The National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change

Why am I going to Creating Change?

• To see one of my mentors from D.C., and hopefully other contacts from my time working there.
• To get in on the first real activist development opportunity that has presented itself in the Metroplex since I left D.C.
• To develop better awareness and skills around gender and sexuality at a time when DFW seems primed for thoughtful action.
• To recognize that after blurring the lines for years, I have now clearly stepped outside simple heterosexuality and to own this deliberate process.
• To celebrate sexual diversity very close to my home turf and strengthen local ties between the LGBT and poly communities.
• To learn how to be a better ally to friends and colleagues and, in turn, to take these lessons back to other allies who don’t always know how to express their support.
• To see some really hot activists talking about “really lascivious things, like communication“.
• To identify lessons and opportunities on the periphery of queer activism that may be useful to my book and my campaign work.

…and because hetero people don’t generally talk about sexuality as candidly–whether it’s related to love, pleasure, or politics–and I simply need more.

What will I be doing  at Creating Change?

Wednesday
DAY-LONG INSTITUTE 1: Challenging and Transforming White Supremacy in Our Work: Our Vision, Our Roles (anti-racist workshop specifically for Whites)

Thursday
DAY-LONG INSTITUTE 2: Sexual Liberation Institute (topics of sexual freedom discussed by the afore-mentioned mentor, her partner, and Tristan Taormino, author of my favorite poly manual)
OPENING PLENARY (followed by a Poly speed-greeting)

Friday
WORKSHOP SESSION 1: Class Matters (identifying issues that cross communities, featuring story circles!) or The Art of the Schmooze (because I need it)
WORKSHOP SESSION 2: Integrating New Media into Your Organizing Strategy (to enhance my existing communications skills) or What Your Parents Never Taught You About Sex  (including discussions of demographics, risk, and practices, because I’m due for a refresher)
PLENARY
WORKSHOP SESSION 3: Strengthening the Connection: Racial Justice and LGBT Rights (presenters include Rinku Sen, a personal hero) or Storytelling for Social Change: Gathering LGBTQ Stories (because personal storytelling is pivotal to my approach to nonfiction)
WORKSHOP SESSION 4: Reaching Out to the Blogosphere (a strong need if my writing is to gain traction)
CAUCUS 1: Young and Poly (if 29 is not too old… definitions vary greatly, so I’ll be asking in advance) or Transitioning Beyond the Boxes (on expanding gender identities beyond male/female)
RECEPTIONS

Saturday:
WORKSHOP SESSION 5: You Lie! Right-Wing Race Backlash: What It Means for Queers (because anti-racist and interdisciplinary discussions make me happy)
WORKSHOP SESSION 6: Mapping Your Desire (very timely for me)
PLENARY
WORKSHOP SESSION 7: Kink, Race and Class (the presenter’s definition of kink includes multi-partner relationships, so all I can say is Hell yes!)
WORKSHOP SESSION 8: Talkin’ Bout My Generation: Intergenerational Storytelling and Dialogue (more relevant to my book) or The Future of Sexual Orientation (expanding beyond gender and gender preference, and also featuring Tristan Taormino)
CAUCUS 2: Designing Useable Research (this is also pivotal to my book) or Polyamory/Nonmonogamy Caucus (if I am, indeed, too old for the Friday Caucus)
ENTERTAINMENT
Sunday:
BRUNCH PLENARY
CONFERENCE FEEDBACK

Who Is Savannah?

[I thought I posted this yesterday... anyway, it's here at last!]

The pertinent reason for my Birmingham disclosure was that my traveling companion had a similar moment of self-discovery in Savannah. Without going too far into telling someone else’s story, I will share that she is another White Southerner (though from a different part of the South as me), for whom Savannah highlighted a personal conflict: ambivalence in one’s personal heritage, taking pride in some-but-not-all elements (both traditional and subversive) and shame in others.

