Tuesday 29 December 2009

ONE DAY WE WILL ALL BE TERRORISTS

All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper."
.... Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.
Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press.
Somewhere I read that the greatness of America
is the right to protest for right.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968

For, if they take you in the morning,
they will be coming for us that night.
~ James Baldwin in a letter to Angela Davis, 1970

By Chris Hedges
December 29, 2009
Truthdig


Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan.

Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.


This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans.

In the coming turmoil and economic collapse,
it will be used to silence
all who are branded as disruptive or subversive.

Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later.

Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements ~ who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism ~ have discovered that his fate is their fate.

Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com
. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.

The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of SOCKS to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.

Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail.

He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage.

His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.


Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens.
“My brother was an activist. He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community.

My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures.

These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls.

We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.


“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.
“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent.

The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war.
The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious.
The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.


“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything.

There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”


Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.”

He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.”

And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly:
“I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”
The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.

“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan?

The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”


Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial.

Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.


SO much for speaking the truth!

There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims.

A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act.

A GREAT INTERVIEW BY AMY GOODMAN FROM DEMOCRACY NOW! FROM RECENTLY RELEASED ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST, JEFF LUERS, AFTER 9 1/2 YEARS BEHIND BARS. INCISIVE VIEWS ON THIS TOPIC.

Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail ~ although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials ~ are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English.

The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.


Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them.
Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen
but is becoming an act of terrorism.

Now you know one of the main reasons for the creation of FEMA camps around North America.

Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).

Monday 28 December 2009

MUBARAK LOSES HIS CHANCE AT DECENCY ~ AGAIN


In early 2008 the US gave $23m in military aid to the Egyptians to stop the tunnels, sending in a team from the engineer corps to advise and train in several techniques, including ground-penetrating radar. Another plan was to build a deep canal along the border to prevent tunneling. ~
Guardian UK

The same news­pa­per reported yes­ter­day that for the first time ever and con­trary to the pre­vi­ous years, the U.S. aid to Egypt (Mubarak regime) in 2010, which is about $48.76 Bil­lion will be uncon­di­tional because of Egypt’s good coop­er­a­tion and assist­ing the U.S. in the Mid­dle East. ~ Grid Focus

Egypt’s President Mubarak
blows his chance to behave decently


(What is a little decency compared to almost $49+ BILLION?

By Stuart Littlewood

27 December 2009
Redress Information & Analysis

My $.02 of Snippits and Snappits in green. But right from the start, did anyone ever really expect this puppet with power to be decent? He has repeatedly sold out his fellow Arabs and begun the Westernizing of Egypt. He snuggles up with war criminals like Tzipi and starves the Palestinians. If I did not know better, I would suspect he is Jewish, he certainly is Zionist in his allegiances.

Stuart Littlewood argues that time is running out for Egyptian President Husni Mubarak to prove that he is not an Israeli stooge and allow the Viva Palestina international humanitarian aid convoy to reach the besieged Gaza Strip in time for the first anniversary of Israel’s mass slaughter of Gazans.

”The convoy’s request for easy passage was Mubarak's big chance to show that he was not, after all, the cruel and unprincipled Zionist stooge that civilized people across the world had already consigned to the dustbin of history. It is not too late to make amends. But if he doesn’t act quickly he’ll blow it for everyone, including himself.”

Gee, thanks President Mubarak. Thanks for ruining Christmas for so many.

Gosh, a Christian celebration. And for Palestinians. Two strikes against the convoy right there. Bah humbug!

But that’s par for the course in the cesspit of treachery that is the Middle East.

Despite Saudi Arabia's record (and it is getting worse but not reported back in the West), Egypt wrote the book on treachery. Perhaps that is the secret of the Sphinx.

The human tragedy of Gaza just gets worse and worse. Nobody seriously believed the Viva Palestina convoy would get through unmolested; and so it came to pass. It is stranded at Aqaba, and its precious cargo is spoiling in the heat, because Mubarak’s henchmen will not allow it to enter Egypt through the port of Nuweiba.

The excuse, we hear, is that the road across the Sinai from Nuweiba to Rafah runs close to the border and the sight of 250 trucks and ambulances laden with food and medical supplies might distress the oh-so-sensitive Israelis. Some vehicles might cause “a big infiltration problem”.

Odd how sensitive these people are. Such tender constitutions! But then, as the only human beings on the planet, the rest of us being unfeeling goyim chattel/cattle, incapable of intelligent thought or the delicacy to feel true pain and emotions, they are truly the only ones capable of such experiences. Despite their bloody slaughter of all others, somehow, when it comes to seeing such things as international aid, or even a Christmas manger, they are sensitive to the point of nausea.

Surely, Egypt is capable of providing an escort to ensure that no trucks leave the column and defect to Israel. Why would they wish to do so anyway when they have taken great trouble and gone many hundreds of extra miles especially to avoid Israel?

The question here is why help Palestine? What's in it for Mubarak? Can it outbid the offers at the top of this post?

That’s not the only nonsensical thing about the situation. Fully 24 hours before Viva Palestina owned up to it, news reports were saying that Egypt’s Foreign Ministry had issued a statement announcing that “

the Egyptian government welcomes the passage of the convoy into the Gaza Strip on 27 December, on condition that it abides by the mechanisms in place for humanitarian aid convoys to the Palestinian people, including most importantly the entry of convoys through the port of El-Arish".
Local pressures being what they are, it might well make things awkward for President Mubarak if the convoy were to travel close to the border with Israel. But one would expect a powerful man like him to overcome any difficulties for human decency's sake and for the sake of his brothers and sisters imprisoned and bombarded by Israel.

He is powerful only if Israel loosens his tethers. I imagine those great humanitarians Lieberman and Netanyahu are giving him instructions ~ or perhaps the fellows up in the banking area of London pull the strings. Or maybe America. Or maybe the lot of them together, but someone is guiding him.

Nevertheless, the convoy organizers must have obtained prior permission for their route. Were they aware of the El-Arish stipulation? Although asked to be precise about what the Egyptian authorities told them, the organizers remain vague. This makes it difficult to explain to well-wishers, and particularly to waiting Gazans, why the convoy is kicking its heel in Aqaba and going nowhere.

Egypt, sadly, has failed miserably to honour its obligation under the Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA), in which it undertook to keep the Rafah crossing open.

Honor? Mubarak? In the same sentence? Unlikely.

Now, incredibly, this Arab country is actually collaborating with Israel and the US in the construction of an iron wall to hermetically seal the tiny enclave of Gaza and ensure its inhabitants suffocate to death ~ a project of unspeakable evil.

It is beyond evil. They say there will most likely be another confrontation with Israel and Palestine in the coming year; the Israelis having never ended the last Holocaust on Gaza. They have remorselessly continued to prod, kill, push, and test the people of Palestine further. They are pushing until the people, desperate beyond human endurance, to action, ~ whether large or small ~ out of pure frustration; then they can justify going in and slaughtering, as they did the last time. This is their usual mode of doing things.

