It’s been over a month since a man died inside an underground sex club at 1618 14th Street NW. The club, operated by David J. Butler and the D.C. Wrestling Club, had been throwing near-nightly “Men’s Parties” in Logan Circle for years. The party came to a halt on the morning of Oct. 4, when one reveler died of “blunt impact injury to the head” on the club’s stairs.

Forty-five days later, the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner says that the “manner of death” in the case—which determines whether a death came as a result of a homicide, suicide, accident, or some other cause—is still pending.

Today, D.C. police released a 911 call made from outside the sex club on the morning of Oct. 4. The call, which originated from one of the club’s patrons, points to one possible contributing factor in the man’s death—that party organizers allegedly hesitated to call an ambulance:

The full transcript of the call is after the jump.

Operator: D.C. Emergency 911 Dispatcher 6741. Police, Fire or Ambulance?

Caller: Ambulance.

Operator: To come where?

Caller: It’s um 14^th street, 1618 A. This guy fell down the steps at this after-hours club, and the guy’s, um, he doesn’t look like he’s breathing, and they won’t call the police, I mean, call the ambulance.

Operator: OK, repeat the address?

Caller: It’s 1618 A 14^th street.

Operator: 1618 14^th Street Building A?

Caller: Yeah it’s A. It’s um, it’s right on the corner of Corcoran and 14^th

Operator: Oh, it looks like someone already called the ambulance.

Caller: Okay, because he—he fell down—

Operator: They’re en route there, somebody already called.

Caller: Okay, because he fell down a while ago. How long ago did they call? Because he was laying there—

Operator: They called at 5:06.

Caller: Oh, okay. What time is it now?

Operator: It’s 5:10 now.

Caller: Okay, yeah. Because he fell before that, and I saw him. And I told them. I don’t know, I’m just upset about it, because it’s actually—it’s like an after-hours sex club—and they didn’t want to call the police, because he didn’t have any clothes on.

Operator: Okay. Look out for the police for him. I mean the ambulance.

Caller: I see them, I see them now, thank you.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

At ChurchOuting.org, you’re invited to scroll through a list of every Achbishop, Bishop, and Reverend in the Archdiocese of Washington, zero in on one you know is gay, and then submit your “detailed account of how you know the priest in question is being hypocritical through his silence.” (Alternately, get at them via Twitter or Facebook).

ChurchOuting.Org is the brainchild of self-described “netroots organizing pioneer” Phil Attey. To Attey, publicly detailing your homosexual tryst with a priest is practically a charitable contribution: “Thank you for helping to liberate a closeted gay or romantically involved heterosexual priest from the oppressive anti-marriage equality agenda,” the Web site reads. Wait a minute: Since when was a homosexual witchhunt meant to free people from their political agendas?

The intention of the Web site is not to bust gay priests out of the closet (and their jobs)—it’s to coerce them into changing their official positions on gay marriage from inside the priesthood. ChurchOuting.org, then, will not technically involve any outings:

Disclaimer:  The goal of this site is not to force Catholic priests out of the closet against their will.  The goal of this campaign is to aggregate reports of the every gay priest in the Archdiocese, so that we can work with them, one on one, and help them stand up to the the church hierarchy’s stand on this important issue.

So: Attey is going to approach priests he thinks are gay, and warn them that they better stop lobbying against gay people, seeing how gay they are . . . or . . . else? As Queerty notes, it sounds like it’s not gonna work:

What’s the fun in that? There is none! Sure, we get the noble mission: Find the gay priests and then engage in dialogue with them. But no single (gay) priest is going to convince the Archdiocese’s leadership, including topper Don Wuerl—who is threatening to abandon the Church’s social services program if marriage equality legislation passes—to give up on its anti-gay crusade just because a website has the name of an allegedly gay priest.

The Washington Blade served as D.C.’s gay newspaper of record from 1969 until Monday morning. This Friday, the paper intends to return as the D.C. Agenda. Editor Kevin Naff confirmed the re-Christening this evening at an event at the Hard Rock Hotel supporting the paper’s rebirth.
Naff, who was accompanied by about 100 supporters at the Hard Rock Hotel event, says he believes that all of the Washington Blade’s former staffers are in on the new project. Their first task, he says, was to agree on a new name for the paper. D.C. Advocate Agenda, Naff says, was “a group decision of about 25 of us.” Earlier today, the paper sealed the deal by securing its new Twitter account, @DCAgenda.

Now, the staff just needs to decide which aspects of the Blade to carry on in its new Agenda. “This is still very new,” Naff says. “We’re still looking at everything. Our core strength has always been news coverage, and that’s going to remain our core strength. But we’re not going to ignore the other areas, as well.”

The new outfit will need to get its editorial priorities straight quickly. The first issue of the paper, due to hit newsstands this Friday, Nov. 20, has already sold “six pages of ads without even trying,” Naff reports. “We were initially thinking of releasing it just as a newsletter, a leaflet, just to say, ‘hey, we’re still around,’” Naff says. “Now, we have plenty of space to fill.”

In committee, the bill’s religious exemptions were finalized to ensure that no religious organizations—including churches, schools, and nonprofits—would have to “provide services, accommodations, facilities, or goods” to aid in the solemnization, celebration, or promotion of same-sex marriage. Boo.

I can’t imagine that you folks are as interested in the implications of the religious exemption than Mike Riggs and I are, but the full language [PDF] of that portion of the bill is after the jump.

No priest, imam, rabbi, minister, or other official of any religious society who is authorized to solemnize or celebrate marriages shall be required to solemnize or celebrate any marriage.

Each religious society has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine, teachings, and beliefs regarding who may marry within that particular religious society’s faith.

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a religious society, or a nonprofit organization that is operated, supervised, or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious society, shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, facilities, or goods for a purpose related to the solemnization or celebration of a same-sex marriage, or the promotion of same-sex marriage through religious programs, counseling, courses, or retreats, that is in violation of the religious society’s beliefs. A refusal to provide services, accommodations, facilities, or goods in accordance with this subsection shall not create any civil claim or cause of action, or result in a District action to penalize or withhold benefits from the religious society or nonprofit organization that is operated, supervised, or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious society.

For those of you who would rather do away with this whole marriage business instead of incorporating new groups into the institution, Canadian group Hidden Cameras have got your anthem: “Ban Marriage.” Recently, eight of them squeezed into the Rock and Roll Hotel to perform the song for The New Gay. The traditional-marriage-averse lyrics include references to fingering, “fag hags,” and drunk ministers. What, no shout-out to the patriarchy? Full lyrics are after the jump.

I was late getting to church on the morning of my ceremony

Ban marriage
Ban marriage
Ban marriage
Ban marriage
Ban marriage
Ban it all

J. Matt Barber, board member of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, has no problem with being gay. Being “gay,” on the other hand, is a serious cause for concern.

In a media alert released yesterday, Barber warned Christians about the impending threat of homosexual terrorism. As he described the activists at the heart of the anti-Christian movement, Barber repeatedly couched the term “gay” in scare quotes. Why go “gay”?

Parents of Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) is in the business of downplaying the immutability of sexual orientation—their whole shtick is that gays can turn themselves straight, and so placing “gay” in quotes helps to devalue the identity as real.

But Barber says that’s not the effect he was going for. “Gay used to mean happy, carefree—the original definition of gay,” explains Barber. “Now, homosexuals are trying to put a more positive face on their lifestyle. In an interesting and clever twist of semantics, homosexuals have co-opted the term. Gay is supposed to be something happy, something good.”

One section of the AP Stylebook seems to back up Barber’s usage. According to the Stylebook, it is acceptable to place real, actual words—like gay—in quotation marks in order to signify that the words are being “used in an ironical sense.” According to Barber, being “gay” is ironic indeed, as the homosexual lifestyle is far from gay. “Based on CDC statistics, there’s nothing gay about being ‘gay,’” Barber says.

Good news: Yesterday, a revised draft of the marriage bill was released that will retain domestic partnerships (for now, at least). Bad news: the revised bill also allows churches to refuse to make their facilities available for those same-sex couples who actually are into that whole “marriage” business.

The Washington Blade reports on the DP “tweaks”:

During the committee’s two days of hearings, Catania said he was open to removing language he placed in the bill that called for ending the city’s registration of new domestic partnerships after January 2010. Catania noted that he put the provision in the bill because most states that have legalized same-sex marriage have ended existing domestic partnership or civil unions programs on grounds that most same-sex couples prefer marriage.

But a number of witnesses, including officials with the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance and lesbian rights attorney and American University law professor Nancy Polikoff, urged the Council to remove the “sunset” clause for domestic partnerships from the marriage bill. These witnesses suggested that the Council take up the domestic partnerships issue at a later date and through separate legislation.

Right now, we’re focused on securing marriage equality, and that’s an extremely important step. But hopefully, by the time the council gets around to considering domestic partnerships, we’ll be able to look beyond marriage and consider our other options on their own merits. Even when same-sex marriages are recognized, we will still need to address how some marriage rights discriminate against those couples and singles who opt out of the institution. Right now, it may be true that “most same-sex couples prefer marriage,” but I believe that may begin to change as the institution evolves and more options are made socially acceptable. A lot of people just don’t want to get married, period, and they shouldn’t have to do so to get their rights.

On to the religious side:

On the religious exemption provision, Catania’s original bill noted that “a religious organization, association or society, or a nonprofit organization which is operated, supervised, or controlled by” a church or religious group “shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, facilities or goods” for the purpose of performing any marriage “unless the entity makes such services, accommodations, or goods available … to members of the general public.”

The revised bill removes the “unless the entity makes such services, accommodations, or goods available … to members of the general public” language.

Seeing as I would never be interested in getting married in one of these God-forsaken places anyway, this language is less important to me personally. But it’s extremely unsettling that the council’s bill includes an allowance for religious institutions to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation. The provision, at the very least, serves as a reminder that even when same-sex marriage is legal, marriage will still be fucked up in a lot of ways. Why not just opt out and go for a domestic partnership?

The battle for ideological dominance in our nation’s capital’s collegiate sex columns continues. Are our local campus columnists on the forefront of radical sex writing, or are they bringing back the good old days of romance born out of  aggressive homophobia?

This week: pro-life gay man worries that if he could have children, his pro-choice boyfriend might kill them; how to talk to a girl without being a creep; your boyfriend is cheating on you to avoid rumors he’s on the down low.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

Sex Tips: In this edition of the AU Eagle’s triple-threat sex column, Buster Darkhole, Maxwell Hillcrest, and Amber Sparkles take on the issue of  . . . ideological rifts in on-campus relationships. How apropos!

The inspiration: A pro-life man writes in to ask if his crush on a pro-choice man is too immoral to pursue. “While he and I can’t have children, it’s more the idea that if we had children he would be OK with killing them,” he writes. “Is this enough to kill a relationship?” I bet you weren’t expecting Buster Darkhole’s response: “let me just say that it is a relief to find another pro-life gay on this campus.”

Life Lesson: The American University community contains at least two pro-life gay men.

Progressive Meter: Sorry, my brain just exploded attempting to accurately gauge the progressiveness of this situation. I think we’ll split the odds and go for a 5.

—

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

Sex Tips: The Diamondback’s latest advice column schools undergrads on how to “start up a conversation without seeming creepy.” Columnist Esti Frischling’s suggestion: ” The rule is this: Any guy can get any girl. . . .  If you approach this situation knowing without a doubt that you are going to get some serious ass, your actual chances improve drastically,” she writes. “Seeing as you already know you’re going to get with this girl in the near future, you can certainly start to relax around her. Suddenly, imagining her naked in class changes from awkward and creepy to fun and clairvoyant. . . . Keep in mind: You are the man.”

Life Lesson: She wants to fuck you.

Progressive Meter: Assuming that a strange woman wants to have sex with you whenever you like will inevitably lead to complications. As one commenter notes, it ain’t the first time she’s doled out this advice. So much for the “without seeming creepy” part. Zero.

—

HOWARD UNIVERSITY

Sex Tips: In this Howard University Hilltop opinion piece, Morgan Winbush attempts to get to the bottom of Howard’s “dating double standard.” She writes: “in a man’s world; you have to be on top of everything including your woman and your relationships. . . . Messing around with other women feed into the need for a man to feel as if he is needed. The more women who ‘need’ him the more he is solidified as a man possessing the qualities that are ‘manly’ and thusly proving himself to be the leader of the pack when it comes to female dependency. ‘Is he gay?’ ‘Is he on the DL?’ — the more female partners a man has the less likely these labels will be placed on him.” But aggressively proving one’s heterosexuality ain’t just for men any more: “times have progressed and women want just as much ego rubbing as their counterparts.”

Life Lesson: Your boyfriend is cheating on you so that nobody thinks he’s gay. At least now you can get in on the homophobic fun, too.

Progressive Meter: Winbush makes a good-faith effort to encourage fellow students to embrace female promiscuity alongside the traditional male version. In the meantime, she raises the specter of the guy on the “down low” without even giving a positive shout-out to the campus LGBT contingent. Three.

Photo by Ollie Crafoord, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

A friend* pointed me to an interesting divide in the Maine election results: While only 47 percent of Maine voters opted to keep same-sex marriage legal, a full 59 percent voted to legalize medicinal marijuana. By my expert analysis, that means that a significant percentage of Maine’s voters are raging potheads who hate gay people.

Here are the latest election results:

Overturn same-sex marriage:

Yes: 53 percent

No: 47 percent

Legalize Medicinal Marijuana:

Yes: 59 percent

No: 41 percent

So, which residents of Maine are fighting for their right to get high while expressing their disregard for the civil rights of gay people? My friend floats a theory: Frat guys?

* In order for me to steal his idea, he insisted that he be described as “sexy.”

Photo by wstryder, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Last we checked in with Dr. Ruth Jacobs, president of the Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government, she was explaining why transgender women should not be allowed in her bathroom: “If somebody with an opposite body part is allowed in to a ladies’ restroom—a guy who has a penis, who could put his penis inside my vagina—what am I to do?” Jacobs said. “We need to be able to retain the right to speak up about men in our bathrooms without being labeled bigots.”

Okay! Well, now Dr. Jacobs is back to apply her anatomical expertise to the issue of gay marriage. Let’s see what she has to say!

Thanks to Metro Weekly for getting this all on tape. Here are the money quotes:

* “An anus was designed for exit, not entrance.”

* “Who will protect the children?”

* “Once it becomes law, you cannot opt out . . . students are terrified to be taken out of sex ed. They get on their knees and beg to their parents to be included. Because, to be outside is to be labeled the conservative. To go to the library while everyone else is in class having sex ed, means that you then—when you refuse to go to sex ed, you then become the group that is discriminated against.”

* “46 percent of black men . . . are HIV positive” (No).

* Marriage and the vagina and the penis are designed to go together, and the penis and the anus do not.”

* And a dose of reality courtesy of Councilmember David Catania: “If your testimony is that you’re only eligible to marry if your population has a low HIV rate, the first in line . . . are lesbians. So based on your testimony, we could only marry lesbians.”

AshleyMadison.com, an online dating site that facilitates extramarital affairs, has never been too popular among moral conservatives. Earlier this year, Deroy Murdock argued on Human Events that Ashley Madison has edged out gay marriage as the number one threat to traditional matrimony. Now, cluck-clucking conservatives won’t have to choose between the cheaters and the gays: Ashley Madison has begun marketing itself as a place where the married can pursue their same-sex attractions, too.

