Take the Long Way Home. Right.

One of the sixth-graders in the altercation in the Lamoni, Iowa, school lunchroom was the son of my family doctor. The other was my son, Jonathan. Both families went to church together every Sunday. It was an awkward situation, to say the least.

It was a fairly typical schoolboy fight. The other boy had deliberately knocked the food off my kid's cafeteria tray. My kid responded by smacking the other boy with the tray. The adults in charge didn't see what started it, but they saw the end of it. Consequently, Jonathan's mother and I were called and told that Jonathan was being suspended for the day.

I knew the other boy. While I liked and trusted his dad, I knew his son was a bullying piece of shit. When I got to the school, I camped out at the assistant principal's office and stayed there for 90 minutes. I did not raise my voice. I just very calmly refused to leave and switch from my position that if he was going to suspend one student for fighting, he should suspend the other.

His main argument was that Jonathan was the only child who was seen. I countered that it takes two to tango, a couple to quarrel, and that the other kid had been bullying my son on his walk home for some time. About halfway through the conversation, the assistant principal said he would look into it but for now Jonathan had to go home.

I needed to get back to work. I said I would be checking in on the matter tomorrow and started to rise.

Then the assistant principal made the remark that caused me to extend the conversation for another 45 minutues:

"You know, if your kid is being bullied on the way home, maybe he should choose another way to walk home."

I sat back down and the lecture began.

I informed him that my son had been given specific instructions about the shortest way home. This was an age where parents were being tormented by news stories of children kidnapped on the way home. Taking a different way home could put my child at risk. It would shorten the time he had after school to get his homework done, do his chores, and have some free time to play before dark. And he was, by the way, the victim in this situation.

It did not matter, I continued, whether any school official had observed the beginning of the fight. The other kid had a reputation for bullying other kids, including his own younger brothers. I could bring witnesses from our church who had seen the big brat in action. My kid was just the one who fought back and got caught. My kid said it was so, and that was that. We had raised him not to lie and he was a lousy liar, anyway, so he usually told the truth. And by the way, if my kid said he was the victim, he was the victim, and telling him to walk another way home --- against the wishes of his parents --- amounted to blaming the victim.

And furthermore, I said, I intend to stay here until I get a promise that the other kid will be suspended for as long as my kid is suspended. Protecting the bullies --- no matter how prominent a doctor their father may be --- is going to end today. Now, if you don't want to discuss it with me, Sir, I said, I can go home and get my son's mother. She has nothing better to do in her life than stand up for her child. She, like any decent mother, is like a mama lion when her child is threatened.

You don't, Sir, want to fuck with my son's mother, I said. She's not nice and calm and medicated like me. She will poke her finger in your chest and rip your chest hair off if you don't do the right thing toward our son. She's crazy that way.

There was a pause while the assistant principal digested this. He got up and excused himself. He did not return, but the principal herself --- a sweet-faced, stout woman who had been there for years and years --- came in and sat down in the assistant principal's chair. She explained that he had some urgent business and that she would be finishing the conversation.

I started to explain the situation to her. She stopped me by raising her hand in a "halt" signal.

"I know your son," she said. "I make it a point to know a little bit about all the children in this school. I don't know him well, but from what I've seen, he's a nice, gentle boy. Maybe a little bit of a loner. But he's not a troublemaker.

"And I also know the other kid and his family. Would you mind shutting the door a minute, Mr. Spires?"

I got up and shut the door and returned to my seat.

"Thank you. The other boy, well, let's just say, he's just like his father was. Maybe a little worse. He's a little piece of shit, if you'll excuse me for putting it that way."

I relaxed. She and I were going to get along just fine. The upshot of the conversation was that Jonathan would finish the day away from home and the other boy would be sent home tomorrow with a letter to his parents explaining his part in the altercation.

And then the principal added, "And your boy should keep walking home the way he always does if that's what you and he want him to do. The school is not responsible, of course, for what happens off the school grounds and he may continue to be bullied. But it's his right and your right to have him take the route you request. It was wrong of the assistant principal to suggest otherwise.

"We do not approve of bullies at our school, but there is only so much we can do about them. I can assure you that bullying will not be tolerated at the school, however, and you and your son can speak to me about any such incidents anytime."

I could see why she was the principal and why she had held onto her job for two generations.

That was when Jonathan was in the sixth grade, back in the early 1990s. He's now 27 and so is the other boy, if someone hasn't killed him in a drive-by shooting or if he hasn't been a victim of friendly fire in his own military platoon. It was a transitional time in public awareness of bullying. When I went through similar problems in the sixth grade, I was told by both my father and teachers that such experiences were a part of growing up for all boys and I should "man up" and learn to fight back.

Nowadays, in the aftermath of the Columbine High School school massacre and other such incidents resulting, in part, from kids snapping after being bullied by other kids, bullying is less tolerated by school officials and parents alike. With one exception.

The conservative propaganda machine Fox News, of all places, reported today that gay and lesbian teens are still bullied more than heterosexual kids. It reports a
new study shows these adolescents get bullied two to three times more than their heterosexual peers.

The Fox report notes that while the researchers aren't sure why this sexual minority gets bullied more than others or the type of bullying, which can include various verbal insults and physical assaults, they suggest in general those who are different from the social norm are often bully targets. Whatever the cause, the researchers say, the results have implications for parents and schools alike.

"Students, parents, schools and community organizations can work to create environments that are supportive and accepting of all students, regardless of their sexual orientation," said lead study author Dr. Elise Berlan, a physician in Adolescent Medicine at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio and faculty member at Ohio State University. "Schools, in particular, need to work to increase the awareness of bullying."

