Two Soldiers

 Posted by riot.

When I was a small child, in the elementary school years, I spent a lot of time living at my grandparents' house.  They had a big back yard full of nooks and crannies that I loved to explore.  I'd construct elaborate fantasy stories and act out parts, using the trees, patio, garage, and spaces between shrubbery as my sets.  Of course, as a kid who loved watching G.I Joe, Transformers, Spiderman, and all those types of hero cartoons, many of my stories featured guns.

I remember the first time I brought a toy gun to my grandparents' house, to lend some verisimilitude to my enactments.  I was on the patio, shooting at an imaginary enemy in a tree, when my grandfather Otto came outside and took my gun.  Now grandpa was the quiet sort who didn't seem to care much for kids and their noisy play, it's true, but he generally left me alone to do my thing, getting involved only if I tried to play around his Steinway grand.  This intervention into my back yard stories was unusual enough to bring me quickly out of the realm of fantasy, so my attention was entirely focused on him as he told me that guns were not toys, he never wanted to see me holding one, and they were absolutely not allowed in his house.

Perry Brass: Lost Gay New York: Riis Park, and DADT

Perry Brass in May, Battery Park City.

            

My friend Toby Grace, whom I adore and who is the editor of Out in Jersey, one of my favorite gay papers, and one of its founders, has an interesting weblog on WordPress called, “The End of DADT - The Begining Of The Right to Die For Insanity,”  in which basically he iterates all the reasons why beautiful young gay men should stay out of the service, and by extension, out of war. He’s right: war is not just hell, it’s Shit & Hell. The best thing, in my opinion, ever said about war was from Oscar Wilde. The divine Oscar said: “As long as men feel that war is evil, they will continue doing it. It is only when they realize that it is downright vulgar that will they stop.”

War is downright vulgar. It’s sloppy, ugly, ruthless, and goes directly to the mangled corpse of the human soul.

It’s the game where all rules are off. Which is probably why at heart humans love war. They adore it. It goes back to those scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 when our near-chimp ancestors duked it out with sticks, stones, and bones.

The only problem is that war has outstripped our capacity to control it. We can’t control war no more. (Forget about “I ain’t gonna study war no more!”—that only worked in a Pete Seeger song.)

QNY Exclusive: Lt. Dan Choi to Serve as 2010 NYC Pride Grand Marshal

By Maurice Michaane 

This past Monday, February 8th 2010, at a meeting of NYC Pride (aka Heritage of Pride) it was announced that Lt. Dan Choi would be one of the Grand Marshals for the 41^st Annual LGBT Pride March, which will occur on June 27^th, 2010. When first approached about the request to be the NYC Grand Marshal, Lt. Choi responded with resounding excitement and a sense of honor for all who have struggled under this policy.    Lt. Choi’s selection and acceptance of the honor of NYC LGBT Pride Grand Marshal marks the first time in U.S. history that an openly gay male on active service with the U.S. Armed Forces will be an LGBT Pride March Grand Marshal.


More, and press release, after the jump.