Ashley Madison’s gay (and bi-curious) population is modest, but growing. Worldwide, the agency hosts 4.7 million members seeking extramarital affairs. Of those, only 143,427 are seeking some same-sex action. About two-thirds of Ashley Madison’s same-sex seekers are women looking for women; one-third are men seeking men. Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison’s CEO (married, two kids), says that his service provides a necessary sexual outlet for gay men and women who are trapped within the confines of traditional marriage. “There are men and women who, for whatever reason, might have been motivated to pursue a traditional marriage because they did want to build a family,” Biderman says. “Unfortunately, in our culture, their sexuality is still at odds with that arrangement.”

In an age when marriage equality is gaining serious steam, helping closeted gays escape their repressive straight marriages seems downright altruistic. But Ashley Madison isn’t so progressive as to encourage gay men to marry each other. “They’re not looking to leave their families,” Biderman says of the same-sex contingent. “They’re looking to have this on the side.” Ashley Madison is not here to release gays from the closet—it’s here to offer them a peek outside before returning them safely to nuclear family life. Meanwhile, it invests in the repression. “I don’t want to call it ironic, because people who find this ironic assume that we’re a home-wrecking service,” Biderman says. “We’re not. We are a marriage preservation service.”

Nobody relies on the preservation of traditional marriage like Ashley Madison. Ashley Madison’s motto, “when divorce isn’t an option,” seems strange in a country where no-fault divorce makes it easy to reset one’s relationship status to single. But Ashley Madison is not designed for folks willing to ruin their home lives so transparently. The service relies entirely on secrecy and discretion—what skeptics might call “lying” and “self-delusion.” “This is not a service for people in open marriages,” says Biderman. “There are sites out there for the courageous ones—the swinger couples who have found the courage to say, ‘I love you, but I need to do something different in the bedroom,’” he says. Ashley Madison, on the other hand, is for people who “can’t voice their sexual concerns to their spouses, because they are terrified of the repercussions,” he says. “There’s this notion that people who engage in infidelity are lying and deceitful,” he says. “But people wouldn’t have to lie if these more realistic sexual options were socially acceptable.”

As soon as those “realistic sexual options” are accepted, though, Ashley Madison goes kaput. The service wouldn’t be making any money if people weren’t terrified of communicating with their spouses. Besides, secrets are hot. Ashley Madison’s branding centers around the service as a sexy, hush-hush taboo. Ashley Madison may have built an empire out of facilitating transgressions, but its continued success lies in reinforcing the traditional. Biderman’s business will only remain viable so long as its members continue to invest in conservative, heterosexual marriages which reinforce monogamy. “People have told me, ‘Oh, you should open Ashley Madison in France,’” says Biderman. “I tell them, ‘You know, I don’t think they need me.’”

To date, Ashley Madison has only identified a need in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. In order for the service to expand, Biderman has got to locate other cultures that are currently struggling between the repressive and the progressive. “Places like Brazil offer an interesting dynamic, where infidelity among men is extremely high and among women it’s much lower,” he says. “There’s no reason to believe you can’t be wildly successful there. There is an incredible opportunity for a global phenomenon.”

Biderman’s latest campaign to make this an Ashley Madison world has, so far, failed to reach its full potential. “We always thought there would be a marketplace for same-sex affairs, but it’s been difficult to cultivate it,” says Biderman. “We could probably stretch those legs further, but there are so many obstacles to advertising our brand. We have enough difficulty advertising infidelity—think about the problems we’d have marketing to same-sex infidelity. I cant even tell you one avenue where I could effectively market that.”

Ashley Madison’s target demographic —people who lead conservative lifestyles but secretly yearn for a transgressive kick—is difficult to target. Social conservatives, remember, are obligated to respond to businesses like Ashley Madison with concern, outrage, and calls for banning. Ashley Madison claims to support the institution of marriage. Other American institutions have proven less than supportive of Ashley Madison. Recently, police kicked a tanker truck advertising Ashley Madison affairs out of the city of Philadelphia. Earlier this year, an Ashley Madison commercial was deemed too hot for the Superbowl. “We’ve got the Parent Television Council saying these ads are reprehensible,” says Biderman of the Web site’s conservative backlash. “There’s this huge fear to have any sort of conversation about sex.”

As a result, Ashley Madison’s marketing strategy has attempted to awkwardly straddle the divide between the conservative and the progressive. In one television spot, targeted toward women, Ashley Madison is offered as an alternative to a life married to a sexist pig. This husband arrives to an anniversary dinner late, leaves early, and in the meantime, ogles other women and implies that his wife is fat. Cheating on this guy practically constitutes a feminist act. The ad targeted at men contains no such progressive bent. In this version, the poor man’s wife isn’t a jerk—but she’s fat, and she snores, too! This man is encouraged to cheat on his wife for more, shall we say, traditional reasons: he just wants to fuck someone else behind her back. And there’s nothing progressive about dudes doing that.

Ashley Madison’s new PR push advertising same-sex affairs may further alienate the conservative base it requires to stay relevant. Then again, perhaps the gay element is just what Ashley Madison needs to keep conservatives abreast of its services—and curious about exploring its taboos. Every time a religious conservative declares a sexual practice an affront to human decency, a new conservative kink is born.

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

Last night, The New Gay editor Zack Rosen set out to determine once and for all whether all those heteros who flock to the Dupont High Heel Race every year are there to support the gay community, or just mock all the queens in dresses. This year, the pre-Halloween drag queen race was pushed into the political arena by a little administrative switch: Instead of a parade permit, the race secured a First Amendment permit, shifting the balance a bit from party to protest. So, are people who love watching gay guys stumble around in stripper heels as enthusiastic about supporting marriage equality? According to Rosen’s findings: Kinda.

Tomorrow, as per tradition, hundreds of drag queens will race down 17th Street between R and Church Streets NW. According to Metro Weekly, the 24th annual Dupont High Heel Race will see a couple of changes this year: One, you won’t be able to drink beer outside anymore. And two, it’s political this time.

Metro Weekly delivers the bad news: This go-around, the “traditional beer garden adjacent JR.’s” will be closed due to inclement weather. In place of beer, however, this year’s High Heel Race will provide racers and on-lookers with a sense of purpose! Will O’Bryan reports:

the event is now being run under a First Amendment permit rather than a parade permit, reflective of the event’s gay identity. That distinction clears the way for street closures and a police presence. Loosely speaking, it’s the difference between a political rally and a block party.

“Until we have complete equality and people want to show up at gay events, they need to realize we don’t have the same rights,” says [Dave]  Perruzza [vice president of JR.'s]. “The [volunteers'] shirts will probably say, ‘Equality for Everyone.’ It’s the High Heel March for Equality. It’s a gay event, put on by gay people.”

It’s unclear why the permit switcheroo was necessary—the parade has run for years with street closures and a police presence. Whatever the rationale, the designation may help drum up support for a pending bill that would recognize same-sex marriages in the District of Columbia. So, who’s running for domestic partnerships?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The signage helps “Men’s Parties” come into compliance with yesterday’s court order, which requires the club—and the nonprofit organization behind it, the “D.C. Wrestling Club”—to temporarily cease holding events, stop advertising, and post this sign five feet from the ground on the club’s main entrance, with lettering no less than 1 inch tall.

Today, the District of Columbia secured a temporary restraining order against “Men’s Parties,” the underground sex club operating out of 1618 14th Street NW. The District filed suit against the owner of the property (1618 14th Street LLC), the club’s manager (David J. Butler), and its nonprofit front organization (the D.C. Wrestling Club, Inc.) on Oct. 14.

For now, the D.C. Wrestling Club has been ordered to stop partying, stop advertising, and replace its purposefully nondescript business entrance with some interesting signage:

The party’s over—temporarily. “Defendants DC Wrestling Club and David J. Butler may not operate or allow to be operated at 1618 14th Street NW Washington DC any business until such a time as they obtain from the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs a certificate of occupancy for such activity and all required licenses for any other legal business activity.”

The weekly Washington Blade ad revenue is over, too. “Defendants must immediately cease promoting any services or events at the Property in any medium, including, but not limited to, newspaper, radio, television, or internet advertisements.”

But the D.C. Wrestling Club is alive and well! “Defendants must immediately place a sign stating ‘D.C. WRESTLING CLUB, INC. REMAINS OPEN FOR BUSINESS, HOWEVER THERE WILL BE NO MEN’S PARTIES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” on the front door of the property at 1618 14th Street NW, Washington, DC in a spot that is immediately visible to anyone who attempts to patronize the ‘Men’s Parties.’” According to the court order, “the lettering on the sign shall not be less than 1 inch tall and the sign shall be affixed directly to the door,5 feet from the bottom.”

That last item contains an interesting little business development for the club. The D.C. Wrestling Club filed for domestic non-profit status with the DCRA in 1994. But last I checked with the agency, the club’s charter had been involuntarily revoked sometime between 2004 and 2009. Now, the club again appears to be active. Nonprofit organizations (if they’re legit) are required to make their tax forms publicly available. The tax forms would shine some light on the amount of “donations” the club has been reporting for tax purposes, and where the money has been going. I haven’t been able to track any forms down yet, but now that I know that the club is back in business, I’ll ask for some copies.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

NBC Washington shows what happens when news outlets fail to confirm the correct gender identity of their subjects before publication. The outlet has just posted another story about the two shoplifting suspects who were shot by police near the University of Maryland last Friday. Here’s the absurd lede:

Upon closer review, it appears two shoplifting suspects shot by a Prince George’s County police officer weren’t men, as originally reported, or cross-dressers, as was later reported, but transgender women.

The third time is the charm for NBC, who took four days to get the gender identity of the suspects right. NBC does one better on the Washington Post, at least. The Post first reported that the suspects were women, then reported that they were cross-dressing men, and finally issued the vague and misleading clarification that they were men dressed as women who “were not in disguise.”

Apparently, the paper has an aversion to just calling the suspects “transgender women.” Interestingly enough, the Post’s first iteration—”women”—would have worked just fine. Martin Weil, the Post reporter who wrote the second story on the suspects—the one outing them as “men”—said in an interview that the paper decided to run the story in order to stay competitive with the television news outlets that had reported the suspects’ sex as “male.”“The police had informed us that the suspects appeared to be men wearing women’s clothing, and we didn’t know too much more about any of the details,” says Weil. “We posted that story on the web so as not to look as if we were totally unaware of the unusual circumstances.”

Weil adds that the original story, which identified the suspects simply as “women,” risked inspiring some gender-related confusion of its own. “When you’re writing about women criminals in the newspaper, it behooves you to be extremely careful, because it alters people’s perceptions of the world,” he says. “When you read about a woman seemingly recklessly dragging a police officer, you get an unusual impression of the range of behaviors that are possible. And maybe it’s an accurate impression. But if it’s not an accurate one, I wanted to correct that in any way that was possible. So I decided, in a burst of enthusiasm, to post that item on the Web early Sunday morning.”

Beyond Weil’s enthusiasm for accuracy, the fact remains that “cross-dressing” shoplifters make for more sensational crime suspects than even women do. While women aren’t generally seen as criminals, transgender women are often cast in the public eye as fakers, predators, and criminals against humanity—shoplifters or not. Weil says he never meant to capitalize upon the “man in a dress” punchline. “The last intention I had was the demonization of anyone, of any gender, or transgender either,” he says. “I just never thought at the time that they could be transgender. I assumed they must be people in disguise, or people who happen to prefer that mode of dress.”

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

According to a recent Pew Research study, the District of Columbia has the lowest marriage rate in the country. Only 23 percent of women and 28 percent of men and in D.C. are married, compared to 48 and 52 percent nationwide. The rates in D.C. are so low that they lie entirely off the Pew map’s color key. The closest states to D.C.’s numbers are Rhode Island, where 43 percent of women are married, and Alaska, where 47 percent of men are married.

Why aren’t D.C. residents getting hitched?

The Pew poll offers up one possibly related figure: residents of D.C. get married significantly later in life than do the residents of the 50 states. In D.C., the median age at first marriage is 30 for women and 32 for men. In contrast, the median age for a first marriage in the state of Idaho is 24 for women and 25 for men.

Additionally, marriage rates are generally lower in urban areas than they are in rural areas. A quick review of the Pew map shows that states like Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas have the highest concentration of married couples, whereas the states which host the nation’s biggest cities—like New York and California—generally have a lower percentage of married people. D.C., which is all city, all the time, would clearly trend toward singledom.

But the District also has another demographic issue working against high marriage rates. In the 2000 “gay census,” the District of Columbia ranked first in the nation for its percentage of same-sex couples. Same-sex couples, of course, cannot currently be married in D.C., and their out-of-state marriages became recognized in the District only recently.

If D.C.’s gay marriage bill is successful, it won’t just ensure equality for all. It will also, strangely enough, make D.C. look a lot better in the eyes of conservative defenders of traditional marriage. When those people glance at a report on the strength of marriage in this country, they probably think that us heathens in the District of Columbia are singlehandedly rejecting the institution. But in a couple years, D.C. may appear significantly more married. I’m not a big proponent of the institution myself, but I can appreciate the irony there: in D.C., at least, the tradition’s remaining relevance may just depend upon same-sex couples wanting to opt-in.

Listening to Hot 99.5 yesterday, I was interested to hear the radio station bleep out the latest trend in hip-hop homophobia: “no homo.” “No homo,” for the uninitiated, is a little piece of wordplay which works to neutralize any potentially “gay” interpretations of a rapper’s lyrics. For a full review of the term, check out Bryan Safi’s informative piece, above.

Recently, Hot 99.5 washed the term out of Kanye West’s contribution to Jay-Z’s “Run This Town.” In the track, Kanye employs the phrase in order to insist that he does not regularly engage in gay orgies. “It’s crazy how you can go from being Joe Blow,” Kanye says. “To everybody on your dick—no homo.”

Generally, radio censorship only inspires listeners to imagine the offensive term in their head. In the case of “no homo,” however, bleeping may also serve a valuable and unintentionally hilarious function!

Apparently, bleeping out “no homo” has become pretty standard for radio stations. Recently, a poster on the IGN hip-hop message boards voiced his concern with no-no-homo radio programmers: “They bleeped out ‘No homo’. What’s that all about?” he writes. “No homo meaning, no gay intended. Why is that so wrong?

The IGN message board was an interesting place to raise the issue. At IGN, working “no homo” into a comment can cause a poster to be banned—unless the post is employing “no homo” in order to discuss “no homo” from a critical lens. This poster’s critique amounted to an outright denial that “no homo” is a homophobic phrase. “Surely, stating that he doesn’t mean anything gay by the line doesn’t equate to anti-gay,” he writes. “I think gays are over-protected. I really do. . . . I was banned for saying ‘no homo’ and I felt it was petty.”

Another commenter concurs: “No homo,” he writes, is “blanked out b/c it sounds Anti Gay even if the word isnt the true meaning.”

Of course, the straight guy who types “no homo” with impunity isn’t the best person to argue that “no homo” is unoffensive to gays. According to another IGN poster, “no homo” is “pretty wrong, kinda like saying i could go for a watermelon, ‘no negro.’”