The research adds to accumulating results on the topic of bullying, with studies showing kids who bully at school are more likely to do the same at home; workplace bullying can wreak havoc at the office and is worse than sexual harassment; and key nonverbal cues could identify children who are likely to be bullied and rejected by others.

The new results also suggest older kids are still vulnerable to bullies, even though past studies have shown the prevalence of bullying declines after middle-school years. Fox reports that lesbians and gays were the least likely to bully others, with none of the girls who identified as lesbian saying they had bullied others in the previous year.

The data analyzed by Berlan and her colleagues came from 2001 information collected in an ongoing study of American teens, which included more than 7,500 adolescents, ages 14 to 22. The participants were children of female registered nurses who took part in the Nurses' Health Study II, and they may not be representative of the general population. The results are published online in the January issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Of the male teens, about 0.5 percent identified themselves as bisexual, 1.4 percent as gay and 4.5 percent as "mostly heterosexual." For teen girls, 1.9 percent identified themselves as bisexual, 0.3 percent as lesbian, and 9.5 percent as mostly heterosexual. The rest reported they were heterosexual.

No group was immune to bullying. Nearly 44 percent of gay male participants said they had been bullied in the previous year, compared with 26 percent of heterosexuals who reported the same. For girls, 40 percent of lesbians indicated they had been bullied in the past year, while just over 15 percent of heterosexuals reported such. About 35 percent of bisexual and mostly homosexual guys had been bullied and about 25 percent of their female counterparts.

Scientists have known that gay, lesbian and bisexual kids are more likely than their peers to experience any kind of victimization, whether at school or in other parts of their lives, Berlan said. Now bullying can be added to the list.

"The importance of that is we know that it's not just that they're bullied and that's a normative experience for young people," Berlan said. "We know kids who are bullied have health consequences of those bullying experiences. Kids who are bullied are more likely to have physical and mental health problems."

Though the study didn't get at the content of bullying, some research has shown that regardless of the target's sexual orientation, bullies tend to spout disparaging homosexual content, according to Berlan.

To my knowledge, the doctor's son didn't say anything homophobic to my son Jonathan, whom I assume is not gay, although he, like all the kids who call me dad, has been called "queer," "faggot," "bitch" and other pejoratives by other kids at some point. It seems to be something that kids are learning early --- and learning that it's a way of getting under each other's skins.

In any case, there is a new generation of children coming along. Some are my daughter Tracy's kids, who call me Papaw James. The older ones know they have a gay grandpa, and some other gay family members, too. And to the credit of their parents, they won't be among the bullies who use "gay" as an epithet for other kids.

That's some comfort. But how long will it take before such good behavior is exhibited by a majority of kids toward each other?

Haitian Orphans and a Bunch of Baptist Dumbasses

The Associated Press photo of a group of frightened Baptist church women being held in a Haitian jail cell is very moving.

The women, part of a group of men and women from Central Valley Baptist Church in Idaho, were only trying to do the right thing: Rescue some orphans from the devastation of Haiti following last month's horrible earthquake.

People from around the world, like these women, have been moved by pictures and video of crying and injured children in Haiti and reports that many of them have lost their parents. These women, moved by their Christian faith --- and maybe just a little bit of Christian arrogance --- went to Haiti to "help the children". They ended up getting arrested for trying to smuggle the kids across the border into the Dominican Republic without a permit.

Today, according to Frank Bajak of the Associated Press, this group of missionaries faced more questioning by a local judge, while an orphanage director said many of the children had parents.

Bajak reported Haitian Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue as saying the evidence from the judge will be presented to a Haitian district attorney who will decide whether to file criminal charges against the 10 Americans.

The Baptists reportedly claim they were only trying to help orphans survive the earthquake. But legal experts say taking children across a border without documents or government permission can be considered child trafficking.

And at the SOS Children's Village orphanage where authorities are protecting the 33 children, regional director Patricia Vargas said none who are old enough and willing to talk said they are parentless: "Up until now we have not encountered any who say they are an orphan." Vargas said most of the children are between 3 and 6 years old, and unable to provide phone numbers or any other details about their origins.

The Americans apparently enlisted a clergyman who went knocking on doors asking people if they wanted to give away their children, the director of Haiti's social welfare agency, Jeanne Bernard Pierre, told The Associated Press.

"One child said to me, 'When they came knocking on our door asking for children, my mom decided to give me away because we are six children and by giving me away she would have only five kids to care for,'" Bernard Pierre said, according to Bajak's report.

So here's the deal: A bunch of good-hearted Baptists, apparently sincere in their desire to "help" the Haitian orphans, decided they were above the law and just loaded a bunch of kids in a bus and drove off with them, presumably to place them in some nice Baptist homes in America or somewhere else.

And because it was easier to do it that way than deal with the bureaucratic paperwork that is made more difficult by the loss of records during the earthquake, the Baptists just decided to skip all that.

In the process, they've created an international incident, embarrassed themselves and their religion, and caused more stress for the kids they were trying to help.

This incident is very typical of the simplistic thinking of many fundamentalist religious types. They view the world in black and white --- "straights" are good, gays are bad; "Christians" have good intentions, "non-Christians" don't.

I had a friend a few years back who was a Presbyterian minister with a degrees in religion, theology and divinity from Princeton University. Obviously, a high-brow type, although he had a sense of humor. He told of having to deal with a small town ministerial association with an ecumenical mix of members. Some, like himself, had spent years getting their religious credentials from Methodist, Catholic, Episcopalian and other institutions of higher learning. Other participants were pastors of small fundamentalist or evangelical churches whose paths to the pulpit started with tent revivals and snake handling.

