Spark In Darkness

It's time for another Bad News Round up. Again, illness and general lack of time and energy has taken me a while to put this together, especially with the usual mental fraughtness of compiling these lists.

However, I do think they're imporant, so here it is in all its horror


In North Carolina a gun range has decided it’s a great idea to advertise how they “convert pansies”. And it’s not like such language on an advert for a gun range is threatening of course, right guys?

A virulently homophobic calendar was on sale at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. In response to outrage over such bigotry, the creator is stamping his feet that those mean gays aren’t just being silent and accepting his hatred. Oh, and of course, AIDS is all our fault.

In Alabama, American football fans can buy a t-shirt that celebrates gay bashing. No, really.

In North Carolina, a campaign poster against marriage equality suggests gays will shoot newly weds never mind that it’s usually us being the victims of violence from the hate groups

In Australia, bigoted tennis player, Margaret Court, is upset because her bigotry is being called bigotry

The hate group, the FRC (who is very anti-family) has released another typical screed against gay people and more from Tony Perkins. It is, after all, the reason for their existence. I’d ignore groups like this if mainstream straight society would do the same. The same goes for the AFA deciding AIDS would be cured by god if gay men stopped having promiscuous sex. And yet more bigotry from these hate groups why are they constantly given a platform?

Of course, we have another bigoted celebrity taking his foolishness to twitter, this time British footballer Lee Steele is pitying the guys who have to sleep next to Gareth Thomas, a gay man



In London, 5 men have been convicted of spreading leaflets that threatened gay people with death. Thank gods, my own experiences with homophobic notes on and around my home have frightened and unnerved me – to have an outright death threat posted through your door is several orders worse.

I’m going to have a rant here because there’s a huge raft of homophobia that I’m constantly seeing that I am beyond sick of. It’s a form of apologism that constantly denies and excuses homophobia – the idea that Christian homophobia only exists in fringe churches.

I am tired of the “fundamentalist” derailment/deception/apologism I am seeing . I am tired of people pretending that homophobia in Christianity only exists on the fringes. I am tired of people using these words and phrases to pretend that the hatred only lies on the extreme edge. I am tired of people pretending that “mainstream” Christianity, “real” Christianity is homophobia free.

The Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, the vast majority of Protestant denominations and most certainly the Church of England are homophobic. Does “fundamentalist” now include the vast majority of Christianity?

To characterise homophobia as a problem that is limited to “fundamentalist” “right wing” or “extreme” churches is to completely ignore and dismiss homophobia as is practiced by the world’s largest Christian denominations – and the world’s largest religions for that matter. The problem isn’t the Westboro Baptist Church – people know them, hate them and treat them with the contempt they deserve. The problem is the Catholic church whose rhetoric is scarcely less hateful (if, in fact, it is less hateful at all – the Pope has just declared us a threat to the future of humanity. Seriously) the problem is the Anglican church which is a major force against our every attempt at equality in the UK and world wide has its fingers deeply in the GBLT genocide. The problem is religious charities like the Salvation Army are continually expected to fulfil the gaps of our endlessly waning social services while at the same time being massive forces of bigotry.

By denying that these mainstream churches are homophobic, you are saying that their policies are ok, not bigoted. So fighting against our right to exist, fighting to keep us criminalised (arrested, imprisoned, tortured and murdered) is not homophobic. Fighting against discrimination laws, against our right to be treated as full citizens is not homophobic. Fighting against hate speech and hate crime laws, against our right not to be abused, is not homophobic

It’s all homophobic. And it’s all supported by mainstream Christian churches. And when you deny that these churches are homophobic, you deny their actions are homophobic. You support and justify homophobia.

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So it seems over in the US we're seeing a change on how rape is defined to actually include a lot of rapes it had previously ignored. The new wording now reads:

The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

I’ve read a lot about this and how important it is. It has made changes that have been well examined and talked about at length and in great detail which is wonderful to see – especially the removal of the necessity of “force” which previously was present and excluded so many rapes.

