• About Me
  • Other Writings
  • Interview Clips
  • All About Me: American Racism, American Narcissism, and the Conversation America Can’t Have
  • Video Clips
  • Boy @ The Window Pictures
  • Boy @ The Window Theme Music

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

~

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: LGBT rights

Where Everything Equals “Radical Islam” Terrorism

14 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

"Radical Islamism", #Orlando, #PulseShooting, Fairies, Fairly Odd Parents, Hillary Clinton, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Racism, Islamic State, LGBT rights, Misdirected Hatred, Mr. Crocker, NickToons, Omar Mateen, Terrorists


Mr. Crocker from The Fairly Odd Parents, June 14, 2016. (http://cdn.smosh.com/).

Mr. Crocker from The Fairly Odd Parents, June 14, 2016. (http://cdn.smosh.com/).

The tragic shame of fifty dead and fifty-three wounded because of one Omar Mateen’s anti-Black, anti-Puerto Rican, anti-gay, and anti-Islam hatred. The attack on an LGBT sanctuary in Orlando, Florida will continue to make news as the world learns more about the deceased attacker, his family and friends, as well as about the dozens of living and dead victims of Mateen’s venom.

While there is much to learn about all of this, there is one thing Americans and the world already know. That we as Americans — politicians, media, and ordinary citizens — are incredibly quick at jumping to conclusions before we have any facts at all. Declaring Omar Mateen an example of “radical Islamism” when he barely brushed an arm of anyone even remotely connected to terrorism in the name of Islam? Thanks a lot, Hillary (you’re supposed to be the sensible choice of the two presidential candidates, right?)!

Really, our reaction as a nation is no different from Mr. Crocker’s to unexplainable phenomenon on NickToon’s The Fairly Odd Parents – a play on the words “fairy godparents.” Until my son hit his preteens, I’d been subjected to six years of this ridiculous show about a permanent ten-year-old with fairies granting his every wish, all to his and the world’s detriment. Mr. Crocker, his permanent elementary school teacher, once had fairies when he himself was a kid. Upon suspecting that his charge has fairies of his own, Mr. Crocker became obsessed, building gadgets and devising plans to prove to himself and the world that fairies exist. Or, even more extreme, to steal the ten-year-old’s fairies and use their power to dominate the world.

But instead of yelling “FAIRIES!!! FAIRIES!!! FAIRIES!!!” every time a mass killing occurs in the US, we scream “TERRORISTS!!! TERRORISTS!!! TERRORISTS!!!” To be sure, what Mateen did was an act of terror. In our use of the term, though, Americans always mean terrorists who are of Arab descent, terrorists who claim Islam as their religion. We don’t do this for White “Christians” like Dylann Roof or, going back two decades, Timothy McVeigh. Why is that? Because we Americans are so obsessed with IS (Islamic State), that we never deal with our own -isms. Which ultimately may be why Mateen could take his internalized homophobia, racism, and misogyny and explode it into taking and harming the lives of so many innocents.

The Hypocrisy of Religion As A Weapon of Fear

12 Saturday May 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Baseball Bat, Bigotry, Burning At The Stake, Fear, Hatred, Heterosexism, Homophobia, Hypocrisy, Judaica, Judaism, LGBT rights, Lot, Love, Mace, Meet The Press, New Testament, Old Testament, POTUS, Prejudice, President Barack Obama, Religious Interpretations, Same-Sex Marriage, Sodom & Gomorrah, Talmud, The Untouchables, Torah, Vice President Joe Biden, Weapons


My Bible (KJV) combined with a French mace (circa 16th century, on display at Morges military museum, August 20, 2010), May 12, 2012. (Donald Earl Collins; Rama via Wikipedia). In public domain.

During my three years as a Hebrew-Israelite (between April ’81 and April ’84), I found more than a few of our ideas and practices confounding. So many issues around issues of blood, kosherizing food, the dangers of using Ivory Soap or saying “Hello” to callers on a telephone. I was in a cult during the most out-of-sorts periods any of us face — middle school and puberty (see my post “Balkis Makeda’s 2nd Coming” from May ’11). Not good, as anyone who knew me during my A.B. Davis Middle School years can attest, for better and worse.

One of the most puzzling practices at 616 and even at the Hebrew-Israelite temple in Mount Vernon was in what my idiot stepfather and the rabbis would have us read. We read more than simply the Torah, the Prophets (or Nevi’im), the Writings (or Ketuvim) or the Talmud. No, on rare occasions, we cracked open the good old King James, and found ourselves in the middle of Matthew or Mark.

The passages that our fearless religious leaders assigned were very specific. They were only assigned for the purposes of showing us what ancient Israelite life had become in the centuries since the fall of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the enslavement and scattering of the ten Lost Tribes. That was it. No discussion of Jesus’ miracles, his defiant sense of social justice and protest, his life, death and resurrection. The rabbis didn’t even publicly acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, much less the son of God.