"We have a deal with them," he said. "We'll call them ministers if they promise to call us theologians. Of course, we have to teach some of them how to pronounce 'theologian'."

The Idaho Baptists, like so many on society's religious right wing, refused to acknowledge life's complexities and got themselves into trouble. They were impatient to "save" children and assumed, because they believe they have God on their side, that God would make it easy for them to just snatch up Haitian orphans like the prizes at an Easter Egg hunt and cart them off to a better life and salvation.

They were naive, to put it politely. Less charitable observers would call them dumbasses.

Did they really think that it would be easy for a group of amateurs to come in and fix one of Haiti's biggest problems in one swoop? Their ignorance of the island nation's troubled history is obvious --- it wasn't the earthquake that created all these orphans. Haiti is a ecobiological mess --- poverty, bad weather, few natural resources have plagued the country for centuries. There is very little birth control. People have their babies and when there are too many at home, many of the oldest ones are turned out on the streets, no matter how young they are.

Haiti's government --- embedded with corruption for decades --- has made some efforts to provide for orphans. There are government-run and private orphanages in the country. But, as one child welfare official put it in another news report after the earthquake --- "We only have room for a few hundred orphans. Before the earthquake, we were turning away 80 a day."

And that person was a director of an orphanage that had been destroyed by the earthquake. The children who survived were being sheltered --- and guarded from predators --- by a few employees of the destroyed building as the kids slept on the streets.

The misguided Idaho Baptists deserve kudos for the what appears to be a sincere desire to help. But they have just created more problems by their presumptions that they could be saviors.

According to the AP report, Prime Minister Max Bellerive has suggested the Americans could be prosecuted in the United States because Haiti's shattered court system may not be able to cope with a trial.

"It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents. And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong," Bellerive told the AP.

The White House has said the case remains in Haitian hands for now, according to the AP report. Apparently, the U.S., with its high unemployment, health care crisis, wars in the Middle East and prosecutions of assorted terrorists, has other legal priorities than having to deal with the headache of a bunch of religious loons who inadvertently committed an act that some might describe as kidnapping.

The Lessons We Don't Learn on the Playground

I was one of those kids who got his school lunch money stolen, who was shoved into school lockers, who was last picked in gym class, and who had his books knocked out of his arms when he walked down the school halls.

I was one of those kids whose name was used when mean girls, wanting to hurt another girl, wrote notes that said "Carol likes him." "Susan kisses him." "Linda wants to marry him."

I also was a kid who, at age 15, was dragged into a car one night by four "straight" older boys, driven around and beaten up and forced to perform oral sex while the assailants forcibly masturbated me.

From the moment I entered first grade through most of high school, education was a living hell for me. By fifth grade,it became obvious that even my teacher, Mrs. Bonna Teichert, regarded me with the same contempt as my classmates --- and in fact, her contempt fed the students' contempt and dislike. Somewhere around that point, I stopped wondering why everybody hated me and just went through the days of my life wanting to survive. By junior high, if Reba McEntire's song, "I Can't Even Get the Blues No More," had been written, I would have adopted it as my theme song.

By ninth grade, when the rape incident occurred, I knew there was something wrong with me. I knew that I had been sexually assaulted because of some kind of behavior of my own and I accepted that. I also decided to change myself as best I could. It was too late to become a jock, but I could at least start dressing like one. I changed the way I walked and talked as best I could, and I made sure I had a girlfriend at all times.

When an older girl asked me to take her to the senior prom, I said I would if she would fuck me and talk about it. Apparently the offer was enticing to her because she did. By my senior year, I was outwardly as straight as they come.

After high school, I married --- twice --- and breeded, lots of times. In addition to the two wives, there are assorted baby mamas out there, at least one of whom sent our son Patrick out on a mission to find his real dad --- me --- after he came out as a gay man. When he showed up on my doorstep, I was surprised --- his mother had neglected to tell either him or me that we existed.

I have only one son who was in my arms on the day he was born. There are other children, adopted and fostered, but the only son who was born during one of my marriages is Jonathan, who is now a 27-year-old college student majoring in mass communication, just like his dad. God help him.

Jonathan, like me, was a very happy, sunny-dispositioned child until he got into school. And then he started to experience some of the same things I did --- while he would have some friends, there were other kids who just didn't like him. One kid in particular --- a boy two years older who came from a very different, less stable family background from Jonathan --- went out of his way to beat up Jonathan on the playground. Jonathan, who had been taught by his parents that fighting was wrong, would just take it and come home crying.

I finally told him he had a right to defend himself, even though the school's policy was to paddle all participants in a playground fight, no matter who was the aggressor and who was the victim.

The next day, Jonathan beat the shit out of the older boy. The adults supervising the playground said that he was still swinging when they yanked him off the kid. He got paddled, and took it like a man.

And he was never the same sunny kid that he had been. His grades went down. He rebuffed attempts at friendship. Today, he's regarded as a gentle, sweet-natured guy and is genuinely liked and respected by his professors and fellow college students whom he lets get close to him. But he's still a loner --- a pattern that looks to be his for the rest of his life.

I read a report, "Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected," this morning by a writer named Robin Nixon, a contributor to LiveScience.com. Nixon writes that kids who get bullied and snubbed by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a child's behavior that can lead to social rejection.

The factors, apparently, involve a child's inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.

According to Nixon's article, in the United States, 10 to 13 percent of school-age kids experience some form of rejection by their peers. In addition to causing mental health problems, bullying and social isolation can increase the likelihood a child will get poor grades, drop out of school, or develop substance abuse problems, the researchers say.

Nixon quotes Clark McKown, lead researcher at the Rush Neurobehavioral Center in Chicago as saying this public health issue is "under-addressed."