The convoy’s request for easy passage was Mubarak's big chance to show that he was not, after all, the cruel and unprincipled Zionist stooge that civilized people across the world had already consigned to the dustbin of history. It is not too late to make amends. But if he doesn’t act quickly he’ll blow it for everyone, including himself.

Who cares what he does to himself? You should hear what the Egyptians say about him. It ain't pretty at all! I have many Egyptian friends who refuse to say the traditional greeting "Eid Mubarak" an old common Muslim greeting during the celebration of Eid. They use a substitute word instead.

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.

GOOD NEWS! (MAYBE!)

December 28, 2009

PRESS.TV

Cairo forces Viva Palestina to take detour

Thanks to Cairo's obstruction, Viva Palestina humanitarian convoy en rout to the Gaza Strip will take a detour and head to Syria Latakia, in a bid to enter Egypt through El-Arish.

The convoy of 250 vehicles has been stranded in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba after Egypt refused to allow it to go through the Red Sea port of Nuweiba ~ the most direct route. Cairo insisted that the convoy can only enter through the Mediterranean port city of El-Arish.

"The aid convoy will leave Aqaba for (the Mediterranean port of) Latakia in Syria before going to El-Arish, in line with Cairo's decision," said Maysara Malas, of Jordan's powerful trade union federation, which has been helping to organize the aid convoy.

"We hope that Egypt does not put more obstacles. It's unfortunate that Israel has interfered in Egypt's decision, which serves the Zionist entity," he added.

It is my belief that, in the long run, this wall will not stop the ingenuous and desperate Palestinians from the smuggling, but it will force them to go deeper and will likely cut both profits for the smugglers as well as use of the hundreds of superficial tunnels closer to the surface that are used to move the bulk of the goods.

Saturday 26 December 2009

CHILD PORNOGRAPHY IN THE CLASSROOM

BREAKING: OBAMA'S "SAFE SCHOOL CZAR" IS PROMOTING CHILD PORN IN THE CLASSROOM ~ KEVIN JENNINGS AND THE GLSEN READING LIST

From "The Little Black Book ~ Queer in the 21st Century." Handed out at Brookline High School during GLSEN event April 30, 2005.The book was prominently distributed at the first table, right after registration, where everyone would be sure to go. It is chock full of incorrect information.Interestingly, the lies and denials by the organization and reactions of the press were identical to events of another special interest group in North America, the Zionists. Something to think about.

I include images from a publication put together by Jennings and the GLSEN that was freely handed out to schoolchildren in a public school, paid for by your taxes. This will give you a bit more of a visual of what this fellow promotes.

~"By now, you should know that Barrack Obama has a homosexual past. Listen to this interview with Larry Sinclair by Jeff Rense. Sinclair who claims he had sex with Obama is being ignored by the mass media, but you can bet that if BO started to steer an independent course, Larry Sinclair would suddenly be in great demand." ~ Henry Makow, Our Leaders are Sex Addicts


By Jim Hoft
December 4, 2009
FIRST THINGS

Safe Schools Czar
Kevin Jennings was the founder, and for many years, Executive Director of an organization called the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN started essentially as Jennings’ personal project and grew to become the culmination of his life’s work. And he was chosen by President Obama to be the nation’s Safe Schools Czar primarily because he had founded and led GLSEN (scroll for bio).

Personally, I describe Jennings as a radical homosexual activist. Will he push for his own interests? Of course, it is the nature of the human beast to do so.

GLSEN’s stated mission is to empower gay youth in the schools and to stop harassment by other students. It encourages the formation of Gay Student Alliances and condemns the use of hateful words. GLSEN also strives to influence the educational curriculum to include materials which the group believes will increase tolerance of gay students and decrease bullying. To that end, GLSEN maintains a recommended reading list of books that it claims “furthers our mission to ensure safe schools for all students.”

In other words, these are the books that GLSEN’s directors think all kids should be reading: gay kids should read them to raise their self-esteem, and straight kids should read them in order to become more aware and tolerant and stop bullying gay kids. Through GLSEN’s online ordering system, called “GLSEN BookLink,” featured prominently on their Web site, teachers can buy the books to use as required classroom assignments, or students can buy them to read on their own.

Scott Baker from Breitbart-TV.com and Co-Host of ‘The B-Cast‘ submitted this shocking report today on Obama’s deviant Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings.

***Warning on Content***

I was recently approached by a team of independent researchers that I have known for some time and have come to trust. They prepared this report involving ‘Safe Schools Czar’ Kevin Jennings and the organization he founded, GLSEN, and asked that I find a way to help draw attention to what they uncovered. Knowing that Gateway Pundit has followed Kevin Jennings since his appointment, as we have on The B-Cast (here, here, and here), and on Breitbart.tv (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), I felt this would be an appropriate place for this report.

Warning: The following material is very explicit.

Scott Baker

Co-Founder,

Breitbart.tv

Written by Boston-based "AIDS Action Committee" with help from Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Boston Public Health Commission. Funded also by major corporations, universities, even charities.

The list is divided into three main categories: books recommended for grades K-6; books recommended for grades 7-12; and books for teachers. (The books on the list span all genres: fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, even poetry.)

Out of curiosity to see exactly what kind of books Kevin Jennings and his organization think American students should be reading in school, our team chose a handful at random from the over 100 titles on GLSEN’s grades 7-12 list, and began reading through.

What we discovered shocked us.

We were flabbergasted.

Rendered speechless.

We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured:

~ explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers;

~ stories that promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships;

~ stories of public masturbation;

~ anal sex in restrooms;

~ affairs between students and teachers;

~ five-year-olds playing sex games;

~ semen flying through the air.

One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview.

We knew that unless we carefully documented what we were reading, the public would have a hard time accepting it. Mere descriptions on our part could not convey the emotional gut reaction one gets when seeing what Kevin Jennings wants kids to read as school assignments. So we began scanning pages from each of the books, and then made exact transcriptions of the relevant passages on each page.

Are we exaggerating, or misconstruing quotes that could be interpreted a different way?

No: Read the passages below and judge for yourself.

There’s no wiggle room.

The language is explicit, the intent clear.

To be specific, the books we read were:

Queer 13

Being Different

The Full Spectrum

Revolutionary Voices

Reflections of a Rock Lobster

Passages of Pride

Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian

The Order of the Poison Oak

In Your Face

Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son

Love & Sex: Ten Stories of Truth

We can only vouch for what’s in these 11 books, since these are the only ones we’ve read through. Are there other books on the GLSEN reading list that are similarly outrageous? We can’t say for sure, but it seems very likely. What you see excerpted below is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

Let it be clear:

This issue has nothing to do with

gayness or straightness,

which is irrelevant to this report.

