stripped down interface would likely be a huge relief.

I don't know what the situation would be with printing attached documents, but I do think that the simple email and browsing that she primarily uses her laptop for would be better handled through the iPad.

For myself, aside from my natural Apple fanboy instinct of see-want-must-have, I've been more anxiously awaiting the arrival of the iPad ever since my first-generation Kindle bit the dust. I actually like a lot about the Kindle, but there was lots to dislike as well (*cough* idiotic page navigation *cough*). I'm glad I waited -- the iBooks interface looks like it will be a lot more in tune with how I read these days. Plus, even I've grown tired of lugging my MacBook into the living room simply to surf web sites while watching TV, something my iPhone is too small for. I'm not totally sold on the movie playback, yet, but then again I've been watching widescreen movies on my iPhone while on the elliptical machine for a long time now, and any increase in size, even small, might be welcome.

The only real question is, can I wait until the second generation iPad?

Washington City Paper writes terrible story about Metro Weekly and the Washington Blade/DC Agenda

I have a general policy of always speaking to reporters who call me for comment because my own livelihood depends on people being willing to talk to reporters. So, when Washington City Paper editor Erik Wemple called me up to ask me last week about the sudden closure of the Washington Blade and the statement I had put out on behalf of Metro Weekly I had no hesitation to talk to him.

Unfortunately, Erik decided that our Metro Weekly statement was “grave dancing” because, after I expressed my condolences for the Blade staff and congratulations for their accomplishments over the years, I included a sentence mentioning some pride in my own publication: “All of us at Metro Weekly take great pride in serving our community, and we look forward to continuing our growth as the source for local LGBT news, politics and entertainment.”

Even accounting for the heightened emotions running through much of our LGBT community over the Blade’s closure, it takes an extreme level of sensitivity to read that sentence as “grave dancing.” Believe me, if I had intended to grave dance, it would have been a far more obvious and memorable statement.

What is obvious is that the story attempts to create some sort of public cat fight between Kevin Naff and myself, one that neither Kevin nor I are interested in having. This is what Kevin said to me via e-mail as a statement in response to the City Paper story:

"Erik's story was a transparent attempt to create tension that simply does not exist. I spoke to Erik and told him I wish Metro Weekly all the best; I never denigrated MW or Sean."

Both Kevin and I tend to aver publicly that there’s no “rivalry” between our publications -- or between us and the new DC Agenda. Those statements should be taken with a grain of salt because there is no way for two publications serving the same community with similar (though not the same) focus to not be in competition for both stories and advertising. What I -- and, presumably, Kevin -- mean by that is that we’re not spending our every business hour focused on cutting the other’s throat.

Sure, there’s competition. Sometimes there are bumped shoulders and bruised feelings. This is natural. Anyone who has dealt with editors and publishers (gay or straight) knows that you’re dealing with a lot of big, ambitious egos. Put them all in the same sandbox and there will be some occasional friction.

In other words, not that big a news story. And certainly, in this case, not an accurate reflection of either my intention or sentiment when I released the Metro Weekly statement.

As for my policy of always talking to reporters, it’s still in place, even for Erik -- who, I should point out, has treated me fairly in the past -- though I will probably be a little less forthcoming, since even when you try to say something nice, it may be better to say nothing at all.

A little Bugg goes a long way

In addition to my usual duties at Metro Weekly, and my occasional blogging here, I've been added to the  stable of bloggers at the just-launched Bilerico D.C., the new Washington-focused offshoot of the Bilerico Project under the direction of the always fabulous Michael Crawford. Be sure to check out the post I have up today on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- it's a subject I'm likely to be braying about incessantly for the next few weeks (and you should, too!). Most of my posting over there will focus on politics and such -- my intensive navel-gazing, tennis obsessions and videogame addictions will stay right here. Except when they don't.

Speaking of resumes

Over at my favorite right-wing, blood-pressure raising site, The Corner, a post on Va. Gov. Tim Kaine's possible ascension to the Obama ticket:

A friend writes, from Virginia.

...a child born on the day Tim Kaine took office would still not be ready for nursery school....What a partnership Obama and Tim would make. A dreamer - and a doer.

