Gay relationship ads 1987 vs. 2012 at OSU

PHOTO: Gay relationship ads, shown in a 1987 "The Advocate" magazine, (click photo to enlarge) were a primary source of income for early gay activist newspapers and magazines because mainstream advertisers did not want to be associated with anything gay. In the days before the advent of the internet, many gay men, especially those in isolated small towns and closeted gay men, often tried placing print ads to look for a long term relationship instead of relying on the random sex hookups that could be easily found in any cruising location across America, such as virtually any bus station tearoom or isolated outdoor park (In Corvallis, Oregon it was the city bus station and the riverfront park bushes). Similar to today, many internet advertisers have found that such relationship ads often fail to find somebody and the ads will only generate a bunch of useless leads to perverts, trolls and old silver foxes. Classified ads developed such a bad reputation that they eventually degenerated to being used mostly by sex workers, such as male prostitutes and erotic massage providers.

PHOTO: (See previous post OSU Valentines Day pride and lonely hearts on Craigslist (2/15/12)) Gay relationship ads, appearing on the Craig's List Web site in 2012, are written in a similar manner to those from before the invention of the internet. They differ only in the contemporary references and internet lingo. Judging from this student's previous ads and his plaintive pleas, it sounds like he has had little success in finding a potential long term partner to love at Oregon State University. Of course, this makes sense from a probability standpoint -- gay men at OSU are rare and so the potential pool is small. Finding somebody is a common problem faced by gay men everywhere. Historically, this type of melancholy was often misinterpreted by homophobic doctors as being a sign that homosexuals were mentally ill. Likewise, many gay men would give up looking for a healthy long-term relationship and revert to what is commonly called a "slut phase" where they would seek frequent random anonymous sex with strangers just for pleasure. Gay liberation and sexual freedom fighters encouraged this type of behavior, which fueled the unexpected AIDS crisis that hit gay men especially hard because gay men never used condoms knowing that they couldn't get pregnant like breeders could. Of course, this type of behavior would only justify the medical community's viewpoint point that homosexual men have a shallow and had narcissistic personality.

The text for the above ad from an OSU grad student at Oregon State University reads as follows:

I didn't get many worthwhile hits with my last ad, but I thought I'd give it a shot again. Maybe it will catch some different individuals' attention.

I'm looking to date, with the hopes of something becoming long term. Relationships often have a mind of their own though and it's best to let them take their own course. As such, as long as you're open to some thing becoming long term in the future, that's good to go.

I'm 6'0, roughly 165lbs (lost some weight from being sick), and in pretty good physical shape. I'm a graduate student at OSU studying Chemistry. I'm definitely a scientific type person, but I am not your typical scientist either. While I'm very analytical, observant, and scrupulous with many things, I am naturally an intuitive non-linear thinker. I have the mind of an artist, that for some reason functions very well in the world of science. In a way I bridge the world between both, left and right brained. Although I would never call myself an artist (I can't draw my way out of a paper bag, although I am quite good at ceramics). I'm also pretty in tune with my emotions and the emotions of others. Thus, I consider myself to be rather caring. I'm very communicative, and that's true across all medias. Writing, talking. Etc. I love psychology and the human mind in general. Personality theories definitely top the list. I'm highly introspective and perhaps one of the most self-aware people you could get to know. I like to apply that skills to aid others as well.

If you're interested please do email me. Tell me about yourself some, and do include a (face) picture or two (without which it's highly unlikely I will reply). Please be in good physical shape and under 30. I hope to hear from you soon!

Location: Corvallis it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests (Quoted from "Dating and or LTR Path - 22 (Corvallis)" posted on corvallis.craigslist.org Mar. 21, 2012)

Clearly he is in pain and it is hard to give him any hope other than the encouragement hat what he wants is not impossible to find.

Obama on Cartoon Network to stop bullying plus Rutgers hate crime justice

VIDEO: Kirk Cameron: My remarks on gays not hate speech interview on NBC Today Show Mar. 20, 2012 (See blog post by Wayne Besen, "Crazy Kirk Cameron Says He Loves Gay People on Today Show," posted Mar. 20, 2012) The actor and producer best known for his role in the 1980s sitcom "Growing Pains" talks about criticism of his recent reference to homosexuality as "unnatural."

