Posted on by Nathan Riley

So What?

There is nothing as unconvincing, as unbelievable as the assumption that a drug user, a sex worker, a gambler, or a drinker is a bad guy who lies or steals. In truth, you know nothing about a person when you learn they take drugs or do sex for money.

These falsehoods are pure prejudice. It is unreasonable and contrary to fact to assume you know something about a person’s character when you find out that they performed certain acts. Such conclusions are specious. After World War II, it became impossible to believe that a black or brown person was a thief or a liar, even though such views were common. These were prejudices, and thousands of soldiers, factory workers building airplanes and tanks during World War II demonstrated that skin color told us nothing about a person’s character. What we learned is that assuming the worst produced false conclusions.

Before drawing a conclusion about a person’s character, the courts, the employers, and the neighbors had to know the facts. Opinion leaders in the United States worked hard to bring this truth to the public. Stars like Jackie Robinson were “most valuable players;” the dignified opera singer Marian Anderson made whites look foolish when they tried to stop her from singing at the Daughters of American Revolution Constitution Hall. Then the decisive change: desegregation of the schools.

Clearly, the recognition of black and brown achievements didn’t end prejudice or stop nasty people from hostile acts, but anyone found to be a racist or making false accusations faced public shame. Many did not give up their prejudices, but they now put their good name at risk. For example, a woman in New York City falsely threatened a black man with a false accusation of rape and then lost her job.

At one time, the black man faced arrest and trial for a similarly flimsy accusation.

It is the contention of this writer that just because you learn someone traded their body for money, gambled, watched porn, or drinks every night, you know nothing about their character. In big cities, the stories are legion about women who trick with men and use the money to pay their rent and care for their children. Carl Hart, a Columbia University professor, insists his habitual use of heroin has not stopped him from meeting his professional responsibilities and social obligations. Anyone who knows drug users realizes many are plumbers, bankers, and lawyers who work every day and enjoy the respect of their peers. Hart, who has spent a lifetime studying drug use, insists that 70% of users of illegal drugs are fully functional.

Prejudice in the form of irrational laws and legal surveillance pose a far greater risk to these people than the drugs they consumed or the persons they tricked with. Gamblers in recent decades have found relief from laws making their activities illegal. It became obvious that “Johnny’s father” or a baseball fan are not criminals just because they liked to bet. The reason for these legal changes is significant. Gamblers were people everybody knew. They didn’t live secret lives and efforts to claim their activities were immoral became preposterous.

Queers faced similar damnation, especially in the dark years after World War II. The federal government fired them on the false grounds that they were security risks. After his dismissal, Frank Kameny, an astronomer, went to court, and found friends to picket against this clear violation of his rights. Homosexuals were common in every large city and have been throughout history. Despite the disparaging attitudes, only rarely were people alarmed by what they considered a common vice. When the Stonewall Riots demonstrated the homosexuals’ anger at the legal hostility imposed on them; city after city created safe spaces for this new political force.

A New York court stopped police entrapment by reaching the obvious conclusion that the undercover officer was not surprised or harmed when a gay man invited them back to their home. The sage judges remarked, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” With this homespun wisdom, the court deprived the police of their chief weapon for entrapping gay men. A few years later, the state’s highest court resolved the issue with the declaration that men had the right to love men and women the right to love women. Same-sex sex became legal in New York, and a few years later the Supreme Court made that the law of the land.

Clients and sex workers and consumers of drugs should pay attention to this history lesson. They are good people and there is no reason to be scared of their habits. In fact, use the word “sex surrogate” and sex workers become angels of mercy and admired. We forget that often clients are people too old, too fat, too callous, or ashamed of their sexual peculiarities to go out on dates. The sex worker is a performer, satisfying the fantasies of their customers. There is nothing remotely criminal about these practices.

Freedom Democrats are dedicated to making the public aware that fear rather than reason, prejudice rather than a willingness to say “so what?” about how other people live their lives is the major obstacle to reform. If legal, sex workers can live lives of respectability, drug users will have access to drugs manufactured with their safety in mind. Doctors can treat patients without the interference of foolish laws.

Freedom Democrats will unite in the common purpose of defying moral rigidity, which thinks it can make a hard-and-fast rule that taking drugs, selling sex, or watching porn is a moral failing. Freedom Democrats will give despised groups their full legal rights in a free country.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Pride

When I lived in Albany in the 1980’s, I went to a NYC Pride march with a young man from Schenectady, a neighboring city but less cosmopolitan than the state capital.

