Athenais Sophie

Moon River

Oh, darling love, when did we stop seeking our rainbow's end? When did our paths diverge? When, love, when? So, Diana hunts in vain the hart, the heart is lost. The moon dims, night fast falls and the strains of Morpheus' harp fade. Muddy Styx take me swiftly from this living land; I shall eat no pomegranite's seed nor seek any return to the harsh light of day. Fare thee well, my love, fare well. Thus doth my tomb enshroud me and no more will I see thee, ruby lipped and golden haired; for all that I love is gone, one way or another the river of the Moon has swept by us and I cannot see the distant bank. I want only that sleep from which even dreams are barred. It is mine.

Papal Politikin'

The Roman Catholic Church is supposed to announce a new pastoral care letter in which it will supposedly state that to some degree condoms used to prevent the spread of AIDS are a "lesser evil". Lesser than what? Letting thirty million people become infected and die while having insisted for years now that 'abstinence only' was the answer? Apparently, there is some recognition at the Vatican that the medical communities concern that an 'abstinence only' program may indeed be insufficient to turn the tide and save lives just might be valid.

Isn't this just grand! Should we fall over in thanksgving and praise this bunch of withered old sexless men in Rome who have finally decreed that in some very rare circumstances saving a life just might take precedence over their moral attribution that condom use is an affront to God?! Wow. Clap your hands if you believe in miracles. (Don't expect it to include same sex usage.)

Bullshit politics again.

First of all - it hasn't been announced by the Church, only leaked by an Italian paper on friendly terms with the Vatican. So, don't hold your breath for anything just yet.

Secondly, even if they issue a modest directive that in a very few instances you won't be committing a grave moral sin protecting someone's life from an incurable and fatal disease by suggesting they use a condom if they are having sexual intercourse it will surely fall far short of fully directing all third world countries to make haste to promote the use of condoms and insisting that all medical and scientific means available be used to end this completely preventable disease from killing millions more of the people of God.

And, it is my heartfelt belief that this seeming act of compassion is not one at all, but rather the belated and far from sufficient response to a slowly dawning realization for Rome that if they allow their new financial and political bases, i.e. the Third World, to die off completely that they will have NO support whatsoever for their antiquated morality tales, either financial or political. (Remember, Europe and the West woke up a while ago to the total lack of Chritian compassion that the Church pontificates in these matters.) After all, to run a business like the Church you definitely need to keep the suckers who ARE paying you alive and healthy enough to keep paying you - and to keep voting for the oppressive religious regimes which keep supporters of such bishops of the Church in power.

Eventually, God willing, education and science will be realized amongst these nations and replace the superstious practices and beliefs which enshrine a deity who loves people only if they are constantly terrified of hell fire and damnation - because, for goodness sakes, the loving God of the New Testament is simply an idealistic and transitory super credulous belief - an omnipotent creator who cannot love a sinner, not really, or forgive anyone anything, not really.

The REAL guy upstairs is the "tooth for a tooth" O.T. guy - so, don't touch yourself or know anything about your body or sex or disease prevention, don't be responsible for your health and the health of others except to say, well, if you get that faggot disease you probably deserved it anyway.

Negative? You bet. And I will be until this pope and his hierarchy do a 360 degree turn about on human sexuality being the greatest of sins. It isn't - forgetting to love God's children and protect them is the sin that will destroy our souls.

In case you're not Catholic and you can't fathom why condom use is a sin of the greatest magnitude in the first place let me enlighten you. A (heterosexual) person who chooses to use a condom disallows God the choice of bringing a new life into the world via your fucking. Of course, at the same time, these Church men will insist, while attempting to prove their point reagrding abstinence, that a condom is not full protection from disease because of its very high failure rate. May I ask if the failure rate is so high how is our omnipotent God prevented from bringing a new life into the world? In fact, if He's omnipotent what prevents Him from doing so even if a condom offered one hundred percent protection? Angels dancing on pinheads again, methinks.

Oh, and do not for one moment believe that these men of God are for a single instance concerned about any gays or lesbians being protected from disease. I'm sure any forthcoming statement will clarify for us that the satanic and abominable love of men for men and women for women is utterly worthy of the most insidious death possible. Too bad drawing and quartering is so out of fashion!

Denis Diderot said it best: "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." God bless him!