According to the study, unstructured playtime - when children interact without the guidance of an authority figure - is when children experiment with the relationship styles they will have as adults. It is a time when kids are on their own and are winging it without much knowledge of the basic rules of operating in society. They make mistakes in the way they deal with each other --- usually unintentional.

I can see that. I avoided contact with my fellow classmates for nearly 30 years after graduation --- a time in which I became a Type A control freak, always needing to be in charge of all aspects of my life, especially those parts that affected my self-image. It resulted in an emotional breakdown at age 40 and some time spent in counseling, during which I finally acknowledged that despite all my efforts to appear otherwise, I was a gay man.

Even after that acknowledgment, I continued to have problems. I started having nightmares about being back in high school. I would be a man in my 40s, but everyone else looked just as they did in the 1960s.

In 1999, I forced myself to go to my 30th class reunion. At this event, I realized that I was not the only one who had aged. The mean girls had turned into mothers and young grandmothers. The boys, like me, had thinning hair and soft waistlines. Everyone seemed --- mellower. One of the more popular mean girls actually came up to me and apologized for something she remembered doing to me that I had completely forgotten.

"I was so scared all the time," she said. "I hurt people before they hurt me." And she was a cheerleader, I thought. She was popular.

And some of them told me they were intimidated by me. I always seemed so confident in high school, they said. Always had a girl on my arm. Always seemed to know what I was doing and what I wanted out of life.

Apparently, I had been something of a "mean girl," too. I learned my lessons well.

In the study reported on by Robin Nixon, 284 children, ages 4 to 16 years old, watched movie clips and looked at photos before judging the emotions of the actors based on their facial expressions, tones of voice and body postures. Various social situations were also described and the children were questioned about appropriate responses.

The results were then compared to parent/teacher accounts of the participants' friendships and social behavior.

Kids who had social problems also had problems in at least one of three different areas of nonverbal communication: reading nonverbal cues; understanding their social meaning; and coming up with options for resolving a social conflict.

A child, for example, simply may not notice a person's scowl of impatience or understand what a tapped foot means. Or she may have trouble reconciling the desires of a friend with her own, according to the report.

When children have prolonged struggles with socializing, it creates a vicious cycle. Shunned children have few opportunities to practice social skills, while popular kids are busy perfecting theirs. The researchers concluded that just having one or two friends can help a child develop the social skills he needs.

Parents, teachers and other adults in a child's life can help, too, Nixon reported. Instead of reacting with anger or embarrassment to a child who, say, asks Aunt Mindy if her new hairdo was a mistake, parents should teach social skills with the same tone they use for teaching long division or proper hygiene. If presented as a learning opportunity, rather than a punishment, children usually appreciate the lesson.

I'm a believer that kids, whether minors or adults, have to learn how to deal with their own mistakes. But it's hard not to want to protect them. When Jonathan started withdrawing from contact with other kids, it broke my heart, because I knew EXACTLY what he was going through. In junior high, he would come home every day complaining about some kids not leaving him alone. One day, I took some time off work and went to the playground during the lunch break. Sure enough, two boys started following Jonathan around and making comments behind his back. At one point, he started running to get away from them and they started running in pursuit.

At that point, I got out of my car and walked onto the playground. I am a big man and I was a bigger man then. I took long strides through the hordes of children on the playground and grabbed both of my son's pursuers by their coats and took them to the principal's office with Jonathan following us.

I made all three boys tell their versions of what had happened. Jonathan said, "I just wanted to be left alone."

The other two boys said they didn't realize Jonathan wanted to be left alone and that they hadn't intended to hurt him. Just tease him a little because he always kept to himself.

The principal, who was a friend of mine and knew that Jonathan had a crazy dad, smiled and said he would handle it from there. Apparently some discussions about social boundaries took place. Jonathan was advised that not everyone is his enemy and the other two were told to respect other people's rights to privacy.

No further incidents were reported. But Jonathan still has issues with trusting other people, even though he makes what are obviously painful efforts to socialize. He is just one of those people who, for whatever reasons, is happier being alone.

It breaks my heart sometimes, but at this point, it has to be his choice about how he wants to live his life. I see him acting out many of the same behaviors I went through, just in different ways. I liked having people around me, but didn't let them close. He seems to just like being alone because it's easier --- human interaction is messy and he likes his life tidy. I guess all that yelling about him needing to clean his room sank in, although it's his life, not his dorm room, that stays sparse and free of clutter.

More than 800 service members could lose jobs under DOMA while Obama administration dithers

Dumb right-wing joke of the day: What special weapons do gay soldiers receive as standard equipment?

Answer: A Swish-Army Knife.

Can someone explain to me why the U.S. government needs a YEAR to STUDY the U.S. military's very stupid "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy when top officials of the U.S. government have already stated their beliefs that it is a dumb policy that never should have been implemented in the first place?

Members of the gay and gay supportive communities across the nation this week were heartened when President Obama, in his State of the Union address last week, called for an end to the 17-year-old policy that has cost an estimated 14,000 gay and lesbian American military personnel their jobs. However, their reaction was cautiously optimistic at best, considering the Obama administration in its first year pretty much adopted a policy of putting the interests of the gay and lesbian community --- which played a big part in helping elect Obama and increasing the Democrat majorities in Congress --- on the back burner.

And their caution has proven wise: This week, while not backing away from the announced plan to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the administration's officials has proven once again that its primary modus operandi, at least toward the gay community, is well-intentioned dithering and delays.

Today, national news wires are reporting that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he wants Congress to repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy by the end of the year. Great news, that on the surface reemphasizes Team Obama's apparent desire to make things right with a large voting group of Americans that has traditionally voted for the president's party.