He was amazed. He muttered, “I never knew there were so many gay people.” That daytrip was special; it gave him a glow of self-confidence. This sense of solidarity, of normalcy, is essential to the LGBTQ+ movement. It makes us stronger and better advocates for our cause.

It is no surprise; the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights had a similar effect on the coalition of white and black supporters of civil rights. This coalition formed before the Civil War and continued even during the dark days of Jim Crow. But the March confirmed that full citizenship was a national issue and prompted President Johnson and Congress to act.

“Pride” describes the solidarity that unites queers. In NYC when I grew up in the 1950’s, being queer was far from unusual. Cities across the world have had queer populations. Certainly, queers were a visible part of Shakespeare’s London and New York City during the Revolution. But as was true in 1950’s NYC, they were the butt of jokes and objects of contempt.

Their pain was greeted with indifference. “What do you expect? If they’re going to live like that, they’re asking for trouble.” Being gay was wrong, even a sin, but in a world of few choices, cities offered relative tolerance, and the crazed moralists were never trusted. Before pride, the LGBTQ+ community was tolerated but not accepted. In every city, many people had queer friends who helped create safe spaces. Hostility was by no means universal. But even the accepting joined with their friends in preserving secrecy and shame.

It was a culture of duplicity, and the 1950’s was a period of unusual hostility. Federal government employees lost their jobs for being gay, an extreme aggression that made even straight people uncomfortable. It was a gross violation of civil liberties.

My mom was an actress, and my father worked in women’s fashion. They were surrounded by gay people. They were competitors; my parents thought heterosexuality was healthy, while their gay colleagues were dubbed sick.

When I was 12, the Senate investigated Joseph McCarthy, the senator from Wisconsin whose ravings about “unamerican activities” threatened liberals in general and gay people in particular. McCarthy’s counsel was an obvious gay man, Roy Cohn. McCarthy’s fulminations brought him into conflict with the Army, and that created an opening for General Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. President, to back a Senate investigation of McCarthy. Attorney Joseph Welch led the investigation in 1954 and at one point in the hearings he made a remark about pixies, leading Senator McCarthy to walk into a trap and ask Welch to define the word “pixie.” Welch’s riposte that a “pixie is a close relative to a fairy” brought gales of laughter from my parents and their friends watching the hearings on television. They giggled uncontrollably and their amusement lasted for several days.

At twelve, I was already sexually active and enduring savage comments from other children about being a fairy. My parents’ reaction to the McCarthy hearing chilled me to the bone. With more stubbornness than intelligence, I decided that I knew the truth about my parents; no matter what they would say, I knew, really knew in my heart, that they didn’t like homosexuals and, of course, ME. Since I kept this dark secret and never talked about it, I failed to learn that this was an unreasonable conclusion.

Homosexuals were sick, and in an era where educated people quoted Freud as gospel, it was common to offer diagnoses about other people’s behavior.  This view offered a false sympathy. Saying homosexuals were sick disparaged them. On the one hand it allowed my parents to respect the civil liberties of homosexuals but on the other hand, and more significantly for me, express their distaste. I concluded that even if they said they loved me, I knew, really knew, what in their hearts they really thought. I shut up and never told them. And mistakenly I concluded that almost everybody despised homosexuals. A rigid view that remained undisturbed, even when my sister introduced me to gay students from music and art high school, I was unable to realize that she was letting me know that it was okay to be gay.

In fact, in my old age, a dispassionate look at my high school years convinced me that I fooled nobody. My fellow students at Elisabeth Irwin, a progressive high school in New York City, were all expecting me to come out. They couldn’t have cared less, but I, traumatized by my experiences between 10 and 12 was convinced that if I told anyone I would be mocked and ridiculed.

I lost a chance to have boyfriends and a “normal” dating life. Pride is not a political statement. Pride is a deeply personal decision that is one reason a person becomes politically active because they are just as good as everybody else. Had I accepted it, my whole life would have been happier.

Pride has fostered a new reality; the LGBTQ+ community is no longer sick. There have always been same-sex preferences and in fact animals from dolphins to monkeys have formed couples. Far from sick, homosexuality is natural.

Today, we are repeating this mistake by thinking we are being tolerant when we say gamblers, drug users, and sex workers are sick and need treatment.

