Living in the Moment

When I'm teaching my wellness classes, I spend a lot of time talking about living in the moment.

It sounds so good and makes so much sense.

All you really have is now, so fretting about what hasn't happened yet, or something traumatic from the past, is pretty much wasted time.

Mindfulness meditation is so rewarding when you practice regularly, but it's hard for me to maintain because of the demands of everyday living.

It is something that I want to add to my life again. I think it would be especially beneficial now.

I can feel so much emotion just beneath the surface- a lot of trapped fears just waiting for the right moment to express themselves.

But I don't have enough information yet to feel rationally. I haven't heard from all the experts, or done enough reading.

I want to feel sad that I have to make a serious life-changing decision, sooner than later.

I want to feel anxious that time is running out.

I want to feel anger that I have yet another obstacle in my way.

But, my belief is that there is a reason for everything. It is not mine to question, but to accept with grace.

That is especially hard when those feelings want to show up and ruin my peace.

For now, I am going to try to look around at what I have to be grateful for...Brad, this place, a job in a bad economy, good health when I need it to bear what's next.

Don't panic, I think to myself.

It is, what it is.

Also Means Opportunity

I've been taking a break from the blogging for a while.

Some things have come up and, well, sitting down to write hasn't been either convenient or something I felt the morivation to do.

The house has taken a lot of energy, but in a good way. Our first home together, my first home of my own, has been an endless joy of sweat and aching. I've watched too many "how to" videos on YouTube and WAY too much HGTV and DIY channels!

This year has been amazing in so many ways.

And it ws the year I discovered that I had prostate cancer.

If you are a friend or family person who did not know until now, I apologize.

I'm not exactly sure what the etiquette is for telling people about such things. I've tried to call or email as many people as I could, although I do wonder why exactly I am doing so. I mean it's kind of awkward for me and them and really, what can they say? I still have a bit of leftover something from my past that wants me to avoid pity or sympathy or attention about these kinds of things. Icky describes it well.

Another weird part of it all is that I have no symptoms. I changed insurances and decided to see my new primary care doc for a physical. He ran a PSA test and it came back elevated.

From there I was referred to a urologist who thought my prostate felt firm and recommended a biopsy.

A week afterwards, my phone rings while I'm at work and Dr. White shares the results that I have cancer.

I'm in shock for a couple of days after I think. It just doesn't register.

Now, three weeks later, I've seen a radiologist and have three appointments coming up with surgeons to talk about treatment options.

The good news is that it's early and curable.

The bad news is that all the treatment options carry risk of complications.

As the Chinese say, "Crisis also means opportunity".

I guess I have to make the most of it.

Enjoying the View

I haven't been writing in the blog much lately. I've been so distracted by moving in to the new place. There was so much do to get it comfortable what with the normal moving in stuff that every one goes through, but also redoing the floors, painting, etc.

I have a little streak of maniac in me I must confess, which means that sometimes, I take on too much all at once and I wear myself down. Two or three projects per weekend would have been more reasonable for example, but I take on three or four per day, and then feel exhausted by Sunday night.

Thank goodness though, most the big projects are done now, and I feel like I can spend more time enjoying it instead of fretting over it.

I can feel myself starting to relax and be in the here and now with it.

Today, I choose to enjoy the deck, the cool breeze after a hot day, good conversation with our neighbors and the twinkling lights in the valley and over the Bay.

Why I Support Putting Gay Marriage on the Ballot in 2010

After the squeaker of a loss by proponents of Prop 8 in California last fall, although my marriage to Brad stands at the moment, thousands of other gay couples now no longer have the right to marry.

It was a stunner to say the least, watching California of all places vote to take away a right that had already been established.

Or was it?

Post election analysis revealed that much of the money that went towards misinformation and revving up the right wingers came from outside of California. How about that? Who would have thought that the nutjobs in Utah would give a damn about what the gays do on the coast?

Well, they care a lot apparently.

Stories of ordinary working Mormon families, whipped up by their community homophobic leaders, devoted substantial portions of their life savings to pass Prop 8, for fear of the saying "As California goes, so goes the nation."

Religious organizations, with deep tax exempt coffers, have money to burn to prove a point-which is apparently that you should either get on board with their dogma or they will make sure you suffer!!

Equality California, one of the major gay marriage advocacy organizations in the state who failed to see this coming or prevent it now have apparently decided to skip the 2010 ballot to try to overturn Prop 8 and wait until 2012.

Their rationale? Because they need more time to do grassroots organizing to make sure this time they win. Not a bad idea.

