Howdy folks!

I'm new to Tribe, and I gotta say, I'm deeply disturbed by much of what I see out here.

I'd like to post something today from my own personal blog, and I've actually decided to cross post it with several other tribes. You are all welcome to draw your own conclusions, and then flame me to your hearts content, if you like. My skin is thick, I am strong like bull. And I'm really pissed off.

I respectfully welcome any and all thoughtful discussion.

Any Thoughtless Diss Cussin will be ignored.

Ready? Here we go.


Every so often, as I’m channel surfing in front of the TV, I’ll stop on LOGO, the Gay TV channel.
I can be a bit of a rubber-necker that way. It's just such a wreck I can't help but watch it when I pass by.

Anyway, 'In the Life' was on. This show is kind of like a low-rent 20/20 news show/lifestyle advertisement. I think it first started being produced in the late eighties/early nineties on PBS here in the United States, and I can remember thinking how marvelous it was back then. It’s kind of like finding an old picture of your self with a really bad hairstyle. Only worse.

So I’m watching this bit, an old repeat, and they're talking about ONE Magazine from the fifties, and the Mattachine Society and all that stuff, claiming it to be the birth of Gay, and I’m listening to this earnest, gushing lesbian reporter go on and on about how deprived we are of our collective homo histories, and how wonderful their archive was. It looks huge. They built a building for it. This woman also talked about how due to fear and hate and shame, much of these histories/ documents/artifacts have been destroyed, burned, whatever. There are enourmous gaps in mainstream homo history.

As she prattles on, I’m getting angrier and angrier because I now know a big chunk of gay history that I never had a clue about until I stumbled across The Reverend Jack Malebranche and his work.

www.jackmalebranche.com/hub/index.php

A while ago, I was watching yet another, more recent bit on In The Life, and they were talking about Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and The Uraning Theory, and they now acknowledge this to be the initial birth of the “Gay Identity”. Once again, Adolf Brand was completely ignored, but several of the Uraning supporters were paid homage. And once again, the segment was being narrated by another earnest, gushing lesbian.

Now here’s the kicker:

For almost two years I attended the first All-Homo High School in the world - from 1986 through 1987 - The Harvey Milk School in NYC. We were immersed in Gay Gay Gay and Womyn Womyn Womyn up to our eyeballs and supposedly given ‘our’ history with gobs of pomp and circumstance. They told us about ONE Magazine and a few others, and all of the usual Renaissance guys and lots about The Stonewall Riots and what not.

“Our Bibles had been burned by the evil male oppressors!. Poor us!”

Please keep in mind, if you will, this little factoid: Some of the same people who initially helped get 'In The Life' up and running were also some of the same people who created The Harvey Milk School, and ran it while I was there.

Why is it that after my brief, bargain basement - though quite formal - Gay Education, I had never heard the name Adolf Brand?

I’ve got the creeps right now. I can’t help but wonder just how much of those precious, lost histories were burned by the people who claim to have made them. Or if they’re just locked up in a basement somewhere. Just like the Vatican. ‘In The Life’ seems like a classic propaganda machine to me. And they all followed it. It set the standard.

Be careful what you say, gentlemen. Big Sister is watching you.