The point proven here is that

the GLSEN reading list promotes

the sexualization of children in general,

regardless of the “orientation.”

I found the emphasis to be 99% focused on homosexual activities and relationships.

And this is not about censorship: It’s about deciding what constitutes appropriate reading material for children. We’re perfectly OK with these books existing and being read by adults; we only start to worry when these books are assigned to children.

All sorts of books are excluded from school reading lists, for all sorts of reasons. Even many books once considered classics are now considered off-limits due to language or attitudes now deemed inappropriate.

And yet, according to Kevin Jennings and GLSEN, books about a 13-year-old getting “my cock sucked and my ass fucked” or about a teenager enjoying the “exquisite bitter taste” of his friend’s semen are not just acceptable, they’re highly recommended.

As GLSEN’s own site says, “All BookLink items are reviewed by GLSEN staff for quality and appropriateness of content.”

Really?

(Note: GLSEN does advise adults to “review content for suitability.”)

If a kid, as they explain, is turning to these books "for advice and guidance", what are the chances his parents will even know he has them, let alone review content?

Although GLSEN does not address how books get added to its list, it’s hard to imagine that they are chosen by low-level staffers or volunteers, with no oversight.

Since the list of recommended books is one of the organization’s primary tools (“The GLSEN BookLink, an online library of recommended resources, along with the Safe Space program remain cornerstones of GLSEN’s education work.” source), it’s likely that the books were chosen carefully.

Kevin Jennings stepped down as Executive Director last year after leading GLSEN since its inception, but every single book mentioned in this report was added to the list while Jennings was in charge (dates are given for each title’s addition to the list). Therefore, it’s reasonable to believe he was aware of the addition of these works ~ especially since most were added when GLSEN was still quite small and the Executive Director had a hands-on role in daily operations.

Below you will find dozens of excerpts taken from books on the GLSEN “Booklink” recommended reading list for grades 7-12 (i.e. for children between the ages of 12 and 17). To prove that these books are indeed recommended by GLSEN for children, click on each book’s title to see its individual listing on the GLSEN Web site.

To prove that each excerpt is transcribed exactly as it appears in each book, click on the page numbers or the small images along the left to see scans taken directly of the book pages in question. (Ellipses ["..."] indicate unrelated passages not included in some of the transcriptions; click on the full-page scans to see the complete extended quotes.) Each passage is preceded by a brief summary, given in italics.

You decide for yourself if you think these are appropriate for kids as young as 12 years old to read. And then decide if you think the man who headed the organization responsible for recommending these books to children should be in charge of school safety in this country.

~ Content Warning: ~

Keep in mind that, although the material below has been deemed by Kevin Jennings and GLSEN to be appropriate for children, some of the excerpts contain explicit language and pornographic descriptions, so if you don’t want to see such things, stop reading now.

If you enlarge this thumb and read between the lines you find out that these bars, yes bars are being encouraged for these young men, to lose their inhibitions, and "play". Interesting terms such as "young guys and those who like young guys" or "older friendly crowd". Old guys looking for young guys. Or "leather and denim" ~ bring on the Master/slave groups. Whatever you want, this tells the kids where to find it.


Reflections of a Rock Lobster ~ Page 13

(At the age of six, the author frequently performed the act of fellatio on his fellow first-graders in the school restroom, all part of "a busy homosexual childhood.")

My sexual exploits with my neighborhood playmates continued. I lived a busy homosexual childhood, somehow managing to avoid venereal disease through all my toddler years. By first grade I was sexually active with many friends. In fact, a small group of us regularly met in the grammar school lavatory to perform fellatio on one another.

A typical week’s schedule would be Aaron and Michael on Monday during lunch; Michael and Johnny on Tuesday after school; Fred and Timmy at noon Wednesday; Aaron and Timmy after school on Thursday.

None of us ever got caught, but we never worried about it anyway. We all understood that what we were doing was not to be discussed freely with adults but we viewed it as a fun sort of confidential activity. None of us had any guilty feelings about it; we figured everyone did it. Why shouldn’t they?


Queer 13 ~ Pages 16 + 17

(A man masturbates and explicitly ejaculates as he sits on a hill overlooking his hometown.)



I sit down on the hard ground and cry a little. I fish my aged cock out of my jeans as though I can mark the scene with pleasure so later I can find it and reread it for understanding.

Once imagined, it is my responsibility to jack off in front of it all. The air feels funny on my cock, which usually squirms like a larva in the darkness; it’s more sensitive than I am to the prickle of a slight breeze.

There is nothing to arouse me except myself. My tract looks so boring, its emptiness so lacks potential, that I can almost believe in reality, since here is appearance spreading out at my feet. It only takes a minute.

My crotch rings like an alarm clock, some pump mechanism kicks in, and after short flights my sperm falls on the gray dirt. I feet edgy and shallow, emptied out by the day ahead, and twinges of residual pleasure make me twitch.


Revolutionary Voices ~ Page 103

(An illustration about the change from “boy to man,” showing two Boy Scouts pointing at and looking at two adult men engaging in anal sex.)

THIS IMAGE WAS TAKEN DOWN AT ARTIST’S REQUEST.

Go to this link to see an extraordinarily twisted outlook of normal boys' activities, along with a multitude of subliminal symbolism and subconscious hits at the sexuality of a child, this is the site to visit. I am ashamed to say IT IS CANADIAN fully sponsored by The Canadian Arts Counsel. It is, as the creator Daryl Vocat admits, "pure propaganda."

_____________________________________________________________

Queer 13 ~ Pages 43, 44 + 45

(A 13-year-old boy has a violent sexual encounter with an older man, which causes the boy to become desperate for sex, and he ends up spending the rest of the year promiscuously getting “my cock sucked and my ass fucked” by “a seemingly endless supply of dicks” belonging to older men, concluding with “I really did enjoy those sexual encounters.”)





One day, on the bus to shop class, this ugly fuck of a man sat behind me and put his foot in the crack of my seat. He was skinny, with a patchy, pencil-thin mustache that besotted his oily face. I ignored him for most of the trip. I did notice that he changed buses when I did, but this time he sat beside me.

He tried a little small talk, but then he suddenly and very nervously put his hand on my crotch. It never occurred to me to tell him not to. I’m not sure if I agreed to it or not, but he managed to get me to follow him to a nearby rest room at another secondary school “to play.”

In the bathroom stall, lit by two scant rows of fluorescent lights, half of them burnt-out or flickering, he tried to kiss me, but I was too nauseated to do that. He sucked my nipples and played with my cock. I had no idea what to do. He then tried to get me to suck his.

Somehow I knew this was expected of me, but I just could not put his ugly, foul-smelling penis into my mouth. When he forced it in I gagged so hard I started vomiting. Undaunted, he tried to put his cock in my ass. Thankfully, he came prematurely.