HOWEVER ...

Gates also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he has appointed a "high-level working group" to identify and solve potential issues surrounding the removal of the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the armed forces. And it's estimated that it will take a YEAR for the group to make its recommendations.

Why a year? Opponents of DADT are rightly asking that question. The policy was first imposed by a presidential order made by President Clinton in 1993 --- one of the first orders of his newly-installed administration. Doesn't President Obama have equal authority, as commander-in-chief of the military, to rescind that order?

The answer lies in four numbers which just happen to be the current year: 2010. This year is an election year. While the president himself is not up for re-election, all of the House of Representatives and a third of the U.S. Senate are. And since gay rights issues of any kind tend to be a hot button issue that the Republicans use to their advantage by fanning voter homophobia, it's going to be politically risky business to make this obviously needed change at this time.

Let's see, the president made his announcement on Jan. 20. And today, Feb. 2, Secretary Gates is saying that "a year" is needed to work out the kinks in DADT. That would mean that under the current timetable, there would be no effect on DADT until 2011 --- after the fall election. Is it possible that the delaying move is an attempt to mitigate voter fallout for the Democrats?

If the estimated figure of 14,000 people in the past year who have lost their military jobs because of DADT is true, that would mean that during the coming year --- while Obama, Gates and the "high-level working group" dither and stall the de-implementation of the homophobic policy --- there is still time for roughly 824 American gay and lesbian service members to lose their jobs. That's 824 people, all presumably without any other blemishes on their service records, who could be outed by a policy that most observers, regardless of political persuasion, agree is not working very well, and also having a great effect on all branches of military service during a time of war. Military recruitment has been down, down, down in recent years. The branches of the service cannot afford to lose service personnel who have done nothing wrong except be born gay or lesbian.

There can be no other reason for delaying the end of DADT other than politics. And stupid politics, at that. The people who are going to oppose the end of DADT will do so anyway, so there will be very little gained by delaying. And support for the Obama administration, after one year in office, has dwindled in no small part because of its neglect of a core group of supporters from the gay and lesbian community. One way to get the gay and lesbian public opinion poll numbers up could be a bold and quick move on repealing DADT.

In other words, delaying DADT means no gains and the people who are annoyed by the current administration will continue to be annoyed. Speeding up the removal of DADT means the possibility of regaining some political ground with people who are rapidly becoming disenchanted.

One reason Gates has stated for the delay and the need for the study by the "high-level working group" is that there are a number of issues surrounding an appeal, including questions such as what timeline would make the most sense and whether the Pentagon would begin offering benefits for gay and lesbian partners of military members.

This is all good, but it can still take place after the presidential order. The commander-in-chief can make an order any time he wants to and has plenty of bureaucratic underlings beneath him who can work out the details. That's the way it worked back in 1993, when President Clinton issued the order.

One of the most clinging criticisms of President Obama in the past year is his tendency to call for consensus, to bring as many people into the decision-making process as possible. This amounts to tossing one bone out for all the dogs in a neighborhood to fight over. It just creates chaos. Sometimes consensus is good --- and sometimes a president needs to be presidential and lead.

Defense Secretary Gates says military officials will report back to him in 45 days on ways to relax the policy within the existing law. What are they going to report? What are they going to recommend? That all U.S. military bases will have to build news special shower stalls --- some for the lesbians and some for the gays, so all the straights won't have to worry about being seen naked by openly queer military personnel? That goes back to the discredited presumptions of the mid-20th century that all homosexual people are sexual predators.

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, who chairs the senate Armed Services committee said he supports the change.

"I agree with what President Obama said in his State of the Union address," Levin was quoted as saying. "The American public overwhelmingly supports the rights of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military."

Levin and other lawmakers haven't laid out any specific plans for outright repeal of the law, but he did say it was possible a moratorium on the policy could be added to the National Defense Authorization spending bill before Congress.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, usually the ultimate pragmatist, is on record as saying that a delay in doing away with DADT is unnecessary and that it should be done "now."

"I don't see why we would need a year," Reid said.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whose wife Cindy and daughter Megan are both active supporters of gay rights issues, is an opponent of the repeal. McCain said at the hearing that he was disappointed by Gates' plans to begin planning for the repeal, and indicated he intends to oppose any Congressional move to change the policy. He and other Republicans on the committee cited a letter signed by more than 1,000 former military officials -- dubbed the Flag & General Officers of the Military -- who called for the policy to remain in effect, citing concerns over "morale, discipline, unit cohesion and overall military readiness."

While McCain is a decorated hero of the Vietnam war and is usually deferred to because of his war record, his judgment has not always been flawless. When he ran for president against Obama in 2008, his first decision as a candidate --- to select former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, an inexperienced social conservative whose main appeal was to the extremist fringe of the Republican party and not to more independent voters, as his running mate --- proved to be one of the main reasons he was defeated: He is not in touch with the majority of Americans. McCain would be better off touching base with his wife and daughter on issues relating to gay people and civil rights.

Supporters of the repeal questioned the need for such a long timetable before making the reversal official, according to a news report filed by Nathan Hurst of the Detroit News' Washington Bureau.

"We strongly applaud (Secretary) Gates supporting the President's view that (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) needs to go," said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. "It's a matter of when and how, he said, not if."

The "when" should be immediately and not a year from now. We need the gay and lesbian service members currently serving their country honorably.

Ideal

In an ideal world, he --- whoever he is --- and I would be spending this evening doing mundane things.

We would have had supper together and talked about his day and my day and things that occurred at our jobs. We'd talk about the kids and the cat, about jokes we heard or told, about little bits of gossip. Afterwards, one of us would clear off the table and put away the leftovers and the other would do the dishes. We wouldn't ask who was going to do what, we'd just do it.