Undoubtedly, there are troubled souls who have these habits, but anybody who has roots in the drug culture knows that you cannot make a blanket statement. People with no problems who meet their responsibilities demonstrate daily that these prejudices are false. They make good neighbors, interesting friends, and hold responsible jobs. What is missing in their lives is pride and the public recognition that these activities are normal and have existed for centuries.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Please Help: Looking For An Organizer

The most urgent need is the search for who will leave their mark on history.

This blog calls for political change, dramatic change on behalf of the millions who do drugs, gamble, watch porn, accept LGBTQ+ people, buy and rent sex, and want to say, “Enough already; stop assuming we are weak, immoral, even sick. In fact, draw no conclusions about our character from the pleasures that we share.” The person who gets this message started will become a player in American politics.

They will be starting a new movement and helping to create a new organized force. This impact is built into the proposal. This blog explains some of the ramifications and this article explains why it’s a near certainty that we can do this.

We build our program from the text of the Declaration of Independence. A foundation of U.S. political history. This justification announces the importance of our ideas.

Freedom Democrats want a dramatic change that should be compared to the new moral truth vividly portrayed in the hymn “Amazing Grace”:

How sweet the sound,
  That saved a wretch; like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
  Was blind, but now I see.

This new force spreads a new truth. All too often people who don’t like our habits damn us, turning us into wretches. The new view—“We are no longer blind.”—tells us we will stand tall and insist we are among the righteous.

“Amazing Grace” is history, a historic moment a gift bequeathed by the Age of Enlightenment: realizing that slavery was a horror and should be abolished. Freedom Democrats want to stop the pointing of fingers and silence the anger surrounding drug use, having sex for money, watching and performing in porn films etc. It will be our historic moment. Once we were blind but now we recognize the truth enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

It declared that the newly united colonial governments are “instituted” to protect equality and secure the “pursuit of happiness.” It is a core right that cannot be taken away. It is a BIG DEAL.

Insisting on this right for the millions who enjoy “vices” will be an historic event. Winning elections is predictable, influencing elections is a sure thing. This is something the Freedom Democrats can promise. The new force will be players in American politics. Doing politics builds pride, it says I am just a citizen, equal to you. I am no sinner; I am no wretch. Our arguments encourage pride. The very act of speaking to friends and government officials is an act of pride. It is something to boast about. In this way, the new force will change the attitudes of its members. Showing a new world to America will foster pride, it worked for lesbians and gays and it will work for drug users. We are not strangers, we are not moral defectives, we just live different lives. Freedom Democrats will expand the live and let live view.

People who want to stop a habit will be able to do so with the same pride as a person who loses weight. This example is important because the people who condemn addiction, believing the illegal substances have magical powers, ignore this obvious truth. A common addiction is eating too much. Addiction is an all-too-common human condition.

We will have truth on our side and banish prejudice. If the LGBTQ+ community can do this, so can we.

Getting  high makes many feel better and stop pretending that these feelings are false. Professor Carl Hart makes this argument cogent in a few sentences:

Opioids are outstanding pleasure producers; I am now entering my fifth year as a regular heroin user. I do not have a drug-use problem. Never have. Each day, I meet my parental, personal, and professional responsibilities. I pay my taxes, serve as a volunteer in my community on a regular basis, and contribute to the global community as an informed and engaged citizen. I am better for my drug use.

(Hart, Carl. Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear (p. 14))

Drug users are not the only group despised by a moral majority. Sex workers, gamblers, overeaters, the LGBTQ+ community, and porn watchers and performers are scorned. The test proposed by Professor Hart is worth emphasizing, “I do not have a drug-use problem. Never have. Each day, I meet my parental, personal, and professional responsibilities.” Professor Hart stresses that meeting responsibilities is an important test. Freedom comes with responsibilities. If a person meets their responsibilities, they are entitled to the pursuit of happiness. People who aren’t able to be functioning adults need help and are NOT moral defectives.

No judge should be able to tell somebody, “Get off drugs or stop renting your body, and then I will let you go.” Judges should have proof that the cause of their problem is tied to their habits before making that part of their sentence. It should be difficult for a judge to reach that conclusion because it is unlikely that a habit that offers pleasure or income is a bad thing.

This change will promote freedom and move the nation closer to the promises in the Declaration of Independence.