I asked, more than once over those three years, “If we are Hebrew-Israelites, then why are we reading the New Testament?” I never got a straight answer. “Oh, Jesus is among the men of Judah, like Moses or Saul or David.” Or “Jesus was like a prophet, in the tradition of Jeremiah or Daniel.” Or “Because I’m the man of this house, and you do what I tell you to do, BOY!,” as  “Judah ben Israel,” my idiot stepfather, would yell.

I knew enough back then to know that the ancient Israelites, ten of those Twelve Tribes, were enslaved and dispersed during the time of the Assyrian Empire, not to mention the Babylonians that conquered the Assyrians. And all between 722 and 586 BCE. By the time the Persians freed the remaining two tribes (Judah and Levi) in 539 BCE, the others were lost to history. So why would Jesus be relevant in a religion based on the history of a group that was scattered centuries before Jesus was born? Why focus on the New Testament in low dosages? Why care about any passages from the gospels at all?

Fast forward twenty-eight years from my Christian conversion to the age of pseudo-Christian evangelical fundamentalism as a proxy for prejudice, hatred and fear. So much of this social issues garbage comes from literal Christian interpretations of the Old Testament. Last I checked, the Old Testament in question here is the Torah, and I haven’t met a whole lot of pastors or priest who are Judaism experts.

The burning of the knight of Hohenberg with his servant before the walls of Zürich, for sodomy, by Diebold Schilling (1482), February 17, 2005. (Lysis via Wikipedia). In public domain.

We’ve been fighting for half a century over abortion — which is essentially addressed for pro-life advocates in Exodus and Leviticus as “Thou shalt not kill.” Lethal levels of disgust and hatred directed at gays and lesbians because of three passages in Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, and one of them over what amounts to attempted gang rape. Really? Our strength as Christians is defined by how well we understand and practice what’s in the Old Testament? Any Christian that believes that this is more important than the Gospels or Jesus’ charge to us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves is a really hateful person. Period.

Though Vice President Joe Biden forced his hand through his support of gay marriage on NBC’s Meet The Press this past Sunday, President Barack Obama did the right thing on Wednesday by outing his truer pro-gay rights and marriage self. You know, the president’s evolving view that took him right back to where he was in ’96. Still, it was a historic moment to see President Obama with ABC’s Robin Roberts proclaim his personal support for gay and lesbian marriage and LGBT rights in general.

But there are questions beyond the historical significance (see John F. Kennedy’s June 11, ’63 speech in support of Black activism and civil rights — on the eve of Medgar Evers’ assassination — for more) or the politics of making this announcement six months before the ’12 election. Like, why does anyone who isn’t gay care at all? Because a pastor who spends more time dealing in fear and misinterpreting the Old Testament says to care? Because you don’t want your hyper-heterosexual sense of masculinity (Black or otherwise) or femininity questioned? Or because you and other people in your life love using your Neanderthal sense of Christianity and spirituality as a club to bludgeon others, to blame others for your lot in life?

“Enthusiasms” scene screen shot from The Untouchables (1987), March 30, 2012. (http://loonpond.blogspot.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws due to picture’s low resolution and cropped nature.

I don’t expect anyone vehemently on the other side of this issue to answer these questions, any more than I ever expected my idiot stepfather to explain why we studied the New Testament as practicing Hebrew-Israelites. I love Jesus and what and who he stood for and I believe would stand for today. But these so-called Torah-practicing Christians are very difficult to love.

In the Closet, On the Down Low

01 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Asexuality, Black Masculinity, Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, Evangelical Christianity, F-Bomb, Faggots, Gay Pride Month, Heterosexism, Heterosexuality, Hypermasculinity, LGBT rights, Masculinity, Self-Reflection, Uncomfortability


The rainbow flag waving in the wind at San Francisco's Castro District, San Francisco, CA, August 5, 2010. (Benson Kua via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-2.0.

The rainbow flag waving in the wind at San Francisco’s Castro District, San Francisco, CA, August 5, 2010. (Benson Kua via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-2.0.

It’s Gay Pride Month, or LGBT Month, or GLBT Month, I guess, depending on one’s perspective. I have nothing directly to contribute, being the semi-well-adjusted heterosexual I am. But I do have something to say about what it means to me to have moved from a world where homophobia and heterosexism was a part of everyday speech (and sometimes action) to a place where it’s actually easy for me to embrace others of a different sexual orientation. Of course, I’m not talking about the world at large. I’m talking about 616 and the folks I knew growing up in Mount Vernon.