Okay, fine. And a child born the day George W. Bush took office would have greater intellectual skills and moral fiber than the current gang of idiots running the country from Pennsylvania Ave.

Hyperbole -- anyone can do it!

Of course, it is The Corner, where if a liberal so much as farts in the general direction of a cathedral or an evangelical theocrat then Kathryn Jean Lopez comes down with a case of the vapors, but when a right-wing nutjob shoots up a gay-affirming church then...crickets.

Karl Rove unsurprisingly detests people with style and wit

From Talking Points Memo, a note on Karl Rove's "uppity" take on Obama:

Karl Rove's latest to Republicans about how to message on Obama ...

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Matthew Yglesias notes the class issues so inartfully wedged into Rove's description:

How many Americans have had the experience of being at a country club and watching some dude with a beautiful date hold a martini and smoke a cigarette? Certainly I haven't. Rove assumes that "you know this guy" but unless "you" are a wealthy person from the past, you probably don't know a guy like that.

Well, I don't know "a guy like that," though I imagine he's a Republican if he's hanging around a country club waiting for his tee time. But if you change a couple things around:

Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the GAY BAR with the TWINKY BOYFRIEND, holding a COSMO and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.

That guy, I know.

Not necessarily my favorite Deadly Sin, but it'll do

I approach every Pride season with more than a little weariness and trepidation. That's not because I have any particular issues with Pride but because as someone who runs a gay publication, Pride really means one thing: work. I'm not whining too much, since the people who put on Capital Pride put in a lot more hours over the course of the weekend than I do. But I'm happy to whine nonetheless!

This year, though, I had even less to whine about because I had the great fortune and honor to be chosen as one of the Capital Pride Heroes. I've been around the D.C. GLBT and HIV/AIDS activist scene for a long time now, and I'm really flattered to be included not only among this year's honorees, but all those who came before. Looking at the list of all the honorees past is humbling for me, and that list doesn't even begin to capture the full range of people who worked in ways large and small to make our lives a little bit better.

But, from the more important navel-gazing perspective, this was also my first year being in the Pride parade. Really, in all my 19 years in D.C. I'd never walked or ridden the parade from start to finish, so getting to ride in a car right at the start of the procession was a pretty cool experience. Frightening, as well. When you're facing that many people crowded together along city streets, you have a sneaky suspicion that they're either going to rip you apart a la 28 Days Later or elect you to public office. Both horrifying prospects.

Also, being a natural introvert makes the whole elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist-wrist waving thing a challenge for me. Things weren't improved by the fact that the ZipCar-provided convertible Mini Coopers the Heroes rode in for the parade weren't actually labeled with anything to let people know why jokers like me were riding at the front of the parade. For example, when you see a bunch of lesbians on loud motorcycles you instantly think, "Dykes on Bikes!" When you see me riding down the street with a sheepish smile and wave, you don't really think "Hero!"

What people thought -- and cheered -- was, "Woooo! Zip Car! We love Zip Car!" It was amusing during the first third of the parade route. It was a little annoying during the middle third. And for the final third, when a drunk guy ran out to my car and gushed about the joys of Zip Car -- "Ohmygod I looooove Zip Car! I drive Zip Car everywhere, even when I'm not drunk!" -- it kind of bordered into the soul crushing. And then Wendy Rieger totally dissed me from the review stand by skipping my bio. Thanks Wendy! I really look forward to picking which picture of you runs when we catch you at the Reel Affirmations reception this fall. I totally promise you won't have your eyes closed or be making an unfortunately funny face!

But it was a great, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Thanks to everyone at Capital Pride for making me a part of it.

As for the rest of Pride, well, even though it's a huge amount of work to get ready for, it's always worth it in the end. It's one of the few times during the year that all of us at the magazine can get out and talk to people, and the number of positive comments we get always make it easier to get back to work on Monday. Well, Tuesday. It's never easy to get work on the Monday after Pride. Thank you to everyone who stopped by. As always, it makes my job worthwhile.