He pulled up his trousers and left me in the toilet stall confused, frightened, crying, and praying to God for forgiveness of my horrible sin. I spent a good deal of time locked in the stall, trying to clean up, trying to wipe the smell of that act off with wet toilet paper, but I was doused in the stench of that man and what he had done.

This incident should have soured me on men, but it only made me more confused and needful. One day later, something accidental happened that would change my life. I discovered that at a urinal I could actually see someone else’s penis. I was ecstatic and fearful, but I wanted more.

One day, at a local shopping mall, as I was trying to sneak a peek at penises in the rest rooms, a man at the urinal actually turned to me and started playing with himself. He flashed me a gold-toothed smirk and motioned for me to come over. Shocked, I zippered up and ran out, but the seeds had been laid. The whole world of rest-room sex had opened itself up to me.

Soon I was spending a great deal of time hanging out in shopping malls and cruising the rest rooms for sexual encounters. My rest-room exploits started to be a great burden on my mind. The better part of the year was spent making deals with God, asking for a sign, then ignoring and rationalizing everything I perceived to be a sign, praying for forgiveness, and being obsessed with raging hormones and a seemingly endless supply of dicks.

I believed that it was all part of a test by God to see if I was a sinner. I was.

I had known before that something was up, and that I was attracted to men, but this toilet thing was a whole new realm of sin and Satan, a new level that I had never before imagined.

The following years were spent praying for forgiveness and trying to purge my homosexuality through prayer and Bible study. While my classmates wondered what sex was like, content to masturbate over pinups, I was out there having my cock sucked and my ass fucked.

These were grown men I was tricking with. Some were nice, grateful for a young boy to have their way with. Some were harsh and mean. There were a few nasty encounters, brutal and painful experiences, near-rapes, but through it all, I never thought that I had the ability to say no.

I was scared about what I was doing, scared of God’s judgment and of being caught in all those rest rooms and parks, but I really did enjoy those sexual encounters. That feeling of doing it to them and them doing the same for me was just too damn good.

Jennings is a strong promoter and believer in NAMBLA. ( North American Man/Boy Love Association).Most NAMBLA members believe the boy-lover philosophy will be mainstreamed within their lifetimes. I would have never thought that even remotely possible until recently.


Queer 13 ~ Page 13

(The author vividly describes masturbating and ejaculating whenever and wherever possible at 13.)

Jacking off into the toilet, into the slit between pushed-together beds, into paper-towel tubes (Ugh, my little sister shouts, what’s this stuff?), in the shower, while standing in the crotch of a tree, while standing on my head.

What belongs to me except the next orgasm? Even shame is not mine. I can’t afford to fantasize or to connect mind and body. Strip poker with Mike Cogan: Since we’re naked, we might as well masturbate.

Don’t look, he keeps whining. His orgasm is like him, a pipsqueak.


Revolutionary Voices ~ Page 220

(A writer is unhappy that she was forced to stop masturbating in public when she turned nine years old.)

I learned the truth about Santa Claus and masturbation in the same year. I was 9. I had a hunch about Santa, but I had no clue about masturbation. I mean, I had no clue there was anything wrong with it.

As far as I know, I’ve been masturbating my whole life. But it wasn’t until 9 that I realized it was an impulse that you had to turn off. Especially in class. Fourth grade craft time taught me shame.


(An interview with a "sex worker" who praises prostitution as a way to raise one's self-esteem and have empowering sexual experiences. He also discusses BDSM, genderswapping, advertising and other assorted issues.)


Minal is a young queer from India and has been a sex worker in the S/M scene for a year and a half. He has taken a break from sex work and lives in San Francisco. In this interview Minal talks about his journey into sex work as a way of uplifting his self-esteem around body-image issues, his feeling of empowerment doing sex work in drag.

S: How did you get into sex work?

M: Well, before I get into that I have to tell you how I got into S/M generally, since I used to be a complete vanilla bottom. I’m gay, by the way; I’m exploring being transgendered, and I’ve been doing drag for about ten years, on and off. Drag was never a sexual thing for me, I’ve always had sex “as a guy.”

Around March of last year a friend asked me about rape fantasies ~ she wanted to know what my fantasies were. I realized I hadn’t been fantasizing at all. When I did start thinking about it, my fantasies were all about whipping. I started reading up on S/M, and it was making me interested in sex for the first time.

Before, I never knew what the big deal was with sex. I put a personal ad in the paper to do scenes with different people, and I realized that for what I was doing, I could be getting good money. I had a lot of friends in the sex industry who were asking me, “Why aren’t you charging for what you’re doing?”

So that summer I did it for free and learned what I needed to do, and by November I started putting out ads in the Bay Area Reporter. My ads were sort of genderfuck: my picture was taken from the neck down in a corset, fishnets and garter belt. It was a dom-type look.

I realized there weren’t that many guys into doing S/M professionally, and the ones that were were really butch ~ so I stood out a lot. It was great. It was the first time I had really good sex, I was getting paid for it, and I felt totally in control. It was good, but I was wondering how many people I was losing by advertising as a fem dom.

I started putting ads online without the fem look and got a lot more response, so I switched to just having a nude picture in the paper as opposed to a girlish one. The responses were more than I could handle, which is a good thing. That’s how I got into sex work, as a way of exploring my sexuality.

S: How has your self-image improved from doing sex work?

M: I feel a lot more confident and secure with myself. I think that has a lot to do with S/M and coming into my own power.


(The author describes how a sudden and impulsive sexual encounter was the healthiest relationship he ever had, then regrets the incestuous relationship he had with his cousin.)

But I know in the immediate future I want a very healthy relationship, because I’ve never really had a healthy relationship. The closest I’ve had was with a guy that I met at the lake when we lived in Davenport. I just met him at the lake, and he already had a boyfriend and stuff.

I just walked up to him and said, “Do you want to fuck?” and we did. For a week. And then I went home because I couldn’t handle it anymore.

The relationship I had with my cousin was very, very twisted, and I didn’t like hiding it. I mean, he was my cousin, and so it feels rather disgusting. But I think that you’re gonna fall in love with whomever you’re gonna fall in love with.


(A fifteen year old boy embarks on an intense sexual relationship with a much older adult male.)

Near the end of summer, just before starting his sophomore year in high school, Dan picked up a weekly Twin Cities newspaper. Scanning the classifieds, he came upon an ad for a “Man-2-Man” massage. Home alone one day, he called the telephone number listed in the ad and set up an appointment to meet a man named Tom.

Tom offered to drive to Zimmerman. So, over the phone, Dan directed him to a secluded road in his subdivision. “Stop where the pavement ends,” Dan told him.

A couple of nights later, Dan pulled the broken screen from his bedroom window and slipped out of the house while his parents slept. He hurried to the prearranged rendezvous spot, and there, in the dark of night, he met Tom for the first time, man-to-man. In the back of Tom’s van, the two had sex.