However, some more impartial “no homo” scholars have argued against the pure homophobia of the phrase. Kanye West, Slate’s Jonah Weiner notes, has crusaded against homophobia in hip-hop when he’s not telling everyone he’s “no homo.” Weiner goes on to argue that there may be a progressive lining to the term’s anti-gay slur. “No homo” is “progress,” Weiner writes, as it allows rappers to “smuggle in a fuller, less hamstrung notion of masculinity”:

No homo . . . allows, implicitly, that rap is a place where gayness can in fact be expressed by the guy on the mic, not just scorned in others. In the very act of trying to “purify” an utterance of any gayness, after all, the no homo tag must contaminate it first—it’s both a denial and a flashing neon arrow. This isn’t to suggest that saying no homo is a radical act, but there’s an appealing sense in which the phrase refuses to function as tidily as some of its boosters might like.

According to Weiner, the homophobia of “no homo” is somewhat mediated by the term’s ability to incorporate traditionally “gay” or “feminine” sentiments into hip-hop’s fold. The popularity of the phrase itself has even encouraged rappers to heighten the homoeroticism of their lyrics—in order to use “no homo” more. Weiner writes, “Often, no homo appears not just as a disclaimer but as a punch line, a See what I did there? that flaunts one’s cleverness.”

The radio censorship of the term poses a problem for rappers who have amped up their gay euphemisms in the name of “no homo.” Writes one IGN commenter, “If they censor it, and someone hasn’t heard it uncensored, doesn’t that completely ruin the meaning?” In other words, when radio stations censor “no homo” following a rapper’s intentionally homoerotic verse, won’t that make rappers sound kind of, well, gay?

If the point of “no homo” is truly, as Weiner argues, to slowly make hip-hop less heteronormative, censoring “no homo” can only speed up the term’s intended progress. Why not encourage rappers to express alternate interpretations of masculinity without an easily deconstructed verbal safety net? As for the commentators who profess that “no homo” truly has no relation to homophobia—if they’re really OK with being gay, this form of censorship shouldn’t chap their asses too much—no “no homo” necessary.

Yesterday, the Washington Post published a story about two shoplifting suspects who were shot over the weekend by a Prince George’s County police officer. The suspects were shot after they attempted to drive away with the officer’s arm lodged in the door of their getaway car. But the Post story was not concerned with the facts of this botched escape—the newspaper had already covered the particulars of the incident a day earlier. The follow-up amounted to a lengthy correction of one fact: the gender of the wounded suspects.

In its first story on the suspects, the Post wrote that “an off-duty county officer shot and wounded two women.” In the second story, the Post corrected the record: the suspects “turned out to be men rather than women,” Staff Writer Martin Weil wrote. Weil explains:

It was believed at first that the two who were shot were women. But they “turned out to be males dressed in female clothing,” Officer Henry Tippett, a county police spokesman, said early Sunday.

That finding was apparently made when medical personnel began treating the two for gunshot wounds, Tippett said.

The headline of the story reads “Two Men Shot by Pr. George’s Officer Were Dressed as Women.” A link to the story goes further to label the pair: “Cross-Dressing Men Shot By Police.”

There are two possibilities here:

(a) The suspects were cross-dressing men who had disguised themselves in dresses, wigs, and make-up in order to lift merchandise from a store. Any man can be a cross-dresser—all you gotta do is put on a dress. Or:

(b) The suspects were transgender women who were born with male sex characteristics, but live their lives as women. Transgender women are not guys in dresses—-they’re women whose gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. They should be identified as women, not men.

For the Post, the distinction between “cross-dressing men” and “transgender women” is an important one. According to the Associated Press Stylebook, transgender subjects are to be identified by their gender identity, not their sex at birth. Media outlets are to employ “the pronoun preferred by the individuals who . . . present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth,” the guide reads. “If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly.”

Additionally, the GLAA media guide cautions against using the term “cross-dresser” to describe a transgender person. Cross-dressers, the guide notes, are people who “occasionally wear clothes traditionally associated with people of the other sex.” The term should be employed to describe someone who is “comfortable with the sex they were assigned at birth and do not wish to change it,” not “someone who has transitioned to live full-time as the other sex, or who intends to do so in the future.”

It’s not possible, at this point, for the Post to definitively identify the subjects as either “cross-dressers” or “transgender women.” One sure-fire way to confirm a person’s gender identity is simply to ask them, but the names of the suspects, both 23, have not yet been released by police.

Still, a couple of facts in the story suggest that the suspects in question presented consistently as female, and didn’t just dress up “in female clothing” for their little crime spree. Initially, everyone—from the police officer who chased and shot them to the police spokespeople who announced the incident—had no doubt that the suspects were women. The suspects were only identified as biologically male following a medical examination. In short, the Post modified the gender of the suspects solely on the basis of a genital check.

If you’re under the impression that a person’s genitals should determine the gender used to describe them in print, consider this: Under what other circumstances would the Washington Post force its subjects to drop their pants in order to prove their gender? Let’s run that test on some other stories which appeared in yesterday’s Metro section. Was Noah Robbins, a 19-year-old local actor headed for Broadway, forced to display his genitals in order to be referred to throughout the piece as “he” and “him”? How about Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell—did the Post ensure that the candidates have penises before calling them “men”? Was Debra Rowe, former HIV/AIDS housing chief, only granted a “she” following a medical examination?

In every other instance, a Post subject is considered a woman if she presents as a woman and says she’s a woman. A couple of shoplifting suspects, however, appear to have been denied that courtesy. There are several reasons for the Post not to write this story. The suspects’ identities are still unknown. The gender identification in the story is contrary to style guidelines. The Post has reason to believe that the gender terminology employed by the police requires fact-checking. Further information in the case could require yet another gender correction here.

There’s one reason why the Post would go ahead with this story: “cross-dressing” shoplifters make for more sensational crime suspects than do a couple of women. The story has already generated such helpful online comments as “Was dey pretty? Does dey gets to wear the dresses in prison? Big dummies,” and “One can only hope that their shoes matched their dresses.” Perhaps the Post received positive feedback for its previous dubious “cross-dressing shoplifter” work, published back in August. The Post is clearly capitalizing upon a “man in a dress” punchline to this modest little crime story. But obviously, the potential for some sophomoric joking is no reason to sacrifice accuracy in reporting. The true gender identities of the suspects in the case are still unclear. When you’re writing a story that is exclusively centered on the gender of your suspects, shouldn’t you wait until you can get it right?

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

On Wednesday, the District of Columbia filed suit to shut down “Men’s Parties,” the underground male sex club operating at 1618 14th Street NW. The lawsuit’s three defendants—David J. Butler, 1618 14th Street LLC, and the D.C. Wrestling Club—face charges of “opperation of a business without a basic business license” and “use of premises for business without appropriate certificate of occupancy.”

The initial documents in the case offer a glimpse into the club’s secretive activities, as well as additional information concerning the fatal accident that occurred inside the club on the morning of October 4th.

According to court documents, D.C. police responded to the report of “an unconscious person at the address” at 5:18 a.m. Detective Thomas Smith, a former Prostitution Enforcement Unit cop, was called to the scene to investigate a potential homicide. During the course of the investigation, Smith met Butler, “who identified himself as the President of a private club, doing business as the D.C. Wrestling Club.”

Butler told Smith that he hosts parties where “men come into the premises, make a donation, and socialize.” By the time Smith entered the property, Butler was accompanied by “more than twenty patrons and staff.” Three other staff members identified themselves to Smith, according to documents: Jerome Goodman, Juan Adams, and Ralph ‘Jay’ Rushing.

According to Smith’s affidavit, the activities of the club were obvious: “Strewn throughout the entire location are used condoms, empty condom wrappers, paper towels, cloth towels and other indicia of frequent, non-discrete sexual behavior.” What, no snacks?

The affidavit offered a full inventory of the club’s amenities:

First Floor: “A lounge area immediately inside the front entrance” which includes “two sets of lockers” and couches. Also on the first floor, “separated by curtains, are three wooden stalls containg ‘glory holes’ used for sexual activity” The floor also contains a “powder room and a linen closet.”

Second Floor: An additional “lounge area with several counches and a mounted television set” sits on the club’s top floor. The second floor also yields a “kitchenette and full bathroom.” Behind the lounge are “sexually-oriented materials” including a “sex swing, large wooden cross that permits an individual to be bound to the structure, and a bench.” The second floor also includes a bedroom “reportedly belonging to Ralph ‘Jay’ Rushing,” and another bench.

Basement: Two sets of stairs lead to this floor (the accident victim was found at the foot of one staircase). In the basement are”thirteen bed spaces separated by built-in wooden partitions and dark curtains,” each containing a “mattress and trash can.”

Early in the morning of Oct. 4, a member of a private Logan Circle “men’s social club” fell to his death. According to a D.C. police report, the 47-year-old man was discovered in the stairwell leading to the basement of 1618 14th St. NW, the victim of “blunt impact injury of head.” Police believe the man may have tumbled down the stairs; the organizer of the club told the Washington Blade that the man likely fell on a “cement floor,” where he “possibly hit his head on a metal pipe or a brick wall.”

The man’s injury was sustained during the regular activities of the club, which include nightly gay sex events called “Men’s Parties,” as well as meetings of the “Jack Off Enthusiasts of Washington and Baltimore.” The accident has drawn public scrutiny over the private meetings, as well as a defense: Following the death, the club’s organizer told police that his establishment provides “a safe place for gay men to have consensual sex.”

How does a club meant to provide a “safe place” end up hosting a member’s death? By working off a creative definition of “safe.”

At Men’s Parties, safety doesn’t mean ensuring that the apartment’s stairs, surfaces, and exposed metal pipes provide a secure sexual landscape for party attendees. It doesn’t even mean encouraging members to engage in protected sex. At 1618 14th St., “safe” means ensuring anonymous sex for a group of gay men sporting wedding rings, sensitive careers, or shame.

For a “men’s social club,” the regularly scheduled activities included little socializing. “There is very little to none, in terms of conversation,” says one visitor to the club, who says he has attended Men’s Parties over a dozen times in the past six years. “Everything is kept strictly anonymous. No one asks for phone numbers, and no one ever really leaves with someone else,” he says. “People come there, do their business, and leave.” The club reinforced the anonymity with a cover of darkness. “The steps leading down to the basement floor were very, very dark,” he says. “I think your eyes, under normal circumstances, could adjust. However, the place was still very dark and the steps were very steep.”

Unfortunately for Men’s Parties, police and city officials operate on a more traditional definition of “safety.” The man’s death marks the second major incident at the club to draw the scrutiny of the police, city officials, and neighbors. In 2005, a candle ignited a mattress in the building’s upper floor, causing $5,000 in damages and bringing fire officials inside the club. According to the Blade, the emergency response revealed an establishment with “exit signs, a reception desk, a row of gym lockers, and signs stating the hours the place was open”—but no certificate of occupancy or business licenses. In November of that year, five months following the fire, ads for the parties read: “We are expecting to move soon. Please call for more information.”

But the most heated safety concerns surrounding the Men’s Parties lie outside the scope of city regulation. According to the frequent visitor to the club, “The most dangerous condition there was the lack of condoms.…There are no bowls of condoms upstairs or downstairs, where most of the sex takes place,” he says. “To me, this was always a recipe for disaster.”

At first, Men’s Parties attempted to weather the unwelcome scrutiny of police, city officials, and neighbors. The evening following the death, the club had reopened for business. On Oct. 9, a regular half-page ad ran in the back pages of the Blade, inviting readers to come “socialize.” The same issue contained a news item on the man’s death. But within a week of the incident, the club had shuttered under the weight of exposure. The front gate, typically left ajar to signal that the party is on, had been locked. A message left on the advertised phone number now informs callers, “We are temporarily closed until further notice.”

A typical advertisement in the Washington Blade.

For years, the club had thrived under a thin cover: organized snacking. In an interview with NBC 4, self-identified “volunteer” Skip Miller described the activities of the club: “We have videos. We have sodas. We have snacks,” he said. In a Logan Circle ANC meeting addressing the death, 3rd District police Lieutenant Vanessa Moore said that the head of the club “does not take money per se. He does take donations for chips, dips, and soda. And we’ll leave it at that.”

Club memberships were easy to come by. All you had to do was show up at 1618 14th St. and provide a donation at the door. The club received plenty of donations in recent years, thanks to the shuttering of gay clubs displaced by Nationals Park. As the city’s above-board clubs struggled to secure properties and licenses in new neighborhoods, Men’s Parties reaped the benefits of their closures, under the table, courting business with ads that read: “The spirit of Southeast lives on.” That spirit included a little bit more than light snacking. “No one pays $12 to eat stale pretzels and off-label lemon lime soda,” the visitor says. “The snacks are placed in large communal bowls and grabbed by hands that have been up asses.” The club’s main activity required little overhead. “Many are having bareback sex, but some are only masturbating or receiving oral sex,” he says.

Twelve dollars may be a bit pricey for stale pretzels, but it’s a small price to pay for anonymity. And no one has benefited from the club’s secrecy more than its organizers. In a 2005 item on the fire, the Blade declined to print the organizer’s name because “he is not openly gay at his regular place of work.” The Oct. 4 death prompted the Blade to get a little bit more specific: “The organizer of the men’s parties…asked that he be identified only as David.” Even the run-down conditions of the club may have benefited the organizers. “A lot of people, gay and straight, don’t know the place exists,” says the partygoer. “Among those that do, there is such shame attached to go to the place—not because of the sex, but because it is so dirty, grimy, smelly—that most don’t talk about it openly.”

Records show that David J. Butler incorporated a domestic nonprofit called the “D.C. Wrestling Club” at his Foggy Bottom apartment in 1994. The club’s members were described as “sports enthusiasts, especially of collegiate wrestling.” Butler, 68, is listed as the club’s president, treasurer, and registered agent. The club’s secretary, Robert D. Meza, listed his residence as 1618 14th St. NW. For a time, the incorporation lent an air of legitimacy to party organizers and provided an easy explanation for donation cash flow. The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs has since revoked the Wrestling Club’s corporation status.

Butler did not return several messages left at the club’s advertised number, nor did he respond to a note left at his Foggy Bottom residence. Knocks at 1618 14th St. were unanswered.

If Men’s Parties remains closed, its clientele may be left without a place to meet up. Communication among this crowd of anonymous sex seekers, after all, has always been a bit awkward. Several years ago, a flier appeared in the neighborhood that read: “If you had sex with Skip at Men Party 1618 14th St You need to get tested HIV.”

UPDATE: District of Columbia files lawsuit against Men’s Parties

D.C. Police Describe Men’s Parties Location: Used Condoms, Glory Holes, and a Crucifix

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The Westboro Baptist Church, proud owner of godhatesfags.com, is hitting up the Equality March in Washington D.C. this weekend, Joe My God reports. If the church’s nonsensical picket schedule can be believed, Fred Phelps and friends will be hitting up three D.C. locations in one big anti-gay tour: The D.C. Jewish Community Center, the Annual HRC National Dinner, and the National Equality March. See what Phelps and the gang have planned for their protests, after the jump. Spoiler alert: Antichrist Obama is gonna be there!

Protest: Queer Simchat Torah Celebration

Date: Saturday, October 10, 5:30 to 6 p.m.

