Peterson Toscano's A Musing

Emily K at Ex-Gay Watch posted a piece about Vince Cervantes , an ex-gay survivor and fellow theatrical performance artist. When Vince Cervantes began to notice his strong attractions to other men in his first year of college, he immediately panicked. At that time he was a student at Azusa Pacific University, a Christian school that taught that homosexuality was immoral. The only thing that made sense to Vince was to enter into ex-gay therapy, and he did so, with an Exodus-trained counselor at an Assemblies of God church. Otherwise, he feared, he would be kicked out of school, disowned by his parents, and worst of all, end up in Hell. His therapist told him to give up activities he loved, like musical performance. He complied, believing this would help him go straight. After going so far as to consent to exorcism, Vince realized nothing was making a difference — he wasn’t going to change. At first depressed over this, Vince came to an “epiphany” that caused him to look at homosexualit...

I arrived in Madrid, Spain last night to visit my brother and his wife (mi cuñada) for a few days. Today is my brother´s birthday (su cumpliaños), and we celebrated with a big lunch in their new flat in the North of the city. All day long I have spoken Spanish and really should be blogging over at Dos Equis , the blog en Español that Adriana Cabrera and I co-write. Speaking Spanish is much more forgiving than speaking Swedish. Ugh, Swedish! Svensk! In Spanish if you mispronounce a word, people typically know what you are trying to say, but in Swedish, you end up saying an altogether different word (and somehow one that is always embarassing). On this trip I have proven that change is possible . I started out with US dollars, changed those for British pound sterling , then moved on briefly to the Danish krone , then to the Swedish krona , then back to the pound and now onto the Euro . I am not sure what has gotten a bigger workout, my language skills or my math skills. I say let´s brin...