“He gave me a little shoulder rub and the next thing I knew his hands were all over me,” Dan remembers. “It wasn’t a bad thing. I didn’t necessarily know it would turn into sex. But I knew what I was doing.”

Dan continued his liaisons with Tom throughout the summer and into the following school year, having sex ~ usually masturbation and oral sex ~ with Tom in his van or his Minneapolis apartment.

Even though Tom was older, almost twice Dan’s age, Dan felt unthreatened by him. Dan admits Tom was a “troll” in every sense of the word ~ an older closeted gay man seeking sex with a man much younger. But Dan says he was not intimidated by the discrepancy in their ages.

“He kind of had me in a corner in that he knew I didn’t have access to anything I wanted.” says Dan. “But everything was consensual.”

“He wasn’t exactly a friend,” Dan says of his relationship with Tom.

“He wasn’t exactly a lover. He wasn’t exactly a role model. He wasn’t exactly anything. What I got out of it was sex, and someone who made me feel nice for once. Sex was a totally different way to feel good. It was a very easy way to get away from the pain. I was young. He brought me down to the city, where I wanted to be. And I was very young.”

Sex between adults and youths? That's PEDOPHILIA.


(A poem in which the author fantasizes about hacking off his penis to become a woman.)

as a little boy growing up, i used ta sit in the bathtub, take the little spikey thing u put soap on, n lay on it, press my little pre-pubescent dick on it hard, impale myself, sometimes until i bled.

then i’d take it, bloodied n bruised, n tuck it between my legs, standing in front of the mirror, pushing the fat that wuz my chest together, seeing what it would b like ta have cleavage, thinking

perhaps i could escape my fate by becoming a woman, i wondered what it’d b like ta have a pussy, what it would b like ta cut it off, ta simply not have it around no more.

Just too morbid and gruesome a topic for any young person! Truly a sick series of materials offered here.


(Two fifteen year old boys turn the religious music up loud so the mother will not hear them having sex.)

I began sleeping over at Bob’s house again during seventh grade. His mother thought we enjoyed a perfectly platonic relationship in his room upstairs playing games and listening to Jim Nabors records ~ the only ones she allowed Bob to hear.

Little did she know that every night I slept over we would turn the record player loud and have sex to the beat of “Lord, You Gave Me a Mountain.”


In Your Face ~ Pages 58 + 59

(The narrator describes how, at age 16, he began to have sex with the 25 year old adult running a gay youth programme.)

I don’t remember exactly when I started coming out, but I joined this youth group called Positive Images; it’s the Sonoma County gay/lesbian/bisexual youth group. I got a boyfriend instantly; he picked me up right away, right when I joined the group. He was older; he was twenty-five, I was sixteen. He was just really supportive of me. I went with him to this gay prom in Sonoma County called the Rainbow Prom in the middle of May.

So there was one night when I stayed at my boyfriend’s house. I lost my virginity to him a couple weeks before that, and so I stayed at his house, and I was feeling good when I went home the next day. It was the first time that I actually spent the night there and stayed the whole night. So I went home and I was in a great mood.


(A woman recalls how, as a teenager, she had a sexual affair with an adult teacher at high school which greatly boosted her self-esteem.)

While still in high school, she had an affair with a teacher. “She was forty-four and had a daughter who was a year younger than me, who went to my school. Needless to say, it was all very confusing, but exciting as well.

The moment right after we kissed for the first time, I ran to the mirror and looked at myself. I was ecstatic. I thought I would look different.

I said in a barely audible whisper, ‘I’m a lesbian.’

About six months later, we stopped being physically sexual, at my request. I was racked with guilt feelings and knew that it was out of control. I was terrified of someone finding out. . ..”


(A gay priest recalls a life-changing incident at the age of ten, when he “felt my penis begin to harden” after meeting a new friend, after which the author “touched the flesh of his cock.”)

One summer when I was about ten, my mother and I spent several weeks at a big resort hotel in the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York State. . . .

Strange how all foreboding vanished when I first caught sight of Jamie checking into the hotel with his mother and father. The desire I felt for him was sudden and electric. . . .

As we changed in the dressing room by the swimming pool, I glanced very quickly to find out what his genitals looked like, but his back was turned to me as he slipped on his trunks. Still I knew I’d find out, somehow. . . .

I remember the fright I felt when there was no more to take off but my underpants, the strange sense of relief when I stood naked by the shadowed pool, the throat-tightening excitement of seeing Jamie’s slight lithe body, as naked as mine.

We tucked our clothes under the embankment. Then, with a whoop, Jamie dived into the pool. I stood on the pool’s edge, watched Jamie’s body squirming beneath the water’s surface, and felt my penis begin to harden.

Jamie broke the surface with a splash and looked at me. A quick grin crossed his face. “Dive in! It’s great!”

I glanced down and saw that my cock was fully erected.

“C’mon, we’ll wrestle. that’ll warm you up.” He grabbed me around the neck and pushed me back on the sand. The warmth of his body sent chills through mine. I struggled (although not very convincingly, I’m afraid) against his grip and we rolled on the sand and I finally pinioned him on his back, astride him, my hands holding his arms.

He looked up at me. “Uncle,” he whispered.

I released his arms. They glided around my neck, pulling my head down to his. I stretched full length on top of him, our heads touching. Our heavy breathing from the struggle gradually subsided. I felt my penis grow hard against his body, and, pressed against mine, I felt his grow hard too. I raised my head and looked at his face. He was looking at me. After a long moment I lowered my head till our lips touched. And held.

Then I moved over on my side next to him, and my hand reached down, slowly, until I touched the flesh of his cock. It stiffened still more and Jamie’s hips stirred. I felt a wonder. I had caused this to happen to someone else. Someone else felt as I did. I wasn’t alone. There was Jamie. And now we had our secret.

We shared the wonder of that secret, touching, exploring, responding, till we heard voices ~ adult voices ~ calling our names.


Queer 13 ~ Pages 86 + 87

(The author recalls with mixed emotions the sexual relationship he had with his cousin when he was 12.)

Despite my best efforts, someday the artifice of “normality” had to fall away. It did, early one Sunday afternoon when I was twelve. My cousin was sixteen.

I put on my blue velour robe and padded down the rickety stairs. My cousin was watching an old black-and-white movie on our black-and-white TV set. He wore only his Ewing High School J.V. basketball shorts, black with waxy yellow lettering. I sat next to him on the couch, silent. He would occasionally sneak glances at me. The glances grew longer and longer.

I noticed his slightly parted thick lips. Uncomfortable, I stood up and went to the front door. I pretended to look out the window up Field Avenue. The street was empty.

My cousin got up from the couch and stood behind me. He lightly brushed the soft fabric of my robe. “Let’s get gay,” he fawned in a mock faggy tone. “Let’s get gay.” He rubbed his huge hands over the thin fabric that separated them from my behind. He pulled up the robe.

