This is my 150th blog entry, but I have even better news!

Author William Maltese has just posted reviews of The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer!

Read Maltese’s review and other reviews of The Acorn Gathering at Amazon.com.

Read Maltese’s review and other reviews of The Acorn Gathering at Barnes & Noble.Com.

Track The Acorn Gathering On the Web With All Consuming.Net.

Preview or Order The Acorn Gathering at iUniverse.Com.

I edited and co-wrote The Acorn Gathering, a fiction collection. My talented co-authors and I are donating all the royalties to cancer research. Please read about The Acorn Gathering. As Maltese points out, it isn’t some depressing book about cancer, but rather a unique and important project.

Book review: The Brentridge Gold: The Pleiades Portals Series by W. Lambert III

While I usually won’t read Westerns, the idea of one involving “Ancient Astronauts” intrigued me, because I love science fiction! The science fiction and adventure elements keep sneaking into the narrative, along with hints of possible supernatural activity. Still, author W. Lambert III stays tightly focused on the Western-style hero, David Brentridge.

In fact, David takes up most of the ink in this book. We often see only him, or just him with brief appearances from the other characters. Fortunately, Lambert makes David a unique and fascinating character who slowly reveals more and more about himself and his family through his actions, dialogue, and thoughts.

The people who keep crossing David’s path in one way or another might want the Brentridge gold, and he rarely can decide which of them to trust. Lambert even holds back from the readers why the gold involves so many secrets, far beyond any obvious fortune, but he gives us fascinating hints and glimpses through David and an ancient shaman. He also gives a fast-paced, unpredictable read.

Gay romance, gay relationships

Gay men, please read Home, a gay love poem from my book Holding Me Together: Essays and Poems. Just above Home, you’ll find a link that says “Email.” You can use that link to send Home to your partner and/or your friends, as a free e-card (electronic greeting card). It would make a great gesture, for Valentine’s Day, or any day. Please tell others about that poem! With certain people trying to pass legislation and even a constitutional amendment to discriminate against gay couples, we need to remember the love that exists within gay relationships.

Another honor for my books!

My publisher, iUniverse, recently added Holding Me Together and Degranon to their “Editor’s Choice” series, thanks to the StoneWall Society awards those books received. The Acorn Stories was already a part of that series.

Articles About Fred Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church visiting Lubbock in Jan. 2004.

Some of the best and earliest coverage came from Fox 34, but their website is under reconstruction.

KCBD.Com: Kansas Church Brings Protest to Lubbock

Lubbock Online: Picketers Only Want to Provoke

ABC 28: Tech Radio Station To Ask For Donations Amidst Protests (Note: that event was cancelled, due to possible FCC problems.)

ABC 28: Controversial Minister To Demonstrate In Lubbock

The Austin Chronicle: Beyond City Limits

HubStuff: Hate is NOT a Family Value (In PDF file of Volume 2, No.3: January 9, 2004. May require free download of Adobe Acrobat. A follow-up article appears in Volume 2, No.4, January 16, 2004.)

KCBD.Com: Anti-Gay Group Schedules Protest in Lubbock

My Announcement from Rainbow: Lubbock

Texas Triangle: Boise Rejects Phelps’ Monument of Hate, Lubbock Next (Scroll to bottom of page.)



My comments:

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church marched with anti-gay signs (God hates fags, etc.) or anti-American signs (God hates America, Thank God for September the 11th, etc.), with at least one member literally stepping all over an American flag while dragging it on the ground. Pastor Fred Phelps, who kept bragging about his plans for Lubbock, didn’t even show up with his followers.

Though the invaders made themselves look bad, Lubbock made itself look good. The Westboro Baptist Church invasion only brought more unity and visibility to the local gay community, as well as more unity between the local gay community and the larger Lubbock community. RAINBOW Project outnumbered WBC tenfold (about 150 to about 15), protesting peacefully and sanely.

Metropolitan Community Church, PFLAG, Queers & Allies, and various others raised money for charities such as South Plains AIDS Resource Center (SPARC), the South Plains Food Bank, and the United Way, transforming all the attention on WBC into attention on more important matters.