After the kitchen lights were dimmed, one of us would go check his e-mail while the other did whatever he needed to do to prepare for the next day. Then we'd switch roles and repeat the process.

We'd maybe watch some TV or a movie, maybe make some popcorn or get out a snack. We'd sit on the couch, close to each other, and snuggle or rub each other's feet. Or maybe we'd not turn the TV on at all, just listen to music and use the couch for more romantic purposes like we used to do during our days of courtship.

We'd probably go to bed early --- maybe read, maybe make love, maybe just talk. We would live quietly and going to bed and rising early would be our custom.

It would be an ordinary life compiled from two people in an extraordinary love affair. Two guys glad to be with each other, committed for the long haul and glad to be safe under the same roof and in each other's arms. Some people would admire us for the simplicity of our lives and how we complimented each other. Some people might be envious. Most people would be glad for us.

We probably wouldn't spend a lot of time on sites like LifeOut or Gay.com. The people who mattered would have our telephone numbers and our e-mail addresses. We would be too busy with just the ordinary stuff of life and not need the drama and bitterness and general unhappiness that make up most of social networking sites.

But that would only be if it were an ideal world. Ideal worlds don't exist. Except in dreams.

The Angry Stage of Grief

Mother always used to say, "Be patient. This will pass."

She said it back from as early as I can remember. It applied to all sorts of life situations. She'd tell it to me when my older sister would slap me for being a younger brother. She'd tell it to my sister when I "baptized" her valuable Madame Alexander dolls in a washtub in the backyard, leaving them floating face down and causing their wigs and face paint to fall off.

She'd tell it to my dad when he was laid off or fired from a construction site because he'd mouthed off at a foreman and now had to go stand in line at the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union Hall for his next work assignment.

She told it to my cousin Phyllis when her first husband was electrocuted while trying to restore a power line one Thanksgiving, so someone else could go home and have dinner with his family. She told it to her nephew Fred as he watched his three ex-wives all stand around his mother's casket and embrace each other like sisters because they loved their former mother-in-law more than they did their ex-husband.

She would tell it to young parents at church when their babies would act out badly and disrupt the service. And she said it every day to my dad when he'd get up in the middle of the night because his elderly hound dog would start barking for food. Except then, she meant it --- she prayed every day that the dog would die and sometimes tried to hurry that process along by slipping Darvon into his dog food. The dog died of old age, just the same.

When Dad died in 1999, Mother stopped eating. Sis and I were worried that she would starve herself to death before we were ready to let her go --- we had just lost one parent and were dealing with that grief. My sister had just buried her second husband. We didn't need any more deaths to deal with.

So I went down and spent a few days with Mother. I told her I wasn't leaving until she ate something. I cooked everything I could think of for her. She said the thought of eating turned her stomach. I would fix something else, and when she rejected that, I'd try another dish.I finally set all the fresh fruit I could find in the house in front of her and told her, like she had told me and Sis when we were kids, "Eat your supper. There are starving people somewhere in the world who would kill for this food."

"Let them kill me for it, then," she said, looking for all the world like the stubborn little girl her older siblings always said she was.

"Mother, this grief you're feeling. It will pass," I said.

"Who told you that shit?" she said, knowing full well who had told it to me.

Shit? Mother said "Shit." Heheh. She's going to be OK.

I grinned at her. She scowled and started peeling a banana.

Mother survived Dad by 18 months. That means she went through at least a year of doing things without him --- Valentine's Day, his birthday, Easter, their anniversary, Mother's Day, Father's Day, her birthday, all the big events. And then she started on the cycle again.

She had dropped down below 100 pounds when she started peeling that banana. By the time of her death, in October 2000, she had started making plans for the next phase of her life. She checked herself into an assisted care home for women, got her lunches at the local senior citizens center, and was even starting to play coquette with would-be suitors.

"I'll never marry any of them," she said. "Your father was the only old man I could stand living with. And besides, none of these men are strong enough to keep up with me, even though they keep sniffing round my door like your dad's old hound dog."

On the night before Mother's death, Sis took her out to a Ponderosa steakhouse, where Mother cleaned out the buffet single-handedly. She had her appetite back. The next morning, at the assisted living center, she died hungry. She raised herself out of her easy chair, took three steps toward the dining room, where they were serving breakfast, and then her body collapsed, sending her spirit off into eternity, where rumor has it, she visits hell everyday to tell Richard Nixon, "This will pass. NOT! Hahahaha!"

I miss my parents. I am grateful for their lives and the time I had with them. They loved me more than anyone has ever loved me, unconditionally, and taught me how to do the same for them and for others.

I am also angry as hell at them, an unreasonable anger filled with grief. They went off and left me with my batshit crazy older sister as my nearest relative who remembers the past. My sister hates me, tried to stab me with a garden trowel in 2006, and hates my parents --- all because they decided to give her a brother she didn't want in the first place and then left her alone in the world with him.

My anger at my parents, of course, is completely irrational. It is also a natural part of the grieving process --- something I've put off for 10 years since they both died, because it's an unpleasant emotion that is no fun to experience.

I do that a lot with grief. In 2006, I was fired from a job because I was gay. I refused to admit that such a thing could happen to me. My then-partner bit his tongue and said nothing when I would try to analyze the situation and "understand" the point of view of the supervisor who had fired me. It kept coming back to, "It doesn't make sense. I was doing everything I was supposed to do."

And then I ran into two former co-workers, also gay, who had been fired under similar circumstances. And I was hired at a new job, where I made sure everybody knew I was gay from day one and asked if they were going to have a problem with it. When it was clear that it wasn't going to be a problem, and in fact, the company had written policies of non-discrimination because of sexual orientation, it just suddenly dawned on me that I had been gay-bashed by an employer.