Exposed and naked, my erection to the wind, I wanted to melt into his arms, to be held by him, to desperately answer the questions my soul had been avoiding, but I also wanted to shield my eyes from what was happening.

We went back to the couch, and I felt someone’s hands on my genitals for the first time. They were boiling ~ his hands and my genitals. I sat back and closed my eyes.

My ecstasy from his touch. My relief from loneliness. Momentarily overcoming fear and shame. Then, the fall. Each of the half-dozen times we did it over the next four years it would be that way.

While we were in the act, it was good. His heavy brown body lying against mine, providing the warmth I never thought I would have. He was tender and sweet. But after I came, shame tumbled on top of me, the pleasure buried, suffocated.

The disgraceful white goo the physical proof of my spiritual delinquency.


(At the age of six, the author played “sex therapist” with a five-year-old friend, and “explored our sexuality to its fullest.”)

One friend I was very close to was Billy Marlen. Billy was a year behind me in school yet we got along well together. In our friendship, a special camaraderie existed that was rare in my other friendships.

There was a brotherhood that does not often occur even between brothers. We shared our toys and spent many summer days building sandcastles on the beach. On rainy days I’d walk down to Billy’s house where we spent the day reading books and building racetracks and playing sex therapist in his basement.

We were human beings who knew no social inhibitions and were willing to explore our sexuality to its fullest.


(The author describes his promiscuous sex life while he was in elementary school.)

Sex continued for me but it was not the same as it was with Billy. It was always readily available after school, during school, at cub scouts, at Sunday School or at summer camp, but that certain element that Billy added was gone.


(The author describes the amoral relationships he has with various adult men simultaneously while still 16.)

I was dating this twenty-five-year-old guy. But then we broke up, because I was messing around with this other guy who was a friend of his, this twenty-seven-year-old, and I was only sixteen.

It wasn’t really a right thing, I don’t think, because I knew they were only attracted to me because I was young, and it wasn’t even like they were attracted to me because of my personality or anything like that. So I dated the twenty-seven-year-old for a little bit, and then we broke up, and I got back together with my old boyfriend, and then we broke up again.

When I was with my first boyfriend, we went to a rave; I felt like we could dance together and stuff, and we could kiss and it was cool. But I still felt kind of weird. I used him. And when I was with him, I was really out. I would hold hands everywhere, kiss in public. But it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be kissing him as much as I wanted to be able to be that out; I wanted to get comfortable with it.

I met this one guy in the city, and he came up with us, back up to Petaluma, and we hung out that night. We just totally talked. He was this really cool person. We had sex, and it was really good ~ five hours of foreplay. That was rad, and I just felt like I could talk to him, like we could really relate.

So he came back down to the city, and then I called him that night, or I called him the next day or something, and asked him to come up, and so he rode the bus up, stayed at my house that night, and we had sex again.

He was just rad; he had the body type that I like, a little pale and kind of scrawny ~ kinda skaterish, like a toned-all-over body. Anyway, so then he went back to the city, and I was supposed to come down to the city and stay at his house on Friday. I called his house and his roommate said, “Maddy doesn’t live here anymore; he went back to Michigan.”

He never called me and he’s never called me or written me since then. It was really fucked. I even think that I am in love with him because I just think about him every day. I don’t even know if I’ve ever been in love before this.

This Jennings and his people don’t see things in terms of “right” and “wrong” or “moral” and “immoral”. Without a God, who is to say what is moral. They see everything in terms of “social justice”. Kevin Jennings isn’t concerned that a boy might be taken advantage of. He is only concerned that they are not spreading diseases through the gay community. There is no problem with a man taking advantage of a boy or young girl because pedophiles have been oppressed and stigmatized by society. As victims of oppression, they are allowed to victimize others.

(Beginning at 5, a boy has sexual encounters with many playmates.)

Throughout his childhood, from age five on, Derek would sneak off with a friend into someone’s basement or the woods along the back alley, where they would take off their pants and play with each other, usually fondling each other’s genitals. It became habitual.

“At that time, I didn’t quite have a name for it,” says Derek. “It was something that I liked doing, that felt good, that I wanted to do as often as I could. The other kids always recognized it as being something bad and dirty. And all I wanted to know was, When can we do it again?”


(A man recounts how he had sex at 12 for the first time and then fondly recalls the first time he had anal sex with a much older man.)

“I just remember, when I was twelve or so, Derek walking into my room and finding me making out with Timmy Musseo. And he just said excuse me and closed the door.”

Philip’s jaw dropped. “You were making out with boys when you were twelve?”

“Eleven,” Eliot said. “Geoffrey and Derek only found out when I was twelve.”

“Then how old were you when you first had sex?”

Eliot shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he said. “How do you define sex? If orgasm is the criterion, twelve. If anal or oral penetration is necessary, fifteen.”

“And was that with Timmy Musseo?”

“No, no,” Eliot said “Timmy Musseo had a girlfriend by that time. My first experience was with a much older man, a friend of Derek’s. He and Geoffrey never found out about it. Probably they still don’t know.”

“How old is older?”

“Oh, let’s see,” Eliot said. “When I was fifteen, he must have been twenty-nine, thirty. My age now. He came and stayed with me at the house whenever Derek and Geoffrey went away.”

“Did he seduce you?”

“I seduced him,” Eliot said, and laughed. “Oh, he wanted to for as long as I did. But I think he was afraid Derek would send him up for statutory rape or something. I was irresistible at fifteen. I kept asking him to give me massages, playing the little nubile waif. And finally ~ well, he couldn’t hold back anymore.” He sighed. “It was a wild night. We did everything.”


(A young activist denounces "this white-supremist, capitalist heteropatriarchy.")

On Diversity

(Presented at Pride 1997, Olympia, Wash.)

The term diversity has become more than trite these days. Slap a rainbow flag on your car and you’re well on the way to “diverse” liberalism. A true commitment to diversity, however, requires a closer look at the privileges and oppressions simultaneously affecting each of us and a recognition of both public and private means of resistance.

In many ways I have privilege: I am white, middle-class, and attending college. These factors grant me certain societally bestowed benefits. In other ways, I am systemically oppressed: as a woman, as a youth, as a person with cerebral palsy, as a bisexual queer.

With these attributes, I fail to meet the optimal requirements for functioning in this white-supremacist, capitalist heteropatriarchy.

What the hell is this?!More of the communist agenda to negate heterosexual white males, that is what it is. It began with feminism and continues to this day.

If you are not part of the system in the optimal way (i.e., as a straight, white, middle-class or upwardly mobile, Christian male), you pose a threat to that dominant system.


Queer 13 ~ Pages 222 + 223

(A boy of 13 carefully inspects the genitals of his friend, admiring the size of his penis and how much hair he had, then the author describes each of their masturbation techniques.)