Nunn of the above

Jonathan Capehart's piece in today's Washington Post is a pretty strong case for why former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn would be a disastrous choice for Barack Obama's running mate in the eyes of the gay and lesbian community. Nunn was one of the principles behind the effort to keep gays out of the military, rebuffing the newly elected President Bill Clinton on one of his big campaign promises, effectively skewering the administration (perhaps in part over pique at being passed over for Secretary of Defense).

But Michael Crowley over at The New Republic's Stump thinks that gays are overreacting to Nunn's past anti-gay activity, and should chill at the thought of putting the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Georgian on the Dem ticket:

For starters, the gays in the military fight happened fifteen years ago. Social attitudes, including within the military itself, were pretty different. ... From what I can tell Nunn seemed less personally offended by the idea than duty-bound as chairman of the Armed Services Committee to represent the strong feelings of the military brass.

I clearly remember those interminable and unfair hearings that Nunn held on gays in the military, with sordid speculation on showers running rampant. I remember front page newspaper stories on Nunn bringing fellow senators and congressman on tours of submarines to inspect the close proximity of the sailors bunks. These were not the actions of the a man who was "less personally offended by the idea" -- they were the actions of a man determined to slander gay servicemembers as sexual predators who could not be trusted to serve their country honorably. Add in the fact that Nunn had previously fired his own staff members because they were gay and it's pretty clear what his opinions of homosexuality were.

Oh, and if things are so different from 15 years ago, why is the policy still in place even as a majority of Americans support its repeal and Democrats control both houses of Congress? No one's even offered up a bill for Bush to veto. Blithely dismissing this issue as a problem of the past ignores the long-lasting damage Nunn inflicted on both gay and lesbian servicemembers and the military itself (how about those gay Arabic linguists?).

Personally, I don't think Nunn has a chance of ending up in the veep slot, his weak protestations that he may -- may -- be reconsidering DADT notwithstanding. But if he does, I will be just as furious as most other gay people will be, and rightfully so. Nunn bears primary responsibility for creating a federally legislated policy that declares us second-class citizens. That Crowley would dismiss that as an "overblown concern" means that some people still haven't learned the lesson.

Postscript: Crowley seems to be basing his case on Nunn's work on nuclear terrorism and anti-proliferation. Fine, he's done some good work there. But he's not alone in that. There are plenty better options available.

Lowering the punditry limbo bar

When some bloggers began criticizing a Commentary column that criticized Barack Obama for choosing orange juice (a "childish" drink) over coffee ("bitter and bracing"), I kind of assumed that too many people were reading a joking column as a serious rant. Then I went to read it for myself.

And it really is about the stupidest thing I've read this campaign. It may even be stupider than Fox News talking about the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Scary thing? There's plenty of room to go even lower between now and November.

Howard Kurtz and Brian Williams have dirty, dirty minds

Howard Kurtz tosses one off at the end of his Post media column today, noting NBC anchor Brian Williams consternation at all the sexy, sexy stuff in recent issues of the New York Times.

Finally, Brian Williams turns media critic on his NBC blog, questioning (without quite saying so) whether the New York Times is out of touch with mainstream America:

"It's tough to figure out exactly what readers the paper is speaking to, or seeking. Consider this: the Sunday Styles section lead story on April 13th was 'Scavengers on the Urban Savannah' (people buy things at flea markets!), and promoted on Page One was 'A Sex Chair Becomes A Battlefield.' Alrighty then.

"This Sunday's lead story was 'Through Sickness, Health, Sex Change . . . ' in a section that included the essay, 'Was I On A Date Or Baby-Sitting?,' and 'Let's Say You Want To Date A Hog Farmer' (and who among us hasn't?).

"The magazine cover story this week was 'The Newlywed Gays!' (happy gay men in Massachusetts who are married outdoor grilling enthusiasts!) . . .The lead story in the Travel Section? The rise of vacation resorts catering to nudists."

All the sex that's fit to print.

You know those stories about young gay men getting married and, in many cases, committing to monogamy -- nothing but sex, sex, sex!

Really, given that it looks like neither one of them bothered to read the Newlywed Gays story  -- I did, by the way, and it's pretty good overall -- it makes me wonder what pictures go through Williams's and Kurtz's heads when they hear the word "gay." And if they did read the story, well, ingrained bias is an ugly thing.