Hatred in West Texas.

I posted the following in Rainbow: Lubbock, the online newsletter I created for the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community in Lubbock, Texas. Visit DuaneSimolke.Com to find Rainbow: Lubbock and a variety of other resources, as well as information about my writing.

Monday, January 12, 7 AM. I hesitate about listing an anti-gay event here, especially since the organizer of the event constantly manipulates gays into giving him free publicity. And no, I won’t give a link to his website, driving more traffic there. Instead of depressing yourself by reading his site, please empower yourself with some of the resources at DuaneSimolke.Com.

However, I wanted to urge my readers to exercise restraint and wisdom at the arrival of Fred Phelps and his followers to Lubbock. They plan to protest the Buddy Holly Center's display of Elton John's eyeglasses, as well as the efforts of Lubbock’s Gay/Straight Alliance, GAP Youth. They also might target Texas Tech University and various gay-friendly churches. If gays and their allies arrive at the protests screaming and ranting at Phelps, he and much of Lubbock’s media will only succeed in making gays look like aggressors, lunatics, and threats to free speech.

Phelps is, of course, famous for picketing the funerals of gay-equality advocates and of people who died of AIDS-related complications, as well as for creating a monument that celebrates Matthew Sheperd’s supposed passage into Hell.

Some gay activists in other communities have responded to these protests in positive ways, such as telethons in which participants donate a set amount of money to gay causes for each protester Phelps brings. Some Lubbockites plan to make donations to SPARC (South Plains AIDS Resource Center) in Phelps’s name.
Other positive responses could include an informational meeting about gays or a prayer vigil; local media might cover such events, in relation to the Phelps protests.

Screaming and ranting at someone who lives to scream and rant will accomplish nothing. Letting him spew out his venom will push sensible people away from his anti-gay views, once they get a good listen.

Please also read about the PBS-sponsored programs Not in Our Town.

“By killing yourself, intentionally or through unsafe sex, you call yourself worthless and expendable. How can you think of a human being that way? Quit punishing yourself for the bigotry in society. Refuse to help the cause of homophobia. Take care of yourself. Learn to love yourself and protect yourself. See yourself and your partner as worth protecting. Treat safer sex as an act of defiance and gay pride, a statement about your love for yourself, a statement about the value of your life. Treat living each day as a tear in the fabric of bigotry.”

From “Not Worth Dying Over,” an essay in my book Holding Me Together. Copyright 1999 Duane Simolke. Paul Harris quotes that passage in his book From Our Own Lips: The Book of GLBT Quotations. (GLBT stands for gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.)

Dann Hazel used “Reactions to Homophobia,” another of my works from Holding Me Together, as a resource for his book Witness: Gay and Lesbian Clergy Report from the Front.

Ex-Gay

Book review: Anything but Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth by Wayne R. Besen

Despite years of hearing, reading, and writing about this topic, I can’t think of a better ex-gay resource than Wayne R. Besen’s book Anything but Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth. Besen not only gives an accessible and easy-to-follow history of the sham’s path of destruction but also makes it clear why so many gays and nongays choose to believe its obvious lies. He also exposes the many people who profit monetarily, politically, or even sexually from ensnaring more ex-gay followers.

Still, Besen also shows how most of the people who become involved with or lead these ministries probably mean well. More importantly, he shows how gays and their allies can expose these hurtful groups, which rely heavily on wild semantics, shaky statistics, pseudo psychology, and highly questionable science, all the while trying to appear Bible-based.

Besen also shows how gays can make their communities less vulnerable to ex-gay groups, while warning those communities about insidious new tactics that the increasingly media-savvy ex-gay leaders use to lure parents into forcing children to join the ex-gay circus. For groups that keep claiming that all of their members come there voluntarily, they certainly keep taking advantage of parental pressuring and other fears of rejection!

Best of all, Besen offers resources and alternatives for people who might want to join these groups. He even defends, to my satisfaction, his undercover efforts to capture all of the information that appears in this sometimes shocking but always fascinating volume. I suggest Besen’s study for all gays, all of their allies, and anyone who thinks the ex-gay movement needs support or more recruits.