I said so, to my then-partner, who replied quietly, "I wondered when you would realize it. Everybody else does." I said so to my friends, straight and gay.

And I wrote an angry letter to my former supervisor, saying, "I know this is what you did, you conscienceless bitch!"

After a while my partner said, "You can stop being angry now. It's time to let this pass."

And then I realized that it's true. Men DO tend to fall in love with people who remind them of their mothers ...

My anger at the job loss was necessary for me to move on. I started allowing myself to feel anger.

I visited a cemetery and the grave of a former co-worker who committed suicide. I told her I was angry at her for shooting herself and leaving her family and friends to grieve.

I found a picture of a gay friend who was a minister. He had died of AIDS-related complications. I had delivered a eulogy for him at his funeral, full of tears and sad smiles and celebratory anecdotes and jokes. I told his picture that I was angry at him for dying and leaving me to move on.

I hate anger. I hate, hate, hate it. Feeling anger makes me sick inside. And yet, it's a normal feeling, something we have that is instilled in our biochemical system from day one. Babies express it well, when they are hungry and hurting and no one is tending to their needs.

Somewhere along the line as adults, we're taught to curb it in because it is inappropriate in daily life. Which it is --- it upsets people; interferes with the orderly way of things. But it is still a part of us, something that needs to be dealt with eventually.

Sis, my crazy sister, deals with it all the time. Her nickname in nursery school was "The Atomic Bomb." She beat the crap out of two second grade boys once (when she was in the first grade) because they touched her bicycle in an inappropriate manner. When she was working as a librarian on a Bookmobile in Baltimore, Maryland, she shoved the driver off the bus because he had slammed the door in her face. She then drove it back to the garage herself.

She went to see a psychiatrist to see why she was angry all the time. He told her to make a list of all the people she was angry at; she responded by filling up an entire stenopad with a list of names of everyone she believed had wronged her.

I was on the first page. Why? I asked her.

"You were born," she said.

She fought with her co-workers, she fought with me, she unleashed and unleashes her wrath on all four of husbands, all of whom were or are named Bill.

She is the opposite of me --- I hold it in for years and then have an outburst that keeps me from going as batshit crazy as she is.

I still have to finish grieving for the death of my best childhood friend, David. We had lost touch with each other for 30 years and then found each other on a site for gay men married to women. We spent a few years visiting and talking and exchanging e-mails and watching "American Idol" together and singing jazz karaoke together. We even made love once, just to see what it would be like.

Then his wife called me and said, "He's dead."

I don't even have a shirt of his to hang in my closet, like Ennis Del Mar did in "Brokeback Mountain."

This fall, I broke up with my former partner. He wanted it. I didn't. He was good to me at a time I needed someone to be good to me, so I didn't have much of a leg to stand on. Apparently I wasn't what he needed anymore.

And so I left. I moved into an apartment, even though I knew my job was being phased out --- more grief. And I went inside the apartment and shut the door. My kids came by and visited and did what they could for me, but ultimately they had to go back to their own lives and leave me to face it alone.

And so I have faced it. Quietly. Unhappily. And not getting angry because my partner was good to me throughout most of my relationship. He's a decent man who loved me when I needed to be loved. It's just that love did not last.

He said, "I'm in this for the long run." And he did things that made me believe he meant it.

He said, of our differing levels of income, "I'm not keeping score." And I thought he meant that, too.

But the truth is, he WASN'T in it for the long run and he WAS keeping score. Nothing wrong with that. People make statements they think they mean at the time and then find out they don't mean them or can't live up to them. I understand that. But it still hurts. And today, I'm finally admitting that I'm angry that he got my hopes up that something in my life wouldn't pass --- that it might be forever.

And the anger, I suspect, is a good thing. It's a stumbling block in the grieving process, a log fallen across my emotional path, that I need to get through. I need to dive into the waterfall of angry grief so I can get to the other side.

So that it, like everything in life, will pass.

There is a guy on LifeOut, a handsome guy with a way of cutting to the chase in all his comments, who I admire a lot for his ability to express his anger. He has a lot of it --- in fact, there are some days that I'm afraid to read what he writes because his anger is so visible and toxic. But I do, because I admire beauty of all kinds, especially the beauty of written expression.

I only know bits and pieces of his story --- I suspect that his anger comes from a well so deep that it the base of it is something so horrible that even he can't approach it. But he lets it out, as much as he can stand --- and perhaps as much as he thinks the rest of us can stand.

I know that I have to let the anger out to help myself get past the grief in my life, so I will be fit to associate with others again.

Deep in my heart, I don't want to be alone, yet I can see that right now, I'm not fit to be near anyone else, to let them close to my heart. And part of the process is dealing with the grief --- I'm handling the sadness, starting to accept the loneliness, have certainly been through the denial. But the anger, that's a tough one. It's something you just have to let out through your pores, I guess, like in a sweat lodge.

But even it will pass, I keep telling myself. I hope I haven't waited too long --- become too old --- to survive it.

The Man on the Side of the Highway

So yesterday after running a bunch of bill-payment errands, I stopped at this Christian-run thrift shop I'd never been to before.

It was the usual thing --- mostly clothing for women and children, used Harlequin and Silhouette paperback romances, weird knickknacks and old dishes and glassware that looked like they'd been through the dishwasher too many times without one of those detergents that always remove "spots."

There also was an area stocked with canned goods and other items which was labeled "Food Pantry." Several women with PHDs (Pentecostal Hairdos in these parts) were working there and humming along to some kind of gospel music coming from a battered CD player.

