Peterson Toscano's A Musing

Hat tip to Timothy at Ex-Gay Watch for culling through a bland article and pulling up a startling quote by Alan Chambers, the head of Exodus International, which oversees hundreds of "ex-gay" Christian ministries, Chambers believes that "anyone who's smart these days would focus on the young because the truth is those who influence the young influence the future." This is why Chambers plans to launch a nationwide campaign to educate the young, their parents, and youth workers through distributing literature on campuses, and by having three sets of conferences: one for the youth, one for their parents and youth workers, and one for pastors. You can read more here .

Sitting today in NYC's Washington Square Park, watching all the NYU students and their folks and the many French senior citizens (like lots of them) milling about, I overheard four young people (seemed to be undergrads) catching up with each other. The conversation quickly turned to breasts. The two women in the group both had theirs done over the summer. "Yeah, they were really hard and swollen at first, but now they feel almost normal. Here touch them." So, in the sultry summer weather, they faced off touching each other's boobs. The two guys in the group soon joined in and started handling them like ripe mangos. Then I realized, I must have just woken up in some heterosexual man's fantasy. (or maybe a lesbian's or a bisexual's). Was there some cosmic fantasy swap? Is there some female breast-loving person in Iowa totally bummed out and bored as s/he looks on at some guys showing off their nipple piercings and their buffed tattooed calves? Shame, I hate ...

One man stands alone on stage and looks back at his complicated relationship with the Catholic boys' camp counselor, who began sexually abusing him at age 12. Another recounts his ex-communication from the Mormon Church and his subsequent life as a gay escort and drug addict. Still another talks about the years he spent in a Christian "reorientation" program that tried to make him an "ex-gay" until he awoke from his "Biblically induced coma." Theaters are increasingly filling up with gay men eager to tell their personal narratives in solo shows. Call it "confessional theater," call it theatrical therapy, but stories about personal trauma - laced with humor and humanity - are becoming a cottage industry on the fringe theater circuit. Frank Rizzo, Hartford Courant. You can read the complete article here .

Today, August 26, is Women's Equality Day in the US. It is the day that the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920 giving all women over the age of 21 the right to vote, but most women of color were not able to exercise that freedom until after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It was the result of a 72 year struggle for women's suffrage and came 137 years after the ratification of the US Constitution in 1787. Hat tip to John Calvi for sharing this through the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns listserve. For more information, you can view a timeline of women's suffrage in the USA. Also you can read an article about Quaker, Lucretia Mott's anti-slavery and pro-women work.

Need hope for the future? Want to feel good all over? Visit Tina's site, Merely Marvelous , The Audio and Video Blog for the Fearsome Twosome--Luke and Matteo (Tina and Joslyn's two sons).

Wow, what a great time at the Kairos United Church of Canada Young Adult Conference. I met the most excellent people and got to enjoy walks in the prairie grass here in Western Canada. The sky is so big and the clouds dramatic. At one prayer service I just had to go out and watch the sky. On Monday I hung out in Saskatoon where we visited every Co-Op Store in search of merchandise from the Canadian TV sit-com Corner Gas . It is set in this province and filled with local humor. I bought a bunny hug (what we would call a hooded sweatshirt) and then sat through a three hour marathon of Season One. Fun stuff. The participants at the conference came from all over Canada. Amazing people, very welcoming (and very much disliking our president). I recieved a crash course in Canadian history and more importantly an on-going lesson on famous Canadians in the US. They are proud of their people (although someone suggested that they wanted to trade Celine for Prince). Here is my favorite Canadian e...

College Promo Originally uploaded by p2son . For those of you who can't view the card that Tina designed for the fall, here is the front of it. She is so good! Thanks Tina.

I rode my newly acquired bike to Quaker meeting today feeling very much like one of those Mormon missonaries (except that I did not have a white shirt, dark tie, Elder Toscano name tag, and a hunky side-kick). No problems or misshaps except, no one told me about perspiration. Oh, and it's hard work peddling up hills. Okay, it was a small hill, but ouch.