Location: D.C. Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th Street NW

Commentary: “Jews Killed Jesus, and love fags, go figure,” the schedule reads. “Antichrist Obama, who loves fags way more than you Jewish dummies, is going to be in DC. He is speaking at the fag event, but not for you Jews. Get the message?!”

—

Protest: HRC National Dinner

Date: Saturday, October 10, 6:15 to 7 p.m.

Location: Washington Convention Center, 809 Mt. Vernon Place NW

Commentary: “Obama Hates You dumb fags,” the schedule reads. “He is going to use your money and your resources and then when he shows himself for what he is, he will merely destroy you along with the rest of this nation of self-loathing hypocrites. . . . But more to the point, God has done this thing. You have so enraged Him that he has sent you this creature to be your ruler.”

—

Protest: National Equality March

Date: Sunday, October 11, 10 to 11 a.m.

Location: Between 15th and I Street and the Capitol Building.

Commentary: “You are not equal with God, Silly,” the schedule reads. “What, oh WHAT are you going to do when Obama has completely destroyed this nation’s economy by the hand of a Sovereign God? You know what kind of money it takes to keep up those various facades! That is going to be some funny, scary stuff.”

Photo by k763

Gergetown student newspaper the Hoya detailed the efforts of a CUA student group that’s attempting to gain official recognition from the school’s administration. The group, “CUAllies,” is an unofficial support group for LGBT students on CUA’s campus. CUAllies first lobbied to be recognized as an official student org back in August, but was denied. In the rejection, Catholic University “claimed that an adequate support structure for LGBTQ students already existed on campus.”

CUA currently recognizes campus groups devoted to anime, role playing, and virtue, but none which serve the particular needs of the LGBT community. A quick search for LGBT on the University’s Web site yields no hits that lead to support services directed at students.

The Hoya piece on the group contained such controversial statements as “CUAllies hopes that the recognition of the group will provide a safer and more tolerant atmosphere for the university’s LGBTQ community,” and, “In spite of the administration’s failure to recognize CUAllies, the group has been successful as an unofficial organization.”

The Cardinal Newman Society, the leading organization devoted to keeping Catholic schools Catholic, is calling bullshit on those assertions.

” CUAllies . . . was denied official recognition by the university because its goals were contrary to the university’s Catholic identity,” the Cardinal Newsman Society wrote in response to the Hoya. “The Hoya article is clearly slanted in favor of CUAllies, touting the group’s alleged popularity and success as an unofficial organization, but that may be exaggerated according to on-campus sources to The Cardinal Newman Society.”

Egad: Anonymous sources allege the possibility of exaggerated popularity? Could this be the work of a sham Catholic institution’s radical college newspaper’s secret anti-Catholic agenda? Oh, probably:

“Unlike CUA, which is among several colleges recommended in The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College because of its strong Catholic identity, Georgetown has come under criticism for flagrant abuses of its Catholic identity for several years,” the Cardinal Newman Society continues (buy Cardinal Newman’s guide to the Catholic-y-est colleges here). “Both the controversial student group GUPride and the LGBTQ Resource Center bear official Georgetown University approval. . . . During October 2009, the LGBTQ Resource Center has an entire month of ‘coming out’ events planned on campus.”

In other words, if you attend a university which happens to have an LGBT organization on campus, you’re not allowed to report on the lack of LGBT organizations on other campuses. It’s just not Catholic to question decisions made by the Catholic University of America administration.

Monday, Sept. 28, was a good day for the sexual assault euphemism.

Discussing the Roman Polanski case with the ladies of The View, Whoopi Goldberg mitigated accusations that Polanski drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl by insisting that the crime wasn’t “rape-rape.” In a statement to the United Nations that same day, Vatican rep Archbishop Silvano Tomasi spun the public outcry over sexual abuse in the Catholic Church by clarifying that the priests “involved in the abuses” are not pedophiles but “ebophiles,” a “sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17.”

Both Goldberg and Tomasi were criticized for employing wordplay that minimized sexual assault. “Look, sex with underage boys is an area where you don’t want to be displaying your connoisseurship and nitpicking about aesthetic distinctions,” the Economist chided Tomasi. The blog Jezebel called Goldberg’s repetition a product of the actor’s “fantastical moral universe.” In that universe, anything less terrifying than the most barbaric form of rape doesn’t deserve to live under the same terminological roof.

How did we get to a place where “rape” needed to be repeated to mean anything?

In ancient law, rape was seen as an affront to female chastity as opposed to a violation of the human body. Raping a married woman robbed her husband of his property; raping an unmarried virgin robbed the woman’s family of her future value in marriage. Rape inside marriage was impossible, as a man could not rob what was already his. Similarly, a woman’s premarital sexual activity in effect nullified the crime of rape—women who chose to have sex outside of marriage had already devalued themselves and had no chastity left to steal.

Modern models of sexual assault have evolved to view rape as a crime against a victim as opposed to a victim’s male relatives. But these outmoded conceptions still invade our thinking about sexual assault. Spousal rape has been illegal throughout the United States since 1993, but many states still view the crime as a lesser offense than rape by a stranger. In many jurisdictions, only vaginal penetration by a penis is considered “rape” because of the potential of the act to produce offspring—and a cuckolded husband. The FBI manages to ignore an entire class of rape victims: men. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system, “Forcible rape…is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” In the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), a mechanism the Justice Department employs to track crime rates, males can be considered victims of rape, but same-sex assaults are entirely obscured: “at least one offender must be of a different sex than the victim for the event to be classified as a forcible rape.”

Part of the trouble over the modern definition of “rape” originates from the term “statutory rape,” used to describe sex between an adult and a minor deemed too young to consent to the activity. Initially, the motivation behind statutory rape law was indistinguishable from that of ancient rape law: guard the chastity of the unmarried women. Defenders of “age of consent” laws have since adopted a more compelling rationale for the legislation: protect young people from sexual coercion and abuse. According to a Guttmacher Institute study, women “who become sexually active at an early age are especially likely to have experienced coercive sex: Seventy-four percent of women who had intercourse before age 14 and 60 percent of those who had sex before age 15 report having had a forced sexual experience.”

Because a lack of consent is so difficult to prove in rape cases, modern statutory rape law arose to address the frequency of sexual abuse against minors by turning lack of consent into an irrefutable
fact. But while “statutory rape” persists to protect youth against rape, it also punishes autonomous teens who are told that, just like in the olden times, young women aren’t allowed to choose sex. The
term’s conflation of sex partner and rape victim has resulted in some troubling cultural perceptions—from Goldberg’s assertion that statutory rapes are necessarily not “real” rapes, to the idea that
women who choose to have sex before turning 18 are necessarily victims.

These highly restrictive and often arbitrary legal definitions of rape have also failed victims struggling to effectively describe their own experiences. In the 1980s, the term “date rape” arose in order to
address rapes committed by friends, partners, or acquaintances of the victim. The term gave voice to victims who had been told that pursuing relationships outside of marriage qualified as a compromise of that ancient chastity requirement. Today, “date rape” scenarios constitute 90 percent of rape cases. The vast majority of the time, rape is date rape. But there remains a reluctance to drop the “date” qualifier from the equation. By emphasizing the circumstances surrounding the sexual assault—circumstances that the victim helped create by agreeing to the date, making friends, or having sex—the term can still imply that a “date rape” is somehow less than a “real” rape.

In 2005, Pulitzer Prize–winning sex writer Laura Sessions Stepp heard the term “gray rape” for the first time. She was teaching a journalism class at George Washington University when a group of students told her that they used the term to describe sexual experiences marked by drunkenness, memory loss, and questionable consent. “I remember coming home to my husband after that class and saying, ‘Oh my God—you’ll never believe what they’re calling this,’” says Stepp.

While the term helped Stepp’s students to discuss an underreported experience on college campuses, it also carved out a convenient space for self-blaming. Victims who are traditionally ignored and devalued by the legal system—intoxicated, promiscuous, or male victims—may latch on to the term “gray rape” in order to describe their experiences without faulting their assailants. In 2005, the GW Hatchet entered “gray rape” into the public record for the first time this decade. In the story, GW student James Daley says he “woke up one morning naked and drunk in an unfamiliar apartment with condoms strewn about the room,” and later deduced that a girl had bought him “a lot of drinks”and led Daley to her room. Daley told the Hatchet “he felt taken advantage of and would not have hooked up with her if he had not been so drunk,” feelings that might prompt a sexual assault investigation—if “gray rape” weren’t there to imply this kind of thing happens to everyone.

In 2008, D.C.-area writer Latoya Peterson coined the term “not-rape” to describe experiences that fell outside the limited legal and cultural definitions of sexual assault. “The language surrounding rape is so strict, any experience which does not reach this very high level of scrutiny is completely disregarded,” says Peterson. To Peterson, “not-rape” is an attempt to give a voice to assaults that are
self-repressed, unreported, or silenced. “In our culture, the word can have even more power than the action,” she says. “We’re so invested in not accusing someone of rape, we completely lose sight of all these terrible things that happen to women and girls.”

Terms like “date rape,” “gray rape,” and “not-rape” help reveal serious offenses that are nevertheless denied recognition as legitimate “rapes.” They also represent a challenge to a definition of
rape that is finely tuned to ignore the majority of victims, sensationalize the least likely offenses, and shame those who would call their experiences what they know them to be: rape.

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

Over the weekend, Lady Gaga promised to head down to D.C. for this Sunday’s Equality March. At New York City’s Bootleg party, Gaga announced:

Listen, next week is the gay pride march. And I know that I’m going to be there marching with all of you. And the most exciting thing tonight is that we’re all here together. And you can sign up at a table here to get a ticket on a free bus to D.C. So, you have no excuse. And if the buses are all filled up, there’s tons of other ways to get there . . . And there’s really no excuse for you not to go.

She continues:

I was thinking to myself, ‘If everyone in this room were to go and bring 10 friends—which I don’t think is a lot to ask because you all have lots of friends—just from this one night, there would be 10,000 more people marching. . . I really believe in this cause, and as a woman in pop music, I think that this is really an important weekend, and it’s not a fucking joke. So, get your asses to D.C. and wear something fabulous. And I’ll see you guys there, I love you so much.”

And if those 10,000 people make good on the promise of wearing something Gaga approved, that means that the march is going to have 10,000 more sexy limo drivers sporting outrageous hair-bows but no pants. No shirts, either. Where do I sign up?

A man died over the weekend in a Logan Circle apartment known for holding late-night “Men’s Parties,” Borderstan reports. The death was reported to have occurred inside 1618A 14th Street NW (shown in map above).

Details of the man’s death—including the cause of death and the name of the deceased—remain unclear, but Acting Sgt. Kenny Bryson of the Metropolitan Police Department’s public information office confirms that the death occurred sometime “Saturday night or Sunday morning” and that it did not appear to be a homicide.

“At this point there doesn’t appear to be any foul play, nothing of criminal intent,” says Bryson. And as long as the death doesn’t spark a criminal investigation, it’s likely that the man’s name will not be released by D.C. police. “We generally don’t list an outside death that doesn’t have any criminal intent,” he says. “With criminal investigations, we’ll do that, but the name is never released publicly until next of kin is notified.”

A 2005 Metro Weekly story on a fire at the same address reported the apartment regularly hosted late-night “Men’s Parties” and meetings of the “Jack Off Enthusiasts of Washington and Baltimore” (The number listed with the Jack Off club is now invalid; a call to a number listed with the apartment building has not been returned). Also unclear is whether this man was attending a party at the residence, or was in the building for a separate reason.

If you have any information on the incident or the locale, let me know. Commenters over at Borderstan have got their own theories.

For last week’s paper, I wrote a story about a group of Beta Theta Pi fraternity brothers at the George Washington University who are working to eliminate homophobia from campus Greek life. Judging by the comments section, they have quite a way to go!

Larry gets the ball rolling:

Fuckin’ fags!

While Clay voices concern about the persecution of homophobes on campus:

I don’t agree with Molldrem that “weeding out the homophobes with the hungry” is a good strategy for Fraternity recruitment. The goal should not be to exclude segments of the student body, as doing so would make his organization equally guilty of discrimination. Providing food or dinners for recruitment is not masculine food porn and offering Maryland blue crabs certainly isn’t “typical.” The point is that Freshmen are on a budget and offering a nice meal is a good way to get a large turnout at an event- regardless of attendees sexuality. The Fraternities can THEN speak to attendees about Greek Life at GW, debunk myths, and talk about what the organizations are about.

Offering an event entitled “Frat vs. Fraternity: Myths Debunked” will not attract anyone who isn’t already interested in pledging a Fraternity and will never provide the opportunity for Beta to change the misguided perceptions and stereotypes of Greek Life possessed by many Freshmen who base their opinions off rumors and television. I believe Beta’s strategy here is counterproductive to the rest of the Greek Community at GW. It would be nice if Beta could be more accepting of all diversity as it would provide them an opportunity to break down barriers and educate as many people as possible about tolerance, instead of just catering to those who “get it” and “weeding out” everyone else.

Greg is mostly concerned about Larry’s campus presence:

I graduated from GW 18 years ago, was active in the gay students’ group, and had many friends in fraternities (Kappa Sig especially) who had no problems with me or my friends, even in the late 80s/early 90s. I was glad to see this article linked to the beloved City Paper from TowleRoad.com, and judging by the range of comments, it seems that GW is still pretty much filled/associated with a wide variety of people who are basically live and let live …

Except for Larry, who reminds me of the people the campus mobilized against in the fall of 1989 following the last time the NAMES Project Quilt was displayed in its entirety on the mall … we were called pedophiles for being gay and the student community wouldn’t stand for that or for the LGBT community being condemned to death from AIDS based on pure homophobia and hate. As we said at the time, people who think like this are threatened and tortured inside by sexual insecurity and, oddly, an inability to spell correctly.

Larry counters:

Greg I think i remember you, you were the ass muncher that got caught giving head to the basketball team in the gelman bathroom. have you made the move to san francisco or are u still scraping your knees and walking bowlegged from the black queens in dupont circle?

Greg responds:

Wow, Larry. You really seem to have the pulse on gay life at GW … I didn’t know the basketball team hung out in the bathrooms in Gelman Library, considering that they play in the Smith Center. Maybe you just play in Gelman and with the black queens in Dupont who, no doubt, would turn you out and upside your head. You’re projecting so badly and loudly that it is causing traffic up here in Connecticut. At least you used spell check this time.

this is stupid lives up to his name:

there is no room for homosexuals in greek life. end of story.

Conrad Davis:

With well supported and reasoned arguments like that, how could anyone disagree?

Thanks for highlighting greek life’s commitment to intellectual excellence!

. . . The last comment was snide, but truthfully in my mind there’s a very strong correlation between Greek life and the stupid. This article, more than anything I’ve read in a long while, has changed that opinion.

And Robert Loggia wants his money back from the free newspaper he didn’t buy:

This is an utterly ludicrous, insipid, waste of time and effort. Whoever believes this is news is not thinking clearly. I do not understand why Beta feels the need to publicize something like this. If they were in such support of diminishing homophobic stereotypes pertaining to Greek Life, why don’t they actually concentrate on recruiting high quality individuals? How is this article supposed to make homosexual individuals who are rushing Beta or wherever feel? It was mentioned that homosexuals don’t want special attention and just want to be accepted. This article seems counterproductive. If people and fraternities are good matches, then that should be good enough, regardless of sexual orientation, ethnicity, what have you.