The Savannah I saw in 2009 was very different from the one I had seen in 2005. This year, I saw little-to-no evidence of conspicuous segregation between White and Black – quite the contrary in fact. Many shops (and even our motel) were surprisingly integrated, with customers and staff inclusively White, Black, and even occasionally Latino. Only River Street, Savannah’s most densely tourist district, matched what I had seen before; the color line there was almost literal, with the waterfront populated almost entirely by Black buskers and the cityfront lapped by waves of White tourists meandering in and out of shops and restaurants. I was, as before, engrossed by the atmosphere and attitude of SCAD, even as its urban sprawl reminded me of NYU in The Village and its funky White eclecticism belied the rest of downtown’s pleasant integration. Generally, there was a lack of visible tension or ominousness like in just about any other downtown, so much so that it seemed the economic downturn had not hit Savannah very hard (yet).

Downtown Savannah seemed less mysterious than the Spanish moss might lead one to believe, but then we took the time to watch “The Movie”, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The film and its source crime narrative are largely responsible for tourism in Savannah since the 90’s. I was once told that the fascination with ghost tours and gothic statues did not really exist before The Movie’s 1997 release, but seeing the film raised a lot of questions about its prominence, especially since the film’s supernatural aspects are more ambient than relevant, and there is rarely in downtown any open reference to any of the story’s character or events.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a lightly fictionalized account of an actual murder that happened in Savannah in 1981, when a wealthy, middle-aged antiques dealer killed his gay lover in the historic home of Johnny Mercer while the victim was high and possibly threatening. The story unfolds from the perspective of a visiting magazine writer from New York City, who has befriended the dealer just before the slaying. The New Yorker is sympathetic, but suspicious; he turns his personality profile into a murder investigation, relying heavily on a mischievous transsexual performer and a sexy blond neighbor to navigate his way through the lifestyles of the Rich and Southern. Wackiness ensues, but under dark and foreboding cinematography.

The Movie was interesting, but more as a cultural phenomenon than as art or entertainment. As I said above, Savannah has wrapped a not-small segment of its tourism around this film, yet signs and solicitations never make direct reference to the movie’s subject matter. The scenery is all Savannah (that city looks like no place else!), but the story as told could have been set with different accents in just about any city in the U.S. (or many others around the world). Local celebrities living semi-closeted lives, having to explain to some out-of-stater the way things are done ’round here (and how can a writer from New York City be so naïve about drag queens anyway?), mutual suspicion and derision between the out-of-stater and his smug, amused hosts…

There seemed to be many swaths of rich material, but no hems to fit it all together; more to the point of this blog, where were the race and class issues? The accused makes a point of explaining that he is nouveau-riche, and his lover was clearly working class, but these tidbits don’t seem terribly relevant to the course of the story. Similarly, the two Black characters are vaudevillian for their entertainment value and receive much critical camera time, but neither exerts much direct impact on plot. Perhaps their roles could have been expanded, to redirect the film toward a study not of a murder investigation but of the quirky community around it – but then it would lose what little was credibly left of the Southern Gothic motif. Conversely, the superfluous parts could have been trimmed (I daresay cut) to allow for a more straightforward narrative, but then it would have lost pretty much all entertainment value (Lady Chablis, who convincingly played herself fifteen years after the actual murder, was the best part of the film). I hope The Book was better.

But even if The Book and The Movie are great works (and I’m no expert, plenty of others seem to think so), it still surprised us that Savannah has so wholly embraced them. Sure, Midnight conveyed Savannah’s haunting beauty, but what did it say about the city and its people that can be such a source of pride and draw to Savannah? Uppity and aloof people of wealth gossiping impersonally over alcohol? Nothing unusual there. Thriving but underground gay culture? Not your usual source of pride (well, not in the lower-case, non-parade variety). A place where Black Americans are not defined by their race, but by their skills as drag performers and Voodoo priestesses? Entire classes could be taught on what’s wrong with that… Was it the notion that eccentric Southerners can charm any Northerner into relocating without really trying?

