Peterson Toscano's A Musing

Nearly once a month I get e-mails from Robin McHaelen, executive director of True Colors , asking help to house or care for queer youth, many of whom have been rejected by their parents or the social welfare system. People think that Connecticut is a bastion of liberalism with GSAs in every school and lots of support. Yet everyday queer youth experience rejection and oppression from their own familes and peers. Robin writes: Youth looking for homes S* is a 17 year old, transgender (MtF) youth living and going to school in Manchester. She and her younger brother J* are looking for a new home in the area so they can stay in the same school. They are not responsible for the loss of their current foster placement but have been living in a terrible situation for some time. The siblings believe that they will be able to live with their mom come summer and so may be a relatively short placement. DI** is a 16 year old female in Hartford whose current placement is ending and who needs a sa...

Friends have complained that they can't keep up with my blog entries. What are you people doing with your time---going to work or something??? Okay, here are some highlights that you might have missed. Marvin had his first date with Soon only to discover that she is lesbian. He will begin a discipleship course with her. He then makes a passionate response to the comments of Willie Hewes. You can see a listing of the current Marvin posts here . Also, the fine folks at Gendertalk Radio interviewed me. I do an excerpt from Homo No Mo and my idenntity monologue. Go here to download the mp3 of the program. (Robin of True Colors is also interviewed along with other conference attendees) Finally, Not Another Homo No Mo Customer Support Hotline call !

In which Marvin shares his pastor's strong reaction to the possiblity of a fomer gay and a former lesbian marrying in his church.

A Christian group in a rural part of the US recently invited me to present my play Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House . The main organizer e-mailed Sarah, my booking agent today, "We are having real trouble finding a venue-people are afraid of "promoting homosexuality" boy, do we need Peterson in this town!" This is not the first time I've heard the charge that by presenting a queer-affirming play that we are promoting homosexuality. Okay, to present something is to hold something out, to acknowledge its existence. To promote attaches an obligation to the issue--this is good; try it yourself. Now I do promote the idea that we should breakdown barriers, that we should listen to each other's stories, that there is nothing wrong with being a same-gender loving person and that it does more harm than good to force people to change their sexual orientation (in either direction). Lord knows the media and society promote heterosexuality 24/7. The conser...

The insightful cartoon artist Bruce Garrett , posted a hilarious blog entry about a WorldNet news story 'Satanic' art in Catholic Church exposed --Documentary links clergy sex abuse with occult imagery. Just to make that much more fun, Garrett juxtaposes quotes from the article with famous graphic Biblical art. Check it out!

Seems that the Homo No Mo Technical Support Call Center has been getting lots of calls lately. Since his calling to get help about his struggle over Brokeback Mountain, Chad has made several other calls. Now he needs some advice for his job which has been recently infiltrated by one of the gays.

From RTE News , A report on mental health has revealed that a quarter of young gay or bisexual men in Northern Ireland have attempted suicide. Nearly two-thirds considered killing themselves and 30% self harmed, according to the survey, which was carried out over three years by the Rainbow Project in Belfast. The article mentions some of the causes behind high percentage of incidents, Among the key factors which contributed to suicidal thoughts and self harm were negative experiences in school such as bullying.

In which Marvin responds to Willie Hewes' recent comments concerning Marvin and Soon's impending entanglement.

The United Church of Christ launched a clever new 30 second commercial . Very cool and well done. Hat tip to Jerry Maneker at A Christian Voice Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights .

A woman in Arizona abducts her two children in 2003 and was arrested for the crime this week in North Carolina. Simple, right? But what has made this a news story is that Shellie White, the children's mother, looks like a man and has been living as a man with another woman. Accordinng to the AP story , In a statement, the U.S. Marshals Service said White had "radically changed her appearance to that of a man." "She even went so far as to tell her children, aged 3 and 5 at the time, that she was their father," the Marshals Service said. "When she was arrested, the children, now aged 6 and 8, asked why they were arresting their Daddy." Authorities said that White had posed as her husband and had used other male aliases while on the run. She is 5-foot-9 and 280 pounds, wears her hair closely cropped and has a slight mustache and stubble. She blamed the facial hair on a hormone disorder. White said she had considered a sex-change operation, but decided aga...