This is trash and I will be writing an additional letter to the editor demanding some sort of compensation for the time I wasted reading this slop and writing this response.

Pssssst, Robert, you can try to rack up the cash by writing that letter to the editor here. Note: Authors published in the Washington City Paper comments section may not receive financial compensation for their work. But they can rest assured that they’re wasting my time, too!

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

This week, the Nation’s Alex Dibranco declared that the college sex column represents “a radical progressive movement in the sense of pushing against traditional silence and the status quo.” That might have been true when sex columns first popped up on college campuses in 1996, but now, fucking and telling is a normal campus activity for radicals and right-wingers alike. At this point, simply rehashing your heterosexual, vanilla, and gender-role-informed Saturday night hook-up through the campus press does not a sexual revolution make—even if you publish under the pseudonym “Buster Darkhole.” Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I talk about where the student sex column should go from here.

References: George Washington University’s sex column, penned by “Mr. Darcy” and “Layla” [Exhibits A & B]; Georgetown University’s sex column, penned by Colleen Leahey [Exhibits C & D]; American University’s sex column, penned by “Amber Sparkles,” “Maxwell Hillcrest,” and our pal Buster [Exhibits E & F].

SADY: ah, the kids today. what are they up to? other than pretending they know enough about sex to write about it, OBVS, since the kids of many various days seem to believe the same thing.

AMANDA: also, inventing hilarious pseudonyms for themselves, like Rex Butthole and V. Gina

SADY: i know, right? or BUSTER DARKHOLE, Legitimate Writer and Giver of Mature Sexual Counsel [Exhibit E]. somehow, i just hold out the hope that Buster Darkhole is his real name and this is the only career path open to him.

AMANDA: hahaha

SADY: actually, as i read your summary, i was fondest of the work and pseudonym of MR. DARCY [Exhibit A]. i remember the third-act twist in Pride and Prejudice which mr. darcy exclaimed, “verily, miss bennet! our coffee date has involved a most unexpected oral manipulation of my genitals! yet i cannot refuse the fair lady Bingley, who is a superfreak in word and in deed!”

AMANDA: agreed, but at least mr. darcy is better than “layla” [Exhibit B], the name of the female columnist. though i knew a lot of kids in college into Clapton, so i guess it’s a cultural thing

SADY: haha. but, you know, reading these things and your summary of them, i was reminded of (CURSE ME FOR UTTERING THE FORBIDDEN NAME) T*cker M*x. [Exhibit douche]. Somehow, it’s just not scandalous any more to note that ladies like to have sex and are having casual sex. Unless you are the Pope, in which case all sex scandalizes you to some degree or another. The Kids These Days are pro-sex, including the lady ones. but they’re also pro-ridiculously-conservative-gender-norms. and i had somehow hoped that making the point that ladies and dudes can both enjoy sex would change things. IT HAS NOT.

AMANDA: one idea i’ve seen in a couple of these stories (and from adults talking down to college-age people, too) is: yes, women like to have sex just as much as men do, but they have to not do it in order to be happy [Exhibit E].

SADY: oh, yes. the HOOKUP CULTURE! which is DESTROYING LADIES’ CHANCES OF HAPPINESS!

AMANDA: because if they don’t not have sex they’ll never be in a relationship, which is what they REALLY want.

SADY: right. your vagina has to accumulate enough charge, through non-use, in order to work its Boyfriend-Entrapping powers on the dude of your choice.

AMANDA: i just read a chapter of a new book about young adult sexual experiences, ill remember the name later [Exhibit Laid: Young People’s Experiences with Sex in an Easy-Access Culture], and the introduction compared “hooking up” to a “microwave burrito” — you want it in the moment but eventually, you’re going to regret it. the book called casual sex “settling,” and insisted that good sex can only be had in committed relationships. personally, i really like being in a relationship, but part of the reason i like it is because i’m not only in the relationship so that i am ALLOWED TO HAVE SEX. i imagine this worldview just ends up with a lot of women settling into relationships with people they they don’t really like that also don’t provide great sex

SADY: yeah, and the mr. darcy column (i am sorry i keep returning to it! it fascinates me!) sets up the same good girl/bad girl paradigm. like, i COULD be with the girl who i might legitimately want a relationship with… or i could be with AWESOME SEXY TIMES lady. and, you know? it’s kind of sad to me that dudes still think this division exists. although hilarious that dude is puzzling out loud over how he wasn’t able to “settle down” as a damn college student.

AMANDA: i know. but then at the end, darcy is all, “you know what, maybe i can find a freaky girl that i love!” but you know he’s just gonna kinda keep fucking both of them. Whatever. that is the weirdest thing to me about the Concerns over the Hook-Up Culture. why should college students be encouraged to search out their Final Life-Long relationship among the first relationships they’ve ever had? that makes no sense, and neither does telling girls that hooking up will damage them. they can look for a boyfriend whenever they want to do that. or a girlfriend, which is one thing that none of these sex columns is really addressing.

SADY: YEAH. it’s all boys sexing the girls, and ridiculous gender stereotypes of boys sexing girls [Exhibit D], but these “sex” columns often seem more like the work of not terribly reflective or original straight college kids marveling over the fact that they can have sex and not worry about their moms overhearing them or showing up to offer suzy a ride home before it gets too late. but shouldn’t “sex” be a more, um, inclusive discussion than this thing about giggling over how you got SOOOO wasted and sexed up someone in your totes heterosexual manner last night?

AMANDA: of course, i would say yeah, but i can see why this happens. when you’re in college, those things are exciting to you, as a boring heterosexual person, even if its not terribly interesting to even, say, your classmates. it can be hard to look past your own experience when you’re first experiencing all these things. also, it can be hard to write when you’ve recently graduated from 5 paragraph essays.

SADY: oh, yeah. and, i mean, that’s cool and all. but it also – and i speak as someone who is ancient as the grave and yet remembers similar pressures from when i went to college – it creates this weird atmosphere on campus, where you ARE, to some degree, pressured to have enough casual sex to prove that you can do it and aren’t some clingy relationship-needing heterosexual female, yet you’re also a slut if you don’t eventually have a relationship, and you don’t exist, basically, if you’re queer.

AMANDA: yep.

SADY: like, it’s about “freedom,” and rebellion, but freedom can only ever take one pre-existing shape. by trying to make sex more public, you should be opening it up, but you end up writing a script for what sex should look like. which is not good for anyone, actually.

AMANDA: no, and it’s not particularly fun to read. which should be the main point. though i thought the American University anal sex column was getting there a little bit. at least Darkhole was all, “if you want her to put her finger in your butt, it’s cool, man.” [Exhibit F].

SADY: well, i mean, you have SEEN HIS NAME, right? he is buster darkhole! this is the column he was born to write!

AMANDA: yeah. I mean, it’s possible that Darkhole is a little too eager with the anal sex. i think i noted that the column didn’t mention the fact that like, it’s cool not to have anal sex, too, if you’re not into it.

SADY: maybe his full name is actually Buster Orhis Darkhole III.

AMANDA: i really want to score an interview with this person. but the AU column is an interesting approach because it is three people, two men and one lady, and i don’t know if there’s any gay or lesbian representation on that board, but that approach does open up the possibility of diversity, and not preaching one person’s crazy high school abstinence-only education lessons to an entire campus [Exhibit C]. although god knows how they actually get together and write that thing.

SADY: yeah, i mean, i’m fond of the collaborative approach to all this. maybe if there were like FIFTEEN college sex journalists per campus (and there are probably enough candidates!) you might get one of them that is confident enough not to just say whatever they think will make them look cool and sexually experienced, middle-school style. and hey, maybe one or two that aren’t straight people! that would be fun! i mean, i am skeptical of the entire “sex expert” position. i’m a grown lady who has been thinking about this stuff for the majority of my grown lady life, and i’m still not an expert on how my OWN sexual relationships should go.

AMANDA: it’s interesting, because the Nation’s piece on student sex columns painted them as this really radical progressive movement. and i think there’s a confusion there, because people still think that “talking about sex” makes you a liberal and saying “people shouldn’t talk about sex” makes you conservative.

SADY: right! and i think it is an issue of the younger generation! battle lines have shifted a bit; now, EVERYBODY talks about sex, liberal and conservative and that’s kind of taken for granted. it’s what they say that is the issue. or, alternately, the fact that everybody who is given a platform to do so seems to say the same thing.

AMANDA: right. and i don’t know what Mr. Darcy or Ramm Bottomham’s political persuasion is, but I imagine there’s more political diversity in these columnists than there is actual sexual diversity. which is weird!

SADY: yeah. and, honestly, i think T. Otis Notavirgin or whatever are – MAYBE! JUST MAYBE! – feeling more pressure to seem in line with the most widely accepted version of College-Age Sexuality than to actually, seriously think about sex and maybe come up with some insights.

AMANDA: yeah, and seeing as whenever i happen to write about college students they all flood my comments with insights like, “gay,” or … “gay,” i can’t really blame them [Exhibit frat]. college students are really harshly scrutinized over their sex lives, and college sex columnists must experience the worst of it.

SADY: Honestly! Here is what I think: I think that Buster Darkhole and Layla and Mr. Darcy and whoever are all filing these pieces that are like, “so I got totally WASTED! and had SEX! like PEOPLE MY AGE TEND TO DO!” then they are going home to make microwave popcorn and watch a movie and call their moms. and maybe ask someone out to a movie. that is what i believe. or hope?

AMANDA: i think they’re probably also silently weeping over the comments and/or getting shit from their friends [Exhibit single tear].

SADY: oh, god yes. but, you know, if embarrassing college sex columns are what it takes to teach the young people about Dealing With The Terrible Mean Blog Comments That People Will Eventually Leave On Any Blog Ever, I think it’s a sacrifice worth making. sort of!

Photo by BodogGirl

In 2007, Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) volunteer David Elliott claimed that he was assaulted at the fair’s ex-gay booth by an unidentified gay man. For this year’s requisite PFOX confrontation, Elliott cornered Jay Fisette, an openly gay member of the Arlington County board. The confrontation had all the elements of a classic PFOX press release: Several ex-gay volunteers, one prominent gay man, and plenty of allegations of anti-ex-gay discrimination.

According to a piece he wrote in the Christian News Wire, Elliott approached Fisette to rehash the details of the 2007 incident. “I wanted to let you know that I was hit when I was working at this booth in a previous year,” he wrote. Fisette allegedly replied, “What happened to you wasn’t good, but neither is your message.”

Elliott pressed Fisette. “Everyone has their own opinion,” he said. To which Fisette allegedly replied: “No.”

Then, Fisette realized that he was surrounded by the alternate opinion. “Fisette then looked at us and inquired, ‘Are you guys ex-gays?’” Elliott wrote. “Both myself and the other PFOX volunteer affirmed that yes, we are ex-gays. Fisette shook his head and hurriedly walked away.”

The incident with Fisette raised a few questions for Elliott:

“When Jay Fisette, an elected government official, says ‘No,’ does he mean that I do not have a right to my own opinion of not accepting the ‘gay’ label for myself?

“Or does he mean that he refuses to dialogue on the ex-gay issue?”

“Does Mr. Fisette also believe that gay groups do not have a right to their own opinion?”

“Or is the right of self-determination permitted only to gays like him?”

“Does Fisette agree that his county’s sexual orientation law also protects ex-gays?”

I have a call out to Fisette’s office, in the hopes of finally getting some answers to PFOX’s rhetorical line of questioning concerning a largely hypothetical sexual orientation. I’ll update when I hear back.

According to fraternal historian ­Nicholas Syrett, America’s fraternity culture has thrived on a fear of homosexuality since the 1920’s. All-male fraternal organizations, Syrett writes, “compensate for what might be perceived by outsiders as either feminine or gay behavior by enacting a masculinity [of] aggressive heterosexuality.” In order to preempt homosexual interpretations of the fraternal bond, the brothers employ ritualistic paddling, frat house sex, and homophobic epithets to fight their way back to straight.

The Syrettian fraternal tradition poses some pre-professional problems for the young men on the campus of George Washington University.

After all, GW’s fraternity brothers are the nation’s future congressmen, investment bankers, and CEOs. They won’t reach those positions if their Google profiles turn up associations with homophobic and misogynistic fraternities. So GW’s frat boys—and don’t call them that!—are straining to undo the legacy of “aggressive heterosexuality” and gay-bashing forged by their predecessors. It’s an effort that involves a good deal of re-education, some new alliances, and a compensatory vice or two.

RUSHING. Each September, GW’s potential pledges navigate a monthlong schedule of university-sanctioned rush events. The activities provide a brief introduction to each fraternity’s social reputation. Will the future fraternity brother enjoy s’mores at Kappa Sigma’s “acoustic jam” or feast upon Kappa Alpha Order’s steamed Maryland crabs? Will he chat up Sigma Chi’s favorite sorority ladies or help Sigma Nu launch a frozen turkey down a Slip ’N Slide? Will he scarf Lambda Chi Alpha’s Chipotle burritos or watch the brothers of TKE take a sledgehammer to a car?

This year, Beta Theta Pi decided to trade the food porn and the masculine displays of destruction for a more meaningful approach. “The events that I rushed into initially were food-focused,” says Stephen Molldrem, the fraternity’s vice president. “This year, we’re trying something completely different. Other fraternities will pick men who share their values out of the ones who show up for the Maryland blue crabs. We attract men of values, and we then just happen to serve them Maryland blue crabs when they show up.”

Beta Theta Pi Vice President Stephen Molldrem

That formula—values first, crabs later—helps weed out the homophobes with the hungry. In Beta Theta Pi’s first rush event this year, titled “Frat Versus Fraternity: Myths Debunked,” Molldrem and his brothers discussed popular misconceptions about “frat boys” with potential pledges.

William Zelenty, the fraternity’s rush coordinator, says the strategy had helped establish Beta Theta Pi as an organization of principle. “In the past, the fraternity was about upholding the status quo and letting the sexist and homophobic stuff fly,” he says. “Now, we’re dealing with it. If you’re the kind of person who goes around and says that kind of stuff, you’re not the kind of person I want involved in our chapter. Not everyone is perfect, but if any homophobic comments arise in a meeting or on the Listserv, I can tell you right now that it’s quelled immediately.”

Also not welcome at Beta Theta Pi: stereotypical comments about sexist and homophobic “frat boys.” “It’s just patently offensive,” says Molldrem, who is gay. “Even using the words ‘frat boy’ together can connote a bias.”

Beta Theta Pi rush coordinator Will Zelenty

HAZING. When one GW sophomore pledged an off-campus fraternity last year, he was relieved that the hazing process did not involve the “grotesque display of homosexual actions and physical pain” he had heard rumors of back home in Alabama. But what the hazing lacked in homophobia, it made up for in Kentucky Gentleman.

The night he officially pledged the fraternity, the student and his pledge class assembled in the frat house. “A trash can was brought out and put into the middle of the floor, and we were told to stand around the trash can,” he says. “We were then asked to drop our pants, but to leave our underwear on,” he says. The light homoeroticism—and the trash can—proved red herrings for the main event. Once the pants were dropped, the student says, “a bottle of Kentucky Gentleman bourbon was introduced to the circle, opened, and passed around among the circle of pledges.