"The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual." (from L'Encyclopédie)

Letter to Boxer - Write your Senator!

Dear Senator Boxer,

I am writing to ask you to oppose Bill H.R. 609 which has now passed the house and is heading for the Senate.

This bill is proposing that Federally funded private universities associated with a particular religious denomination may discriminate lawfully against the GLBT community by refusing to admit them as students and/or hire them as staff.

While I support the right of all Americans to express their religious beliefs I cannot support allowing educational institutions which expect to be subsidized by our taxes being allowed to pick and choose who may work or study at their facility. Either the law is for all companies and institutions or it is for none. Who next will assert that they may still recieve tax benefits and public monies while being able to reject any person they find unacceptable?

Further, the GOP is sending a clear message that the religion of choice in Washington DC is fundamentalist Christianity. Has the principle of separation of Church and State lost any credibility? We are a multicultural and ethnically diverse Nation and we cannot allow favoritism of any particular religious sect, however broad their base may be, to overshadow our pluralism.

It is currently against the law to allow discrimination of any sort in publicly supported institutions. This seems particualrily important to me in our colleges and universities which hold the illumination of learning and understanding as the light by which we see our way forward in the advancement of our society.

Please oppose this narrow minded and unlawful legislation. The GLBT is particularily vulnerable to exclusionary practices, as you well know - we have still to win eqaulity for so many civil rights in America.

I remember my mother, who sacrificed and saved to send us to Catholic school, being exceedingly alarmed back in the late sixties and early seventies as public funding was first diverted to assist schools with religious and private affiliations. She said at the time that nothing good can come of the government being involved with religious schools. She was right - though her concern at the time was for the school's teachings not the public's funding. Now we can see these private institutions want to 'have their cake and to eat it, too', as the cliche goes.

Please hold Washington and the Christian right responsible to the same laws which bind all of us - or ask them to stand-up for their religious beliefs with their own money: without tax exemptions or Federal funding for their discrimination.

Sincerely,

Don Larson

A Mother's Love

The story this Mother relates of her beloved son is similar to many of our Gay and Lesbian stories. It is very similar to my own. Would that every Mother would write such a letter for her own son or daughter.

By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News

As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be.

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.

I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life with no dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.


No choice

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it.

For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will?

If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."



Principles?

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending.

My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart. He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.

You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

Get It

When our Senators take their oath of office, they put their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution. They do not put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.

No one is your friend who asks you to be Silent or refuses to let you Grow.

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of
Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced
one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion?
To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."

Thomas Jefferson

Un Homme

French Academic Study, Pierre Noir on Paper, Early Nineteenth Century

for Mark

Who
is seductive as you, Man, who rallies inimical to my pitch-black melancholy with ardorous aplomb? No one.
Wit, a sly grin and whispered toss of scarlet locks betray your charm,
as surely as a spell wound tight about a bone and fleshy fetish.

You, my implacable demigod of deep thick wood and moonless night;
You, my Apollo, steeded chariot on fire, thrust freely through tangled limbs into pining heaven's void, ever pliant for your shooting beams.

I succumb; rapt Cupid breathes toilsome as he seats his fevered dart, blazing, deep through my cardinal Heart,
'till I, plunging rearward into celestial vacuity,
my carnal self unfurled, explode light luminous.

So does your Soul persuade me, not through holy invocation penitent,
but by dulcet murmur of sweet vermilion lips like silk my nape caressing; Pneuma speaks:
Fear not! for you are loved.

Easter Hymn to Mark
Donald William Francis Larson, April 16, 2006, New York

Eros Binding the Hands of the Old Centaur

After the Antique, oil on canvas, 36" x 48", D. Larson, 2002

Senator Russ Feingold, D-WI

FEINGOLD OPPOSES DISCRIMINATORY AMENDMENT:
SUPPORTS MARRIAGE EQUALITY

April 4, 2006

Washington, D.C. - Responding to a question posed at his Kenosha County listening session over the weekend, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold said he strongly opposed the proposed civil unions and marriage ban facing Wisconsin voters this November. He also expressed his support for the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Feingold holds listening sessions in each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties every year. Later this year, Feingold will hold his 1000th listening session as a U.S. Senator.

