"Loving" and the Fight for Marriage Equality

Cherry Grove vs. Fire Island Pines

[2013 Update at end of post...]
 
Growing up as a Long Island beach bum, Fire Island was never too far away, and for many years I worked up a full-body tan at Lighthouse Beach in Kismet. But this Memorial Day Weekend, my boyfriend and I decided to make the ultimate gay men’s beach pilgrimage to the more ‘fabulous’ communities on the island, and took an early morning ferry over to Cherry Grove. What follows are the experiences and reactions of two middle-aged Fire Island ‘virgins.’

After disembarking, we followed the boardwalk to the Grove Hotel, a complex that includes the Ice Palace dance club, pool and poolside bar, beach store, and pizza parlor. We had no reservations, but walked into the ‘lobby’ and were rented a room. The office staff introduced themselves by name, and set the ‘atmosphere’ for what would be a very laid-back, ‘no-problem,’ relaxed location. While the hotel itself bears the salt-blasted, foot-worn, not-quite-level, and dry-rotted evidence of an old wooden family resort, our room was clean, roomy, bright, and we thought, quite a bargain.

That day, there were several drag-queen lead events taking place at poolside. We tend to be more ‘at home’ with a Bear-crowd, and decided to skip the Queen events and head out to the beach for the day. But I need to add that while there is a century-long love affair between The Grove and its Drag Queens, the population that weekend was entirely diverse: Queens, bears, twinks, young, old, black, white, hippies and preppies, lesbians, and liberal-minded straight couples with their children all mingling together on the narrow boardwalks and the beachfront for the weekend. Our nakedness on the beach in the middle of all this was pretty much ignored and accepted…although we discovered later that day that a remote stretch between The Grove and The Pines was a more popular with nude sunbathers.

Everywhere we went, people – both visitors and Island employees – were friendly and laid-back, but quick to laugh. At the hotel bar, we quickly learned the bartenders names (Todd, John, Ken, Chuck), and hanging out at poolside quite literally meant hanging out with our new bartender-friends, as well as other guests who joined in the ‘party’ and bought rounds of shots.

The friendliness continued everywhere we went – at Floyd’s, we enjoyed the most incredibly delicious breakfasts and great conversations with the Irishwoman who owns the place, and when I went into the Island Breeze to order some dinner and a drink, the bartender greeted me – like so many people here – by introducing himself with a handshake.

In walking around the Grove, we detected a very strong sense of community – a sense created, in part, by the tightly-clustered patterns of modest-sized homes that ‘fit’ into, and became part of, the beachside landscape, and by the narrow (five feet max?) boardwalks that forced eye contact and a bit of physical maneuvering between those out for a walk.

In one of our conversations, a well-meaning woman suggested that we head down to Fire Island Pines for a day. She added, “…there’s got to be about 200 Chelsea boys down there…,” a reference to the young muscle boys from the Chelsea gyms in Manhattan. Since we were just ‘taking the island in,’ we figured that should be our next stop, and we headed off through the trails in the “Meat Rack” and wound up in Fire Island Pines.
The physical difference between the two communities impacted us immediately. Upon arriving in the Pines, we found narrow boardwalks as in the Grove, but we also found ourselves on an actual dirt/sand roadway that would have accommodated two-way vehicular traffic. And in fact, those would be large vehicles: dump trucks and service trucks, filled with landscaping tools and bags of compost, used to service huge houses which exploded out of the landscape. In one of the most brutal landscaping assaults I have ever seen, one homeowner had sited his home at the back of his lot, and cleared the entire yard of the native sand, beachgrass, and beach flora. Instead, the bulldozed plot was planted with unnatural-looking birch trees and covered with – of all things – wood chips. Wow. How to stick out like a sore thumb and import your suburban mindset onto a barrier island….

As we walked this ‘road’ towards the harbor, others past us buy, but they generally avoided eye contact and conversation. We were clearly visitors – or perhaps seen as imported ‘help’ – in someone else’s kingdom.