Shocked about plans by anti-gay Dr. Throckmorton* to blanket the US during National Coming Out Month with a film that proports gays can become straight, Wayne Besen approached Tom Murray , Shawn O'Donnell and me to see if we can organize a counter-action. Every October 11th, thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and allies celebrate National Coming Out Day. They hold workshops, speak-outs, rallies and other kinds of events where they dispel myths about same-gender loving people and sexual minorities and affirm the coming out experience. In an affront to the positive spirit of this event, the anti-gay group, Truth Comes Out Project, recently announced plans to screen their film during this same time period as a counter move to the Coming Out event. Read more at National Coming Out Project And spread the word! *Throckmorton, the perfect name for an anti-gay nemisis. Sounds retro 50's with a sexually nuanced twist

Well, it is back to school time boys and girls and others. And for the new school year, Sarah B. Miller, my performance & media coordinator, has put together a big promotional campaign to US colleges. Tina Encarnacion, the woman who does all of my non-web graphic design work, created a wonderful postcard. On the front is this really cool radioactive rainbow sort of design. You can view it at Flickr . On the back is a listing of all the current shows I do and contact info. If you know of someone who would be interested in receiving a post card, e-mail the name and mailing address to Sarah . Also coming this fall, Roy Steele , a long-term NYC friend of mine and the web designer of homonomo.com create www.petersontoscano.com.

Four years ago I got into my 2001 VW New Beetle turbo dream car. What speed and very roomy (in the front seats). Well, it's gone, I dropped it off at the West Hartford VW dealership and took the bus home. In what will be a six month experiment, I will attempt to live without my own car. Of course when I lived in NYC that made perfect sense, but in Hartford it will be more of a challenge. A member of my Quaker meeting gave me her old mountain bike (purple no less), I bought a helmet and a 40 ride pass for the bus. I see some advantages to this move. 1. more exercise (or should I just say exercise. The biggest workout I've gotten lately has been getting out of bed!) 2. environmentally friendly. With all the flying I do, I pollute the planet enough. 3. support local businesses. 4. car sharing (borrowing or begging) with friends. 5. meet new people on the bus 6. look really cool and athletic in my new bike helmet (and kinda dorky too) 7. look really tough with a chain wrapped aro...

The words of African-American, Queer Civil Rights Leader, Bayard Rustin spoken in 1986, still speak to us today. "Indeed, if you want to know whether today people believe in democracy, if you want to know whether they are true democrats, if you want to know whether they are human rights activists, the question to ask is, 'What about gay people?' Because that is now the litmus paper by which this democracy is to be judged." "There are four burdens, which gays, along with every other despised group, whether it is blacks following slavery and reconstruction, or Jews fearful of Germany, must address. The first is to recognize that one must overcome fear. The second is overcoming self-hate. The third is overcoming self-denial. The fourth burden is more political. It is to recognize that the job of the gay community is not to deal with extremist who would castrate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small perc...

Daniel Gonzales over at Ex-Gay Watch is compiling a media list of "ex-gay" survivors who can speak to the press about their experiences. He asked if I knew of any people of color who have been through the "ex-gay" process. Out of the hundreds of people I've met who attended "ex-gay" programs, two are black men. I do not know any latinos except for a man from Brazil who attended Love in Action with me. (And I don't know if Brazilians consider themselves latinos) Really, the "ex-gay" movement is a white male thing. The vast majority of people who run and attend these programs are white males. (alhough during my first weeks at LIA, we were challenged by the staff to stop talking like sassy black divas). Yes, in the "ex-gay" world there are some women, and yes, some people of color, but if you look at the documentary Fish Can't Fly , out of the dozen or so people interviewed, you will only see white folks and very few women. ...

Since Friday, I have been at Bryant University in Smithfield, RI for the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker). I will be here until Thursday working as a full-time volunteer for the Young Friend's high school program. As a result, I will not be on-line much this week. These teens amaze me, in fact, after being a part of their community two years ago, seeing their love and their integrity, I felt that I could once again be part of a spiritual group. Here is an idea of the kind of teens I'm talking about. What are their biggest complaints about the worship service with the 800 or so adults? That there is not enough silence and that the messages shared in the meeting for worship are too personal and light. The teens would rather spend most of an hour in total stillness and silence punctuated with a very few messages and plenty of time to contemplate these messages. They felt so strongely that about 1/3 of the 60 teens left meeting for worship hal...

