WATERCOOLER: No Hate Music

Toronto activist have spearheaded numerous campaigns against musicians with explicit hate language targeted towards the LGBT community. Join the group take action.

Here's the latest:

Uganda this year has experienced a rash of vigilantism in which accused LGBT people were publicly identified in the newspaper, radio, and TV. A new proposal before the Ugandan Parliament assigns a death sentence for certain homosexual "crimes" and outlaws all advocacy or defense of LGBT people with a punishment of 7 years imprisonment. This has provoked an international uproar; Stephen Lewis commented on it recently saying, “This intended anti-homosexual statute has the taste of fascism.”

It was in this horrific context that LAST WEEK Beenie Man played a show in Uganda at Kampala’s Kyadondo Rugby Club where it was reported:

"The King of Dancehall stuck a sword of words into gay people through singing and talking. 'In my family, we don’t have any gay person but if you’re gay, my brother that’s not my fault,' he said as he performed his song Mi Nah Wallah, in which he says he would like to cut the throats of all gay men."

One of the sponsors of the show, Pepsi, upon hearing of the show and their sponsorship of it, issued this statement:
"We are appalled by his lyrics and find them repugnant. We are not associated with him in any way."

Now, mere DAYS after inflaming anti-gay sentiment in a country contemplating a law that will result in government sponsored gay executions KOOL HAUS is bringing him to Toronto unless we contact them (and their President Charles Khabouth) and compel him to pull this show. Kool Haus should not have allowed him to play in the first place, but this has become more than solely about offensive lyrics, it's about sending a message to LGBT Ugandans that we won't ignore their struggle or support those that do.

Please call or email (or facebook graffiti their FB Page listed below) and let Charles Khabouth know how you feel (FYI: he also runs The Guvernment, This is London, Ultra Toronto, Tattoo Rock Parlour & DragonFly NightClub):

Phone: 416-869-0045

email: clubevents@theguvernment.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/INKEntertainment

twitter: http://twitter.com/inkevents

Do it soon as the show is in THREE days.

"No one wants to leave home. Will I risk all that, for the chance of being home? No. It is not pride. It is not bravery. It is just simple despair. What do I do? What do I do when this law is passed?"

- Anonymous gay Ugandan blogger.

OOOT AND ABOOT: Virgin doubletake.

Standing at the bus stop has never been more exciting! Hello and thank you to Virgin for making my morning commute more exciting. Waiting for the TTC = the perfect time to conjure up inappropriate office scenarios. Fortunately we just got a boardroom in the theatre (aka The Lemongrass Room), but unfortunately I'm allergic to down feathers. Just another forward thinking Canada-wide campaign from a HOT company.

If this is what it's like to work at Virgin... Dental and oral coverage! Who do I send my resume to?

SKOOL: Gilbert No Longer Gay

Buddies founder gives up his gay card and challenges our perceptions of what it is to be gay in society today.

(Via The Globe and Mail) Gilbert writes:

I am no longer gay. I quit. But that doesn't mean I don't still adore my pink high heels (and the questionable stains on them). In fact, my unrepentant love for those smelly old shoes has very much to do with why I am defecting and/or just resigning from the club.

No, it's not just because I'm old and tired (although I am); it's because the love that dare not speak its name is now shouting it out from the rooftops. Gay is everywhere and, paradoxically, gay is also over. But the new gay that is simultaneously invisible and ubiquitous is not the gay I once knew.

I think it was Modern Family that did it. I flicked on the TV - as I always do when I hear of a new sitcom with gay characters - and what a shock! Not only is the gay couple on the show completely accepted by their family as a whole, but there is nothing the least bit gay about them. They are a pair of nice, overweight, unattractive middle-class men obsessed with their adopted Asian daughter. I found myself searching for a camp moment, but I'm afraid neither of them is any nellier than the straight husband on the show.

But, like most mainstream entertainment, Modern Family is merely a symptom of what's really going on. For years, gay neo-con Andrew Sullivan (he's the only gay man you are likely to see on CNN, ever) has been telling us that being gay is all about being a good citizen. In fact, if you speak to the leaders of most gay and lesbian political groups about what it means to be gay today, they will probably answer using the words "love" or "family" or "caring."

Well, the world of pretty rainbows, church on Sunday, monogamy, respectability and good citizenship is not the world I signed onto when I filled out my gay card.

How did this happen? Well, we live in a cyber-reality of Twitter, blogs and virtual sex. The great movements of the sixties - leftism, feminism, gay liberation and civil rights - are over. That doesn't mean we're done with class inequities, misogyny, racism or homophobia. But political correctness makes us think they're gone - and besides, we have the endlessly satisfying drug of technology to assuage any and all insecurities. Heck, these days no one interacts with anyone in the real world long enough to care about what goes on out there anyway.

In this contradictory era, there is a black U.S. president and yet police officers are still being accused of racial profiling. And Adam Lambert - the gayest American Idol contestant ever - was recently criticized by the gay community for wearing makeup and kissing a guy in his act. (Jennifer Vanasco, editor-in-chief of website 365gay.com, said Mr. Lambert tarnished the reputation of gays in the eyes of middle America, "who think gay life is exactly what he portrayed on the American Music Awards.")

The contradictions of postmodern culture don't stop there. Though some real-life gay men are adopting Asian children, some are so pressed by the new, perfect, sanitized gay ideal that they end up drowning themselves in suicidal drugs and unsafe sex.

Here's my own personal solution. I reject the gay world. I have a new identity: I'm an ESP (pronounced ESPIE). That means effeminate sexual person. I'm committed to things that are no longer gay: alternative sexual and romantic relationships (promiscuity) and gender play (I prefer my women to act like men and my men to act like women). Don't worry, you can be a butch woman and still be an ESPIE - all you have to do is commit to gender-inappropriate behaviour of any kind and enjoy sex for pleasure alone (please don't do it - yawn - just to beget children).

Lately, Toronto's gay press has been bemoaning straight forecasts of what some have called "the premature death of Church Street." One gay columnist says that, even if the condos drive the gays out of our neighbourhood, we will always have Church Street (sigh) in our hearts.

But it isn't just Church Street that's on the wane. When being gay is the same as being straight, there's no need for gay anything. Gay bars, books, gay magazines, gay newspapers - gay culture as we know it - will eventually disappear.

But, hey, I'm an ESPIE! So I don't care. And finally I can stop complaining.

Sky Gilbert is University Research Chair in Creative Writing and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. His latest poetry collection is A Nice Place to Visit.