As the pledges drank, the brothers sang. “You would have to drink until they stopped singing,” he says. “The first time, it was not that bad—they didn’t sing for that long,” he says. “The second time, they sang for maybe 10 to 12 seconds—an extremely long time.” When the bottle was finished, the pledge pulled up his pants as a newly minted member of the fraternity. “Shortly after that, I blacked out,” he says.

The student awoke in Georgetown University hospital to learn that he had left the post-pledging party, entered another student’s dorm room, and urinated all over his possessions. The student called the University Police Department, which administered the pledge a breathalyzer test. He blew a .24.

All hazing activities—from “paddling” to “scaveneger hunts”—are banned on the GW campus, and many fraternities honor school rules. When GW frats do haze, the activities—low on the homoerotic domination, high on the blood alcohol content—comport with the campus’ progressive nature. When fraternity brothers don’t fear associations with homosexuality, they’re a lot less likely to turn their hangups into a good paddling. But chugging alcohol is universal. Stereotypically, “frat boys are thought of as sexist and homophobic, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really heard that at GW,” says Josh Brown, rush coordinator of Zeta Beta Tau. Brown, who doesn’t drink, says that even GW’s wildest frat parties involve only “drinking to prove yourself,” not “drinking to get a girl drunk.”

PARTYING. Todd Belok, a GW sophomore, was a member of the school’s Naval ROTC program when he decided to pledge Beta Theta Pi. Belok wanted to make sure his potential brothers “didn’t hate who I am,” so he casually informed a couple of brothers of his sexual orientation over the course of the pledge process. “I was taking a course with one of the brothers who happened to be in my class,” says Belok. “I asked if I could bring my boyfriend to [a fraternity] party, and he said that would be completely fine.” Later, inside the Beta Theta Pi house, another brother “pulled me over and told me it was totally OK, and they didn’t have a problem with it here.”

Beta Theta Pi brother Todd Belok

The fraternity house quickly became a safe haven for Belok. A few weeks later, Belok was again partying with his boyfriend in the Beta house when a couple of Belok’s fellow NROTC midshipmen saw the couple kissing and reported the infraction to their superiors. “I had seen the guys at the party, and I was a little bit concerned,” says Belok. “But I thought it was really wrong to keep on hiding.”

The incident, which led to Belok’s dismissal from NROTC under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” revealed a growing rift between two of the nation’s most masculine traditions—fraternity life, which embraced Belok’s sexual orientation, and military life, which rejected it. Belok’s dismissal hasn’t prompted Beta Theta Pi to take a more discriminating approach to its guest policy. “What are you going to do? Stop everyone at the door and ask them about their thoughts on various social subjects?” says Belok. But it has renewed the house’s commitment to its idea of fraternity culture. “A lot of the brothers were really angry that it happened,” says Belok. “And they were really angry that it happened here.”

Photos by Darrow Mongtomery

Remember Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX), that rag-tag group of heterosexual activists that just can’t seem to find many “ex-gay” people to advocate for? Last we heard from PFOX, the group was celebrating a court decision which said that “ex-gays”—people who were once gay, but are now totally heterosexual—should be covered under the District’s sexual orientation protections. PFOX was psyched with the ruling, because it meant that the group could begin to capitalize on protections that have been afforded to the LGBT community (hate crime legislation, anti-discrimination policies, etc.) and open up the possibility of suing on behalf of persecuted “ex-gays.”

I’ve never seen nor heard of an “ex-gay hate crime,” but I assume it would involve screaming epithets like “curse you, former homosexual!” while committing an assault, or refusing to hire an employee based on the fact that he doesn’t have sex with men like he used to. Alas, the world may never know: Yesterday, PFOX posted a blog entry encouraging supporters to help oppose hate crime legislation in Texas.  A couple of months ago, PFOX was ecstatic that “ex-gays” would finally be protected against discrimination. Now, the group is rallying opposition to those same protections across the country. What gives?

As I detailed in a story a few weeks ago, PFOX doesn’t so much advocate for ex-gays as it does advocate against gays. The group’s main interest is sabotaging the acceptance of homosexuality by arguing that sexual orientation is changeable, nobody has to be “gay forever,” and “ex-gay is okay.” PFOX will use whatever tactics available to them to protest the gay movement. When it suits the group’s interests, PFOX will celebrate sexual orientation protections. When it doesn’t, PFOX will rally the troops by penning sentences like this:

“Oppose Effort to Include Anti-ExGay Hate Crimes in Annual Defense Authorization Bill”

Woo, that is a doozy! Let’s try to pick that one apart, shall we? According to PFOX, hate crime laws protecting gays and lesbians themselves constitute hate crimes against ex-gays. Because if you tell people that they can’t beat up people because they’re gay, you discriminate against the people who beat up gay people because they are gay! It is you who are committing the “anti-ex-gay hate crime,” because if people aren’t allowed to hate gay people, how will PFOX ever find any ex-gay people? Shame on you all!

This week, Catholic University newspaper the Tower reported that the Washington City Paper would no longer be made available on the school’s campus. In fact, the paper has been gone from the CUA campus since May 7th, the day that my story on CUA’s campus sex ban, Screw U: Inside the Secret Sex Life of Catholic University, was published.

That morning, a very nice man who identified himself only as a CUA employee called to tell me that the university was removing the paper from the campus racks. “I just wanted to bring that to your attention and let you know that really sucks, because I know for a fact there are a lot of staff members and students that love to read your paper, and especially for this article,” he said. ” Again, love your work, awesome, thanks so much for throwing that out there, and, we got a really great chuckle for it. I hope you don’t get in too much trouble. Take care of yourself.”

The Catholic University administration was less amused.

Catholic University spokesperson Victor Nakas, whom I quoted extensively in the piece on the subjects of premarital sex, masturbation, and men kissing, explained the school’s reasoning for removing the paper from campus. “These decisions were occasioned by the City Paper’s hateful article ridiculing our Catholic faith,” Nakas told the Tower. Some CUA students were moderately pissed about it, but they were dealing. “Whether or not that article was a true portrayal of students, we should be able to decide for ourselves whether or not it’s worth reading,” sophomore Joe McAnaney told the Tower. “It’s disappointing that I can’t just pick up the City Paper in the Pryz anymore, even though I understand the University’s decision.”

Oh, Catholic University, always banning things! Catholic University of America has banned sex, masturbation, pornography, and condom possession among unmarried students for years. Let’s see how that’s going for them: clandestine condom distribution, check; student center sex, check; healthy LGBT population (considering), check; masturbation, check; celebrity naked photos, check; girls sneaking into boys dorms, check; boys sneaking into girls’ dorms, check; high-profile sexual assault case involving videotaped group sex in open CUA dorm room, check.

Unfortunately, college students prefer doin’ it to reading alternative weekly newspapers. Or do they? Perhaps a good campus banning is just what the City Paper needed to catch on with the CUA crowd. By my calculations, the Washington City Paper should already be well on its way to becoming the new campus forbidden fruit, a taboo rag which CUA students will hide beneath their mattresses and transport secretly between dorm buildings by slipping it inside the pages of the Express. How can it be wrong when it feels so right?

Or, maybe they’ll just read it online.

Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government is a conservative group which opposes gender identity protections in the state. The group’s president, Ruth Jacobs, says stuff like: ““If somebody with an opposite body part is allowed in to a ladies’ restroom—a guy who has a penis, who could put his penis inside my vagina—what am I to do?” The group’s recent written materials, too, strike that special blend of horror, humor, and confusion.

Horrific: In a recent flier, the group refers to Human Rights Campaign staffer Allyson Robinson—a transgender female—as a “male transsexual.” I’m beginning to think that these people just indiscriminately pick a gender, tack on a trans term, and run with it:

Funny: The flier then attempted to point supporters to the group’s anti-transgender Web site, notmyshower.com—but accidentally sent readers to notmyshower.net:

Hey, I wonder what notmyshower.net is all about?

Would you rather spend an evening wading through right-wing materials on the sanctity of traditional bathroom arrangements, or a German party casino? Downloaden!

—
Confusing: As Jim Kennedy points out at Teach the Facts, this bill was passed a year ago. Live in the now!

“Have you ever gotten cum in your eye? It burns, it burns.”

The password must be whispered.

Quoting liberally from Neil Whitehead’s book, “My Genes Made Me Do It!,” PFOX argues that there are plenty of “ex-gays” living outwardly as homosexuals that don’t want to identify as ex-gay—because they just want to be straight. Writes Whitehead:

At this point the natural question arises – if there are so many “ex-gays” in the population, where are they? Most readers will never have met any. It is no wonder the GLB community is very skeptical about whether real change occurs, though the best estimate of the researchers involved is that it does, and spontaneously, without clinical intervention, just in the normal course of life.

According to Whitehead, many “ex-gays” choose not to live openly as “ex-gay” because they “have some shame about their previous life,” because the identity “may be destructive of a present relationship,” or because “they will be relentlessly and openly attacked and crossexamined by activist members of the SSA community.”

So, ex-gays don’t want to identify as “ex-gay” for the same reason they want to become “ex-gay” in the first place: because people don’t like gay people. For ex-gays, the solution to people not liking gay people is to (a) will their way to heterosexuality; (b) pray for divine intervention into their sex life; or (c) stop having sex entirely.

The problem of people-who-don’t-like-gay-people plagues both gays and “ex-gays,” of course. Gay activists have come up with a pretty good solution for this: they work to eliminate the stigma against homosexuality instead of never having good sex ever again. “Ex-gay” activist groups, like PFOX, actually work to promote “ex-gay” stigma: They encourage people to not like gay people, and to become not-gay people, which in turn makes people not like “ex-gay” people, because they used to be gay.

PFOX can’t find more ex-gays because of PFOX. Since the group represents a minority of people who are driven to silence by the shame over their homosexuality and, uh, political differences with the gay community, PFOX is in the privileged position of providing a voice to the voiceless. While the gay community works to eliminate shaming its members’ sexuality, the stigma against “ex-gays” actually benefits the “ex-gay” activists. When “ex-gays” aren’t talking, PFOX gets to say whatever happens to serve their own interests.

Of course, PFOX’s self-interest doesn’t explain why individuals would choose to leave a life of shame and good sex for a life of shame and bad sex. I have to think that’s another reason why I can’t find any ex-gays around here.

Yesterday, CBS CBC News reporter Sarah Liss spent 12 hours of her life reading The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s 509-page sequel to The Da Vinci Code. Only 45 minutes in, Liss comes across this Brown gem:

The act of tattooing one’s skin was a transformative declaration of power, an announcement to the world: I am in control of my own flesh. The intoxicating feeling of control derived from physical transformation had addicted millions to flesh-altering practices …. . . cosmetic surgery, body piercing, bodybuilding, and steroids . . . even bulimia and transgendering.

“Ugh,” writes Liss. “Sometimes, Dan Brown, loosely adapting Anthropology 101 texts for fiction just doesn’t work. Also, why do I get the sense you’ve never been tattooed—or met a gender-variant person? Also: ‘transgendering’ is not a verb.”

Allow me to join in here: Fucking Dan Brown.

No, it’s not enough for him to casually and unnecessarily refer to transgender people as “addicts.” Too subtle. He must also lump them in with a laundry list of other “flesh-altering” sorts—Barry Bonds, people who suffer from life-threatening eating disorders, and dudes with tribal calf tattoos—then top it all off with an offensive make-believe word . . . which millions of people will surely read. God damnit! Fine: Just add it to the dictionary now. But please, don’t make Tom Hanks grow his hair out again. I’m begging you.

After studying Manhunt’s recent penis graph at length, I logged on to the Web site in an attempt to locate the D.C. Manhunt user with the longest reported penis. (My job-related research is, at times, difficult for the layperson to understand). My manhunt ended in a startling revelation: Manhunt won’t even let you register a penis longer than 30 cm (11.8 inches)!:

I understand that in order to keep its online gay penis reporting within the realm of reality, Manhunt had to draw the line somewhere.  But 11.9 inches? You guys call yourself “Manhunt,” and you’re not even interested in collecting the online cruising scene’s most peculiar specimens (warning: highly disturbing imagery of naked dude at North Pole)? For shame.

“Manhunt,” an online cruising network for men, has been quietly compiling its users’ penis lengths since the site added “cock size” as a Manhunt profile feature. Now, the work has finally paid off, in a penis graph. And D.C. Manhunt users have been awarded the longest penis on that penis graph!

According to Manhunt user data, D.C. men-seeking-men reported Manhunt’s largest penis sizes, with an average length of 7.59 inches. (Girth, as usual, gets the short end of the penis graph). D.C.’s neighbors reported slightly smaller averages: Marlyand users reported an average of 7.27 inches, carrying the state to 24th nationwide.Virginia, which reported penises one-tenth of an inch shorter than Maryland’s Manhunters, measured in at 38th. Every state’s online gay penises are longer than Alaska’s, which came in dead last with an average reported length of 6.34 inches. Meaning that the one dude in Alaska with a Manhunt account has a 6.34 inch penis.

The Houston Press hypothesizes that D.C.’s penis graph dominance can be attributed to either “the racial stats on DC’s population” or “politician joke.” It’s a penis graph! It’s gotta mean something!

How long ago was it that a black woman would be denied entrance to a whites-only restroom? Well, at one point in the afternoon, a white woman wearing a shirt that said “Kill Fags,” which appeared to be a homemade silkscreen job, felt a similar call of nature. At the door of the Penn Quarter Sports [Tavern] she met Matt Hunter, the bar’s marketing and events manager. He told her that she could not use the restroom.

“So you’re refusing?” she asked.

“Yes,” Matt said. “There’s no public option here.”

“Bastard,” she said.

“I can do you one better,” Matt said. “I suck cock.”

He then put his tongue in his cheek and cupped his hand, moving it back and forth in front of his mouth in the internationally-recognized gesture for fellatio.

“I’m one of those,” he said, pointing at her shirt. She left to find a bathroom more accommodating to her sort.

On the phone, Hunter was more conciliatory to the “Kill Fags” set. “There was a lot of stuff said down here,” Hunter confirmed over the telephone. “It was a nightmare down here.”

Hunter says that at the Penn Quarter Sports Tavern, “everyone is welcome”—but that the tea bagger protest stretched even the most inclusive bar’s resources. “Everyone had to put signs out that said ‘restrooms for customers only,’” says Hunter. “It was a big public event, and the city should have helped assist by putting public toilets out.” D.C. also could have done Hunter a solid by informing him that hordes of out-of-town tea-baggers would be descending upon the bar. “This whole thing just came out of the blue,” he says. “I guess because I don’t watch FOX TV, I had no idea what was going on.”

“Remnant International Public Relations Division” must have heard that I’m hot on the “ex-gay” beat now. R.I.P. relations (ouch) just sent me a press release offering up Cornelius Williams, author of “Transition: From Homosexual to Preacher,” for an interview. (Sorry, PFOX: This ex-gay is based in Chicago). Unfortunately, I am ill-equipped to provide Williams with the requested “Possible Television Interview” in which I would “interview the author and air the story encoded in the below press release.” I can, however, attest to the fact that this press release appears to be written in some sort of code:

The homosexuals in this community refused to allow the author to speak, saying “his message is a message of hate.” They also acused the author of preaching “reparative theropy” which they say does not exist acording to phycologists.