While I was perusing a copy of a book called "Alcoholics Anonymous Explained: The Later Years" (there was no copy of "The Earlier Years" on the rack), the director of the store opened her office door and escorted a young woman, weeping with grateful tears, over to the Food Pantry.

The store director, who had Baptist Big Hair (different from PHDs because of the quantities of Silvernuke hairspray involved) looked around the store and focused her eyes on me.

"Can I help you, sir?" her voice boomed across the store.

I looked around. I was the only man in the store. She walked over to me, saw the book in my hands, and motioned for me to come into her office.

"We can talk more privately in here," she said. I started to put the book back on the shelf but she said, "You can bring that with you, sir."

I followed her in and she pulled out an application form from her desk.

"Name?" She said, her pen poised.

I gave her my name and then said, "I'm not here asking for help."

"It's OK, hon-eee." she said, putting her pen down and reaching across the desk to grab and hold tightly to my hand. "God understands your needs."

My needs? If God understood my needs right at that moment, God would make that woman relax her bonecrushing hold on my hand.

"You don't understand," I said. "I'm just here looking and ---"

"And I see you've found it," she said, pointing to the AA book. "God helps us when we're struggling."

I was starting struggle loose from her grasp. I noticed a Broadway playbill on the shelves behind her. I decided to let my gay sense of self-preservation kick in.

"Oh, I see you've been to see 'Wicked!'" I said. I gestured desperately with my eyes at the playbill --- she frowned and turned to look over her shoulder.

"Yes," she said. "My son is starring in it." She relaxed and I yanked my hand free.

"Starring in it? Really? How cool!" I said. "Which part is he playing, Elphaba or Glinda?"

That rattled her.

"He's not really starring in it," she said, frowning in a way that made her Baptist big hair look even bigger and stiffer. "He plays several parts."

"But he SEEMS like he's starring," I said. "I know how that is. I have a son who's trying to be an actor. Whenever I see him in a play, it always seems like he's the most important character, even if he's just holding a spear."

She stared blankly at me for a moment and then put on her smile again.

"What DID you come in here for today, hon-eee?"

"Um ..." I stammered. "Uh, God wants me to buy this book, I guess."

She frowned.

"Hardbacks are fifty cents," she said. "If that's all, are you getting enough to eat?"

My stomach growled. I had skipped breakfast that morning, mainly because I was out of milk for my Cheerios.

"Well, actually, I was just going to see about getting some milk and ..."

"We don't have milk here, hon-eee," she said. "The deep freezer broke down. But you can have whatever else we have. LE-THA!"

When she bellowed, an elderly woman shuffled into the office.

"LETHA, I WANT YOU TO FILL UP SOME FOOD BAGS FOR THIS GENTLEMAN!" Obviously deaf --- although I don't know whether she started out that way or lost her hearing from having the store director yell at her, Letha smiled and shuffled off and started putting canned goods in plastic bags and loading them into a grocery cart.

"Ma'am," I said. "I didn't come here for a handout, I just came in here because I'd never been here before and was curious and ..."

"God brought you here, hon-eee," she said. "And before I let you go, I want you to pray with me." And before I could say yes or no or "holy shit", she started in a'praying --- praying for the love of God, for the beautiful day, for the shipment of Tampons that someone had donated that morning. She gave thanks for God leading me to their thrift store and for the person who wrote the second part of the book about Alcoholics Anonymous and for me and the great things that God wanted me to do and just about anything that could be squeezed into a five minute prayer delivered faster than a speeding bullet.

When she was done, she got up and walked me to the door. Letha, grinning, gave me a grocery cart with six bags full of food. Grateful that I was going to be allowed to leave, I took the bags out to my car and drove away as fast as I could drive. Halfway home, I realized I hadn't paid for the book. Nor had I brought it with me.

On the way home, I passed a man standing on the side of the road. He had a dufflebag beside him and was holding a sign:

"HOMELESS AND OUT OF WORK. WILL WORK FOR FOOD OR LODGING."

I drove past him, wondering if I should pick him up and drive him back to the thrift store. I wondered about it all the way home.

The bags contained cans of peas, corn, green beans, chicken noodle soup, fruit salad, Dinty Moore beef stew, Vienna sausages, a couple of loaves of bread, some packaged bologna, a can of coffee, and toilet paper, a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant and a bag of potatoes. All stuff I had. When I unpacked it and put it away, I couldn't get my pantry doors closed.

I sat down and thought about the man on the side of the road. I looked at the overstuffed pantry in my kitchen.

And then I remembered I forgot to buy milk.

I got up, started to put on my coat and then stopped.

I went into the kitchen and got out a loaf of bread. I opened the bologna and made two sandwiches. I opened the peanut butter and got out a jar of jelly I already had. I made four sandwiches, wrapped them in napkins and then put them and the rest of the bologna, the peanut butter and the bread into a plastic bag, along with an extra table knife. I got out a couple of Diet Cokes from my refrigerator and put them in the bag. I got the toilet paper, the deodorant, and the toothpaste and toothbrush and tossed them in. I found a couple of apples and added them as well.

I then was able to shut the doors to my pantry.

I got in the car and drove back to where I saw the man on the side of the road. When I spotted him again, still holding his sign, I did a quick U-turn and drove up to him. I handed him the bag of food and said, "Here. Someone gave me some extra today. You take it."

He looked inside the bag and said, "Thank you, bud. This is the first food I've had today."

He looked down the highway in the direction of The Food Pantry, about three miles down.

"I stopped at this thrift store down there today," he said. "The lady there told me I should leave, because they didn't allow loitering."

I wished him luck and drove away. I got home and remembered that I forgot the milk. Again.