Actually, let’s think about that. Because the trial, the denouement that follows… those were anticlimactic. They’re kind of benchmarks to let you know the story’s almost over. Really, they’re just props, no emotional reaction. And all those lovely, eccentric, one-and-a-half-dimensional characters who stretch the film out well past two hours… most of them are kind of props, too. The mistrust, the culture-clash, the anticipation of twists and turns that never quite materialize… these are the most powerful elements, and the film isn’t over until the narrator tells his new love interest that he’s not going back to New York. But he’s still little more than a prop. That plot I was kind of ragging on? Prop. The gay community and its thin closet, the Black characters (and lack thereof), the rich and the poor – they’re all just props.

The real protagonist of the story is the city of Savannah. Between dialogues, the city calls out to viewers and lures their eyes away from the foreground with beautiful townhouses and creeping Spanish Moss and says, “Look at these crazy people. Only a real city could produce a story like this. Someplace with history and beauty and tragedy behind tired eyes that you’ll never see because I am too gorgeous to let you in on the baggage. I can’t change who I am. I can’t change my history and I’m not sure I would if I could, so I’m just going to put it out there: the eccentric, the ostentatious, the best and the worst of myself, and I dare you to assume that’s all there is to me.” This city puts on a fabulous show of everything it is and everything it wants to be but can’t and celebrates that which it cannot hide with undulating flair.

Savannah is a drag queen.

But not just any drag queen; Savannah is THE drag queen of The Old South. In a good economy, you can’t even tell black from white, happy from sad, any part of any dichotomy from its opposite, because all the polarities are just jumbled up around you and inviting you to savor the blend. As the economic shifts catch up, well, we’ll see who gets invited into the next, more meager concoction, but for now Savannah bears whatever scars it must without trying to hide them, neither flaunting nor obscuring, just getting by on personality and hotness and hoping they will keep you from asking another one of those questions it’s already tired of answering.

On the drive to our next destination, we stopped at a 24-hour Starbucks near Auburn University for warm beverages and people-watching. We couldn’t decide how to feel about the strange blend of gymnasts and debutantes, hipsters and hicks; was it all too illogical or simply our own lives flashing before our eyes? At least it seemed integrated. There’s a lot to be said for how easily it comes to people my age and younger, even here in the South.

Any other day, we would have been talking about that Starbucks for hours, but Savannah had already stolen the show. We would talk about those two days for weeks to come…

Sights: Bamboo Farm and Coastal Gardens, E. Shaver, Bookseller, River Street, Savannah’s Candy Kitchen

Topics: Speculating on the political leanings of employees and clientele at E. Shaver, cheap toilet paper at expensive hotels, how great it would be to live in Savannah for a month while writing a book, gender, race, class, acceptance vs. tolerance.

Soundtrack: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Martha Wainwright, Placebo, Simon and Garfunkel

We were a bit late heading out of town, but it was okay. There was very little to see in Montgomery.

Did I Bury the Lead?

In my earlier entry about Birmingham, I skimmed over an important detail that I would like to revisit: the moment I cried.

It was in the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, in the second room after the film introduction. There were tall glass panels, free-standing like a small crowd in a wide room with high ceilings. Each panel had been laser-etched with full-bodied portraits: people of various ages and races in uniforms for several vocations or lifestyles. It was very idealistic, with everyone smiling and comfortable with his or her panel standing alongside another panel with someone of another color and background – probably bordering on cheesy, but I responded well, I was all smiles, just like the etching of the little black girl carrying her lunchbox and dressed for school.

After meandering through the twenty or so panels, I emerged on the other side of the room to see a large wood and glass cabinet set in stark contrast to the rest of the room. Inside hung a full set of Klan robes, alongside a small, rope-bound cross, ready for burning.

How could they include this? I asked myself. How could they put this on display? How dare they?

