Traditionalists vs me

Traditionalists vs me, Clayton Leon Winton

Recently, while discussing Gay Rights, Same-sex Marriage, AIDS and a plethora of LGBT issues, where I emphasized how many I've known since childhood who have succumbed to HIV related illnesses, or drunkenness, or drug addiction, or incarcerated, or felonized and therefore have no voting rights, or engaged in black-listings of one another,  and while I spent a few moments emphasizing that sex with strangers, internet hook-ups, casual-sex, bed-hopping, etc., is a death sentence for those claiming to be 'gay' while participating in it or promoting it are not promoting the values of real Gay Rights ... during that conversation, I was judged, then labeled:  "Traditionalist!"

How is it possible?  Me.  The person that has advocated for Same-sex Marriage my entire adult life, who's first same-sex husband died of AIDS (yet I do not have HIV); same-sex married two others; spent 14-yrs total with another same-sex spouse, who moved here to Spokane, WA from Los Angeles, CA with me 20yrs ago?  Me, first person to address the City Council on behalf of we Gays and our unique issues, testifying before the Human Rights Commission to secure funding for HIV/AIDS outreach and awareness, and hated for my success at it?  Me, the person that never cowered behind a woman, never lived a double-life, never "came-out" of a closet-of-deception because I was never involved in any deception?  How is it possible a self-described 'gay' would label me, a Real Gay, of all people, a "traditionalist?'

We of the greater GLBTQ community, GayLandIs (worldwide Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Tranny, Queers, etc peoples), have a bigger responsibility, an obligation, to the remainder of the world and the people in it, to protect them from harm, by modifying behaviors that are known to contribute to the spread of HIV, and it is we, Gays (not Lesbians), who are still the fastest-growing demographic of new infections.

The Str8-world that opposses us, think we are "evil" or "possessed" or "genetically insane" for not honoring monogomy in our (and our sex-partners') relationships.  It's a DOMA-clese sword hanging over the heads of both Gays AND Lesbians AND Bi's AND Trannies and all other version of 'queer' as more and more countries pass laws making "homosexual conduct" punishable by DEATH.

 -- and a promise that future health-insurance plans will eventually seek and find a form of Legislated "exemptions" from those engaged in such practices.  The 'thinking' is akin to:  if you are a drunk, should my transportation expenses increase, a "breath-analysis" lock-out devices installed on MY CAR at MY EXPENSE for YOUR PROBLEM?  And that truly is how these people think of it.

Further, the promotion of these nonsensical, unhealthy, expensive, killer behaviors that devalue, therefore dencigrates monogomous relationships, same-sex or otherwise, is why so many states have modified their State Constitutions defining marriage as between "one man and one woman." (If you think the recent SCOTUS decisions about either DOMA or CA Prop8 did anything at all to stop that, you are grossly misinformed).

Walk the walk, talk the talk, or you have no right to the word 'gay' -- you are in your own seperate 'class' of your own making.  Gay Rights is Equality, especially in work, housing, health and benefits;  it is NOT and has NEVER been the endorsement of lieing, cheating, sneaking-around in bed-hopping.

Kind Regards, always,
Clayton Winton

Israel, Palestine, Gays, Obama

President Obama's speech to Israeli University students was interesting.  As with most of what he says, it was filled with platitudes and 'reasonable-sounding' soundbites, "fluff," professionally 'crafted' to give the listener the "warm fuzzies."

Native Americans, where is your "promised land?"  Should I give up my land, that I paid blood, sweat and tears for, my home, because a President of mine says that it "rightfully belongs to someone else?"

Natives have no "nations," although duped into "just believing," endless "peace treaties," all violated, and after many billions and billions of dollars, spent mostly by college grads to pay for their own careers, few Natives are active, productive participants in society.  Natives have no "defenses," and in the past, when humanitarian aide was received, the bullies hoarded it, sold it for pennies-on-the-dollar, to buy a few more premium-priced bullets, to kill more from the "Great White Satan."

If it were any different, the taxpayer-secured "job security" of all those "whitey" college grads would be jeopardized.  And the very few, a tiny percentage, of Native Americans that actually found a way to navigate the great maze, an obstacle coarse of hurdles, obstacles, discriminatory financial barriers and stone walls, that received college education, especially Judicial Doctorates, would not be used as the "whitey badge-of-honor" to endlessly claim "the system is working" as an excuse to pay themselves more, raising taxes endlessly, mind you.

I will not give up my home for descendents of aggressors to build theirs.  I built it.  Not they.  I paid for it.  Not them.  I worked for it.  They did not.  I earned it.  Nobody else.  Just me.

But I am Gay.  I was born this way.  I am Jew-ish.  A descendent of displaced Jews.  It's in my blood, mixed with so much more, including Native American.  But that is not what a "jew" is.  Jews come in all sizes, shapes and colors.  Black and white and everything in-between.  Yes, I have a few drops of Hebrew blood in my ancestory, and my faith is Reform Judaism oriented, and I know that's why I "think this way," the diversity of my thoughts alone excuse enough to be hated.  I "see" things differently, it's in my DNA.  I was born this way.