This isn’t easy for me to discuss. It means revealing more about myself and some painful memories growing up than even I’m used to doing. Still, it’s important for me and for others to understand that uncomfortable as folks may be about the reality that some people aren’t strictly male, female or heterosexual, these so-called others exist, and are a part of our family, among our co-workers, and deserve our acceptance, love, friendship and support. Or at least, our tolerance.

This story starts with an exchange I had with my father Jimme a couple of weeks before the start of my senior year in high school, August ’86. In a summer when my sexuality was no longer a question — at least to me — my father still had his doubts. I’d hardly seen Jimme most of the summer, only coming over occasionally to see how he was doing or to bum a few bucks off of him. I saved enough money from my job to cover the cost of my three AP classes — $159 to cover the $53 fee for each of the three classes. The College Board and MVHS didn’t grant fee waivers for these courses. Even though I had put that money in my mother’s checking account, I knew that with our money issues my savings were gone. So I found Jimme one Saturday morning near the end of August hanging out on the street corner and having drunk his fill.

His mood was especially foul that day, like his body odor. He refused to give me any money. “I don’ give my money to no faggats!” Jimme yelled at me as he came walking down his block toward me. He’d seen me come out of the front yard of the house he lived in. I wasn’t in the mood for his crap. “I’m not a faggot and I’m not gay,” I yelled back. When he got closer, I could see that he’d been out too long already. Jimme’s clothes were a mess, and his face was in a twisted rage. He grabbed me by my arm.

“Did you get yo’ dict wet?,” he asked as usual.

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” I said.

“YOU’RE A FAGGAT,” he yelled again.

I was so pissed with him that I said, “Forget it. I don’t want your money. I’ll find a job somewhere.”

That was when the conversation got ugly.

“Ain’t no one gonna giv’ a faggat like you no job.”

“You’re a drunk and you’ve had a job for years.”

“Watch who you talkin’ to bo’. I da boss of the bosses. No one tell me what to do.”

“Why should I? I’m a faggot, right? Faggots don’t have to listen to an alcoholic like you”

“I yo’ father, an’ if you want my money, you do what I say.”

“I don’t have to listen to you or anybody else.”

“Come here bo’!”

At that point, I came over and Jimme grabbed my arm. Then he tried to punch me in the face. I caught his right arm, twisted it away from me and toward him, and then pushed him away. The push sent him to the ground, tipsy as he was.

“I can’ believe you hit yo’ dad”

“I didn’t hit you, I pushed you. Besides, you tried to hit me first. You’re not acting like much of a dad right now, anyway.”

I started to walk away, only to be hit in the head with folded up money, about $200 in all. “Take it all, faggat. I don’ want you aroun’ here no more,” he said.

This time I grabbed him and stuffed half the money in his pocket.

“Don’t you still have to eat, pay rent, get some more to drink?”

I kept all of the rest because I figured I earned it that day. Darren, par for the course, just stood around and watched.

That was a scary conversation and confrontation for me. It meant seeing myself for the first time as someone not only defending myself, but defending unnamed others. I could’ve easily said that I love women, and only women, that there was something wrong with gays and being gay. But I didn’t. I guess because at least gays hadn’t chased me down the street, calling me a “faggat” in the process.

I was also ambivalent, though. My mother, for all of her quietness about my lack of dating and friends in the five years before I went off to college, would make weird statements basically daring me to say that I was gay just so she could somehow un-gay me if I was. For her, the mixed signals she received from me started when I was seven. We had just moved to 616, and after a summer camp at Darren’s Clearview School, we went outside on 616’s grounds for the first time, in August ’77. The kids at 616 and 630 harrassed us, chased us around while throwing rocks at us. Scared, we hid behind the big, wooden, dark brown front door and huddled, hoping that the kids wouldn’t find us.

Instead, a couple of young Black Turks saw us, took us to my mother and stepfather, and declared that they saw us doing “the dukey.” I had no idea what they were talking about. All I knew was that my mother and stepfather proceeded to whip us as if we’d gone to the grocery store and stolen $100 worth of candy and soda. Besides “dukey,” the only other new word I picked up that day was “faggot.” That, and an incident one year earlier, one in which an older boy attempted to force me to suck his penis, was about all I knew about how others were “different” and how others saw difference until high school. Even then, I understood at some level the difference between someone attempting to force you to into a sexual act and someone simply being themselves. It didn’t necessarily make me feel better, though.

There were others who dropped the F-bomb on me over the years. Most of them were Black and Afro-Caribbean guys whom I’d shown up in the classroom or in gym class. All of it made me feel as if there were something wrong with me, like a target had been painted on my forehead that said this fool is so different that we can see in him the worst of our homophobic fears.

Even when I started to date, and even after I started having sex, I would occassionally run into women and men who assumed I was gay. Or at least, “asexual,” “sober,” “boring.” It was partly due to my overintellectualizing sex as a distraction, combined with a well-developed habit of protecting myself emotionally, that led to others making these cosmic-leap assumptions.

