Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Barack Obama Versus Dick Cheney

Yes, there is already a Barack Obama action figure available in Japan. And you know that the Prez beats Cheney cause the order to close Guantanamo and the CIA Black Sites has been signed. (Thanks Danny!)

The Jewish press covers a synagogue getting an award for gay marriage activism

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is sort of like the Associated Press for the Jewish world — news outlets around the world pick up stories that they cover. Which is why it's important that they've just posted a story about Congregation B'nai Jeshurun being recognized for its work in support of marriage equality in New York state.

Here's the story:

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A New York City synagogue has received an award for its leadership on the issue of gay marriage.

Congregation B'nai Jeshurun was given the Star Award from Empire State Pride Agenda in recognition of the synagogue's leadership on working to obtain passage of marriage equality legislation in New York State. It is the first time the award was bestowed on a group rather than an individual.

The Manhattan congregation formed a marriage equality commitee in the spring of 2006 to advocate for enactment of New York state legislation that affirms the rights of same-sex couples to have the same access to civil marriage and lawful rights as other couples. The committee hosted an action event in Manhattan later that spring with 500 activists, clergy and elected officials and has organized groups to attend the annual Equality & Justice Day in Albany to advocate for marriage equality -- bringing 40 people in 2008. The synagogue also organizes in-district meetings with legislators and sponsors discussion programs for the congregation.

The Gay Agenda is now the White House Agenda!

On the whitehouse.gov site if you check out the menu and go to civil rights this is the unprecedented message you will read:

Support for the LGBT Community

"While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect."

-- Barack Obama, June 1, 2007

• Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: In 2004, crimes against LGBT Americans constituted the third-highest category of hate crime reported and made up more than 15 percent of such crimes. President Obama cosponsored legislation that would expand federal jurisdiction to include violent hate crimes perpetrated because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical disability. As a state senator, President Obama passed tough legislation that made hate crimes and conspiracy to commit them against the law.
• Fight Workplace Discrimination: President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. While an increasing number of employers have extended benefits to their employees' domestic partners, discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace occurs with no federal legal remedy. The President also sponsored legislation in the Illinois State Senate that would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
• Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.
• Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: President Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006 which would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman and prevented judicial extension of marriage-like rights to same-sex or other unmarried couples.
• Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell: President Obama agrees with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and other military experts that we need to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should be prohibited. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation. Additionally, more than 300 language experts have been fired under this policy, including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. The President will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy and ensure it helps accomplish our national defense goals.
• Expand Adoption Rights: President Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.
• Promote AIDS Prevention: In the first year of his presidency, President Obama will develop and begin to implement a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategy that includes all federal agencies. The strategy will be designed to reduce HIV infections, increase access to care and reduce HIV-related health disparities. The President will support common sense approaches including age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception, combating infection within our prison population through education and contraception, and distributing contraceptives through our public health system. The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. President Obama has also been willing to confront the stigma -- too often tied to homophobia -- that continues to surround HIV/AIDS.
• Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS: In the United States, the percentage of women diagnosed with AIDS has quadrupled over the last 20 years. Today, women account for more than one quarter of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses. President Obama introduced the Microbicide Development Act, which will accelerate the development of products that empower women in the battle against AIDS. Microbicides are a class of products currently under development that women apply topically to prevent transmission of HIV and other infections.

Shehechiyanu — I have been blessed to live to see this moment.

On another note, I want to reprint the first sentence of the inaugural address and point out something that has great meaning to me as a Jewish Buddhist:

"I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors."

Humility. Gratitude. Mindfulness. May we all embody these qualities. Keyn yehi ratzon.

Sunday Morning (Not A) Cartoon: If I was straight

I had planned to post some of the usual queer animation when I came across this video, and felt it just had to be seen. It is sweet, moving, sad and funny. Check out his youtube channel.

This is why Mark Segal started Gay Youth New York in 1971. Today a young man could face the same issues we all dealt with, but today he can share it with the world.

The loss of Rabbi Alan Lew

"He taught us that meditation is part of our heritage."

Rabbi Alan Lew died suddenly today, at the age of 65, while on a run after morning prayers at a rabbinic conference in Baltimore.

The path that Rabbi Alan Lew followed is a familiar one to many Jews who have spent time deep in Buddhist practice. He left Judaism, disillusioned and disheartened at the lack of spirit he found there. He touched something deep in his journey into Zen practice, and then returned to Judaism, bringing the heart of meditation back into Judaism. Back because meditation was long a part of Jewish practice, but lost to many of us for a wide variety of historical reasons.

His life, a commitment to living the path of compassion through social activism, is an example to us all.

His books, The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi, and This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, are essential reading for anyone with a serious Jewish meditation practice. May his memory be for a blessing.

Queer Jubu Hero: Pieter-Dirk Uys — See Him In Darling! At The Jewish Film Festival

You have only two opportunities to see a film about the most politically subversive and influential drag queen in living history (if not all history). Don't miss it — "Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story" will be part of the 18th Annual Jewish Film Festival, at the Walter Reade Theater on January 29th. 

Uys is best known in the guise of his alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, the Most Famous White Woman in South Africa.  During the later apartheid years, as Evita, Uys appeared regularly on television and in clubs satirizing the evil of the apartheid government. When people who spoke out and challenged the government directly were imprisoned or worse, Uys managed to speak truth to power without finding himself disappeared. Nelson Mandela himself has said that Uys is one if his heroes.