Yet I still have this burning desire to do something now besides donate money and talk to people for the next three years.

I therefore am putting my energy into the groups who think we shouldn't wait and we should put this issue back on the ballot at the first opportunity, like the Courage Campaign.

Here's why I don't want to wait.

First, I don't want to wait. I've waited my whole life and the time is always NOW to take action whenever possible. So what if we lose again? Maybe this time there will be more public discussion than last time. And by the way, we have the chance to start talking to our friends, family and neighbors now about this issue.

Second, I want our opponents to have to spend more money. The idea of destitute Mormons (and a few rigid Catholics) not having the money to put in a swimming pool this year or to pay for Sally's braces suits me just fine (of course the idea that there will be Mormons running around without huge perfect teeth is kinda scary as well). If we put his on the ballot, they HAVE to respond and over time, the message of fear and hate that they promote just starts to lose its punch. Next time, there won't be quite the right wing fervor that I believe was associated partly with the possibility that our nation was about to elect a black man. It made all the zealots and racists VERY nervous and if you are racist, there's a pretty good chance that you are a homophobe as well.

Third, I want the troops who are fresh from defeat and still smarting from the loss to keep the energy going. I believe that we will go into 2010 with a lot more energy for this fight after having victory snatched from us twice (once by vote, once by the lame California Supreme Court) while the homophobes are now out screaming about "death panels" and "socialism" (again partly driven by deep-seated racism in my opinion).

Fourth, there is no reason that Equality California can't walk and chew at the same time. Why not have a 2010 and 2012 plan?? Even if you believe that victory is more likely with more time to build grassroots, is there no value is siphoning off the coffers of the opposition just because? Won't they also have time to build more grassroots opposition to us and also earn interest on their anti-gay marriage monies between now and then?

And speaking of short-term plan, I hope someone is out there seriously challenging the Catholics' and Mormons' ability to pour money into these campaigns and still maintain tax exempt status. I know that I actually wrote to the IRS when I heard what the Mormons were doing last time.
It seems if there's a serious challenge going on that they have to fight, it might weaken their forces just enough for us to win.

If you're in a similar frame of mind to fight and are discourage by Equality California's decision, don't be. Hook up with Courage Campaign. And let me know if you hear of other groups eager to take up the fight again in 2010.

Forgiving God

I'm considering the next book project I want to work on.

Something in the self-help genre would be a natural, but I've been thinking about trying something different.

I have two radically different ideas. One would be my memoirs.

That brings up a lot of anxieties like, would my life be interesting to anyone else? Can I write well enough to carry it off? Can I make it funny like David Sedaris? or dramatic like Augusten Burroughs? How does it start? Where does it end?

If I do write the memoir, my working title is "Forgiving God". I like the title because it reflects an ongoing process in my life and it's a double entendre, both adjective and verb.

My second option is a futuristic sci-fi thriller screenplay. I have the basic idea. I've already done a two page "treatment" with the setting, the plot, the characters, etc. I just have to do some homework on how to actually write one.

Both would take me down some interesting roads.

What do you think?

Mark Sanford: The Best Defense is a Good Offense

Promise Keepers. Family Values. Moral Decay. Moral Majority. Focus on the Family.

Abstinence Only. Proposition 8. DOMA. Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

What do all of the above have in common? Hypocrisy.

Yes, I'm back with the blogging. How could I not? Sen. Ensign and Gov. Mark Sanford scandals within days of each other?

Moralistic politicians who use the idea that THEY have all the "RIGHT" answers to how to behave and that other people should be FORCED to live by those answers who then completely disregard their all holy rules and then have the gall to refuse responsibility for their actions.

Sheesh!!

How could I ignore that?

Ensign and Sanford not only raise the issue of "holier than thou" ethics and morality to win elected office, they are among the most ardent, vocal critics of others who do not follow their personal arbitrary standards. Sanford DEMANDED that Clinton resign after admitting his affair with Monica Lewinsky. His argument? That anyone who holds a public office should be held to a "higher" standard than others when they have ethical lapses.

NOW, however, when it's his own lapse, that same standard doesn't apply according to Sanford.

Does that surprise anyone? Someone with the twisted logic and rigid egomaniacal perspective on things from the beginning has something wrong with him.

Mark Sanford does not care about people. Mr. Sanford does not care about Monica Lewinsky or Hilary Clinton. He does not care about the people of South Carolina or schools. He does not care about his wife. He does not care about his sons.

Mark Sanford cares about Mark Sanford.

I even feel sorry for the Argentine mistress.

He will throw her under the bus when it serves Mark Sanford's needs to do so.