Upon arrival at the Harbor, we hoped to have a few drinks and lunch, but first stopped at a small retail shop, Jalston’s, to buy a hat for my boyfriend, who was beginning to feel the effects of the sun beating down on his uncovered head. With the exception of a woofy man doing some plumbing work there, the visit to buy a hat was a complete disaster. They had no clue as to their prices, and flipped indiscriminately through folders and papers to find a price. After more than 15 minutes of waiting, the sales clerk (Owner? I don’t know – we never learned his name) – said, ‘take the hat…go have some drinks…give me $60 as a deposit…we’ll settle up later.”

Frustrated with waiting, we agreed. The clerk then insisted that he personally walk us to a pool and bar on the harbor, and “set us up.” Off we went to poolside…along a walk littered with garbage and debris. We were then set up under a desert-tent-looking shelter, which, in the sun, simply retained heat, and our clerk/host took off. I went up to the bar to order, and realized that some shaded tables at dockside were actually much cooler than at poolside, so we switched tables, and I ordered our drinks.

I would learn that I could not wait at the bar and get my drinks…rather, they had to be ‘delivered’ to me by the bartender – who never once said hello, or introduced himself, or established eye contact, or spoke to us after delivering the drinks – drinks that cost us $32.50 for TWO (yes, TWO) Jack Daniels & 7-ups.

We decided this was not the place for us. We returned to Jalstons where they had not yet uncovered the price, and then suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, here it is! $54.00 and change! See how close we estimated?!” I was handed back a $5 bill as change. My boyfriend promptly tweeted: “Jalstons: Overpriced, disorganized, poor service, not a recommendation at all, steer clear.” With that, we decided to head back to the Grove by trying a different path, hoping to leave with a better impression than the one created upon our arrival.

No such luck.

We passed an older gentleman in a negligee who chose not to respond to our nods of “hello” as we passed him. The woman (the only woman we’d seen in The Pines) with whom he was walking, however, commented on a ‘flock’ of plastic pink garden flamingoes, calling them “geese.”

Danny and I looked at each other and couldn’t even begin to deconstruct this odd encounter. We quickened our pace, and returned to the Grove.

Our first stop? Our hotel.

“Can we stay an extra night?,” we asked.

“Of course!” our friends responded.

And so, for $60, we had another day in Cherry Grove (as opposed to that same amount buying us three drinks, or a hat in The pretentious Pines).

So, back to our new friends Todd, and John, and Ken, and Chuck, at the Poolside Bar in Cherry Grove, and Floyd’s, and the Island Breeze,

We’ll return to Fire Island again and again, that’s for sure.

To Cherry Grove.
--------------------
 2013 Update:  SO, we have done more than simply 'return' to the Grove.  We have become summer residents. 

Throwing in on a house-share arrangement, we are fortunate to have a rental just a few steps from the dock.  We are now here at the end of April, and the last weeks of May, June, July, August, and September, and a five day stretch in October. When the weekend party crowds dissipate, we ae surrounded by "known" faces - other summer residents who already know our names, or at least recognize us.  We have "our" barstools at Cherry's On The Bay (my new favorite bar), where I can drink all day if I want, wear no shirt, and smoke my pipe, all while watching the boats arrive and depart at the dock.  We spent Memorial Day weekend 2013 chasing clueless people off of the sand dunes, erecting "Stay Off The Dune" Signs, and pining back the National Park Service's ears for overzealous enforcement.

It feels like "home," and, for me, retirement is a mere 2 years away.

Justice, 10 years later. Osama bin Laden is Dead.

Unions Should be Stronger, not Weaker

In Wisconsin, in Massachusetts, in my home state of New Hampshire, and indeed, across the country, a battle over the rights of unionized labor is playing out in state legislatures. In the last half century, as we have moved from a manufacturing economy to a service and information economy, union membership has fallen from 40% of the workforce to barely 10%...and these members are highly concentrated in certain industries - automakers, steelworkers, mining, health care, and public services such as firefighters, police, and teachers.

It has been fashionable in many political circles to blame unions for the nations economic woes: when auto makers sought government bailouts, unions were blamed for the company's poor cash flows, and Tea Party advocates have criticized the success of public employee unions for obtaining pay and benefit packages that they claim are better than most Americans get. When workers show up to protest legislation aimed at eliminating their right to negotiate the terms of their employment contracts, their detractors call them 'union thugs' and 'mobs,' and often throw in cheap shots about the power of 'union leaders.' This name-calling and rhetoric does little to add to objective public debate about the proper role of unions.