Instantly, the answer poured from my face – hot, painful tears that shamed me and shamed my passivity through the earlier exhibits. I had to walk away, lean against a wall, so that my uncontrollable sobs would not disrupt the experience of others. I have never shied away from crying except when there was an audience, and an audience of strangers who were likely having a very different experience only made me more ashamed, simultaneously of my tears and of their lack of them. I didn’t even know why I was crying!

A young Black man came up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. He reminded me that we had come a long way and offered me a hug. My companion came over and stood with me until I was ready to move on. We went at separate paces, and I’m afraid I wasn’t there when her composure was later lost over the choice parents faced between getting their children a better education and saving their lives. The rest of the exhibits were very vivid, very informative, but I worked through them, taking notes and scuttling closer to the gift shop.

It wasn’t until after we had left that I was able to piece together the thoughts that had set me off. There were plenty of violent events covered in the museum, there were artifacts and scenes painted all-too vividly, and there were moving biographies and tributes to heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, but none of these had stirred the guttural sadness that the robes had. What had overcome my jaded, learned, untouchable stance of observation? My reflections led me to think about context. Perhaps it’s a sign that I’m too liberal, but I can understand (though not justify) the actions of an individual. Every individual has stories, and relationships, and complicating factors that can lead to a single instance of bad judgment or even divert them permanently toward a life of violence and antipathy.

What bothered me about the robes was their power of community. Such power does not come overnight, and it doesn’t come without permission. The acts of the Ku Klux Klan were accepted and congratulated by Whites throughout the South as a backlash against those events we now celebrate as “progress”. Then there’s all the half-assers… for every community that actively embraced the Klan, how many more were there who passively supported it, tolerated it, or kept their discomfort to themselves? Yes, I can wrap my brain around just about any action committed by an individual in a particular circumstance, but I have no ability (or desire) to comprehend broad, successful movements of hatred and violence.

Believe it or not, it is just such communities whom I wish to describe in my upcoming book. But I’m not ready to say too much about that here.

Why did I not tell this story when I first blogged about my day in Birmingham? Well, for one thing, I was blogging closer to real-time then, and I was not yet ready to write about the incident or to share it with an audience. But for another, I was not yet sure at that time of the tone I wanted for this blog. That tone has come to me in subsequent entries, as I have decided to focus this journal on my politics through travels and my travels through politics. I cannot write the political without writing the personal, and vice-versa. They resonnate, and it’s these points of resonnance that always interest me most.

Thanks for reading.

What Is It about Savannah?

[apologies for the delays in getting the last few out... they're just as important, I assure you!]

I had been to Savannah once before, on a business trip with the now-defunct Leadership for a Changing World program. I remember being sucked in because it was my first Southern city to explore as an adult and by that time, I was already beginning to miss my roots (non-progressive though they were). We had stayed in a supposedly four-star hotel downtown, where the garish decorations could not disguise a bug problem and blatant segregation on the staff. I got the feeling on that first trip that Savannah was a beautiful town in its own right but that it had a bit of an identity crisis going on. It was hung (possibly for a long time) on the precipice of choosing an identity, like a beautiful cheerleader who is too compassionate to let the jocks pick on the nerds, but too popular to intervene. At one time, Savannah was one of the richest cities in the world, but of course with that wealth came the injustice and indignities of slavery. Especially after I took a ghost tour, which (White-) washed all of Savannah’s rougher history in favor of stories of lost (White) love and bitter (White) family disputes, I got the sense that Savannah was in denial of a history they could not ignore. That first visit was in 2005, and I hadn’t even seen Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil yet.

Sights: Tybee Island Lighthouse, exhibits at the Savannah College of Art and Design (including a graphic narrative display that featured The Devil’s Panties among others), Gallery Espresso Coffee Shop.

Topics: lots of picture-taking, love of lighthouses, the ill-likelihood of finding the perfect book for my research in a lighthouse gift shop, that book when I found it, the exhilaration of being around artists, how segregated River Street seemed, how un-segregated everywhere else seemed (compared to 2005 especially), getting lost on the two US80’s, art in the bathroom, was mayonnaise crossing the line in the sexy-woman-objectifies-self-with-food paintings for sale, the concept of “meta” and the likelihood of its inherent pretentiousness, how well we do or do not learn American History in school and elsewhere, Whiteness of SCAD, Jennifer Leigh Dunlap.