“How old are you, twelve? I had pubes when I was twelve,” Donnie said in disbelief.

“I’m thirteen and I do have some pubes,” I said. “Just not a lot.”

Donnie moved toward me. “‘Let’s see. I bet you’ve got more than you think.”

I started to unzip my fly to show him when his mom yelled again for us to turn the music down before she came down and did it herself. I nervously zipped my jeans back up.

Donnie said, “It’s weird. I’m only two years older than you, but look at mine.” He sat on the edge of his bed and slid his jeans down to his knees. He pulled on his pubes and showed me how thick his hair was. He wasn’t self-conscious at all. It felt like he was showing me a science project or something.

He let me examine his dick and pubes close up. I had never seen that much pubic hair that close before. I only had a few pubic hairs, but I kept a vigilant watch over them. I counted them and watched them grow. I knew whenever a new one appeared.

Donnie’s pubes looked so good, so exciting to me. Blood started rushing around me. I felt warm. I felt happy and hopeful at the thought that someday soon I would have that much, too. Donnie was proud of himself.

That close, his pubic hair looked like a dense forest. There was a dark moist smell. Kind of familiar, but different from my own. More like a man smell than a boy smell. I was in awe not only of his pubes but because I wanted to have a dick the size of his, with all that hair. Compared to Donnie’s mature dick with that thick bush at its base, mine was a naked pencil.

I was surprised that his dick was big. He was kind of overweight, just a big kid really. I told him I thought fat guys had small dicks. He didn’t get upset that I called him fat. He said matter-of-factly, “Some of ‘em do.”

He spread the Playboy open on the bed and showed me how he jacked off. I sat next to him and watched as he spit in his hand and rubbed it on the head of his dick. Then he wrapped his hand around his dick and moved it quickly up and down. He didn’t get very hard. It was just a demonstration.

I was too shy to tell him how I did it. When I masturbated I had to be quiet so I wouldn’t wake up my brothers. I lay on my stomach and humped the mattress until I came. My sheets always had yellow crusty stains on them, but my mother never mentioned it even though she was the one who washed them.


(A girl describes how she became “fuck buddies” with another girl while at the same time having a boyfriend.)

The girls I have gone out with have been high school age or a little bit older. I went out with this girl Jennay, and with her, it was just total attractiveness. I got to know her on a different level, and we became lovers.

It’s funny to say it, but we didn’t really relate emotionally. So we sort of became fuck buddies. This was actually going on at the same time I was going out with Mark, so it was kinda bad.


Queer 13 ~ Page 17

(The author describes various sexualized public restroom incidents.)

The little man in a checked sports jacket stands too close to me at the urinal. Is he subnormal? Doesn’t he understand social distance? He has an accent ~ British? Cockney? Maybe he’s wearing a bowler? “Excuse me?”

“Xxxx’x x xxxx xxxx xxx xxxx xxxxx.”

“What?”

That’s a nice cock you have there.” He’s offering his, a prim pink boutonniere; I can see why he likes mine better. A nice cock? Is it separate from my body, which is not nice? Separate, like my beautiful eyes? He’s will-less as a dust bunny, and when I tap him on the shoulder, he drifts away.

Later, in a smelly gas-station toilet, I realize the wad of toilet paper left on top of the dispenser is filled with someone’s sperm. Some pervert left it there, I tell myself wonderingly. To be found, I add. And recognized. As what? An offering, an assertion? I don’t forget to be grossed out. I smell it ~ sure enough, sperm. Consciousness the predicament, orgasm the escape. I look around for the masturbator as though I’m dreaming, as though I can hear his I’m coming noises.


(The author mentions how, while in fifth and sixth grade [age 10 and 11], he often had sex with his male classmates.)

Fortunately, even though being homosexual laid heavily on my conscience during fifth and sixth grades, sex was nevertheless still available. No feelings of guilt entered my mind when having sex with other boys because sex was something spontaneous, and a satisfaction of certain needs.


(At the age of 12, the author reports being shocked when the friend with whom he frequently had gay sex asked him “What would you do if you had some pussy right now?”)

As I entered seventh grade, I noticed that kids were changing physically as well as socially.

Interestingly, Bob Cote and I began a sexual relationship. In fact, we had sex together quite frequently. So I was completely taken by surprise one day at the lunch table when he tried to initiate me into the conversation about heterosexuality.

“How about you, Aaron, what would you do if you had some pussy right now?”


(The narrator regrets that as a teenager he was too shy to hook up with an older man.)

I’ve never been with a guy yet. I was tempted once. I was in this store ~ a clothes shop or something. Well, this guy was looking at me and my friend pointed it out. I was gonna go up and talk to the guy, but the guy was twenty-something. He was good-looking, too.

This was like a year and a half ago or something. I was really screwed up ~ not sure how I felt. I didn’t say anything. I remembered going home and wishing that I had said something.


(A memoir in which the author begins masturbating at the age of nine, later bemoaning the culture which said it was not OK.)

I discovered masturbation when I was nine. But because of other Christian peers and teachers, I learned it was not OK. According to them, the only time a woman should be sexual was after she got married.

My parents did not talk about sex or sexual orientation. The only thing my mother told me was, “Don’t get raped.” She did not describe what it meant to be raped, let alone what it meant to have a healthy relationship, to have sexual intercourse, or the consequences thereof.

How was I to know how I could protect myself? How could I protect myself when I wasn’t confident in my own body?


(A five-year-old girl and a six-year-old girl engage in sex games.)

I am five and Katie is six. Her birthday is in September. Mine is in June. We are both in kindergarten, she in the p.m. class and me in the a.m., but we go to day care together. We are best friends.

Today I am going to Katie’s for a playdate.

Katie pulls her shorts off. She is wearing blue and white polka-dotted Hanes underwear, the kind that I have at home. They come in a three-pack with a matching blue pair and a matching white pair.

She lies down on her floor and pulls her underwear off over her butt, and tells me to spank her because she’s the baby and I’m the mommy. It seems kind of weird and she yells at me to do it. Then she makes me be the baby and she spanks me, too.

She tells me that I should learn how to French-kiss because boys always do that, so she kisses me and puts her tongue in my mouth. I roll my tongue hot-dog style, because that is fun.

Her mommy drives me home, and in the backseat of her white car Katie Frenches me again.

We are in second grade now, and Katie still makes me practice Frenching her.


Queer 13 ~ Page 148

(A boy avoids a schoolyard fight in order to engage in “a masturbation marathon” instead, then adds that he prefers teachers’ bodies to students’ bodies.)

My wrestling partner, fellow lightweight, a boy with “skaggy” chin-length hair, called me out ~ dared me to fight him, tomorrow after school. I agreed to the duel.

His skinny arms were nothing to fear, and yet I stayed home from school the next day and had a masturbation marathon instead.