Others have more reasonably questioned the status of unions, suggesting that since the days of sweat-shops and dangerous working conditions are over, unions are no longer needed. It is to these 'thinking people' that I would like to respond, drawing on basic economics.

Any one of us knows that when driving about, even in unfamiliar territory, about what to expect to pay for a cup of coffee at a roadside coffee shop or gas station. No one expects to pay a quarter, but no one expects to pay $5.00 either. I recently took a quick survey of 30 students, and asked them to write down what they'd expect to pay in such a situation for a medium-sized coffee. With a single exception, everyone wrote down a number between $1.00 and $2.00, with an absolute majority between $1.25 and $1.75.

This, in spite of the fact there is no law anywhere dictating the price of coffee. It is the result of the natural interplay of the forces of Supply and Demand: thousands of consumers, and thousands of sellers of coffee interacting in the marketplace, with the natural result that a functional price exists. Consumers know that if they stop in a coffee shop and the price is outrageous, they can go elsewhere; and if the price is too low, they may suspect the quality of the product. There is much transparency in a market such as this, as even my students who are not coffee drinkers were aware of the general price level of the product. This is an example of a market that functions well, and it functions well because there are many consumers, with much information, and many suppliers in competition with one another.

But what happens when these perfect market conditions do not exist?

Consider a hypothetical case where hundreds of farmers sell their chickens to any number of processing plants, which in turn package the meat and then sell it to supermarkets. But now consider the results if all the processing plants decided to merge, so that only one chicken processor existed.

If there was only a single Processor, they would constitute a Monopoly insofar as they would be the sole seller of packaged chickens to supermarkets. As most consumers know, when you desire a product that is sold by only one firm, that firm can demand a price far higher than they would be able to if they had to compete with other producers. Consumers paying electric bills to Monopolistic providers know this all too well. However, in our example, we shouldn't presume that the higher prices paid by the supermarkets means that the chicken farmers will get a higher price for their chickens.

In fact, the truth is just the opposite.

The relationship between the Processor and the farmers is called a Monopsony - not a word that is as popular in the public mind as Monopoly. A Monopsony - rather than being the sole provider of a product - is the sole Purchaser of a product. In other words, with only one Processor, the chicken farmers can only sell their product to one buyer. If that buyer should say, "We're paying .25 per chicken - take it or leave it," the farmers have no place to turn. In such a case, the price the farmers receive will be less than under normal market conditions where there are a variety of both producers and consumers.

As a result, our Monopoly/Monopsony Processor is able to depress the price it pays the farmers, and increase the price it charges to supermarkets, and ultimately, the consumer. This is due to unequal bargaining power (or concentrated "Market Structure") of the Processor...and it would simply be erroneous to blame the farmers or the high prices the consumer was ultimately paying.

There are two solutions to this imbalance of market power: the Processor's power can be reduced or divided; or the farmers power can be increased. In the former, the state would use anti-trust laws to 'break up' the Processor into several smaller companies, thus restoring balance in the negotiating of prices; or, the farmers could band together and speak with one voice to negotiate a price for their product with the Processor (This is precisely what cranberry growers have done, by creating the farmer's cooperative known as Ocean Spray).

Now, let's apply these principles to Labor Markets.

Individual Workers, rather than raising and selling chickens, sell their labor to Employers (which could be private employers, or to governing structures). Those employers then sell the final products (whether goods or services) to consumers. In the case of public employment, the consumers are taxpayers, who have little say: they 'purchase' these services with their tax dollars, and face legal repercussions if they refuse. Understandably, from time to time these consumers may complain about either the price or the service...but just as chicken farmers are not the natural enemy of the consumer, neither are public employees the enemy of the taxpayer.

In fact, just as the Processor in the above example wields market power to increase prices to consumers while simultaneously depressing the prices the farmer gets, so too do the structures of government (and many private corporations) increase the price (or tax) they charge to consumers, while wielding the ability to depress the price (or wages) it offers to its employees. Unlike private industry where employment contracts are enforceable in a court of law, government can - and does - change the terms of its employees compensation through a mere act of the legislature. The terms of employment that labor counted on can be changed with a legislative vote and a pen stroke, with few legal rights of recourse. The unilateral power of governing structures to dictate the terms of employment means that, left unorganized labor is in no better condition than the farmers in the above example.