Here's the real question: Why does it seem that the people who yell the loudest about rigid moral values and have such harsh, intolerant views are always the ones who deep down are hiding something?

Larry Craig? Mark Foley? John Ensign? David Vitter?

And why is it often about sex?

As a cognitive behavioral psychologist, I have not practiced Freudian-based psychotherapy in a while.

But sometimes, Freud was a pretty smart guy.

You see, even back then, people did some strange things that people couldn't explain.

Like laughing when they should be crying. Or dreaming about cigars.

And he did his best to explain why people did these odd things.

He even had one that could make sense of rigid moralistic people who harbor secret dreams of getting nasty that perhaps they can't accept within themselves.

It's called reaction formation, which is a psychological defense mechanism in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are controlled by taking the sometimes extreme opposite public tendency.

Freud scared a whole lotta people at the time (and still does) with this concept.

People who cannot deal with their own deep seated desires often suppress and repress these desires but not without a price.

The theory goes something like this.

Men who have pedophilic impulses (having sexual desires for children) often choose public careers that openly are hostile to pedophiles. This serves two sometimes opposing purposes.

First, they believe that by becoming a public beacon of morality, they can overcome deeper, sometimes unconscious lascivious desires. The more you fight against it, the safer you will be.
The second purpose, and the more sinister (yet still possibly unconscious) possibility, is that holding yourself up as beyond reproach, the less suspicious people with be of you holding the deeper opposite desires and ironically, the more trusting of you they will be with their children.

Initially in some cases, people who use reaction formation may not understand or even be aware of these deeper frightening emotions or impulses. All they know is that they hate child molestors, or adulterors or homosexuals.

That's the beauty of the mind. It can create an "illusion" for you of self-righteousness, even as it covers up deeper desire and needs that are simmering beneath the surface.

In my book, Loving Ourselves, I spend a little time talking about the phenomenon of publicly homophobic men who secretly have sex with men on the side. This topic has always fascinated me as a gay person who knew about his own sexual orientation very early in life and chose to deal with it directly rather than hide or deny it (except for a very short time during puberty).

In the chapter dealing with these very specific types of self-esteem problems, I describe scientific testing this theory of reaction formation among heterosexual men with varying degrees of homophobia.

During the study, a same of self-identified heterosexual men were given a questionnaire asking their opinions about homosexuals and homosexuality and based on the responses, ranking them in terms of negative, neutral or positive feelings about gay men.

Then, in an ingenious second phase of the study, the men were connected to a penile plethysmograph, a device that measures blood flow into the penis, and volunteers were shown a variety of pictures of attractive women and men in various states of undress.

At the end of the study, the results of the blood flow measurements were correlated with the "attitudes toward homosexuality" scale they had taken before.

Ironically, the men who tested as having the most negative attitudes toward homosexuality showed the most penile reaction to the pictures of men!

Discuss.

Back to Sanford et al.

If Mr. Sanford was an isolated case of someone who preaches morality and taking responsibility who, in a moment of weakness, made an impulsive mistake, then I can see moving on. I also might be able to stomach him personally if he held himself to the same standard that he applied to Clinton (resign from office).

However, because this seems to be a fairly frequent occurrence (i.e. the most loudly moralistic zealots are the most likely to be themselves morally flawed), then perhaps we should get more comfortable holding some healthy skepticism for those in the political and power circles of the world who "doth protest too much"?

Do all supporters of Prop 8 harbor secret homosexual fantasies?

Do all celibate clergy have deep-seated sexual identity issues?

Do most extremists have something to hide?

The answer is probably "no".

But we should keep our eyes open for the next racist, homophobic, family values leader who assures us that they have the "correct" version of the truth and that intolerance is the ONLY option. They may have something to hide.

Blog Spot of Shame

After the recent disasterous ruling by the California Supreme Court on Prop 8, I decided that someone somewhere needed to keep a list of the cowards, the zealots and the outright homophobes in our times. My list will include not only the hatemongers, but the people who fear change, who follow the "status quo", and the hipocrites in life who preach "values" but do not follow them. Feel free to send me your own lists and suggestions and I'll take the famous, the infamous and the local people who preach intolerance and self-righteousness.


