Exodus Co-Founder “Knew It Wasn’t True”

Posted on April 27, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

In case you’ve ever wondered about all those “ex-gay” groups, the biggest of them is Exodus, and it’s co-founder says “Deep down he knew it wasn’t true”… In the interview shown below he says essentially that Exodus is about repressing feelings. “Reparative therapy” doesn’t mean you stop being gay, it means you just repress the feelings and become asexual or focus on any heterosexual feelings you might have if your bisexual.

When I was getting my high blood pressure figured out I went to a hypertension specialist and he felt there’s a good chance I’m hypertensive because I was gay and grew up in a fundamentalist environment. Repressing who you are is not healthy, it’s not “therapy”, and it can lead to serious health problems.

So if one of the guys who started it thinks programs like Exodus are all smoke and mirrors, that sorta deflates their claims pretty effectively. Wherever it comes from, if you’re gay, you’re gay… Accept it and move on…

Powerful Afghan Men & Their Dancing Boys

Posted on April 22, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

Back when I was in college I did my honors thesis on homosexuality in the Middle East. After a fair amount of research I found there are homosexual traditions in the Middle East that are accepted despite the fact that homosexuality is punishable by death under Islamic law. Modern, Western gay relationships are out, but what you find are one of two things – 1) cross dressing, and 2) pedophilia. Think of Middle Eastern cross dressers as pre-op transexuals who live their lives as women. Despite the segregation of men and women, the cross-dressed men are allowed to spend private time with women outside their family (which is unheard of). The pedophilia was well structured and took the form of young “apprentices” to older “masters”. The older men didn’t consider themselves gay because they would have wives and families. The boy was just something on the side.

The other night Frontline had a program the other day on “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan”. Afghanistan has a tradition that’s called “bacha bazi” (بچه بازی) which literally translates to “baby play”. Poor young boys are recruited by an older wealthy men, their families paid pretty well for the boys, and they’re “trained” to entertain men. Not stated in the documentary, but pretty clear from watching which boys are recruited, is the fact that they’re trying to find and recruit kids who are probably gay. It probably also explains why the families are willing to sell the boys – I doubt they’d sell their butch, rugged son, but it’s not such a big deal to sell the kids who they suspect to be gay.

The entertainment consists of dressing them as women and having them dance for a group of men. Curiously, the dancing part is quite modest – like women dancers, hardly any skin shows.

The issue is that after the performance their “master” (owner) may lend the boy to another man for the evening and sex is expected. From a western perspective this is literally sexual slavery of minors. The other big problem is that while some of the boys manage to fit in (the femmy gay ones), ones who resist and cause problems are often killed.

What’s interesting is that it’s all practiced pretty openly. Frontline even showed one case where bacha bazi was the entertainment for men attending a wedding. And most of the men who involved are powerful, with standing in the community – military commanders, police chiefs, businessmen, etc.

When I was in college studying sociology and Middle Eastern studies one of the big challenges was to try to look at cultures from their own eyes – cultural relativism. The Afghans who are outraged about bacha bazi are typically western educated, English speakers, or strict Muslims (the Taliban banned bacha bazi). I think part of their outrage comes from that fact that rich, powerful “straight” men with families might actually be gay or bisexual. Yes, there are serious exploitation issues with bacha bazi, but I think homophobia is a big part of the opposition to it. If the boys were older and things were more consensual (like western drag queen) many of the opponents would probably still be opposed to it.

However, the traditional Afghan seems to pretty much accept bacha bazi, and in a culture that isn’t all that fond of educating women and makes women wear burqas, it’s really not that surprising. Human life just isn’t intrinsically valued in Afghanistan like it is in the west. All men are not created equal. In Afghanistan if you’re male and wealthy you get to do pretty much what you want. And if you’re poor or female your life will be dictated by others with more power. Women literally can’t show their faces in public and some poor boys are required to have sex with older wealthy men.

So ultimately this is less about a sex crime and more about principles of basic equality. You can pass all the laws you want outlawing bacha bazi (as the Taiban did), but it will have little effect if you don’t instill in people that everyone is inherently equal and that there are certain human right everyone just gets without earning them.

If you’re sitting there thinking the Afghans are so horrible for accepting bacha bazi, think again. Many in the “Tea Party” movement seem to have big problems with the fact that the country is being led by a black man and say pretty horrible things about him based solely on his skin color. Others spend millions of dollars fighting civil rights for gay people. Others don’t like to ride in airplanes with Muslims. Then there are the thousands of hate crimes that are reported every year with some people getting killed simply because of the color of their skin, or their religion or their sexual orientation. We’re really not in a position to throw stones at the Afghans.