The genetic traits that made me Gay, isn't a story of "conversion" or "going along" with a 'movement.'  50% of Jews/Jew-ish in the Americas do not go to a Synagogue.  Like 'christians,' most don't go to church at all.  They celebrate 'christmas,' and think it's about the birth of some "more-than-equal" super-being from some abstract time in the past, not the birth of all sons and daughters (including themselves) throughout eternity, a son or daughter that could, at any given moment, be hated, beaten, oppressed, enslaved, persecuted, prosecuted, killed, merely for their existence, their breathing, their faith; hatefully labled "negative" by the "positive-thinkers," hammered as "negative" against merciless "positive-cross-signs" by those "positive-thinkers" using their hypocritical forked-tongues as nails.  The non-literalist, non-fundamentalist interpretation of the evils of "crucifixtion," the ancient 'christ-concept' itself forgotten, substituted with cartoon-imagry, flashing lights, and pretty wrapped 'presents,' only to ridicule and scorn one another for not "gettin' sumpin'" or not "giving" or "celebrating properly."

Same with North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and many other locations:  they had nothing;  the people there lived in tents and caves, huts, had no sanitation, no running water, no hot showers, no toilets, no roads, no transportation, no infrustructure and no economy to support building it.  Our people, of all religions, all colors, all educational backgrounds, went there to free them, to liberate them from such squalor, such burdens, such tyrannies of mind and body.  We built corporations to exploit resources to build those economies, those infrustructures.  Sure, some individuals had merely selfish motives, fame and fortune, but the overall achievements were about uplifting all of humanity, and that always has been the goal.

With every humanitarian aide and effort, it's hoarded by bullies, sold for pennies-on-the-dollar, merely to pay premium-price for a few more 'bullets' to kill anybody different, including that 'son and daughter,' be it yours, your neighbors, or your neighboring country's people.  They build monuments to themselves, palaces, write their names on it, call themselves "liberators," and yet the people still have no toilets, no running water, no hot showers, no transporation, no education, no healthcare, just excuses, the hostilies a promise to keep the same bullies in power generation to generation.

 -- I know all about bullies.  They've been beating me on playgrounds in kindergarten, and after relocating again since sixth grade;  punching me in the balls in boys' locker rooms; following me home from school throwing sticks and stones at me; dropping their pants, holding me down, sitting on my face; they've beat my same-sex husband and me, killed my friends, vandalized, stolen, plagairized, killed my pets, poisoned my food and drink, lit me on fire, censored, rumomongered, fired me for being Gay, fired me for being Gay Married, denied me access, run me off the road, all they are about is superiority, hate.

Israel welcomes all people.  Anybody may participate freely.  Yes, it gets complicated, the funding for education, the profiteers from education, merely to "buy a career" to eventually freely life one's lifestyle, be it Israel of the United States or China or anywhere else.  But a Palestinian 'state' carved-out of my land, is no more a 'solution' than a "native state" carved out of my land.

I shall not work, pay taxes, only for those dollars to educate eventual murderers.  

There are many types of Jews.  Judaism is a faith, a religion, comprised of all different races of peoples.  If it's about a specific race, it's racism; a double-standard at that, because those claiming it, are hypocritically denying the fact that if their 'logic test' were applied to all religions, then they are not 'christian' unless they can prove to be direct-descendents of the religious-character 'jesus.'  Who can do that?  NONE.

So, I never want to hear another word about it.

As for 'conversion therapy", it's not "jewish."  Palestinians have been led, by bullies, to a state-of-mind, that is all about "conversion therapy" :  convert to 'islamic think' or be hammered as a "negative" against merciless "positive-cross-signs."

My Jewish ancestors were displaced from France, what is referred to as "Ashkenazic Jewery."  The Jews that were raised in Spain and Portugal were under Moslem rule, displaced to South America.  After being run-off, walled-in, each group learned new languages, their Jewish customs evolving into distinct ethnic traits.  There are Ethopian Jews, they are black, never displaced from European countries at all.  How did they get there?  We don't know.  The theories are nearly endless, a way of telling ourselves "reasonable-sounding" stories.  But they are Jews.

I did not grow-up in a Jewish community, nor a Jewish household.  I studied theologies all my life to find the roots of my faith.  I always knew, but finding the words took decades.  And when surrounded by other people who think differently, the slightest questioning, the slightest objection, no matter how carefully worded, is met with ridicule and scorn and the eventual hateful label, hammered as a "negative" against merciless "positive-cross-signs."

Gay Rights is about diversity, acceptance of it, inclusiveness of it.  I've never had a sexual-relationship with a woman.  Ever.  I never hid in a closet.  I never "came out" of anything, because I never cowered behind a woman while pretending to be someone I was not, never lived a double-life, never learned the discipline of spontaneous lieing, never cheated, never was any of the stereotype.  I'm just normal Gay.  There is no "surpressed woman begging to be expressed" within me.  I am a man, proud of it.  I have real Gay Pride.

I say I am "Jew-ish" -- because I do not attend the Synogogue, I do not celebrate the holidays (most, or in the traditional manner), I do not speak Hebrew (which was a dead language and only revived primarily within my own lifetime anyway), and I am no literalist, so even my faith is discounted by both  Conservative and Jewish Orthodoxy.  But Reform Judaism is actually ancient, and like the spoken language of Hebrew, the end may have been the beginning.

Suggesting that a two-state 'solution' carved from our homes, be it your home or my home, your land or my land, is promoting anti-semitism.  I cannot support the President on it.

Kind Regards,
Clayton Leon Winton

OnEdit:  added paragraph about bullies

SCOTUS, Passover and Gay Rights

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