My letter to the editor (see below) was inspired by President Obama's introduction to the Cartoon Network documentary that can be seen at Cartoon Network StopBullyingSpeakUp.com (Note: this link redirects to www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/promotion_landing_page/stopbullying/index.html) The home page says: "Stop Bullying: Speak Up. How do you stop bullying? Just by speaking up! If you or someone you know is a victim of bullies, tell your parents, teachers or another adult you trust. By letting other people know about it, you can help make sure it stops. Join Cartoon Network and help us spread the word about bullying awareness and prevention with Stop Bullying: Speak Up."

Also see the opinion columns by:

• Jay Michaelson, "Can suicide be a hate crime?" Newsweek, Mar. 19, 2012, published online Mar. 12, 2012 as "Is It Fair to Punish Dharun Ravi Because Tyler Clementi Died? Dharun Ravi may be a jerk, but he shouldn't go to prison for it."

• Michelangelo Signorile, " Tyler Clementi and the Dharun Ravi Trial: Why the Verdict Is Just," posted Mar. 19, 2012
• John Aravosis, "CNN's Piers Morgan takes down Kirk Cameron's bigotry, deliciously," AmericaBlog posted Mar. 21, 2012

My letter to the editor below is on bullying and President Obama's appearance on the Cartoon Network special about bullying (NOTE: this is the unedited version -- the printed newspaper version had edited out the Kirk Cameron section, probably to fit the layout space.):

I sincerely commend President Obama for introducing the Cartoon Network television documentary, "Stop Bullying: Speak Up." Children tell their own stories of being bullied.

Boys, in particular, routinely risk being physically assaulted if they are perceived as acting "so gay." Girls can similarly suffer for not following society's prescribed gender role.

Both Obama and the program instructed kids to tell an adult, teacher or principal. However, the children said that adults would often blame the child instead of the bully.

One child also blamed himself for not being able to "man-up and fight back" as his father instructed him. The boy intuitively knew this would only cause insensitive adults to blame him, not the bully.

Self-loathing homophobia is insidious. For example, movie star Kirk Cameron, an artistic and effeminate man, is clearly trying to prove he is not gay by biblically condemning gays and constantly bragging about his six children.

Hate and bullying can lead to more tragic results, such as the suicide of a Rutgers student. Another student was convicted of a hate crime and faces a potentially harsh sentence for what some dismiss as "normal locker-room teasing."

Even partisan LGBT columnists are asking the judge to compassionately send the right message by giving justice to all instead of vengeance. Nobody wins with bullying.

Thomas Kraemer

(Quoted from Thomas Kraemer, "More people should stand up against bullying," Gazette-Times, Mar. 23X, 2012, p. A11)

Encyclopaedia Britannica 1778-2012 printed edition killed by virtual edition

PHOTO: The copy I own of a printed edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Americans spell it Encyclopedia Britannica), published in 1910-1911, is shown next to the three added volumes printed in 1922. The editors apologized for having to publish an update so quickly after 1910, but say it is because of the extraordinary occurrence of the "World War" (World War II hadn't occurred yet) had compelled them to do it. In 2012 it was announced that sales for the Encyclopaedia Britannica online edition are so much more than the printed edition that they will no longer be printing it. The company insisted that Google, and I assume Wikipedia, is not the reason they are no longer printing an encyclopedia.

PHOTO: Encyclopaedia Britannica 1910-1911, Vol. 24, p. 746, "Sex" entry appears below a diagram of the Singer sewing machine shuttle mechanism. Unlike today, the idea of sex referred only to the concept that an animal was biologically male or female. No other mentions of sex were to be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, much to the disappointment of adolescents who were trying to learn what sex was all about. Sex education did not become widespread at public schools in America until the AIDS crisis compelled the teaching of at least safe sex to students. Prudish theocrats are still trying to ban all mentions of sex in schools, especially anything to do with being gay or homosexuality. (Note: The leather binding and high-acid paper are disintegrating and becoming discolored as the book ages.)

PHOTO: a 1997 digital edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on one CD ROM, produced by Netscape, the inventor of the World Wide Web standard, and sold in retail computer and book stores. It included an optional dial-up internet connection to access additional articles online. The first CD-ROM version was published in 1989 and a version went online in 1994.