Energy Efficient Window Choices – NYC

Posted on April 21, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

Choosing the right windows for our townhouse is a lot more complicated than you’d think. The best website for guidance is EfficientWindows.org which has a page dedicated to what the effect of different choices will be on your heating and cooling bills. Here’s a screenshot showing what the top choices are (click on the image to see more).

First, a few explanations of what some of those values mean…

“U” is “U-Factor” which measures the insulating value of the window. The lower the better.
“SHGC” is the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient which measures how much solar rays can heat the building. It’s a proportion, so an SHGC of 0.26 means that 26% of the sun’s heat gets through the window and 74% is blocked.
“VT” is the visible light that’s transmitted. It’s also a proportion, so a VT of 0.50 means 50% of the visible light is transmitted through the window. The higher this value, the brighter your room will be.

The problem is that they assume that you’re installing the same types of windows in all the windows in your house and that you heat and cool your house evenly. Neither of those assumptions are true for us.

In our case the windows in the back are facing south and will get an incredible amount of light. The windows in the front will only get direct sun for maybe an hour early each morning, and the windows on the side will get no sun at all. Simply put you want different windows where there’s lots of direct light than you do where there’s virtually no direct light, so those recommendations only take you so far…

The other issue is balancing the windows effect on heating and cooling. The U-value is going to determine how much the outside temperature affects the inside temperature. You want well insulated windows so on cold or hot days the temperature inside the building isn’t affected. This means you want as low of a U-factor as possible. However, with solar heat gain it gets a lot more complicated. The more solar heat gain you have, the lower your heating bills will be, but the higher your cooling bills will be.

If you’ve heard of “passive houses” the idea is that they want solar heat gain in the winter and try to avoid it in the summer. They’ll have concrete floors on the south to absorb and store solar heat in the winter, but then they’ll have overhangs that block solar heat gain as the sun climbs in the summer. Passive houses are all about being intelligent about solar heat gain.

We really don’t care about LEED certification in the least, but we do care about how much it costs to run our house. We’re going with more expensive closed cell foam insulation in the walls, and (as you can see) I’m giving a lot of thought to our window choice in an attempt to reduce the heating and cooling bills. We’re more than happy to put extra money towards stuff that will save us money down the road. So here’s my thinking…

Windows that get almost no direct light…

U-factor is important
SHGC is irrelevant (no direct sun means virtually no solar heat gain)
Visible light transmission should be as high as possible

Windows that get lots of light…

U-factor is important
SHGC “depends”
Visible light transmission “depends”

I don’t like to be in overly sunny rooms. I often cross the street to get out of the sun and I hate sunny places like Arizona and Southern California. So I don’t want a whole lot of visible light transmission on the southern windows. Your taste may differ – many people like direct sun – I’m just not one of them.

The SHGC you want depends on how you have your house arranged. In reading Julia Angwin’s blog on the Wall Street Journal I see she’s taking a very different tack than we are. She specifically said “We chose the south side for our office so we could have good light during the day.” (source) She and her husband are clearly people who like direct sunlight. In my mind “good light” is indirect northern light, so I want our home office on the north side. I would hate Julia’s south-facing office, but that’s just me… In addition to light issues I want the office on the front because the street is noisy and I can tolerate more noise in the office than I can in the bedroom when I’m trying to sleep.

I say all of that for a purpose. How you arrange your house will have an impact on what SHGC value you shoot for on your southern windows. In our case our primary daytime room (the home office) will be on the north side of the building. Solar heat gain is not going to affect our air conditioning bills too much on weekdays because we’re not in sunny rooms during the day – just maybe a bit on weekends when we use more rooms in the house during peak cooling hours. On the other hand Julia Angwin is spending time during peak cooling hours in a south facing room. A low SHGC value is far more important to her than it is to us.

In addition, unlike Julia and her husband, we’ll be providing heat for our ground floor tenants. On top of that, since we’re going with a mini-split system for cooling every room will be a zone for cooling and we can just cool the room(s) we’re in. But heating will be more general. While we can turn off the rads in rooms, there’s a certain level of heat we have to maintain throughout the house.

As a result, I’m expecting heating to be a bigger expense than cooling. That means we’ll benefit by having somewhat higher SHGC values on the south facing windows… If you look at the graphic above you’ll see the two scenarios where the heating cost was below $800 had very different SHGC values – 0.40 in one case and 0.56 in the other. Lower isn’t necessarily better when it comes to SHGC. If you’re in Miami it is, but not NYC.

The other issue that’s important to us when it comes to windows is how much UV is blocked. I remember visiting my sister’s friend’s apartment when I was in college. They had an incredible place in San Francisco with water views. Problem was their windows let through too much UV and it ruined a Matisse color block collage they had bought. We’re a bit paranoid about UV affecting our art and furniture. That means that UV protection will be a huge issue for us on south facing windows (and somewhat on north facing windows).