Okay! More of that, after the jump!

Fwd: Press Release: You Want to Read This!

To: Television Producers, News Reportors and Anchors

From: Remnant International Public Relations Division

Re: Press Release

CC: Possible Television Interview

Hello,

I am sending you this press release to see if there is a way you can interview the author and air the story encoded in the below press release in your area.

Recently there has been some protests against this book in Oak Park Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where the author was refused venue for his book discussion. The homosexuals in this community refused to allow the author to speak, saying “his message is a message of hate.” They also acused the author of preaching “reparative theropy” which they say does not exist acording to phycologists. (Read Below)

**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**

EDITORS: For review copies or interview requests, contact:

Promotional Services Department (Holy Remnant International Ministries)
Tel: 773-614-9971
Fax: 773-542-7140
Email:prophetcw@gmail.com

(When requesting a review copy, please provide a street address.)

Transition: From Homosexual to Preacher

Cornelius Williams Shares Life Story in Tell-all Memoir

CHICAGO – With the gay rights movement gaining momentum daily and gay marriage slowly becoming a reality state by state, the debate still exists about whether or not homosexuality is the result of choice or genetics. In his provocative new book, Transition: From Homosexual to Preacher (published by AuthorHouse), Cornelius Williams shares his journey from homosexuality and sex addiction to reformed man of God.

Transition: From Homosexual to Preacher chronicles Williams’ life from childhood through his early 20s. Growing up he endured rape, anger, alcohol abuse, mental breakdowns and a severe sex addiction, all of which he writes about with raw, honest detail. He shares the string of rejections he experienced as a child; rejections which he believes eventually drove him to homosexuality.

After candidly expressing the details of his painful past, Williams reveals his dramatic journey to what he calls “reformation, restoration and joy.” He chronicles how his faith in Jesus Christ helped him to set forth on the path to redemption and shed his former ways. When he realized he wanted to pursue a career in ministry, Williams knew he could no longer live in denial of his sexual impulses. He shares how his aunt, Joan, helped him change his life and “live for God completely.”

“Transition: From Homosexual to Preacher is not a book of judgment, but a book detailing [my] personal experiences while living the life of homosexuality,” Williams clarifies. “It provides the riveting details of transition from this life.”

Cornelius Williams is an ordained preacher and prophet, author, singer and motivator whose journey began on Chicago’s west side. He considers his mission one of helping those seeking restoration in the areas of abuse, homosexuality and rape. His motivation is his own testimony of transition, which gave him the courage to be transparent about his past. “If it takes my whole life helping one person be free, then I will spend the rest of my whole life doing it,” Williams writes. Transition: From Homosexual to Preacher is his first published book.

For more information, please visit www.hripn.org.

AuthorHouse is the premier book publisher for emerging, self-published authors. For more information, please visit www.authorhouse.com.

###

Cornelius Williams

Remnant International

Press Relations

PO Box 440389

Chicago, Illinois 60644

e-mail: prophetcw@gmail.com

Alas, there is not yet any conciliatory  “Gay for McDonnell” campaign merch to speak of. The McDonnell for Governor online store does, however, offer up a host of campaign materials for McDonnell supporters of every other conceivable interest group—including hunters, paramedics, and babies. All of which, I’m betting, are much more likely to feel McDonnell’s message than are the ladies.

There’s Hunters for McDonnell:

Paramedics for McDonnell:

Golfers for McDonnell:

Under-socialized children for McDonnell:

Sauna enthusiasts for McDonnell:

Babies for McDonnell:

And for the low price of $54.99, you can even become a Chump for McDonnell:

Oh, C’mon Bob: That seductive Life Size Right Wing Wall Cling is just screaming for the votes of ladies and gays!

Last weekend, Time Magazine declared Georg Gänswein, Pope Benedict’s personal secretary, a “heartthrob.” Over the course of the piece, Time sketched a profile of the 51-year-old adviser to the pontiff using the following descriptors:

-handsome
-elegant
-gorgeous
-tall
-athletic
-austere
-severe
-ethical
-affable
-quick-witted
-scene-stealing
-dirty-blonde

Gänswein, who is known to locals as “Bel Georgio” or “Gorgeous Georg,” is also described in the magazine as possessing both “glamour” and “bravura.” Yep: He’s the dude on the left with the sash. Sure, he’s pretty good-looking guy. But is he really a scene-stealing dirty-blonde paragon of athletic and ethical bravura?

You decide:

- Gänswein looking coy
- Gänswein looking carefree
- Gänswein looking concerned
- Gänswein looking deep into your eyes

Despite Time’s extended praise of Gänswein’s other-worldly good looks, I suspect that there’s an ulterior motive to most of the fawning. There’s only one reason you dub a celibate priest with a nickname like “Georgeous Georg”: You think he’s totally gay. The other nickname Vatican residents have bestowed upon Gänswein, “Gay-Org,” is less subtle.

Photo via Wikipedia Commons

On Wednesday, Aug. 26, one person was killed and another critically injured in a daytime stabbing outside 209 Q St. NW. In the hours following the homicide, police and reporters gathered witness testimony, formed a description of the suspect, and chased likely motives. This time, cops and journalists were also forced to devote resources to another developing story: the gender of the victims.

Within three hours of the incident, three local news sources had independently verified the victims’ gender identity with police. They all got it wrong.

Fox 5 news reporter Roby Chavez gave this report at 3:59 p.m., about an hour and a half after the stabbings occurred. “D.C. Police sources tell Fox  5 officers found two transgender male victims in front of the building when they arrived,” Chavez reported.

At 4:36 p.m., the Washington Post’s Paul Duggan filed his item on the stabbing, also published in the next day’s paper. “Police said the victims, whom they described as ‘transgender males,’ were stabbed shortly after 2:30 p.m. in the 200 block of Q Street NW.”

WUSA9’s Bill Starks weighed in at 5:23 p.m.: “Officers…arrived and found two transgender males in front of the building at 209 Q Street, both suffering from stab wounds.”

The Washington Blade’s Lou Chibbaro was the first to nail down the correct gender identity of the homicide victim, who has since been identified under her legal name, Joshua Mack, as well as her chosen name, Tyli’a. At 7:06 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after the incident occurred, Chibbaro wrote, “One transgender woman was stabbed to death Wednesday and another was in stable condition with stab wounds from an unknown assailant.”

But even after Mack’s correct gender identity was established, the struggle continued. In “D.C. Transgender Community Outraged After Fatal Stabbing”—filed more than 24 hours after the incident occurred—ABC 7 reporter Sam Ford announced: “One transgender is dead, another is in critical condition.”

Mack was not a “transgender male,” a “transgender man,” or a “transgender.” Mack was a male-to-female transgender woman who clearly appeared to be female. On the reward poster for her homicide, she’s shown wearing eye shadow, shaped eyebrows, and two long braids. “Of course, when the one young lady was murdered and the other was hospitalized, we were quite upset [with the media coverage] because they aren’t transgender men—they are transgender women,” says Brian Watson, the director of Transgender Health Empowerment, which counted both victims as clients. “I know both of the young ladies that were attacked, and they lived their lives as transgender women. They looked like women. For me, there shouldn’t have been any confusion about them being males. If you saw them on the street, you would see they were females.”

Since the victims in this case clearly presented as women, how were they initially identified as “transgender males”?

Chavez, Duggan, and Starks all attributed the “transgender males” identification to “police sources.” Duggan says that the department’s public information office provided him the term. “The police department put it out there, and we went on what they said,” says Duggan. Starks got even more specific, sourcing the terminology to Quintin Peterson, the public information officer on duty when news of the stabbings broke. “‘Transgender males’—those were his exact words,” says Starks. “I’m not trying to get him in trouble or anything, but that’s what was said.”

Peterson denies that the police originated the term. “‘Transgender males’ was never used. Not by me or anyone in this office,” he says. “We cannot be held responsible for the terminology the news media chooses to use. We did not put anything out other than what the correct terminology is.” Acting Lieutenant Brett Parson, the police department’s top liaison to the GLBT community who was on scene shortly following the stabbing, similarly defers the misidentification to media reports. “It’s the media that seems fixated on their gender identity. That issue did not come from the chief of police,” says Parson. “We’ve had to correct the media on countless occasions because they have been reporting, insensitively, terms that are not used in the community.”

Wherever the term “transgender males” originated, no one really wanted to touch it. Starks says he never asked Peterson for clarification on what the term “transgender males” actually meant. “I didn’t ask him to go beyond that,” he says. “I assumed that it was referring to a person who may be in the process of either a sex change or someone who is dressing in the clothing of another gender.” When asked if “male” refers to the victim’s biological sex or gender identity, Starks was stumped. “That’s a good question,” he says. Duggan says that the Post avoided parsing the term with a deft use of punctuation. “It was a short brief that we wrote really fast, so we decided to use, in quotes, ‘transgender males,’” says Duggan. “I got beat up a lot over that, because I wasn’t educated on [the terminology] at the time, and I was quickly educated on it.”

For cops and journos, employing the correct terminology is more than a matter of respect. Both D.C. police procedure and Associated Press style mandate that transgender individuals be addressed in accordance with their gender expression. According to the AP Stylebook, reporters are to “use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.” And in 2007, D.C. police adopted one of the nation’s most comprehensive transgender policies, which states that when a police officer is unsure of a person’s gender identity, “the member shall inquire how the individual wishes to be addressed (e.g., Sir, Miss, Ms.) and the name by which the individual wishes to be addressed.”

Of course, ascertaining the correct terminology becomes more difficult when the transgender individual is dead. Sometimes, even the victim’s family can’t help identify the preferred gender. ABC 7’s story on the stabbing included a quote from Mack’s brother, Aaron Walker: “I’m just hurting right now. My mom, she’s got 10 boys, and that’s one of my little brothers and for me to see him pass like that,” Walker said of Mack. (ABC 7 also misidentified Walker as “Aaron Hall,” proving that newsroom slip-ups are sometimes based in sloppiness, sometimes in ignorance).

In the event that a victim’s gender identity is unclear, sometimes it helps to do some reporting. Chibbaro took care to verify Mack’s gender identity with “sources both in the community and in law enforcement” before publishing his story, three hours after the first news of the stabbing hit. “This misidentification is not always the fault of police, or the press, or others—this is something that everyone is grappling with,” says Chibbaro. “The first concern that I have, and that I think the Washington Blade has, is whether the information is accurate.”

As the scene of the daylight stabbing grew dark, reporters set about correcting the terminology in their stories, abandoning “transgender males” for “transgender women” and swapping “he” for “she.” But for some members of the transgender community, the damage had already been done. “[S]ix hours and (at least) six edits later, we finally have gender appropriate language in an article based on a double homicide attempt that was clearly motivated by hatred and transphobia,” wrote one commenter on the Fox 5 story. “[I]’m saddened on so many levels.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The Metropolitan Police Department has issued a reward poster in the death of transgender woman Joshua Mack, a.k.a. “Na Na Boo” (pictured). The flier, which you can download here [PDF], doesn’t include any intel on possible suspects. It does, however, promise a $25,000 reward for “anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for any homicide committed in the District of Columbia.” Information on how to tip the MPD in this case is after the jump.

On Wednesday August 26, 2009, at approximately 1430 hours, Joshua Mack aka “Nana-boo” was found stabbed in the 200 Block of Q Street, Northwest. The Metropolitan Police Department seeks the public’s assistance in gathering information regarding the incident.

This case is under investigation by members of the Department Homicide Branch. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Detective Jonathan Clingerman 202-497-4994 and his partner Detective Al Batton 202-486-0620 or the Metropolitan Police department’s Command Information Center (CIC) at 202-727-9099. Anonymous information may also be forwarded to the department’s TEXT TIP LINE by text messaging 50411.

The vigil will be held at the site of the incident, 209 Q Street NW at 6:30 p.m. The event is being organized by Transgender Health Empowerment, which counted Mack as a client, in order to “condemn this recent violence and urge the community to come forward with any leads.”

Meanwhile, police are investigating the possibility of a hate-bias motivation to the crime, the Washington Post reports:

Two transgender people who were stabbed Wednesday, one fatally, in Northwest Washington might have been victims of a hate crime, D.C. police said, although investigators have not yet determined what led to the violence.

. . . The incident is being investigated as a potential hate crime based on “a shred of information” that detectives obtained from the survivor, according to acting Lt. Brett Parsons, the department’s top liaison to the city’s gay community.

The surviving victim told a detective that the attacker might have used an anti-gay epithet during the incident, Parsons said. But it would be “extremely premature” for authorities to definitively classify the crime as having been motivated by the victims’ gender identity, he added.

“Until we’re able to do a really detailed interview with the surviving victim, I’m not sure that anyone really knows,” Parsons said.

5. Doug Pinnick, bassist for King’s X

Metal Cred: 1. More “contemporary Christian” than metal.

How He Came Out: In a 1998 interview with Christian Magazine Re:Generation Quarterly.

Why Gay Is Metal: Pinnick has since split from Christianity, and now chooses to identify as “agnostic.” Maybe he jumped ship because being gay isn’t Christian; maybe he did it because Christian isn’t metal. But if gay isn’t Christian, and Christian isn’t metal, isn’t gay kinda metal?

—

4. Otep Shamaya, frontwoman for Otep

Metal Cred: 5. Though Otep is often regarded as “nu metal” (alongside, unfortunately, Korn), Shamaya has said that her music is inspired by a traditional metal influence: aggression.

How She Came Out: Shamaya never “came out”—she was always out and metal. “It never even crossed my mind why I should hide it,” she has said. “So far I’ve only had a few people who seem to have a problem with me being here. Mostly because I’m a woman, and I guess I’m the antithesis of what they embrace as what a woman is. Like, you know, tits and ass.”

Why Metal Is Gay: Shamay’s music is so aggressive, it has at times reduced male metal fans to whining over sexism. Case in point: Shamaya’s track “Menocide”. “The lyrics of the song suggest men are ‘infectious human waste’ and that those who are oppressed should ‘give death to them’ and commit ‘menocide.’”

—

3. Roddy Bottum, keyboardist for Faith No More.

Metal Cred: 7. His name is Roddy Bottum, and you’ve got to respect that.

How He Came Out: Bottum came out in 1993.

Why Metal Is Gay: Bottum wrote “Be Aggressive”, a song about performing oral sex on a man. Despite easy-to-parse lyrics—”I SWALLOW, I SWALLOW, I SWALLOW, I SWALLOW,” for example—the song is still one of the band’s biggest hits.

—

[youtube:v=mIC7KQPDuDc]

2. Rob Halford, frontman for Judas Priest

Metal Cred: 10. For decades, Halford performed in the most popular metal band in the world while wearing an increasingly ridiculous succession of leather-daddy outfits. And metalheads were still shocked when he came out. What does that say about metal?

How He Came Out: In a 1998 interview with MTV.

Why Gay Is Metal: “There are still stereotypes that all gay men are effeminate and weak and queeny,” Halford has said. “Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, which is why I think it’s unfortunate that that type of portrayal is still given to the straight general public. In my world, you couldn’t have anything stronger or more masculine and intense.”

—

1. Gaahl, former frontman for Gorgoroth

Metal Cred: 11. Don’t fuck with this guy. In 2006, Gaahl spent 9 months in prison for “torturing a man for six hours while collecting his blood into a cup and threatening to make him drink it.” Gaahl maintains that the blood-draining was performed in self-defense.

