I Hate to Support the Ex-Gay Movement on Anything...

But I can't in good conscience support the petition demanding that Apple remove an app by Exodus International for its anti-gay content.

Exodus is one of the leading ex-gay Christian organizations in the country, and, as you might expect, their propaganda, on their website and on their app, is profoundly misleading and hateful.  But it's not any worse than what you're likely to find on the Exodus website, which is accessible through the Safari browser on your iPhone.  Why is it unacceptable for them to promote the same hurtful message through an app, if it's perfectly all right for them run a similar website.

I suspect many of the signatories to the petition don't see a qualitative difference between app content and web content. The only real distinction is that, here, there's a censor to appeal to.  Apple wants to act as a gatekeeper for content and is committed to removing apps which are "offensive to large groups of people."  That's not an approach I want to endorse.

People with smartphones paid for memory storage.  They should be able to keep any kind of content saved to their device, whether or not I find it offensive.  Apple has a history of infantilizing and abusing its app store customers by withdrawing any app that musters a vocal opposition.   Among the deleted: an app criticizing Mohammed and the Koran, a saucy satirist, and anything that might boost Apple's rivals.  Apple's power to censor needs to be curbed, not expanded.

If you want to attack the app, feel free to leave a negative reviews, as many already have.  The app evaluation system means you've got a much better chance to present your argument to people who may be wavering; after all, most websites don't let you critique their content on their homepage.  This is the appropriate response to the Exodus app and all other offensive apps.  The gay rights movement can't let our legitimate outrage with Exodus be used to help Apple legitimize its terrible approach to content and the rights of the tech user.

UPDATE: Apple pulled the app.

Pippin's Sexcapades made me Squirm

I spent my last week at Yale before summer break working on Pippin, the Dramat's commencement musical, and, although I'm certain that there's an interesting discussion in the gender roles intrinsic to the costume shop (after an afternoon spent alternately doing delicate stitchery and draping chain with a hammer and a vise, my boyfriend exclaimed "I have the best butch girlfriend ever!), I'm more interested in talking about what happened onstage.

Pippin, the show's protagonist, is a young man who becomes increasingly dissatisfied with everything. He loses interest in sex as a means to fulfilment after his participation in a raucous, but empty, orgy which occurs in the first act. As part of the choreography, Pippin is lifted by four male dancers and is briefly lowered onto a series of dancers who lie under him in a very mechanistic interpretation of the sex act.

In the original choreography, all the dancers that Pippin had sex with were female, and lay flat on their backs, until Pippin was lifted off them and they hurried out of the way of the next girl. But sometime between early rehearsals and the performance, one of the female dancers was swapped out for a male dancer, who lay on his stomach while Pippin was lowered onto him.

The dance as a whole was not strictly heteronormative. The pairings of dancers in the background were f/f as ofter as m/f, and were sometimes m/m/m/m, but it was the anal sex acted out by the protagonist that got the biggest audience reaction during performances. At every show, the m/m sex act got an enormous laugh, while the m/f pairings passed unremarked.

Sitting in the audience, I felt vaguely uncomfortable. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the appropriate response would be. There's something wrong when its only the gay encounter that reads as a joke, even if the entire sequence is played for laughs. At the same time, I don't know whether the real solution is to insist that homosexuality be treated as identical to and interchangeable with heterosexuality.

What reaction would you have to Pippin's encounter? What would you hope to see from an audience?

Why NOT to Queer the Census

Today is Census Day at Yale!

You've probably noticed the flyers put up by the small army of Census volunteers, but the added PSAs from Fierce Advocates telling you to 'Queer the Census' may leave you wondering what to do today. Fierce Advocates, in partnership with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, is asking students to paste stickers asking the Census to add a question about sexual orientation to the next iteration of the form.

Don't.

The Queer the Census campaign is misguided. Although, as a social science nerd, and 538 afficionado, I am always sympathetic to the lust for more statistical data, but the Census is not the right way to collect this information. And, even if the question were added, it is unlikely to result in a PR coup for the gay rights movement.

The Census is the Wrong Instrument

You won't notice many personal questions on the Census (aside from race, which was included from the first census, when it was important to know whether a subject was black or white, since blacks counted as 3/5 for redistricting). We don't rely on the Census to take a complete snapshot of the nation every ten years. The Census is necessarily short, since every additional question increases the odds that it won't be returned. The Census an essentially simple purpose: tallying the number of residents to guide redistricting and disbursement of per capita funds. A queer tally is not relevant to these goals.

This cycle, the government eliminated the long form of the census, preferring to rely on the work done by the American Community Survey, which surveys samples of the country every year. If we want to ask questions about queers, this is the place to do it. In fact, the ACS already tallies the number of gay committed partnerships nationwide.

The Census would Undercount

Even if the census asked about sexual orientation, it would be likely to produce a massive, but official looking, undercount of American queers. Although the Census counts every individual, it is filled out by household, and I have a tough time believing that most high schoolers or other young people living at home are likely to see the Census questionnaire as the appropriate segue into coming out.

In addition, the question as proposed would be likely to undercount younger people who would identify as queer or questioning and might hesitate to commit to a stigmatized category like gay.

The Count Doesn't Count for Much

Mere evidence that gay people are everywhere will not result in the rolling back of discriminatory laws. The American Community Survey has already shown that gay couples exist in 99% of counties nationwide. It is wrong to claim, as a Daily Princetonian op-ed did, that demonstrating that single gays are equally ubiquitous will force bigoted legislators to clean up their act. Progress for the LGBT movement has come not through numbers but through stories. The entire point of "We're Here, We're Queer" was to turn the frightening spectre of 'a gay' into the familiar face of a friend or neighbor.

We Can Do Better

Instead of trying to up the numbers of queers who might be eligible for hypothetical government programs, let's do more to expand those programs. Today, take the time you would have spent on stickers doing something for Lambda Legal (still my fav LGBT activist group).

If you really want to do good work to reform the Census, join the movement to count prisoners in the districts they're from, rather than using them to boost the numbers of the richer neighborhoods where they're imprisoned.

Sometimes I just miss my mom...

A couple of years ago, around the same time I started dating women I stopped talking to my mom, a lot.

Before I actually "took the plunge" and actually got the guts to ask girls out, I had tested the waters with my mom, so to speak. I asked her questions about what she thought on the topic and quite frankly I never received a very positive response to say the least...

When I actually went for it, the girl dating part, I didn´t tell my mom, in fact I was very careful to hide it from her. I was afraid of her rejection and her criticism, she can be quite harsh at times.

This went on for a while, eventually she started getting suspicious, and our relationship plummeted at an accelerated rate...

I realized that keeping things about my sexuality not only meant that I couldnt tell her who I was dating, but also I couldnt tell her about the parties I went to, the people I hung out with, I couldn't explain certain political interests I have, heartbreak, joys, worries about questioning girls in my life....

I came out to her a couple of months ago. She didn't take it well. It disgusts her. My girlfriend is banned from my house. I can hardly tell her half the things I do here because half of them have to do with my queerness. I feel attacked by her.

I miss her. I wish we could talk like before. When I was younger, when I was still what she "wanted".

I know she loves me, but she disagrees with so much of who I am.

Sometimes though, I really just want her back. It´s strange to want someone in my life that both hurts me and loves me at the same time. She´s bittersweet to me.

Sometimes i just miss my mom...