By the time I had reached my junior year at Pitt, I knew full well that not only I wasn’t gay, but that I was comfortable being around gays, lesbians, even transgender folk. And that made me uncomfortable. I was also a Christian, and between my mother, televangelists like Frederick K.C. Price, Kenneth Copeland, Jimmy Swaggert, Oral Roberts, as well as some of my friends, I found it difficult to reconcile their interpretations of scripture with my own natural comfortability with people of different sexual orientations. Even in grad school, if someone asked me — I certainly didn’t volunteer this — I’d trip over my own words quoting scripture while saying that it’s none of my business what other people do in their private lives.

It took an interview I did with an office at the University of Maryland in ’98 to finally see what I was doing. They asked me flat out if I had a problem advising LGBT students. I actually didn’t, but I also didn’t want to come off as gay myself. So I kind of tripped all over the place while answering the question. Not only did I not get the job. The phone clicked about five seconds after I gave my answer.

I realized that I was still being heterosexist myself, that I had yet to confront the issues I had around sexuality growing up. I made a few decisions around this issue after that interview. One was to stop spouting out-of-context scriptural rhetoric about homosexuality, and to stop attending churches where gays and lesbian were blamed for high crime rates and poverty, like the church I used to attend in Wilkinsburg back in the ’90s. I realized that there was a higher law, one that says “judge not, lest ye be judged,” and “do unto others…” Beyond that, it’s okay to say “I don’t know” when it comes to Christianity and to say “I’m comfortable” when I’m at work or in conversation with someone who happens to be gay or lesbian.

For those wholly uncomfortable with what they’ve been reading, let me say this. Uncomfortability with someone different is hardly unusual. But your uncomfortability shouldn’t mean that someone else’s human and civil rights should be trampled in the process. On the spiritual front, we aren’t supposed to pass judgment on others because we’re uncomfortable with who they are or even how they live as Christians. What do we know, anyway? Otherwise, we’re no different from the White bigots who rapped themselves around a Confederate flag while killing, maiming and intimidating Blacks and others of color out of their rights. Oh well! I guess I’m out of the closet now myself.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

scr2555-proj697-a-kindle-logo-rgb-lg

Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

iBookstore-logo-300x100

Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

Boy @ The Window

Twitter Updates

  • RT @wunpini_fm: They have a completely extractive relationship with African communities. They harvest knowledge and disappear back to thei… 7 hours ago
  • @IamGMJohnson This is sad, stupid, depressing, maddening, and so dead-on American. Maybe they have a soul, but it's… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 10 hours ago
  • RT @IamGMJohnson: Their next move is suing Barnes and Noble to have our books removed from retailers… 10 hours ago
  • RT @IamGMJohnson: A member of Moms for Liberty who is trying to ban All Boys Aren’t Blue lost her child in Uvalde. 6 hours after the shooti… 10 hours ago
  • @profTLe If it were really that simple, we wouldn't be where we are as a country in 2022. I'm not saying vote or do… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 11 hours ago
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Archives

  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007

Blogroll

  • Kimchi and Collard Greens
  • Thinking Queerly: Schools, politics and culture
  • Website for My First Book and Blog
  • WordPress.com

Recent Comments

My Sampling of Super… on The White-Boy Logic of Su…
decollins1969 on “They Can Never Kill Eno…
JAYSON J LUTES on “They Can Never Kill Eno…

NetworkedBlogs on Facebook

NetworkedBlogs
Blog:
Notes From a Boy @ The Window
Topics:
My Life, Culture & Education, Politics & Goofyness
 
Follow my blog

616 616 East Lincoln Avenue A.B. Davis Middle School Abuse Academia Academy for Educational Development AED Afrocentricity American Narcissism Authenticity Bigotry Blackness Boy @ The Window Carnegie Mellon University Child Abuse Class of 1987 CMU Coping Strategies Crush #1 Crush #2 Death Disillusionment Diversity Domestic Violence Economic Inequality Education Family Friendship Friendships Graduate School Hebrew-Israelites High-Stakes Testing Higher Education History Homelessness Humanities Humanities Program Hypocrisy Internalized Racism Jealousy Joe Trotter Joe William Trotter Jr. K-12 Education Love Manhood Maurice Eugene Washington Maurice Washington Misogyny Mother-Son Relationship Mount Vernon High School Mount Vernon New York Mount Vernon public schools Multiculturalism MVHS Narcissism NFL Pitt Pittsburgh Politics of Education Poverty President Barack Obama Race Racial Stereotypes Racism Relationships Self-Awareness Self-Discovery Self-Reflection Sexism Social Justice Teaching and Learning University of Pittsburgh Violence Whiteness Writing

Top Rated

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Notes from a Boy @ The Window
    • Join 2,398 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Notes from a Boy @ The Window
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...