How He Came Out: Gaahl confirmed his homosexuality in metal magazine Rock Hard’s November 2008 issue, after some detractors threatened to offer “information” that would make Gaahl appear in a “whole new light.” “It seems like I’ve pre-empted a few people. And for that I’m truly sorry,” Gaahl told Rock Hard. “My idea of art, and black metal especially, is the depiction of honesty without compromise. I really don’t care how other people react to it or the feelings it might provoke.”

Why Gay Is Metal: Gaahl is “strongly opposed to Christianity,” and purports to follow a personal philosophy he terms “Gaahlism.” Again: there’s nothing Christianity hates more than gay.

Tosin Abasi was walking down the street in the East Village when he ran into New York magazine. Abasi’s outfit had caught the eye of a reporter looking for a subject for the mag’s fashion blog, the Cut. Abasi obliged, and proceeded to detail his street style for the camera: a pink paisley scarf, a Schiaparelli fedora, and khaki linen women’s shorts he scored as a hand-me-down from his girlfriend.

Such an outfit wouldn’t prompt a second thought if Abasi worked as a writer, artist, butcher, salesman, or in any number of other professions.

But Abasi is a metal guitarist, and women’s shorts don’t sit too well with that crowd.

Two days later, the shorts had made their way to MetalSucks, a “heavy metal community” dedicated to “intelligent, thoughtful discussion.”

In a post titled “BORN OF OSIRIS’ TOSIN ABASI WEARS WOMEN’S SHORTS,” MetalSucks proprietor Axl Rosenberg opened Abasi’s feminine inseam for discussion. “Born of Osiris are making it very hard for those of us who like their music to defend them against the tr00est of the tr00,” he wrote. “I really, really don’t like to judge people solely for what they wear, but… what the fucking fuck dude. Women’s shorts? I’m at a loss for words. Truly.”

It wasn’t Abasi’s first appearance on MetalSucks—the Web site had previously bestowed a “glowingly positive” review on Abasi’s D.C.-based solo project, Animals as Leaders. Abasi’s personal style elicited a less enthusiastic critique. “The guy was appalled,” says Abasi. “It was like he was personally insulted by my shorts.”

Orea Guthrie, Abasi’s girlfriend, wasn’t concerned with metal fashion commentary when she bought the offending shorts in June 2008 at Banana Republic. She didn’t particularly like them at first, either. “I’m really pale, and I thought they looked too ‘soccer mom’ on me,” she says. Guthrie, who studied fashion at Savannah College of Art and Design, had Abasi try on the shorts and deemed them a good fit. “He’s curvy!” says Guthrie. Abasi, who wears a women’s size 8, agrees that the women’s shorts are more than just a good look. “I do shop body-conscious because I have large thighs, and women’s clothes are usually more forgiving in that area,” he says. “But they’re linen shorts. It’s not the most feminine short in the world, really.”

They are, however, a couple of inches shy of metal. “In metal, you generally see kids wearing the cargo shorts and the camo shorts,” says Abasi. The looser, longer versions are more befitting the metal lifestyle. “It’s because of all the moshing. There’s a lot of thrashing and windmills and stuff that goes on at the shows,” Abasi says. The demand for pit-appropriate bottoms is so strong that Born of Osiris even markets its own athletic shorts—a white mesh pair with the band’s logo screen-printed above the right knee. Gym shorts are one thing—having the band’s name associated with Banana Republic casual women’s wear is quite another.

Abasi had just joined the band, after filling in on guitar for the band’s Summer Slaughter tour, when news of his shorts broke. “I felt really bad, actually. I felt like I had brought a negative perception to their band, and I had just joined, literally, weeks earlier. And I was afraid the whole shorts story was going to be a negative hit for them,” says Abasi. “I was hired to work for this band, and if they like to wear black, unmarked T-shirts on-stage, that’s their thing, and I’m going to respect that. It’s not my place to throw this left-field element in there. But some people took that to mean that I was just pretending onstage, and that this thing [wearing women’s shorts] was my secret life.”

Within a week of the New York piece, that “secret life” was following Abasi on tour. At shows, Abasi would hear the call through the crowd: “Hey! I saw your women’s shorts!” Online, fan responses proved more colorful.

There was the derisive homophobic angle: “He looks like he is on a safari for some weiner.”

The supportive homophobic angle: “[Born of Osiris] FUCKIN RAPES ALL YOU HATER FAGGOTS.”

The hypocrisy angle: “If you wanna where women’s shorts and carry a handbag, at least have the balls to wear it on stage.”

The philosophical angle: “He wears women’s shorts, which is so far from metal that it’s actually the most metal thing on this site right now.”

But the most common response to the women’s shorts dust-up was the shredding angle. “I couldn’t care less if the dude mud wrestles in wading pools with midget tranny hookers between sets at their shows, or if he writes music while wearing a garter belt with stillettos and nipple clamps for inspiration,” wrote one commenter, “just so long as he keeps ripping.”

After all, Abasi is not just any man in women’s shorts. Abasi is a man in women’s shorts who can shred. The video “Born of Osiris Guitarist Tosin Abasi Wears Women’s Shorts” currently has 26,587 hits on YouTube, but “Tosin Abasi playing custom 8 string guitar” has nearly five times as many—plus a five-star rating. Abasi’s women’s shorts may inspire homophobic vitriol, but his guitar work has reduced metal fans to fawning same-sex overtures. Back in July, metal music writer John Gnesin hailed Abasi’s eclectic solo album as “brilliant instrumental metal” that will leave the listener “cock-strokingly orgasmic over this man’s talent.”

In metal, the penis fixation is not uncommon. “Metal is a male-driven, testosterone-fueled style of music,” says Abasi. “In metal, you’re more of a man if you hate gay guys. You’re a pussy if you like this band. You’re gay if you wear women’s shorts. I’m straight, but the small-mindedness can get really depressing,” says Abasi. Abasi’s modest resistance to metal gender norms has, at least, been appreciated by some. “The band is fine with it,” says Lee McKinney, 20, who shreds alongside Abasi in Born of Osiris. “To be honest, I’m just a pale-skinned kid with red hair, so I could never pull things like that off. I dress really boring,” he says. “But we’ve all learned a lot from Tosin, as a human, which is cool.”

Last week, Abasi embarked on Born of Orisris’ fall tour, Night of the Living Shred. He says the women’s shorts will remain a staple off-stage, whether or not the metal kids get it. “Because I can play, it opens the door to tolerance just a little bit. Now they can say, ‘we can excuse this, because he shreds,’” he says. “But it’s not that I have the freedom to do what I want because I’m a human being—it’s that I’ve earned it because I can shred at guitar.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

In 2002, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) applied for an exhibit booth at the National Education Association’s annual convention, “Expo 2002.” PFOX submitted an application, signed a deposit check, and prepared its exhibit: an educational display, it claims, “to promote tolerance and equality for the ex-gay community.” The NEA denied PFOX’s application, citing limited booth space. PFOX suspected there was another motive at play: sexual orientation discrimination.

In 2005, POX filed a discrimination claim with the D.C. Office of Human Rights against the NEA for “refusing to provide public accommodations to ex-gays.” When the D.C. Office of Human Rights sided with the NEA, PFOX appealed the decision to D.C. Superior Court. Judge Maurice Ross handed down the decision [PDF] in June of this year: PFOX’s request to reverse the OHR’s decision was denied.

But Ross’s decision wasn’t a total loss for PFOX: While Ross decided in the NEA’s favor, he also held that ex-gays do, in fact, constitute a protected group under the D.C. Human Rights Act. Judging from PFOX’s eerily celebratory press release, this is kind of a big deal for them.

According to Ross’s decision, the Human Rights Act doesn’t only protect groups defined by “immutable characteristics,” as the Office of Human Rights’ decision claimed. The Act also protects groups defined by “preference or practice” —like people who previously “practiced” gayness, and now “prefer” to practice heterosexuality:

OHR’s determination that a characteristic must be immutable to be protected under the HRA is clearly erroneous as a matter of law. . . . Indeed, the HRA lists numerous protected categories such as religion, personal appearance, familial status, and source of income, which are subject to change. . . . Pertaining to sexual orientation, moreover, the HRA in §2-1401.02(28) defines sexual orientation as “male or female homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality, by preference or practice.” Thus, the HRA’s intent and plain language eschews narrow interpretation.

But while the NEA can’t discriminate against “ex-gays,” it may legally discriminate against exhibits that are explicitly anti-gay:

The Court affirms OHR’s ultimate determination that PFOX’s application was denied legally. In NEA’s judgment, PFOX is a conversion group hostile toward gays and lesbians. Thus, even though PFOX vehemently disagrees with NEA’s characterization, it is within NEA’s right to exclude PFOX’s presence at NEA’s conventions. . . . Indeed, the HRA would not require NEA to accept an application from the Ku Klux Klan or a group viewed by the NEA as anti-labor union or racist. . . . Similarly, military organizations and the Boy Scotts of America are excluded from renting exhibit space at the NEA Annual Meetings because of the positions those organizations take with regard to gay and lesbian rights.

. . . Thus, PFOX’s arguments miss the point. The NEA did not reject its application because PFOX’s members include exgays, homosexuals, heterosexuals, or members of any other sexual orientation. Rather, NEA rejected PFOX’s application because PFOX’s message and policies were, in NEA’s opinion, contrary to NEA’s policies regarding sexual orientation.

In other words, the Human Rights Act protects groups who identify as “ex-gay” based on their previous and current sexual “practices.” It does not, however, protect those groups in spreading anti-gay agendas. Somehow, that part was left out of the press release.

Steven Anderson, the gay-hating pastor who preaches that Barney Frank is a paedophile and that Barack Obama deserves to die, operates out of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz. That means that Anderson’s religious sermons declaring that gays are rapists, child molesters, “animals meant to be taken and destroyed,” and also secretly bisexual (?), are all being created and disseminated like fifteen minutes away from the house I grew up in! Wow. I knew there was something else I didn’t miss about home.

Allegations of Discrimination at Tastee Diner, Silver Spring MD from Tastee Diner on Vimeo.

Last week, two women staged a “kiss-in” protest at Silver Spring’s Tastee Diner after being ejected from the restaurant, they say, for hugging. In response, Tastee Diner released this grainy security video of the incident in an attempt to prove that the couple was not just hugging—that Aiyi’nah Ford and Torian Brown were “engaged in behavior that is normally considered inappropriate regardless of gender or sexual orientation,” including one “burying her face in the other’s breasts.” The video (above) was so blurry, it allowed both supporters and detractors to see whatever they wanted to see:

whaddya know wrote:

Seriously, if an establishment asked you to please stop putting your face in your partner’s breast at the front of the restaurant (seen in the video, for more than 10 seconds), would you allege discrimination, or would you think that maybe there is an etiquette issue you aren’t sensing, that might be worth thinking about?

anonymous wrote:

I have a lot of gay friends but I knew from the get-go that this story was NOT as it was written. I’m glad the restaurant had video to defend themselves. I’ve been to that place for 20 years with gay friends and while customers might say something they thought was funny but wasn’t here and there and one time a waitress basically refused to serve us pie for some unknown reason, I felt pretty sure that in 2009 someone would have to have gone over the edge to elicit such a reaction. It’s clear from the video that this couple was engaged in a significant tight embrace for way way longer than is culturally acceptable in the USA. Sorry, but Tastee Diner 1, indignant couple 0.

TJ wrote:

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I’ve been saying since I heard this story that there had to be more to it. I lived in Georgian Towers, which is less than a block away, for years and I never had a problem there with my girlfriend. There were times when they were extremely slow, but that would annoy anyone. NO ONE ever gave me or my girlfriend a problem. I think, at this point, that most people understand that there is great sensitivity surrounding the LGBT community when it comes to being discriminated against, but if the management of the restaurant asked you to cool it, then COOL IT! They weren’t asked to leave until after the first refusal to stop. I’m sure it was embarrassing to have been asked to leave, but don’t make matters worse. Frivolous claims of discrimination do not further our cause.

Aiyi’nah Ford wrote:

Let me be clear that I am in no way upset by the aforementioned commentary. I knew when we decided to protest that we opened ourselves to the public’s response {both negative and positive}. The video is indeed blurry however Torian’s head was not “in my breast”. Please note my arms around her as we embrace. She was sitting and I was standing therefore she was chest level. But you can clearly see her head leaned on my shoulder. Torian and I have been consistent in our statements regarding this story however Tastee Diner has been unable to do the same. I welcome you to read the story done by the Silver Spring Penguin that includes statements from the Tastee Diner staff involved completely contradicting the “claims” they note on Youtube. If Tastee Diner hadn’t made a different claim to every different media source and the video actually showed something “x-rated” as the establishment is quoted as saying then I could understand…But really? Furthermore, Torian and I asked for nothing more than a simple apology. We aren’t trying to sue them for the $400,000 the city awarded them to move their discriminatory cyst pool 3 blocks. We also have additional statements from former employees and patrons who have made discrimination claims. Ultimately. the MCHR will decide as we have completed the intake process and they (MCHR) felt it was substantial evidence to proceed with an investigation.

Supporter of the Truth wrote:

Everyone is going to have an opinion on this. I believe that if someone truly felt like they were discriminated against, for whatever reason, has the right to have it proven and at least an apology. I agree with Aiyi’nah, all they are asking for is an apology. If that is the case, then why is Tastee Diner trying to make them look like they were doing something inappropriate by releasing a grainy video. Also, if this has never happened before, why did the employee apologize to them after they left saying “they’ve done this before”? Hopefully, the MCHR will be able to get to the bottom of this and justice will be served.

Jen August wrote:

I’m shocked at the comments shown above. I watched the video expecting to see what I’ve seen at diners and other public places (especially late night) all the time – “get-a-room type behavior”. But, lo and behold, what do I see – two tired women leaning on each other (hands on shoulders and head on chest/shoulder once or twice). Are you kidding me? This is inappropriate?? This is sexual?? I’m dumfounded, absolutely dumfounded. Especially at Tastee’s ignorant handling of this. Get a PR rep and get a lawyer, quick. Get a new manager and general manager while you are at it. I don’t know any of the parties involved here, but I’ll never eat at Tastee Diner again and will tell everyone I know to do the same. (p.s. I’m still shocked that Tastee didn’t hide this video far in the cellar as opposed to thinking it was supportive of their position. Come on!) Ms. Ford, go get them.

Ben August wrote:

Wow – if that’s inappropriate behavior then PDA is outlawed for everyone everywhere. To me, that was sweet mild affection that we should encourage in this icky world! I’ve seen millions of couples engage in this type of conduct. It’s pretty standard coupleness. In fact, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have done similar on TV! I think Tastee has a problem with head-on-chest simply because one of them has a large/nice chest. I’ve put my head on my girlfriend’s chest a million times. It’s a coined move by tired couples. Wow. Notably, the manager is watching the couple bizarrely well before any head on chest resting occurs. He just didn’t like them, because they are black and/or gay. It’s so obvious. Tastee’s response is shameful. The response should have been to immediately fire the manager and welcome the couple back. I guess I better not be tired and lean on my girlfriend anywhere in public, because apparently this standard should be applied to heterosexuals and gays alike. Wow wow wow.

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