I wrote about the ex-gay movement and various other gay-related topics extensively in works that appear in my collection Holding Me Together: Essays and Poems. I use a fictional character to explore ex-gay issues in “Mirrors: A Blackmail Letter,” a story that appears in my book The Acorn Stories; that character reappears in “Fat Diary,” a more light-hearted story I wrote for an anthology, The Acorn Gathering.

I also suggest Ronald L. Donaghe’s scathing fictional treatment of the ex-gay movement, The Salvation Mongers, as well as the disturbing documentary One Nation Under God and—for some needed levity on the topic—the silly yet likable comedy But I’m A Cheerleader.

Bareback

Gay Men, HIV, Barebacking, and Safe Sex


Please visit The Body, the most comprehensive AIDS and HIV resource on the internet. It includes information, Q&A, support, communities, and more, with areas devoted to the health of gay men.

This poem deals bluntly with unprotected sex among gay men. "Bareback" is from my book Holding Me Together, which also includes some of my most popular essays (such as "Reactions to Homophobia" and "Not Worth Dying Over"). The HIV-infection rate has been rising again in the US, despite all we know about how to stop its spread.

Bareback, by Duane Simolke

Louder, louder, the music pulsing
harder. Lights flashing, faster.
Young male bodies grinding harder
on the crowded dance floor,
in the ecstasy of ecstasy.
Heat, sweat, eyes, hands,
another night, pulsing faster
than crystal shooting
through your veins
harder than a stranger
in a hurry, in a daze.
Simply in. He says it’s better
without.

And you think it can’t happen to you,
but if it did, the new magic pills
would make it go away,
but this time it pulses faster
than crystal shooting
through your veins,

faster than insurance running out,
faster than parents walking away,
faster than friends dying off,
faster than a virus mutating,
faster than another cure failing,

faster than the thirty seconds
he wouldn’t take
to open a package
and slide on a condom.

But all that happens off stage.
With perfect hair and perfect clothes,
we live in the safety of the dance floor.

Make up a name,
and tell me, do you ride
skin to skin?



Some related books or DVD.
(This is not a “select” or “official” list—just a sampling.)

Books.
The Crisis of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Holding Me Together
Latino Gay Men and HIV: Culture, Sexuality, and Risk Behavior
Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces
On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of "Straight" Black Men Who Sleep With Men
DVD.
Making the Man: A Young Man's Guide to Safer Gay Sex
Jeffrey
It's My Party
And the Band Played On
Longtime Companion
Alive & Kicking

Bareback also appears in my eBook Selected Poems.

Entry updated 7/6/13.

The Alliance for Lung Cancer Advocacy, Support, and Education (ALCASE).

I recently mentioned here that November is Diabetes Awareness Month. It is also Lung Cancer Awareness Month.

The Alliance for Lung Cancer Advocacy, Support, and Education (ALCASE).

I recently mentioned here that November is American Diabetes Month (see the American Diabetes Association website for details about that). It is also Lung Cancer Awareness Month.

The Alliance for Lung Cancer Advocacy, Support, and Education (ALCASE) identifies itself as “the only not-for-profit organization dedicated solely to helping those living with lung cancer improve the quality of their lives through advocacy, support, and education.”

Please visit their website to find out how you can protect yourself against the most common form of cancer, and how you can help raise awareness. The site also includes an online petition to help convince Congress and the President to better fund lung cancer research, education, and support. Please do yourself the favor of learning more about this dangerous disease and how you can help fight it.

Suggested reading: Lung Cancer: Myths, Facts, Choices--and Hope by Claudia Henschke, Peggy McCarthy, and Sarah Wernick. Peggy McCarthy founded ALCASE and is a long-time advocate of increased lung cancer awareness. She contacted me recently about this important issue, and I will have more information about it in some of my future blog entries.

Of course, I will also have more book reviews, and updates on my writing projects as well. Thanks for reading!