But another thing it has done is actually acknowledge that men can be raped.

This is vital and doubly vital for gay men because there is a pervasive idea that gay men cannot be raped. After all, we want sex all the time right? A gay man is a raging sex driven monster that leaps at any and all possibilities of sex, right? So how can we be raped? If we always want sex with men (and remember, it’s any men all the time, no matter what, who or when) then how can we possibly be raped? Surely we not only always consent but are always ultra ultra eager, right?

Yeah, it should be laughable – but it remains that an ultra-common response to a gay man who has been raped by another man is “but you’re gay!” And that most certainly extends to law enforcement.

Even rape within a gay relationship – and all relationship rapes are poorly understood at best – is faced not only with the idea that gay men always consent to sex all the time, but also a pervasive belief that our relationships are entirely sexual, that sex is the only reason we’re ever with another man (and if sex is the only reason we’re together, and we always want sex, how can there be rape?). Added in the prevailing belief that our relationships cannot be happy, loving or anything other than miserable (another element that makes it nigh impossible to have any acknowledgement of domestic abuse) and any kind of reporting or acknowledgement is fraught.

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After a holiday full of the usual crap and some extra crap and some work crap and some general crap, and just crap crap, my energy, tolerance and general give a fuck reserves are at a severe low. And it pisses me off further that I've supposed to have just had a holiday and I'm feeling as tired, angry and manky as if I've just done a months worth of 12 hours days without weekends. Which is something else which has supposed to just happened but instead I feel run down and there's MONDAY looming tomorrow.

So I'm tired, irritated and generally hacked off.

And I can feel it building. Some day soon someone is going to get it in the neck. It's all going to build up and one of these days someone is going to get several weeks of crap launched straight at the jugular.



And can people stop pushing straight authored books as giving me an amazing insight into GBLTness? It's tiresome

And I'm not even going to address the idea that, to counter the Male Gaze (that would be the straight male gaze apprently, or I'm not male again) it's wonderfully progressive to make a site where straight women can ogle guys getting it on with each other.

And if I get one more, one more damn covnersation, post, email or message explaining why a slur is ok I'm going axe murdering, ok?

Good. The world has been warned

Or, so I'm guessing by the copy of Inspire that landed on my doormat (and now recides in the recycling bin). Hand delivered, not even in an envelope

Beloved's cameras don't seem to be workinhg. but then, so many people cut past our door I'm not sure it'd show anything. Still, it would be nice to know

Of course, it could be unrelated to the nasty notes fiasco and I could have another random neighbour who thinks it's appropriate to drop religious mags through people's doors - but my next-door neighbours didn't get one. Maybe I'm just lucky *eye roll*

Needless to say, I'm not amused

There now begins my annual attempt to maintain sanity as the holiday season officially begins. After all this is the time of year for food! (YAY!) drink! (YAY!) and family (oh dear gods preserve me).

On the food front, I started baking to day (not including the Christmas Cakes which were, obviously, been made in September and have been fed brandy on a four times weekly basis to make them rich and unctuous and only now have been covered in marzipan and royal icing). Finger food, pies, cakes, buns, snacky and, because of a poorly worded and possibly drunken argument, several pork pies (I complained that most pork pies you buy skimp on the jelly – pork pies without good jelly are nasty. I complained enough that I was challenged to make my own, so yes yes I have. With lots of jelly. So there). My freezers, fridge and cupboards are bursting and I’m not even half done. And everything will have brandy in it

On the drink front, we have assembled a terrifying array of colourful, braincell killing drinks. And we have numerous recipes for cocktails that sound oh-so-witty. If Beloved holds control of the bar for the season they will be yummy. If someone wrests control we will have drinks that taste of sugar and paraffin. We also have more wine than France (and yes, it is all European *Euro-snob mode*)

On the family front. Ugh. Well, this is what comes of deciding that people who share the same great great grandfather as you are totally family. And those ancestors loved their breeding. Damn they were bored.