Waves of nostalgia went up my spine reading the news by the Associated Press, "Encyclopaedia Britannica to stop publishing print editions, will continue digital versions," Washington Post, posted Mar. 13, 2012.

At least one newspaper columnist shares my nostalgia: Laurie Herstzel, "On Books: As Encyclopedia Britannica stops print edition, we lose a little serendipity in our lives," StarTribune, posted Mar. 15, 2012. I share her memory of how the World Book encyclopedia was simplistic compared to the more scholarly articles of Britannica. Of course, using either as a source was looked down upon by university professors grading papers, similar to today where Wikipedia is viewed with suspicion by scholars, but secretly used by all of them to quickly find the confirmed root sources of information they need for scholarly work.

Like her, I also recall browsing through the Britannica to learn random things in a similar manner to how children probably surf the internet today. I suspect children can learn even more today by browsing the internet, even though it might be hard for them to sort out the good and bad sources as an editor would do.

Yes, the transition to a computer world of paperless documents has been what I have devoted my entire life to achieving and therefore I should be happy. However, it is also sobering to see one more indication that my dream has been realized at the expense of real things becoming obsolete or lost, namely printed books and magazines, which I have also loved and cherished all my life.

The social implications of a paperless society will not be determined until long after I am dead. I speculate that digital books and media will be a two edged sword.

On the one hand, digital media will make it easier to preserve written material and make it more widely available to humans. The old librarian's concern of high-acid paper and ripped paper pages will be replaced by concerns about establishing digital standards that are required to enable the reading of older digital copies.

On the other hand, I anticipate that there will be a new problem facing historians in trying to use old documents for historical research. Many of the clues used to authenticate a paper document as being a true root source will no longer be available. It may be impossible for a historian to know if a person's blog page that is read 100 years from now is exactly what he wrote a century ago. Even for contemporaneous documents, scholars are still in disagreement about how do you cite another piece of scholarship, given that multi-media document can automatically update and change by design. Professional librarians have adopted the good, but inadequate, method of noting when a digital work was accessed. This assumes that a digital change history of a document is being kept. A change history is better than nothing, but it still seems open to problems in being to able cite and authenticate documents.

Of course, the methods used for storing information throughout human history have had their share of problems. For example, scrolls and other documents have become lost or inaccessible throughout history, which has often led to man reinventing things or making decisions that are not based on good knowledge. But as any scholar knows, digital copies may provide more information in the future, but it will not necessarily be better or useful information for mankind. I wish I could live long enough to see how this evolves.

CBS "The Homosexuals" 1967 report featured Jack Nichols

VIDEO: The legendary CBS TV reporter Mike Wallace, "The Homosexuals," CBS Television Network, first aired March 7, 1967 interviewed the pioneering gay rights pioneer Jack Nichols who believed getting gay people to come out publically would shatter the myths about homosexuals that were documented in this report as being fact. (See , "The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, March 7," Box Turtle posted Mar. 7, 2012, TODAY IN HISTORY: CBS Airs "The Homosexuals": 1967 and TheLoverOfMovies, "CBS Documentary - The Homosexuals (1967)," aired on March 7, 1967, filmthreat.com posted May 23, 2011 -- ""Although this was the first network documentary dealing with the topic of homosexuality, it was not the first televised in the United States. That was 'The Rejected,' produced and aired in 1961 on KQED, a public television station out of San Francisco. Three years in the making, "The Homosexuals" went through two producers and multiple revisions. The episode included interviews with several gay men, psychiatrists, legal experts and cultural critics, interspersed with footage of a gay bar and a police sex sting. "The Homosexuals" garnered mixed critical response. The network received praise from some quarters and criticism from others for even airing the program."