Soundtrack: just talking, navigating, and the radio.

We got around to watching Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (thank you Netflix) that night, which just confused us all the more…

Why Not Discuss?

It was going to be hard to top Inauguration Day, so Wednesday had us playing tourist. It was my first trip to Atlanta.

Ostensibly, this trip was about research as much as seeing sights, but I was shy more than once about approaching strangers for their insights on race and class. A peculiar incident on this day was a conversation with the owner and a regular patron at a gentrification coffee shop. The owner was a middle-aged White man, the patron a Black man in his late twenties or early thirties, and the two had already been talking about insurance or something-or-other. The older man invited his friend to dinner; he began talking to us as the younger man gathered his belongings. After a few pleasantries, I told them I was doing research for a book on race and class (I was not more specific, though I my topic is actually much more focused). They laughed and wished me good luck. They recommended checking out some other places in Georgia, which I jotted down, but the conversation waned quickly and they left. I’m sure either of them would have been able to offer some interesting perspective, but I held back the particulars that might have grabbed their attention and proven I wasn’t some clueless, over-reaching young fool (well at least not completely).

I had to ask myself afterward why I had held back. Was I reluctant to engage the (presumably middle-class) latte culture before I had really talked to anyone from the working class, which is the actual focus of my book? Did I feel vulnerable because they already knew each other, or because race is always easier to talk about one-on-one? Was I unwilling to betray my background, for fear it would affect our discussion, or that I would subliminally let slip the crass notes I had been making about this very shop the night before? Or was I just settled into my tourist and cuddling mode and not willing to get out of it for people who obviously weren’t going to be around for long?

Yes, I think so.

Sights: World of Coca-Cola (yes, I know they’re an evil corporation but I’m a soda aficionado), the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site, and oh, technically we drove through Centennial Olympic Park.

Topics: “simulation mode” at spectator factories, the creepy extended version of “The Happiness Factory“, corporate indoctrination, potential subversion by advertising agencies, Pemberton/Candler/Woodruff, charging 5 cents for 50 years, omitted chemicals, bottling for GIs, New Coke, aluminum bottles, sampling everything (including Beverly), the absence of real Pibb, lack of water fountains around the sample room, corporate credit unions, the future Center for Civil and Human Rights, real estate around tourist attractions, the King Center’s two bookstores, respect, frozen fountains, reaching out to educate kids, entropy, Wormsloe Plantation, homeschooling, panhandling

Soundtrack: U2, Sinead O’Connor, Johnny Cash, Kimya Dawson

That night, we drove into our eastern-most destination: Savannah.

[ETA some topics]

Where Was the Best Place to Watch the Inauguration?

If you were in Atlanta, probably the big gathering at Centennial Olympic Park, but if you couldn’t make it into town, you’d be hard pressed to beat a warm house with a big TV, which is what we ended up doing. I was glad to hear from friends who were part of the DC throngs we saw on screen, but I was just a digital age spectator. After the ceremony and Obama’s drive/walk to the White House, we found a Five Guys for lunch (A DC institution! What was it doing in Georgia?). In the evening, we drove into downtown Atlanta just to explore. We found a gentrified neighborhood near the MLK Center and talked over coffee.