Of course a lot have died off and we’ve also had more peace this year because of the huge amounts of my family tree I’ve decided I refuse to deal with any more. Which means less visits (this time of year the clan visits each others houses so they can criticise, snark and argue in different settings). Which is good – because the people I won’t be seeing are people who always made me cringe, annoyed me, insulted me and generally left me in the position of having a blazing row, during the holidays, with my host/guest OR biting my tongue and taking another insult. So, yes. Good. And it si good, even if I do have to keep telling myself that.
Of course there’s still a lot of family left and they’re all very annoying in their own ways and certainly not fail free so I’m sure I’ll get that wonderful grey hair feeling soon anyway. At least this year I have my pills.

So, chaos reigns. Sparky will be… up to his eyeballs in it for a little while and no promises to peak my head over the parapet until some of the dust has settled.
Also my ISP keeps dropping the net. Do not make my nightmare a reality, ISP, do not!

So, Louis C. K. has joined the legions of those downplaying Tracy Morgan’s bigotry and chiding gay people for our reaction to blatant homophobia

So let’s address some things here, Louis.

You found it hilarious. Really? A joke about stabbing a gay child you found hilarious? You know why we can’t laugh at this shit? Because it happens, Louis. Because we have a truly horrendous homelessness rate – how about that a quarter of gay teenagers could be homeless? This is why we can’t laugh at this “joke”. We can’t laugh through the memories of parental hate and family rejection, of the legacy of our kids driven from their homes, driven to drugs and driven to suicide by their families hating them. And you think it’s funny when a man jokes about stabbing his child because that child is gay.

He is on a comedy stage – do you think that makes it better? Do you think that the fact we can’t even go to a comedy club without being abused isn’t significant? No, he wasn’t on a pulpit – but it doesn’t mean he isn’t telling a room full of people that murdering gay kids is funny. That abusing kids for being gay isn’t good. Do you know what it does mean? It means we can’t go anywhere – anywhere – without having to face this shit. Oh we already knew, there are no safe places – but this is just another straight assertion of that. If we go out, into your world (and, of course, 99.9% of this world is your world) we will be abused.

He was fucking around? He was engaging in hate speech. He was talking about killing a child for being gay. He was talking about rejecting a child, his own son, for being gay. This happens, Louis. This happens every damn day – that’s not fucking around, that’s legitimising and downplaying ongoing persecution

You know nothing. You understand nothing and you’re choking on your privilege.
Don’t tell us what would be more effective, straight man. Don’t tell us how we should react. Don’t tell us what would be more effective in our own path to equality and justice. Don’t presume to know our struggle better than we do.
In fact, why are you even talking? Seriously – do you think we need your advice? Who the hell are you to tell us what our reaction to homophobia should be? Why should we treat your opinion as even slightly relevant? Why do you think you have even the slightest hint of enough insight to presume to chide us?

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We have a friend, we spend a lot of geekery on the net and occasionally, about once a fortnight or so he comes round and we engaged in such depravity as: discussing how Skyrim could have been a better game, debating whether a game can be too non-linear, considering which Vampire the Masquerade clan is the best, debating on whether Mages are better than Werewolves, taste testing value booze from supermarkets so we can decide which one deserves mocking the most and other such geekery. We were at uni together and though we’ve drifted in and out of friendship since, we’re now very much on the friend ladder – and we were geeky then too. Occasionally he’ll stay the night but that’s rare since it makes it hard for him to get to work- but if there’s been a lot of booze testing then he can’t drive away, obviously. (By the way, Tescos value cider gets the award for being the weirdest value booze for having absolutely no flavour at all – but still having an unpleasant after taste). Usually he drops in for a couple of hours or so.

So this is a semi-regular meeting of much geekery but when he left last night we
found a note under his windscreen wiper – you know, like he’d got a parking ticket.