This weekend at the True Colors Conference , Nancy Nangeroni & Gordene O. MacKenzie of Gender Talk Radio , interviewed a bunch of us including Robin McHaelen the woman who started the conference 13 years ago as a graduate school project. It is now the world's largest LGBTIQ youth conference for youth and their supporters. GenderTalk Radio is "the leading radio program on transgender issues." In the show I was able to talk a little about the "ex-gay" movement, give a sample up the recently updated opening to Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House and perform my Identity Monologue, where through six characters in two minutes I tell my life story. I also spoke briefly about transgender issues and the "ex-gay" movement and how like the gay and lesbian community, the "ex-gay" movement has not known how to accept or even acknowledge transgender individuals. It is a great episode with plenty of youth voices included. Have a listen .

Have you heard the recent news story from Tenneessee about the wife of a Church of Christ minister who gunned him down then fled the state with their three daughters? Yeah it is a made for TV movie sort of news event that gets the media all sexed up. Mary Winkler was captured over the weekend and pled no contest to the crime. The funeral is today. Although no one has yet publically shared a motive for the murder of Matthew Winkler, today reports come out that the parents of the slain pastor assure their forgiveness for their son's kller. According to the Jackson Sun , Though they don't understand what reason Mary Winkler would have had for killing their son, her in-laws have "assured her of their forgiveness," a longtime family friend said Monday. Wow, what a powerful display of Christian love and witness, and so quickly on the heels of the murder. It seems unnatural. I guess God's love is like that, and had we seen a similar expression of Christ's teachings ...

From the Toronto Star, Fears that James Loney's Iraqi captors might harm the peace activist if they knew he was gay forced his partner to remain silent as his loved ones called for an end to the hostage ordeal, Christian Peacemaker Teams co-director Doug Pritchard said Monday. During his four months of captivity, Loney's sexuality was kept out of the media spotlight at the request of his family, said Pritchard. "It's a sad fact that around the world gays and lesbians are more vulnerable to attack than straights," Pritchard said. Family Kept Loney's Homosexuality Secret which makes a lot of sense in light of how Iraqi gays have been fatally attacked since the US invasion. You can hear of some of Loney's experience in his own words . Hat tip to Fraser, Toronto .

georgia10 at Daily Kos picks up on Sen. Hillary Clinton's comdemnation of H.R. 4437, a proposed bill that has brought many thousands out on the street to protest. Senator Hillary Clinton has called H.R. 4437 a "mean-spirited" piece of legislation which "literally criminalizes the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself." The "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005" (H.R. 4437) is a Republican piece of legislation which would not only makes felons out of the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States, but it would also make it a crime to provide any assistance to those immigrants, if you know they are undocumented. "Mean-spirited" doesn't come close to describing this bill. -From Americans Rally In Protest Of Immoral Immigration Bill The plight of immigrants in the U.S. brings together people from different camps, latinos, religious leaders, some progressives. It makes m...

Marvin got cut off and had to add a final word to his tale of romance and woe.

In which Marvin shares the intimate details of his date with Soon (which went from lunch until 10:30 PM last night!)

At the True Colors Conference this weekend, I attended a workshop entitled The Bible: Word of Death or Voice of Hope ? In the packet of materials provided by presenter Rev. Alice O'Donovan , she included the following quote from a Twain Biography : In 1905 the Brooklyn Public Library removed Twain's books, Adventure of Huckleberry Finn , and Tom Sawyer , as bad examples. In response Mark Twain said, "I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years. old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again..." (Paine, p. 1281)

Rev. David B. Miller, a Mennonite pastor and a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams responds to conservative Christian Cal Thomas' recent criticism of Tom Fox, a peacekeeper who stood and died for peace in Iraq. hat tip to Ex-Gay Watch which got it from Jesus Politics .

In which Marvin decides to look into the WORD for models of healthy relationships. It ends up only confusing him.

On the Democracy Now radio program today I learned about the shocking attacks by Shia Death Squads agains Gay Iraqis. Shiite death squads in Iraq have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution. The attacks follow a death-to-gays fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani last October. In a question and answer section of his website, Sistani says homosexuality is "forbidden" and calls for the killing of gays in the "worst, most severe way." Host Amy Goodman interviewed Ali Hili, a ...gay Muslim Iraqi living in exile in Britain. He fled Iraq two years ago. Five months ago he founded the Abu Nawas Group to support persecuted gay Iraqis. He joins us on the line from London. He does not want to expose his face as he has received several death threats. Hili states, It's a very dark age for gays and lesbians and transsexuals and bisexuals in Iraq right now. And the fact that Iraq has been shifted from a secular state into a religious s...