We’d planned to rendezvous by the locked, parked bikes, near the ecological simulacrum of a habitat, created by the science teacher to show us how to respect the planet.

I preferred teacher to student bodies, with a few exceptions.


(A group of 9- and 10-year-old boys all get erections together in a tent.)

Sleep-away camp lent itself to exploration as well. The summer between fourth and fifth grade I learned what an erection was.

Six guys in a tent without a parental figure and instructed to go to bed had no intention of falling asleep until our eyelids felt like anvils. At some point, the conversation turned to sex.

And that same friend who enjoyed mooning the guys also instructed us, using his own body for visual proof, as to what an erection was. Soon after, we were all erect, with very little inkling that what we were doing would be considered by some to be wrong.


(The author discusses the psychological issues his sex partner experienced when they were both 12 years old.)

My school life was becoming lonelier. Most of my former friends ignored me. Bob and I stayed friendly and kept up our sex life together, but many times Bob also talked about fantasies with females and salami.

Bob felt guilty about having sex with me and pretended that we never did. It was frustrating because now, more than ever, I wanted to communicate with someone about my sexuality ~ but there was no one available. Although Bob provided sexual stimulation, there was little other communication between us; he was too inhibited.

In fact, one time he refused to have sex unless we first hypnotized each other into being different people: he would be a woman while satisfying me, and then we would switch. I went along with it but felt ridiculous when the two identities he had chosen for us turned out to be Ann-Margret and Jaclyn Smith. My part was Ann-Margret, of course.

Bob and I had sex often yet there was always that suppressive air.


(The narrator describes how the other teens in his social circle “have sex all the time” and “go down to the Castro and pick up guys.”)

With queer kids I meet outside of the youth group, it’s the only thing we have in common is that we’re gay and we’re young. They just go to clubs and get fucked up and have sex all the time. They go down to the Castro and pick up guys. And I know it’s their internalized homophobia and that kind of stuff and they’re dealing with that.


(Two second-grade boys engage in sex-play when the adults aren’t looking.)

Troy and Jordan soon discovered they shared a common secret ~ they both were infatuated with boys. They would compare their affections for boys they knew at their school and tease each other about their latest crushes.

Both admired one boy in particular, a second-grader named Kelly. Kelly was exceptionally good-looking. Troy remembers thinking he was the type of boy who surely would grow up to be strikingly handsome. Troy and Jordan vied unabashedly for his attention, pushing and elbowing to sit by his side during lunch, and showing off during recess.

It was Jordan who won out, finally capturing Kelly’s interest. He invited Kelly over to his home, where they would roll and tumble together on an old mattress down in the basement, out of sight of any adult, kissing and hugging under blankets and sheets, sometimes without their clothes.


(A girl describes how at the age of 12 she announced to her entire elementary school that she is a lesbian.)

Coming Out in Middle School

I first began to come out when I was 11. In terms of my family, I was fortunate because my parents have always been accepting of my sexual identity. It was really great to have their backing, especially considering that a lot of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people don’t have that kind of family support.

I come from a political, staunchly liberal family; I guess you could say I inherited my parents’ socialist genes. However, the school I was going to when I came out was immensely different from my home situation.

I was in sixth grade and attending a Catholic school in San Francisco when I came out to a small group of people. (I was actually raised in an agnostic household, but the Catholic school was three blocks away from where I lived.)

My fellow students had already assumed I was a queer because I defended queer people and got angry at folks in my class when they said the word “faggot.” So of course they were making accusations about my sexuality left and right. Still, I didn’t feel comfortable coming out to all of them.

During this time I started attending LYRIC, the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center, a wonderful program and hang-out space for LGBT youth in San Francisco. Just hanging out with other queer youth and finding a place where I could get support was incredible. Programs that give queer youth a space to be safe are really important, and I know that finding LYRIC helped me out a lot.

The next year I was in seventh grade. At that point I was tired of being harassed, and I had gotten to a place in my life where I could actually deal with the harassment and stand up to people who hurt me. I realized I could only be happy if I was honest with the people around me. So at the age of 12 1 came out to my entire elementary school, which included grades K-8.


(As a six-year-old, the author became sexually aroused by Batman and GI Joe, and “messed around” with his playmates.)

One day when I was about six, while watching a Batman episode with Cheryl, I casually commented on the anatomical proportions of Batman. I knew no reason to stifle my aroused sexual feelings, so I just mentioned that I liked what I saw. Cheryl freaked out. It was my first lesson that talking about this subject made people upset.

This was the first time I had spoken of my sexual thoughts although I had been having those thoughts for as long as I could remember. Already I was undressing my GI Joe dolls, and I had messed around with some of my male playmates, but it never crossed my mind to mention my feelings to anyone.


Queer 13 ~ Page 228

(Two 11-year-old boys sneak into a school closet to have a sexual encounter, but are interrupted by a teacher before they can begin.)

Something was in the air, and it wasn’t just pot smoke. But at age eleven I was alert to it, sniffing it out like a caged animal keenly sensing freedom. That year was an awakening for me. Puberty struck like violent spring weather.

The boys of my new school, East Meadow Elementary in Palo Alto, were sexual boys, and I had never been cast among sexual boys before. It’s not that they were having sex; rather, they radiated sex, its power and allure. We were a school of boys coming into sticky heat.

We got hard in our pants, grabbed at one another’s crotches, traded sex drawings we sketched covertly during class. We talked solemnly about the mysterious and exciting changes happening to our bodies, the public hair some of us were beginning to sprout, our nipples that felt strangely sensitive. Overnight we became achingly aware of our penises.

In the school library there was a supplies closet where some of the boys, it was rumored, went when the library wasn’t in use. One spring afternoon, as Lex Bancroft and I, unsupervised, shelved books ~ an honor bestowed from time to time on A students ~ he confided to me that he and Brian Freeman had gone to the closet the week before.

The window shades were down to indicate the library was closed, but still the afternoon light suffused the room with a tender glow. Lex hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and splayed his fingers against his pelvis as if in triumph. Did I want to go? he wondered.

Those of us who had not been to the closet could only speculate about what, exactly, went on in there. I felt a bright spasm of longing ~ everything in the room seemed at once vague and luminous; we were on the verge, I sensed, of something truly amazing ~ when the door opened and our teacher, Mr. Bouchner, appeared to tell us the news that Martin Luther King had just been assassinated in that faraway city where I had grown up.

This post was so long that I cut it in half.

Just a last note. These books almost all seem to be about the boys. The boys and the joys of sex. I noticed as I went through, for the girls the stories seemed to end up in shame and guilt or the joy of being a lesbian. Once again, no need for white heterosexual males. Just reading between the lines, folks.

When Silence Would Have Been Golden ~ Acts of Homosexual Promotion to Youth that We Wish Had Never Happened

DAY OF SILENCE 201