There must be a person who wants to start Freedom Democrats. I am 82, nearly blind, and clearly unable to be that person, but the articles in Legalize.blog explain how to start.

I will help. For example, I think that Stormy Daniels, whose testimony reflected the dignity that should be the right of every sex worker could possibly be an excellent leader. Reaching out to her would be the responsibility of the person I’m seeking.

It is a chance to make history and make the United States a better nation.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Drug Use Is No More Addictive Than Overeating

Since World War II, caring people have rejected stigma, recognizing its cruelty.

Freedom Democrats enthusiastically join in the fight against stigma. The latest group to hold its head high and say, “We are doing nothing wrong,” is drug users. It has become increasingly difficult to accept the stigma that using hard and psychedelic drugs is always harmful and should be illegal. More and more drug users reject the hostile conclusion that getting high must be destructive behavior. Some people have problems with drugs, just as some people have problems with overeating, but the growing body of evidence makes it clear that many people use drugs and have fulfilling lives. It is mean to look down on drug users.

In the United States black people were stigmatized before and after slavery. Black workers were stigmatized as lazy and stupid. Whites were often surprised by blacks’ intelligence and shrewdness. Written before the Civil War, Frederick Douglass’s autobiography was greeted with skepticism. No black, the stigmatizers said, could write that well; a white person must have been the actual author.

When it comes to stigma, the unfair treatment of blacks has lasted an extraordinarily long time, but other stigmatized groups have shed their negative labels since World War II. Historically homosexuals were mocked, occasionally locked up, until the nation went crazy. Immediately after World War II, gays became a national threat. They were considered security risks. Homosexuals could stay in the closet, but if their loves became public, they lost their jobs. It became illegal for Uncle Sam to provide employment to LG persons.

During this gruesome period, supporters of homosexuals helped lesbians and gays stay in the closet. These heterosexuals, like my parents, thought it was helpful to call lesbians and gays “sick.” Sick people deserved compassion and treatment. Psychiatrists thought that gays could become heterosexual with treatment. In other words, lesbian and gay people could become “healthy” by just being like straights. Men chasing women was considered “normal.” “Sick” had turned into a stigma.

During this same period, women fought stigmas that labeled them overly emotional flibbertigibbets who created confusion until men straightened out the problems. Men were the smart, rational backbone of government and society. Women took care of the home. This prejudice was stupid. Virtually every open-minded person understood that some women were smarter than some men and that women often had better solutions to problems. Feminism blossomed and so did the view that women are equal to men.

By the 1960’s, a growing population across the globe realized that labeling groups as “inferior” was wrong. Stigmatization demeaned same sex love, women, blacks, Spanish speaking, and in the northern United States southern whites were stigmatized. It took George Wallace running for President to demonstrate that some whites in the North were just as racist as some whites in the South.

The battle against stigma was widespread in the United States after the upheavals of the 1960’s. As the times changed even the military, long considered a deeply conservative institution, adopted anti-stigmatization policies. Gay and lesbian soldiers opened doors that allowed the transgendered to work in the military. Women, blacks, and Spanish speaking people became senior officers whose rank required them to command white men. Stigma didn’t disappear, but it became dubious and presumptively illegal in the eyes of the law.

This social change is attacked by the Donald Trump administration. Diversity is damned, and employees are dismissed for supporting it. It will be a hot-button issue as long as Trump is president.

Nonetheless, the battle against stigma is being fought on a new front. The latest group fighting stigma is drug users. Slowly but surely, it is being recognized that drug users are not sick nor demented.

In fact, much if not most of drug users’ pain is caused by stigmatizing drug use. Change has been painfully slow. In the 1960’s, using marijuana was considered dangerous. It led to laziness, opened the door to stronger drugs like heroin, and demonstrated a contempt for law. This argument failed. Marijuana use became widespread, and its users did not become drug addicts. Stigmatizing people is dangerous, wrong, and causes harm.

World War II and the German Holocaust had exposed the dangers of racial categories. Their acceptance could justify horrific acts. As the lesson of World War II became clear, segregation in the army and the classroom became illegal. The battle to give blacks the right to vote and end Jim Crow practices created interracial friendships. Smoking pot was not only fun, it was a form of solidarity with the victims of racism.

Pot use skyrocketed and by high school teenagers had been to parties where some people got stoned. It became impossible to claim pot was dangerous. The menace of drug use had been disproved. Zero tolerance, or the goal of making America drug free, became absurd extremism.