Here goes my list of shame:

(1) Dick Cheney- former co-President and architect of torture and war

(2) George W. Bush- former President and pawn, brush remover

(3) Pope Benedict- largest perpetuator of homophobic religious dogma

(4) Rush Limbaugh- entertainer who pretends to be interested in politics

(5) Ann Coulter- entertainer/media whore who pretends to be interested in politics but is more interested in self-promotion

(6) Sean Hannity/Glenn Beck- Fox "News" entertainers who want to be as rich as Rush Limbaugh but neither bright enough to stand alone

(7) Michael Savage- entertainer who will say anything to get ratings

(8) Rick Warren- Christian minister who cannot control his impulse to eat, yet expects gay people to "control" their sexual urges

(9) Fred Phelps- Spawn of Satan

(10) Heather Wilson- sexually ambiguous and repressed former US Representative from Arizona

(11) Virginia Foxx- US Representative from NC without a soul

(12) Newt Gingrich- variable ethics opportunist and entrepeneur, cleverly manipulates the moment to his advantage


(13) Tom Tancredo- US House Representative and blowhard



(14) Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, Ronald M. George, Mind W. Chin, Marvin R. Baxter, and Carol A. Corrigan- California Supreme Court justices (and cowards) for voting to validate Prop 8 and create a second class citizenship for gay and lesbian Americans


(15) Lindsay Graham- sexually ambiguous U.S. Senator from SC and right wing tool


(16) Rick Santorum- former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania with questionable intelligence


(17) Rick Perry- weak Republican governor of Texas, idiot hypocrite (we hate the bailout-give us money!) successionist


(18) Mark Sanford- governor of South Carolina, hypocrite who would rather make a political point than help his state, Christian adulterer


(19) Kenneth Starr- legal whore who will work for the highest bidder


(20) Pat Buchanan (and his sister Bay)- irrelevant columnist(s) and right wing tools



(21) Carrie Prejean- Miss California USA, shallow non-natural "beauty" queen with fake hair, fake skin color, fake tooth color and fake boobs, with no known talent or skill


(22) William Kristol- neocon pundit, supporter of "preemptive" war and anti-intellectual


(23) Jeff Sessions- U.S. Senator from Alabama, overt racist


(24) Norm Coleman- Former U.S. Senator from Minnesota- Republican tool and hypocrite


(25) David Vitter- U.S. Senator from Louisiana, adulterer, hypocrite


(26) Larry Craig-Former U.S. Senator from Idaho, tortured repressed soul and hypocrite

(27) Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia- U.S. Supreme Court Justices and radical right wingers who legislate from the bench about issues they find important

(28) Karl Rove- sexually ambiguous architect of attack politics and mastermind of getting religious zealots to vote against their own best interests.

(29) Sarah Palin- Hypcrite; example of what NOT to do as a parent (have a teen who gets pregnant, go on the campaign trail to further your career and leave your infant child with special needs at home, etc.); set up an unethical fund to defend herself from ethics charges

(30) Pat Robertson- tv evangelist (in decline) who has the record for highest level of narcissism in a single human being- hypocrite, homophobe

(31) James Dobson- supposed "psychologist" who uses his degree to promote his personal beliefs and values from a "Christian" perspective- very anti-gay

(32) Joseph Nicolosi- debunked psychologist who believes that sexual orientation can be changed, despite lack of empirical evidence of effectiveness of his treatment practices and the evidence of potential harm to the people he treats (never met him but wonder about his own sexual "fluidity")

(33) Michelle Bachman-U.S. Congresswoman from Minnesota- unafraid to expose her ignorance in public regularly

(34) John Ensign- U.S. Senator from Nevada- hypocrite, conservative Christian adulterer

(35) John Kly- U.S. Senator from Arizona-racist, hypocrite- rails on Obama's bailout plan, but continues to accept the money.

(36) Joe Wilson, Republican Representative from South Carolina- showed lack of impulse control during President Obama's address to Congress which is at a minimum immature, and possibly indicates deeper seated racism

(37) Max Baucus, Democratic Senator from Montana- in the pocket of health insurance lobbyists, refused a seat at the table for single payor advocates, no public option in his committee's plan

(38) Chuck Grassley, R from Iowa, Mike Enzi, R from Wyoming, Olympia Snow, R-Maine, Kent Conrad, D- North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, Max Baucaus, D- Montana- "Gang of Six" intent on killing public option and true health insurance reform in a "bipartisan" manner

(39) Charlie Crist, R Governor of Florida- sexually ambiguous "bachelor" who is virulently anti-gay despite many rumors of his own sexuality

(40) Mary Cheney, Republican right wing tool, hypocrit, anti-gay open lesbian

(41) Ken Mehlman- sexually ambiguous anti=gay Republican operative

(42) Jason Chaffetz- Republican US Representative from Utah, strongly anti-gay, "big government in your bedroom" believer