“The proposed ban on civil unions and marriage is a mean-spirited attempt to divide Wisconsin and I indicated that it should be defeated,” Feingold said. “It discriminates against thousands of people in our communities – our co-workers, our neighbors, our friends, and our family members. It would single out members of a particular group and forever deny them rights and protections granted to all other Wisconsin citizens. It would also outlaw civil unions and jeopardize many legal protections for all unmarried couples, whether of the same or the opposite sex. We shouldn’t enshrine this prejudice in our state’s Constitution.”

At the listening session, held at the Village Hall in Paddock Lake, Wisconsin, Feingold also expressed his support for the right of gays and lesbians to marry.

“As I said at the Kenosha County listening session, gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry and have access to the same rights, privileges and benefits that straight couples currently enjoy,” Feingold added. “Denying people this basic American right is the kind of discrimination that has no place in our laws, especially in a progressive state like Wisconsin. The time has come to end this discrimination and the politics of divisiveness that has become part of this issue.”

Feingold noted that removing the prohibition against gay marriage would not impose any obligation on religious groups. He indicated that no religious faith should ever be forced to conduct or recognize any marriage, but that civil laws on marriage should reflect the principle of equal rights under the law.

Dear Senator,

I was deeply impressed on reading your statement today supporting the rights of all Americans in Wisconsin, including gays and lesbians, to marry and protect their relationship and family members. It is a refreshing and courageous position and I wanted to acknowledge your action and attempt to stop a Wisconsin state constitutional amendment.

As a New York resident I am not in a position to assist you much at present, but should you move forward to a national stage please be assured that continuing to hold our Democratic parties strong beliefs in diversity and fairness will be well remembered by me and acknowledged to everyone I speak.

I have recently contacted Senator Clinton challenging her on her support of DOMA and her refusal to support same sex marriage in New York and nationally. Supposedly, we here in New York, hold an international reputation for civilized and progressive thinking - buy I'd say that acoulade is better reserved today for Wisconsin.

My sincere congratulations for a brave stand.

Don Larson
New York, New York

Dear Senator,

I came to your site because of your statement today on eqaulity for gays and lesbans - to thank you, which I did a few minutes ago in a separate e-mail.

I had to write back because I'm simply astonished at the many, many courageous positions you are taking. All are issues I'm deeply concerned about, from the President's abuse of power through the Patriot Act to the seeming unjustness of the administartion of the death penalty.

You are the most principled man I've witnessed in politics for some time. As a former California resident (New York is a new home for me and my partner of 17 years) I find you ranking with a couple of people I'm deeply proud of in my home state - Senator Barabra Boxer and Mayor Gavin Newsom, as well as a number of lesser know but just as hard-working Democrats. (My partner and I were one of the 4000 or so couples who married, if briefly, in San Francisco).

Senator, they say you are one of the "new breed" of Democrats which I believe our party so desaprately needs to take stand against the divisive and oppresive actions of the current Republican monopoly in Washington and the frightening shift towards a singular far-right Christian viewpoint for our wonderfully multicultural society.

I offer my support, little though it may be worth to you. You have inspired me to keep open the debate and work towards the continued good of all Americans.

I do not know your religious beliefs, and I do not ask, but as a Catholic I find your values to represent the very best of a genuinely loving God inclusive of all. That is the Christianity I was taught.

Thank You!

Don Larson
New York, New York

You may contact Senator Feingold via his website,
just click this post's title to take you there.

Un Homme?

Inside each of us there is an Antinous; a great love, a child and a god.
Why do we drown him?

Into the Wood

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Mr. Frost is wrong. There is no doubt that we come back, time and time again, to the same crossroad. Perhaps not for years, perhaps tomorrow, but we come back. The idea that we solve the great question of our lives with one decision, however thoughtful and premeditated, is a dreamer's answer to the complexity of our lives. Often, I believe, we don't even choose the path, but rather we're swept along the trail like a raft on rapids, trying to avoid the rocks and shoals, yet without success even in this: we always smack into something, and whether we survive or not depends on... what?

Faith? Fortitude? Upper body strength?

I have an image of a man. He is resolved, sure and implacable. Steadfast and true. He posseses beauty and intellect in abundance. He takes the less travelled path and never returns to the question he asked himself that day in the wood. He is the man we all wish to be: the hero without regret. The renaissance gentleman who will live his life over again without change, knowing with surety the rationale of every pace his boots have made upon the fallen autumn leaves.

He is not I.