In city after city, all over the world, it became recognized that some people did drugs, always had and always will. Policy makers were forced to answer the question, what is the harm? If it was the spread of disease from needle-sharing, then it became obvious that drug users should have a steady supply of sterile needles. Though by no means universal, harm reduction became a public health objective. Cities like San Francisco boasted of their accomplishments in reducing drug related harm. Other cities kept their policies lowkey and faced attacks if their harm reduction programs became public knowledge.

Harm reduction is a major step forward, but like supporting homosexuals because they are “sick” it doesn’t dispute the belief that drug use is dangerous and inferior behavior.

A growing chorus of thinkers now argue that drug users are not sick and those who have problems deserve help. It is generally understood that gambling can become addictive and lead to financial disaster. In fact, most gamblers watch their pocketbook and stay within a budget. Gambling is fun, and that is why people like it. Drug users are just as sensible.

The argument that heroin is dangerous because it is addictive has become suspect. Gambling can be addictive for some but not for others, the same is true for heroin. Bankers, plumbers, and college professors use heroin without harming their careers. A Columbia University professor came out of the closet about his drug use. Carl Hart makes this argument in his book Drug Use for Grown-Ups. Consider this observation: lock-ups in cities all over the United States don’t help heroin users going through withdrawal. For some, it is horrible agony, but for many it’s just a challenge and they “tough it out.” Don’t think you know about heroin’s effects because you read newspaper stories or saw antidrug movies. The effects are individual, and they vary with the individual, just like gambling and drinking. Some people get great pleasure from eating and preparing food; other people overeat. You can’t generalize about drug use anymore than you can generalize about eating.

Addiction is a troublesome concept. Using heroin, methamphetamine, is a problem for some but not everyone. That is the lesson that Freedom Democrats are learning and disseminating.

In a free country, no judge should be allowed to tell a person you must go into treatment. It should be up to the person to decide if they want help. Nobody should be allowed to shout “Don’t do this! You will go to jail!” That is not freedom; it is stigmatizing and ignores the right of persons to make their own decisions about how they live their lives.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Fighting Stigma Against the Transgendered

One inspiration for starting Freedom Democrats is queer history. Gays and lesbians were subjected to active hostility after World War II.

The Lavender Scare was more than a moral panic; it fed popular feelings of disgust about unnatural behavior, frequently summed up in the notion of “sin.” By the time the Cold War ended in 1990 and a treatment was found for AIDS, the dismissals from  jobs and hostile verbal attacks had become signs of bigotry and backwardness. The last decade of the 20th century marked a transition in queer history. More and more of the public came to accept lesbians and gays.

During the ‘90s as local governments across the United States recognized that LGBTQ+ people were active in public life and had tens of thousands of supportive friends, queers lost their stigma.

So great was the acceptance that the public shrugged its shoulders and accepted the truth that it is nothing unusual. Some people are gay or lesbian; others aren’t, so what. The well-read came to accept that this was a fact throughout history.

The queer community was extended to include bisexuals and transgender persons. Medical advances that also made abortions safer allowed the transgender persons to alter their gender. While the queer community accepted the deep desires that led people to reject the division of humans into men and women, hostile people have attacked gender-bending.

Evangelical religious people and their conservative allies simply know too many lesbians and gays to feel comfortable attacking these queers, not so for the transgender. Phony issues like “strong men” joining women’s sports teams were used to incite hatred. Meanwhile, stories about the murder of trans people have become a weekly event. Clearly the trans community is stigmatized and must struggle to obtain the general acceptance, however grudgingly, offered lesbians, bisexuals, and gays.

 At the same time, queers whatever their gender choices, have insisted on supporting their gender-bending cousins. Elected officials offer support while others attack trans persons. It has become a political football frequently separating Democrats from Republicans. Just as they have done with abortion, the hostile officials try to interfere with the medical treatment available to persons who question their gender.

Although they often skirt the question, hostile politicians treat trans persons as mental defectives. Parents and physicians are accused of abusing trans adolescents. That teenagers sincerely wish to change their gender is considered foolish. Adults who help adolescents explore their gender are labeled abusers. Those who recognize these wishes as heartfelt don’t get credit for listening to and loving young people; they get treated like they were harming their own children. Those members of the public hiding behind the language of abuse feel no compunction about passing laws to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and forbidding parents and teachers from working with children in a positive manner.