Team of Experts Originally uploaded by p2son . All week people have spectulated as to the exact meaning of Zach's cryptic blog post on August 2nd. Throughout the blogosphere, people have attempted to break the code to unearth what Zach is trying to say. Well, I have assembled a team of experts to decipher once and for all the REAL meaning behind Zach's message. On my team I have two socio-linguists, an anthropologist, a psychologist, a theologian and a plumber (he's my uncle and wanted to help out) After doing a thorough text analysis, these are our findings. In the 509 words that Zach wrote in 47 lines, he uses the word and 10 times but only uses the word but five times (and never uses the word butt at all). The word and indicates the need to connect which outweighs his desire to contradict. (My uncle, the plumber, noted that if Zach's words were connecting pipes they would most likely be made of Cross Linked Polyethylene--but none of us have a clue wha...

I will offer presentations on Friday October 14 and Saturday October 15, 2005 in Baltimore, MD for That All May Freely Serve , a Presbyterian organization that works towards the full inclusion of LGBT clergy. While I am in the Baltimore/DC area, I would love to present at other venues, particularly universities and high schools. If you know of a possible venue, please contact Sarah Miller , my amazing and very stylish booking agent!

Pete, the Bread Man Originally uploaded by p2son . Stuffed in the trunk of his car, my dad, Pete Toscano, always stows several dozen loaves of bread, packages of english muffins, boxes of doughnuts and bags of bagels. He buys the stuff wholesale then ferries it around with him handing it out randomly to anyone he meets. Whatever is left over he "feeds to the animals", a nightly furry crew of skunks, foxes, deer, cats and the occasional black bear that lumber onto my parents' New York Catskill property. Then the animals get their carb fix. My dad turns 75 this month. A Marine veteran of the Korean War (who stands opposed to the current Iraqi War of terrorism), he uses every opportunity to hand out bread, wisdom and one-liners. Some dad classics, "Stand Up for Jesus! Now sit down for Christ's sake." Referring to the outcome of a night of partying with marine buddies, "Yeah, we got hooty-toot." As my 96 year old grandmother tells us that when...

self-portrait--driving Originally uploaded by p2son . I originally created this post in early June. It outlines the mental effects I experienced as a result of anti-gay church teaching and the therapy I received in "ex-gay" programs Brain research reveals that when we experience fear , neural pathways in our brains shut down affecting the transfer of ideas, thought processes and memory. As an educational consultant, I once tried an experiment on a group of teachers. Once we determined their academic weaknesses, we then forced them to work within those weaknesses. The results? The teachers could not follow directions, did not stay on-task and became loud and disruptive. Fear affected their thinking. Add shame to the mix and the brain shuts down even more. Think of the student with math-phobia who instead of studying for the big algebra exam, chatted on-line all night. In the morning, sitting for the test, the student forgets the little s/he once knew and freezes...

sun through trees Originally uploaded by p2son . On Friday Zach Stark came out of Love in Action's Refuge "ex-gay" program. He may be out, but chances are he will not be free. After weeks of enduring nothing but an alternative view, and sporting the Biblically-crafted lenses his parents and the program fashioned for him, it is uncertain how he will view himself and the world. I don't know if we will find out for some time what Zach really thinks and feels about his ordeal--even with his recent blog posts. He still lives under the financial control of his parents. Like many LGBTQ youth, he may face homelessness if he asserts himself and his queerness. At a retreat in Northern Michigan, hearing firsthand the stories of the Point Scholars and the harrowing experiences many shared, moved most of us in the audience to tears. Parents shove kids out on the streets to fend for themselves or deny their own children money for college if their children persist in the...

Redwood Forest Originally uploaded by p2son . After nearly two weeks in Northern CA and before that two weeks of travel to Memphis, Philadelphia and Virginia, I feel ready to crash for a few days. Sitting here in San Francisco airport, I try to catch my breath. Fortunately I did two things during this trip to help me refresh. I went to a Japanese bath and spa--a vacation in an afternoon. A few days later I took a short hike through a redwood forest. As an artist and an activist, I begin to realize how important it is to maintain a rhythm of creativity, work, socializing and quiet rest. Going to Quaker meeting for worship, walks in the woods, evenings with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and good laughs with friends all help me to recharge. On the road I find it virtually impossible to maintain any sort of routine. My writing, my healthy eating, my exercise all goes to the wayside. I think that is the challenge for me this year, to do the work while I still live my life. Any suggesti...