Allow me a tangential discussion of the Mattachine Society here, which Harry Hay named in honor of medieval buskers who appeared in masks and whose performances were often satirical jabs at the ruling classes. Jesters if you will, who have always had the ability to couch the truth humorously, for the most part without penalty. Clearly Uys is a living example of this tradition. And while the horrors of apartheid are over, as Evita Bezuidenhout, Uys continues to perform in schools throughout South Africa, teaching children about how to protect themselves from AIDS, something the ANC government, with an HIV denialist health minister, has most strenuously not done.

This documentary film follows Uys as he goes from school to school. It gives something of his life story (we learn half way through, just as Uys only learned as an adult, that his mother was a Jewish refugee from Berlin).

In some ways, the making of this documentary is also an amazing story. The director, Julian Shaw, a native New Zealander, saw Uys perform on a trip to South Africa when he was 15 years old.  He went up to Uys after the performance and said he was coming back to make a documentary film about him. Uys was nice to him, but didn’t think he’d ever see the boy again. Except that two years later, Shaw showed up, camera in hand. For the next two years he shadowed him, capturing footage in schools, performances and at home. Another couple of years of editing later, and the finished film has won honors at documentary film festivals in Australia. 

Truth be told (though I am not in drag and you wouldn't want to see it) the film is far from perfect. But the story of Uys is compelling, as is the story of Shaw deciding to film him. I wish there had been more about Uys in the apartheid days, and more about Shaw’s life and his need to make this movie.

Quibbles. This film is a must see — and a mirror to what the gender clowns (this is meant very respectfully) in New York should aspire to.  The closest we have is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose true charity work is masked by the drag clowning and whose serious challenge to organized religion is made more acceptable by the fact that men have feminized themselves.

There are all kinds of questions I have: does drag take away a man’s power and thus make it safe for him to speak the truth. Or is it the taking on the the feminine power that enables them to speak the truth? What do you think?

What’s even more interesting to me as an advertising copywriter is Uys appearance in a recent commercial for Nando’s, a fast food chain in South Africa. In this clever spot, Uys as Evita delivers a sell for a special meal deal, while setting up a very pointed political barb that comes as a stinger at the end of the spot. While such a jab at the current government (Uys is an equal opportunity satirist) is no surprise coming from Evita, I am amazed that the advertiser was willing to chance government disapproval. Certainly no advertiser in the U.S. would make such an obviously negative statement about either the Democrats or Republicans in a commercial. The spot runs below:

Visual Headlines: Plucking the Chrysanthemum and the Black Tulip

There are many headline writing techniques to get attention. The visual headline uses either a graphic or  visual element to be both words and visual. For example, in this ad for Ikea below:

We see a floor plan that spells out the word "play," which is hopefully the attitude customers will bring to shopping at Ikea to decorate their flat. The Black Tulip Hotel in Amsterdam, which advertises specifically to the gay community used a similar technique -- the visual headline -- and in fact, a floor plan, to suggest another kind of play available for guests at the hotel:

An odd tangent is my question about the name The Black Tulip. In classical Japanese literature, the phrase, "plucking the chrysanthemum" was used to denote the taking of a young man's anal virginity. Apart from a reference to the tulipmania of the Netherlands' economic history, I wonder if the phrase "black tulip," has a similar connotation as the Japanese phrase mentioned above. Any Dutch speakers out there have any info?

From Deeper Dating to Depth Psychology Dating: The Divine Androgyne

Dating and the pursuit of the perfect partner — it's the Holy Grail of modern urban life, straight or gay. It's why there are so many organized meet-uo dating events out there. Deeper Dating is one of the best. Because it takes people beyond the snap judgement of appearance to a really deeper place. But in the ad for a British online dating site below, it gets down to the depth of Jungian psychology and archetype:

The image is of two people sliced together brings to mind the image of the Divine Androgyne (or for those less psychologically inclined, the half man/half woman carnival attractions of yore) found in alchemical texts. These texts were coded instructions to opening up to the inner feminine in order to experience divine unity within. Shel Silverstein made the point in his brilliant little book for adults and children alike, The Missing Piece, that one doesn't find completion in a partner, but within. And the mystic's path in many traditions, has emphasized this search for the Lost Princess that can only be found in one's own heart.

Heterosexual men seek this in the project of their inner feminine on the women they love. Gay men may take in their inner feminine and be open to a spirtuality that takes them deep quickly. But since our culture denigrates the feminine, divine and human, it is equally easy for a gay man to manifest the Demonic feminine, or celebrate it (hence the love of Joan Crawford). Or just as a straight man does, a gay man may project his inner feminine out and in order to integrate it, find himself attracted to men who are fey. Or there is the inner homophobia and misogyny that leads men to an almost Spartan celebration of the masculine to the obliteration of feminine qualities.

Then there is the whole issue of drag as a spiritual path that celebrates the inner feminine -- and drag as misogyny where performance of comedic femininity reinforces division rather than unity. I will write about this dynamic later this week in the review of a new film about the most politically astute and influential drag queen of the last 100 years.

See what happens when a gay Jungian Jewish Buddhist advertising copywriter sees an ad for a dating service in a British newspaper. Now if I could only get a date.

Sunday Morning Cartoon: How Calvin Klein Ruined My Life

A quick, humorous meditation on advertising, the history of body image and undergarments for gay men. Or straight men for that matter.

How to tell if it's Larry Craig...

...in the next stall. Okay, this ad is really for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and their Dinosaur exhibit. But I can't imagine what the creative team was thinking when they came up with this image to go with the campaign theme: "They're just waiting to be discovered." Well, maybe I can imagine, I just don't want to think about it anymore. Except that Joe reported today that Senator Craig (R-Tearoom) dropped his appeal of his own guilty plea. So there's no escaping the possibility that you might see feet like these in a wide stance inching into a stall near you soon.