Sights: Underground Atlanta, Sweet Auburn

Topics: What lyrics might have been going through Obama’s mind as he stepped onto the inaugural stage, Rick Warren’s inoffensive invocation, whether Aretha and the classical ensemble would release their performances as singles on iTunes, Feinstein’s inoffensive hosting, whether Biden (or the new administration in general) got to choose which Associate Justice administered his oath, Roberts’ flubbing the oath, the President’s inaugural speech (one of my favorites so far, including the first mention of “nonbelievers” in such a prominent national address), the poor delivery of the poet, how great was Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery’s benediction, whether Obama had to remind himself “cab, not blades” as he led Bush to his helicopter, how distracted the NAACP’s new president might have been at Love Shack being played in the background during his CSPAN interview; the merits and drawbacks of franchising and its explosive growth in recent years (leading me to wonder whether there isn’t a franchisor out there who is franchising the business of franchising), the resemblance of Atlanta’s streets to those in Lower Manhattan, awareness of privilege by White men, the resemblance of a certain statue to John McCain, whether a swimming pool was an appropriate tribute to MLK, and the repurposing of old buildings.

Soundtrack: Johnny Lloyd Rollins, Barenaked Ladies, Guy Forsyth.

The next day we returned to Cold-lanta…

What, No Parade?

Apparently, despite its prominence in the Civil Rights Movement, Birmingham doesn’t have a parade on Martin Luther King Day like Dallas and Fort Worth (each) do. Not that I didn’t enjoy sleeping in a bit longer, but I was a little disappointed… not unlike the fireworks in D.C. on Independence Day…

But the day has been great. Much less driving and much more interaction (outside of truck stops) than yesterday.

Sights: Irondale Cafe, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Remember that scene in Jerry Maguire where Cuba’s character goes on the talk show swearing the host can’t make him cry but is decisively proven wrong? Yeah, that was me today, except they were not happy tears…), and Dreamland Bar-B-Que. We also had a glimpse of the steel mills and a lot of old homes in various states of disrepair.

Topics: Surprising integration of Birmingham retail and service staffs, Buy Fresh Buy Local, whether landmarks really earn 100 on their health inspections, army tourists should definitely ask and tell, deep fried Coke sausage, graffiti as the urban Buddha Board, individual injustice vs. communal injustice, the  goal of idealists in a cyclical history, the hottest waitress in Birmingham, the ongoing destruction of girls’ schools in Pakistan, and the impact of Rick Warren on Obama’s coalition.

Soundtrack: Elvis Costello, David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, more Indigo Girls, Oldies radio

Now in Atlanta for a couple nights. 8.5 hours to inauguration…

Where Is Quix_Tic Two Days Before Inauguration?

Birmingham, Alabama!

I’ve had a road trip to Georgia in the works since last summer and when the time came, it happened to coincide with:

a) Martin Luther King Day

b) Barack Obama’s Inauguration

c) An early stage of research for the book I conceived late last year about race, class, and the South.

So I’ll be dropping some hints and notes about the trip each day that I can, and maybe I’ll even put in some time on the topics waiting to be discussed here for future posting. Hey, it’s a time of great hope and change, right?

Topics of the day: The Free State of Van Zandt, Louisiana’s Ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Hillary Clinton’s Captain Jack Gaffe, and Lee-Jackson-King Day.

Soundtrack: Dresden Dolls, Dave Matthews Band, Crash Test Dummies, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Vertical Horizon, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, and Elton John.

Check-out in 6.5 hours…

Who Else Is Blogging?

I don’t have a lot of blogs linked to the side there, but I have a long list of political blogs to check out… you know, when I have time.

But blogging is an artform of outliers. There are very few people out there who can blog about one sphere of life without it getting rabid, wonkish, repetetive, boring, self-righteous, or repetitive. Even the good ones have their ups and their downs (a few years back, I would read Tom Tomorrow’s blog on a daily basis, but lately even his comic fails to offer much amusement).

Sometimes you find the rarest gems in unlikely (web)spaces. So rather than try to throw together some half-thought-out entry about my ambivalence toward Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State (reaching out to Dem opponents and Iraq War supporters is good, but their foreign policy differences are significant), or the distinct differences in which Republicans and Democrats deal with political and sex scandals within their own parties (the Democrats can’t shun their members fast enough, while the Republicans will profess “innocent until proven guilty” as long as possible – unless your sex crime was same-sex, of course), or the sizable gamble of symbolism Obama took on by inviting Rich Warren to deliver his inaugural invocation… rather than discuss any of those topics, I thought I’d toss you a few gems from off the blogosphere radar:

“The Sanctity of the Commercial Holiday Season” by Kadair: In this entry, a non-Christian presents a different take on what Bill O’Reilly (and few others) might call “The War on Christmas”. Too bad she wrote it before she learned that these days, you, too, can purchase your very own aluminum (well, wire and plastic) reproduction of the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.