Unlike the example of the Monopoly/Monopsony Processor, however, there are fewer solutions available to public employees to 'even the playing field.' Anti-trust laws can not be applied to government structures, and government can not be 'broken up.' No one seriously suggests that there should be multiple State Troopers, or competing Registries of Deeds, or three different fire departments competing to provide service in one city. No one seriously believes that there should be multiple public school systems in the same town, with the resultant duplication of administration and buildings.

The only solution, then, to create equivalent market power, is to permit those at the bottom of the chain - the laborers - to organize and speak with a single voice. And that is what unionism is all about. It is the only option available to create equivalency of bargaining power between those seeking to sell their labor and the governing structures hiring them, and to counteract the arbitrary and raw power those institutions can exercise if unchecked.

And for those who claim that public employees, or any other employees, 'make too much,' or have 'extravagant' benefits as a result of union agreements - perhaps they should turn that question around:

What has happened to the average Americans pays and benefits as a result of the decrease of unions in this country over the last half-century?

By most measurements, Americans are now losing purchasing power. Their health benefits are less than at any time in the last 50 years. Their vacation, sick, and personal time lags behind every major industrialized nation in the world.

Those who complain about the effects of unions remind me of the 1971 song recorded by "Ten Years After" titled, "I'd Love to Change the World." One of the more memorable lyrics in that song went,

"Tax the rich, Feed the Poor,
'Till there are no Rich no more..."

I have always believed that the writer, Alvin Lee, got that all wrong. Rather, it should be:

"Tax the rich, Feed the Poor,
'Till there are no Poor no more..."

Our goal as a nation should not be to make everyone equally miserable by impoverishing everyone...but to ensure that all our citizens share in the wealth our society creates.

Irish Foreign Minister: end ban on gays in NY St Patrick's Parade

"...They need to celebrate Ireland as it is, not as people imagine it. Equality is very much the center of who we are in our identity in Ireland," said Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore, speaking yesterday with prominent New York Irish gay community leaders and groups at the Irish Consulate on Park Avenue in NYC.

"This issue of exclusion is not Irish, let's be clear about it. Exclusion is not an Irish thing..... I think that's the message that needs to be driven home."

After a financial debacle more serious than America's, Irish elections last month catapulted Fine Gael into the leadership of Ireland. They replaced Fianna Fail (relegating them to third place status), which had been the largest party in Parliament since 1932. The winds of change are strong according to Gilmore: The new government is committed to a constitutional convention to draw up a new constitution for Ireland in time for the 100th anniversary of 1916 Easter Rebellion. The government plans to introduce a provision for same sex marriage. (Civil Unions are currently available for legal for same-sex and heterosexual couples in Ireland)

"Ireland has changed," said Gilmore. "..For the majority of Irish people being gay is no longer an issue."

While often perceived as having a very conservative approach to sex and gender issues, the Irish actually have a very 'progressive' past: in medieval Ireland, women had the right to divorce their husbands, own property, and figured prominently in Irish legend and history, including Queen Maeve and St. Bridget. The 12th century historian Gerald of Wales records ceremonies for same-sex male unions taking place as early as the 1100's. The 16th C. English Poet Edmund Spencer was appalled by Irish men, writing that they were "a bunch of lascivious bisexuals who offered themselves freely to both women and men." Spencer recommended the extermination of the Irish race but was himself burned out of his famous castle in County Cork.

The imposition of a strict Puritan code under the Elizabethans, Cromwell, and the Victorians; the loss of 1/3 of the population during an Gorta More (the Great Hunger); and the resultant alliance of independence-minded Irish with the Catholic Church against Protestant Ulstermen resulted in a strong social ethos of conservatism in matters of gender and sex - at least on the surface.

But those of us who really know the Irish, know that the real Ireland is emerging once again...

Michele Bachmann: Ignorance knows no bounds....

In previous posts, I have complained about young people’s lack of grasp of history, and thus, their inability to place current events and political proposals into some sort of context. As serious and problematic as that is, it’s even worse when a current Member of Congress and Presidential aspirant repeatedly displays a thorough ignorance of American history.