The note urged him to stop what he was doing. That he’d get AIDS. That he needs to think of his wife. That he’s going to ruin his life and hers (he doesn’t have a wife, but that’s somewhat beside the point) and doesn’t she deserve better?

To which it seems that some random observer thinks that he comes to our house to have hot, dirty threesomes. I do say hate it when people have better fantasies of my life than I do. I can see where they’ve extrapolated the AIDS from (homophobic assumptions) but why assume he has a wife? Creepy anonymous note maker, you make no sense!

The content is just ludicrous enough for me to not actually be all that offended by it. If it were a random troll on the net sending me it in an email I’d roll my eyes and delete like I do the random-slur troll (seriously, you go to all this effort to get round the IP block to post a slur that I then delete with a single click of a button. I can’t imagine your life is so empty that you have nothing better to do).

But, snark and humour attempts aside, this was a note on a car, outside my house put there presumably by someone who has watched us – at least enough to see Friend is a semi-regular visitor. And, yeah, I’m several several kinds of severely freaked by this. I’m going to have a little world with some powers that be over this (though single incident that’s not overtly threatening and given the givens I don’t expect it to achieve a lot and nor do I want to drag Friend further into the middle of anything – but it’s nice to have a record, just in case. If things do escalate I can point to a beginning and a trend earlier than later).

Yes, I’m definitely having a bad case of the creeps here. Shit like this can stay the hell away from my house.

Ok, since the various powers that be seem to think that me and mine somehow control the entire world with our insidious gay agenda and we all live under a brutal gayocracy enforced by our mystical gay power to cause natural disasters I’ve decided it’s time we use our mighty magical abilities to drop David Cameron into a volcano.

But since not everyone seems to be as gung-ho as I about the whole volcano dropping thing, I’ll settle for having some words either a) struck from the English language or b) cause you to be brutally attacked by an extremely angry armadillo. So, prime your armadillos

First up for armadilloing is “controversial”. Oh how I hate this word. See, there’s a lot of people and things described as controversial out there.

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So, after much hemming and hawing, we finally have winter here! (Damn you climate change, it's now middle of December and the weather's only now becomming consistently cold).

I'm probably one of the few people who love winter, especially since I hate snow. I have always been winter's child. I love waking up with the sun still down, I love the dark evenings. I love the cold, clean, clear stillness of it. I love the gfrowling wind, I love being snug and cozy. I love being able to wrap up on a night rather than sweat and groan (for the heat you dirty dirty people. And yes, you were)

What I don't like are my bones that have had their first "ah shit, it's cold again" aching for the season. Ok, more medically informed people than I - is it purely psychosomatic that makes bones-that-have-been-broken ache in the cold, wet weather or is there an actual reason for it?

And will you all tell me that booze will cure it so I have An Excuse. And then I can get back to loving my favourite season



Also, let this stand for the annual "I don't do holiday cards (or any cards)" post. Sorry, I think historically they were important for families that were a long way apart and didn't have means of quick and easy communication - but those days are largely gone. And they're grossly overpriced, seriously, not to be a cheapskate because it's not a matter of "can't afford" so much as "I refuse to be ripped off by this." I shudder to think how much good the literally millions spent on pointless pieces of paper could do elsewhere - similarly I shudder to think of the paper wasted. Also, I don't see them as being sentimental - "here's a message from Hallmark or Clintons. I probably didn't even read it while getting writer's cramp scrawling my name on the 50 cards I'm obligated to send. Oh and here's a picture of a robin" isn't very touching. And then you get the fraught moments - the "oh Mildred has sent me a card, have I sent them one? Quick lie and say the card's at home now sneakily go write one! Oh Doris didn't send me one! I am going to be offended/angry/smug because I sent her one! My addresses, my addresses my kingdom for addresses! WHO IS DENNIS DATING NOW?! SHE MUST BE INCLUDED ON THE CARD?!"

So yes... I'll check out.