“Untitled” by J: A rebuttal to Bush’s recent statement on KWANZAA and, more importantly, the knee-jerk reactions of commentators to online media articles. Apparently all those snot-nosed kids from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back have grown up and gotten real jobs where they have to bum around the Internet on professionally appropriate sites.

“DTMFA-a-Thon” from Savage Love: Sex columnist Dan Savage cleared space on his popular and irreverent weekly to digress directly into political commentary. He cross references two studies on teen sexuality to show how ass-backwards (dare I say, literally?) abstinence-only sex education has made your children. Added bonus: it’s hilarious.

Happy reading and Happy New Year!

Who’s Not Getting It?

The parents at Rowlett High School who got Rent cancelled, that’s who.

I mean, I don’t know whether the “it” is the importance of learning other perspectives (even if you disagree with them), the importance of artistic expression that pushes boundaries so their children don’t end up stale and on stronger antidepressants than they take, the fact that lines like “hating dear old mom and dad” are jokes, or – yes I’ll say it – sex. Maybe they need to get laid. Maybe those parents just need to get tied down and something stiff extracted from (or inserted into) places they’re not supposed to be.

In case you haven’t heard, I’m talking about Rowlett High School’s recent cancellation of its student production of Rent, the hit Broadway musical set in mid-90’s East Village of Manhattan (“New York City?!” … “Get a rope.”).

Forget that the show’s depiction of drug use is anything but positive, or that its representation of gay lifestyles is anything but simple, or that the musical was made into a PG-13 movie just a couple years ago, or that some of the offensive material was pared down for the school version (which had already been approved by administrators who were very unlikely to be hippie liberals), what bothers me is that the kids are going to miss out on putting on a good show with a good message. Rent celebrates friendship, creativity, critical self-determination, and even monogamy and presents life as ambivalent and complicated.

Guess it’s better if the kids learn that on their own when they go away to college (not knowing how to put on a condom) or take a monotanous job down at the cubicle farm.

Honestly, I was surprised the cancellation came so slowly once the local news started to report, but the administrators were wiley. They got the theater director to cancel the production “for the good of the school” rather than cancelling it from on high. This way, not only is the director responsible for ever suggesting such a barbaric notion, it also keeps angry protesters from harassing the board and other administrators. “Well, we were taking it under serious advisement, but the theater director made the final decision before we had made up our minds.”

The theater director takes the fall, before the students or all of the parents could speak.

The noisemakers win this round.

I have an idea I would love to see happen for a reaction from the community. On the date when the play would have opened (or possibly the date of the next board meeting), gather as many local defenders of Rent and of student expression as possible outside the building and sing the soundtrack from the sidewalk, beginning to end. Show them what the play is really about: people coming together (Hell, if the musical glamorizes anything, it’s how absolutely lonely NYC can get when you haven’t found a community there, and that’s antithetical to the plot).

But I believe in grassroots starting locally. Such a protest should originate with members of the Rowlett community (preferably students and parents), and the only family I knew there moved elsewhere earlier this year (which is too bad, too, because the kids – ages 14 and 11 – know the Rent soundtrack by heart!). But if my idea happened to be picked up and promoted by a student, parent, or teacher in Rowlett or the greater Garland ISD, I would be happy to attend and invite all my friends and allies. Maybe they could tie it to Prop 8 protests… those folks are still trying to figure out what to do with all their anger.

But in the meantime, I hope a rebellious teacher will at least show the crappy film version on movie day. It’s a Christmas story, too, you know.