Many news outlets have picked up on Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann’s recent trip to New Hampshire. Speaking to the Republican Liberty Caucus in Manchester, NH, Bachmann addressed her crowd by stating,

“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord. And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors.”

I know that when I was in school, I learned that Lexington and Concord were in Massachusetts. That Paul Revere rode out from Boston, Massachusetts. That the early Revolutionary War skirmishes – the Tea Party, the Boston Massacre – were in Massachusetts. How does a Congressman and Presidential wannabe get this wrong?
One could be charitable and assume she misspoke – but this was the second time in two days she made that claim. Speaking a day earlier in Portsmouth, she said the same thing.

When called out on her lack of grasp of basic American history, she responded on her Facebook Page by saying,

"So I misplaced the battles Concord and Lexington by saying they were in New Hampshire. It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!"

Her cavalier dismissal of her own ignorance is disturbing…as is her unnecessary and snide insinuation that somehow Massachusetts is not proud of its heritage.

If this was a one-time occurrence, or occurred late in the campaign season when candidates are exhausted, it would be easy to write it off as a simple error. But Bachmann exhibits a scary tendency to rewrite history over and over in order to whip up passion among her base.

In a speech given to “Iowans for Tax Relief” in January of this year, Bachmann included these incredible statements:

“For 21 generations in America we have listened to Lincoln’s words…”

“We republished the Mayflower Compact in the Declaration of Independence…"

"[In our first years as a nation]…it didn’t matter the color of their skin, it didn’t matter your economic background– once you got here, we were all the same”

Is this woman serious?! Is she completely ignorant of American history, or does she simply not care what she says in order to attract the votes of the under-educated?

Since Lincoln was President in the 1860s, 150 years have passed. Squeezing 21 generations into 150 years would result in a new generation every SEVEN years. I realize that the age at which girls are becoming fertile is dropping, but even this is a little hard to grasp.

There is not a single phrase from the Mayflower Compact included in the Declaration of Independence.

And when African slaves came here, they were considered 3/5 of a person. Catholics were forbidden from holding office in New Hampshire, and non-property owners were forbidden from voting in many states. The Irish were greeted with NINA signs, and American citizens of Japanese ancestry were put into concentration camps. Native Americans in the east were marched to Oklahoma.

We were not “all the same” once we got here.

Bachmann acknowledged that slavery took place, but she countered that,

“… we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States”

Huh? You mean the founders who (a) owned slaves, (b) specifically voted DOWN an anti-slavery clause drafted by Jefferson in the original Declaration, and (c) who were all DEAD when the Civil War was fought?

I’ve collected a series of Bachmann quotes that establishes a pattern of ignoring or rewriting facts to fit her political goals. Below are some of the most astonishing for their shear stupidity:

“Unelected bureaucracies will decide what we can and cant get in future health insurance policy. Thats why theyre called death panels.” (They were not called death panels – that’s what Sarah Palin called them)

”And what a bizarre time we’re in, when a judge will say to little children that you can’t say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it.” (No Judge has ever said a child could not say the Pledge of Allegiance, and no Judge has required that children should learn about and ‘try’ homosexuality)

”I’m very concerned about the international moves they’re making, particularly … moving the United States off the dollar and onto a global currency, like Russia and China are calling for.” (Neither Russia nor China are calling for an international currency. In fact, our current trade situation with China is difficult precisely because China tightly controls the value of its currency)

”I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” Ummm….if you’re not blaming this on Democrats or Obama, why did you say that?

“The President of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day.” (Bachmann does not understand that the original report was expressed in Indian currency – rupees – where the exchange rate is 45:1)

And my favorite:

“I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I’m not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I’m not a scientist.”

Taken together with her previous quotes, Bachmann reveals her hand: Theology, not science or facts or history, drives her program. She parrots a re-written version of American History that has been developed by a narrow fundamentalist agenda seeking to portray America as a Divine Gift to the world, and the GOP tea partiers as the righteous remnant battling the socialists, the ungodly, the blasphemous, the homosexual, and all who think ‘differently.’

If this is the new and representative face of GOP, scary times are indeed ahead.