This 1967 CBS documentary on homosexuals echoes all of the canards about gay men that were commonly believed by most people at that time. A typical example from OSU's archives was written by a distinguished OSU professor, which essentially equated gay men with child molesters and is shown in the history by Thomas Kraemer, "Corvallis, Oregon State University gay activism 1969-2004," outhistory.org accessed Mar. 9, 2012. Given the pervasiveness and history of bigoted opinions about gays, it is remarkable that the work of these early gay activists led to the formation of the first officially recognized gay student group at OSU in 1976. (ibid)

The first gay activist shown in this 1967 CBS documentary and interviewed by CBS reporter Mike Wallace was the pioneering gay activist Jack Nichols, who can be seen below in 2004:

PHOTO: (left to right) Dr. Frank Kameny, Jack Nichols, and Dr. George Weinberg being honored as Grand Marshalls of New York City's 2004 Heritage of Pride Parade. (See Thomas Kraemer, "Jack Nichols 1938-2005," thomaskraemer.blogspot.com posted Sept. 5, 2006)

PHOTO: Jack Nichols obituary, New York Times, May 4, 2005, p. C16.

PHOTO: Jack Nichols obituary, New York Times, May 4, 2005, p. C16.

Oregon panders to computer sever farms with hydro power and no sales tax

PHOTO: A standard computer server farm in use at a U.S. military base. (From Server farm (Wikipedia) accessed Feb. 29, 2012)

The editorial by Hasso Hering, "A case for ending the property tax," Gazette-Times, Feb. 26, 2012, p. D4 is a good example of how a tax break for one industry can have a negative effect on something else in society. Below is my letter to the editor in response to the editorial:

Hasso Hering's Feb, 26 editorial, "A case for ending the property tax" by replacing it with a sales tax, is a good idea, but it might also jeopardize Oregon's burgeoning industry of computer server farms being built by Google, Facebook, etc.

Every dotcom is sanctimoniously publicizing their move to Oregon as a way to help the environment by using renewable and inexpensive hydroelectric power that was abandoned by the aluminum industry.

In fact, their biggest reason is that other states want to collect a sales tax on every internet transaction. Oregon is sales tax-free.

Will Oregon pander to server farms as North Dakota has to credit card providers? Banks exploited North Dakota's generosity. I pray that dotcoms will "do no evil" as Google's corporate objectives aspire to.

Thomas Kraemer

(Quoted from Thomas Kraemer, "A good idea, but...," Gazette-Times, Mar. 3, 2012, p. D5)

BusinessWeek cover of airplanes humping for Santorum and Dan Savage

PHOTO: (click on photo to enlarge) BusinessWeek's Feb. 6-12, 2012 cover illustration depicted two doggy-style humping airplanes with the caption, "Let's Get It On" (left). The negative reaction from disgusted readers was printed in the reader's letters section of BusinessWeek, Feb. 20 - Feb. 26, 2012, p. 6. The readers who were disgusted by the cover probably had a homophobia panic attack when they saw the article in the next issue by Barrett W. Sheridan, "In Politics, Google Is a Weapon," BusinessWeek Feb. 27 - Mar. 4, 2012, p. 42 posted February 23, 2012 (right) that featured the sex advice columnist Dan Savage and his spreadingsantorum.com Website he created to stifle Santorum's political career. BusinessWeek appears to be thumbing its nose at their offended readers. Either that or they have a subversive graphic artist on their staff and the editors are clueless about what he is doing.

Eight years before this BusinessWeek article was published, I wrote about Dan Savage's Google Bomb spreadingsantorum.com in an article published online by gay pioneer Jack Nichols Website: Thomas Kraemer, "51 Gay Bashing Speeches at the Republican Convention," GayToday.com posted September 13, 2004

Other people have tried to the same thing for different politicians, but only Dan Savage's Santorum meme has gone so viral that even the mainstream press has had to mention "Santorum's Google problem" as being relevant to his run for President of the United States. Of course, I am sure that not all the press is feeling forced to report it because it appears some editors are having fun with by writing double entendre headlines such as, "Santorum comes from behind in three-way."

It is amazing how references to sodomy and the possible disgusting side-effects are no longer the "unmentionable sin" of preachers just a few decades ago. Only a few years ago, anybody merely mentioning such a disgusting thing, even in an oblique and discrete manner, would have been censored by the mainstream press, much less given prominent coverage by a mainstream business magazine that is read by every CEO and conservative Wall Street investor. Of course, society hasn't yet moved beyond gay sex being mentioned as anything other than as a joke, but this slight shift is a sign that gay liberation and the sexual revolution of the 1960's has had a positive effect on society, even though gay sex has not quite yet been normalized in society.