Obviously, Freedom Democrats will support the trans community in its fight against violence and hostility. The trans community is not trying to allow men in women’s bathrooms or help men gain an unfair advantage in women’s sports. Nonetheless, these tropes are circulated widely, and trans individuals and their friends and family are forced to respond to invented issues. It is unfair and another chapter in the cruel history of prejudice and bigotry.

I have been rightly criticized for not highlighting the harsh views spreading across the country. For this, I am truly sorry; I have neglected what should be a main purpose of Freedom Democrats—welcoming trans persons and their family and friends and protecting their well-being, jobs, and livelihood.

Obviously, Freedom Democrats would welcome trans persons to their weekly parties and rise up in anger when trans persons are attacked. Parents should feel welcomed and able to look to Freedom Democrats for support. The medical community also deserves Freedom Democrats’ support.

Sad to say hatred keeps finding new ways to stay alive. The trans community, sex workers, drug users, porn watchers, and porn performers all deserve community support to end the stigma that too often forces them to feel shame about their identity.

Posted on by Nathan Riley · 2 Comments

Reflecting on a Young Life Haunted by Stupidity

How a smart person made himself stupid is a possible summary of my life. A cold assessment that has left me optimistic after I moved into my seventies and looked back.

For my first 30 years, I hid, convinced that disaster awaited if people knew I spent my free time trying to suck cock.

So deep and misguided was my shame that I included gay activists among the people who shouldn’t know my secret.

The curtain in this dark closet was woven from many threads, only one of which was homophobia. Even in nursery school, I was the toddler who walked up to a circle of blocks and kicked them down. No way to make friends.

This hostility put me at a crucial disadvantage and cut me off from lessons that friends could have taught me. All children face confusion and tension. Most cope by changing the subject. They play with each other and push away stress with fun games. They don’t fret over their troubles; they put them aside. Having few friends left me alone to mope.

The uncontrolled anger gave me a bad reputation and made people stay away. From nursery school, it was off to a child psychiatrist who taught me that being rude made people yell at me. I had been the dumb child who yelled back. With therapy, life improved for me and my classmates.

As I grew up—like at 7 or 8—I grappled with a new problem: when I got into fights I couldn’t fight back. Boy fisticuffs were common in the 1950s and often led to friendship, but I didn’t play the game. I was stubborn, got into arguments that led to fights, but I wouldn’t punch back. I tried to tell my father, but he thought I was carrying “being nice” too far. Sometimes you have to “hit back,” he said, a useless answer since I knew that—the problem was I couldn’t. This frustration was a critical crisis during elementary school.

I harbor this explanation. Dr Stella Chess in helping me control my anger stifled it in such a way I couldn’t use it where appropriate. This explanation is not under discussion; my topic was my stupidity. I decided I was a coward.

A profoundly destructive negative identity. In college it led me to turn down an invitation to join the students helping African Americans register to vote in the Jim Crow South during the freedom summer. I cheated myself and missed a moment of history.

At age ten I became the neighborhood cocksucker.  It was no secret, and most boys knew it. My parents never did. I wasn’t out, but often I was an object of scorn, ridicule, or worse. I remember walking down the school hallway cringing as girls called me disgusting. To the boys I was a faggot.

Cringing with fear and beset by depression, I seldom recognized the students and teachers who were kind and supportive. I thought I was alone and nobody would help me. Another stupid conclusion.

I started a new life in high school. My history was wiped clean, and it became one of my highest priorities to keep my desires secret. Once again, I reached an extreme conclusion: secrecy was a matter of social survival, even though it haunted my friendships. I couldn’t talk to people I liked about what mattered to me and remained convinced if they knew they wouldn’t be my friend. This way I could go to parties and visit other boys but still feel lonely. I was certain honesty would bring disaster.

The 1950’s social atmosphere fed my fears. My family was left, and McCarthyite blacklists harmed family friends. A comic actor, who I loved, was forced to move to the west coast to become a banker. His departure remains a searing pain as he was a person who made me feel truly relaxed.

My family avidly watched the Army McCarthy hearings on TV. When the lawyer presenting the Army’s story puckishly asked had “pixies” supplied a doctored photo. Senator McCarthy rose to the bait and snapped to find out what was being said.