And to make things even more complicated, I think we’ll be getting Gaulhofer windows (from Austria) and Europeans measure a lot of these values differently (especially SHGC) so I’ve been struggling to convert European values into US values. But Gaulhofers are just incredible windows – their standard window is tilt-n-turn (an inswing casement that can also open a little at the top to allow ventilation), and they’re made with furniture grade wood – not the cheap crappy pine Marvin and Andersen use.

The bottom line is there are a lot of factors you should consider when picking windows and it gets a bit confusing to balance all the different criteria. But if you give it some thought it starts to make sense…

Churches Have More Crime Than Strip Clubs

Posted on April 21, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

Here’s something you don’t hear every day – there’s more crime in religious houses of worship (churches, synagogues, monasteries, mosques, convents, cathedrals and chapels) than there is in adult businesses (strip clubs, sex shops, brothels, massage parlours, gay clubs, gaming houses and gambling clubs) – at least that’s what one report from Australia has shown.

To be specific… “The data showed 85 people were assaulted in places of worship, compared to 66 at an adult entertainment premises… Places of worship also took the lead in sexual offences (16), theft from motor vehicles (33), resisting arrest (7) and liquor offences (10). Harassment and threatening behaviour at places of worship (30) was over 50 percent more than at places of adult entertainment (13).” That’s right, there’s more sex crime in churches than in sex clubs.

None of that should be all that surprising. How many wars have been fought in the name of religion? How many millions of people have been killed in the name of religion? The Spanish Inquisition? Fatwas? On the other hand I’m having a hard time thinking of a war fought to defend “adult activities”. Hitler put gay men in the death camps – but that sorta proves my point – the person doing the “deviant act” wasn’t the one doing the killing.

The other aspect is that churches tell you there’s something wrong with you and you need to change. That means people wind up repressing their urges. The problem with Catholic pedophile priests shows what happen when you take that approach. In contrast, sex businesses accept you for who you are (for the most part) and you give a legal outlet for your urges.

If you need even more evidence check out Joe.My.God.’s “This Week In Holy Crimes” series of blog posts. It’s truly amazing how screwed up some religious leaders are.

That said, religion done right can be a good thing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a brothel or a sex shop or a massage parlor be a community center, or do social work, or pressure politicians on behalf of their community, yet I’ve seen churches do all of those things. But all of those things are also done by non-religious community organizations. So while I wouldn’t advocate replacing churches with strip clubs, I do wonder if we wouldn’t be better off replacing them with community centers.

Equality Isn’t Something You “Study” Or Vote On

Posted on April 13, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

To add insult to many years of injury, the Pentagon has decided that the next step in “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is to “study” the problem despite the fact that more than enough studies have been done already, and every other first world country has successfully implemented openly gay men and women into their armed forces without any problem.

How would you like it if some did a study as to whether people like you should be treated with equality and respect? They’re literally going around asking service members and their families whether they have a problem with gay men and lesbians serving, as if we should care if they don’t.

What would the reaction be if we were asking people if they minded if Jews, Mormons or African Americans served in the military? It’s an absurd question on it’s face.

Yet these things do happen… I remember when I went to the University of Texas at Austin I stayed in a private dorm that was run by Jews (orthodox Jews got the lowest floors, then more mainstream Jews were on the floors above them, then there was a mixed intensive study floor, and then the top of the dorm was where the ‘goyim’ lived). When I sat down with them and they were trying to find a room for me they said “well, we have a spot on the intensive study floor, but your roommate would be Latino – do you mind that?” The question floored me. While I was brought up in an almost all white environment I had been taught race didn’t matter.

I know none of this sort of thing comes as a shock to people who are racial minorities and have faced inequality all their lives, but I still really wish I could turn the table on some of these bigots and have a study which asked people if they should be treated with dignity and respect. They seemed to have forgotten “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”…

I know it’s just a matter of time before Don’t Ask Don’t tell is gone, but it sorta galls me that a President who’s had to deal personally with racial discrimination can’t stand up for the core principle of treating everyone equally. Taking policies like this down slowly reinforces the idea that it’s understandable to be a bigot.

And how can a military that doesn’t live by “equality and justice for all” police that concept around the world? Military conflicts just get worse when soldiers think the person they’re pointing their guns at aren’t as good as they are…

UPDATE:

Even though President Obama it crystal clear about getting rid of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the White House has also made it clear that they won’t get rid of it until their ‘study’ is done. What is the logic in that? Either their not taking the study seriously and it’s recommendations will have no impact and they’ll do what they’re telling the LGBT community, or they are taking the study seriously and they may not get rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, in which case they’re flat out lying to the LGBT community. Pick a side – any side… Just stand for something…