“I should say, I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy, shall I proceed sir? Have I enlightened you?”Senator McCarthy’s closest advisor was Roy Cohen a diminutive gay man. My parents and their friends roared with laughter and gleefully repeated the story for days.

My suspicions became fixed. They really thought homos were inferior, nay, sick. I knew they would say they loved me, but after the hearing, I KNEW what they really thought. I never worried they would throw me out. I was “sick,” and they wouldn’t disown a sick person. But the flip side of this conclusion was painful. It was a common belief that a person like me could “get well” and date girls. This hostile notion preyed on me for years.

Perhaps the biggest harm caused by clinging to this stupid conclusion that nobody could like me was a lost chance at happiness. Bright and cheerful, Jeff always treated me with warmth and good humor. It made me think he was a wonderful person, but my doubts stopped me from considering the possibility that he was acting this way because he wanted to be my friend.

This stupidity kept me away from Jeff. He and a girl who was also in my class tried to get me to admit I was gay. I listened only to the suspicion that they were trying to trick me. In fact, neither Jeff nor the girl would ever do that, and it was stupid of me not to realize they were trying to tell me Jeff was gay and wanted to date me. I lost a chance to have a lover who was a delightful person, who I could have brought home and dated.

Had I been smarter and dated Jeff, I would have realized that I could be gay and have friends. It would have been impossible for Jeff and I to date and really keep it a secret. This affair I never had would have turned my life upside down in a positive way. I would no longer have been able to say, “I’m gay. Nobody will like me.”

In fact, if I had dated Jeff, I would have learned that I was desirable and people liked me. The secret that my stupidity preserved from me even when the evidence pointed in the other direction. In other words, at eighty-two I truly understand that coming out is vital. This is hardly a new idea, but had I accepted it, I am convinced my high school years would have been happier.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Tumblr’s Ban on Porn is Wrong

Hi

This message is for John Bothman, member of the Board of Directors of Tumblr. Please forward.

Dropping porn from Tumblr leaves me deeply offended. Like millions of others on Tumblr I found people as weird as I am. I’m 76 and like young men; Porn is not an option, it’s a source of profound pleasure. Without it my sexual life is drained of significant vitality. I’m not some lonely guy sitting in front of this computer. I enjoy sex with attractive vital men who enjoy fellatio including my best fellow a friend for 14 years. Porn is an important addition. It is the deeply pleasurable recollection of my pleasant affairs. At 76, my active sex life is a source of pride.

I am not alone there are millions like me whose histories are replete with orgiastic moments. I know that because we find each other on sites like Tumblr. To have our wishes and memories discarded precipitously and without just cause is offensive. A possible flaw in the decision-making is the sense of disgust that surrounds pornography because the practices often convert pain to pleasure and mutuality is forsaken for games of dominance and submission. But the spread of pornography is associated with widespread compassion for sex workers, the LGBTQ community, and recognition that in some respect most of us have queer habits when it comes to sex. The notion that porn is bad for us is controversial and improbable.

Parents all over the world live with the knowledge that their children watch porn and porn enables teenagers to have mature discussions with their school teachers and other students that advances sexual education. Far from being offended, many students exchange nude pics of each other, a practice that raises eyebrows but is in fact safe sex. There seems to be a predisposition towards pornography in this country as great as among the ancient Romans. Pornography has been around for centuries; a sign of the pleasure enjoyed by viewers.

Shutting pornography down is falling prey to the illusion that banishing the problem will make it go away. But it won’t because Tumblr and porn are so entwined that the website will lose an extraordinary number of users and the chief executive will be called to task for this loss of business. It won’t be forgotten; users like me will have an animus towards the site. Tumblr will remain mired in controversy. Tumblr’s prosperity will be called into question, and its reputation will suffer.

For make no mistake, this drastic action is giving aid and comfort to those who would revive anti-pornography laws and eviscerate the free speech decisions that made the industry legal and aboveboard.

And its revenues are in the billions. It employs all races, all income groups. Pornographers don’t ask if you graduated from school or went to prison they are looking for performers who can be sexually convincing. It offers work to people who face obstacles applying for other work. It’s a business to be regulated and responsive to public opinion like all others. Tumblr should not ban it.

There is a graceful way out. Before Government embarks on a change it asks for public comment. Tumblr would be well advised to consult its users and interested parties. These conversations will bring better policy outcomes and increased harmony.