Postal Pride

Guess what I got at the post office today?



That's right. I got a sheet of Harvey Milk stamps.

I'm not sure how these are being sold or distributed at your post office, but I wasn't sure if they even had them at mine. The counter at my post office has a little display board that says, "The following stamps are available" and shows one of each stamp the post office allegedly has for sale. I checked the board by the first clerk and didn't see the stamp, so I checked the board by the other window and didn't see it there, either. Finally, I asked.

"Oh. Oh, yes, we have those."

They just don't advertise it or display them where any of the other stamps are. You have to go to the counter and ask for them, like a 1950's teenager buying condoms at a drug store, but I refuse to be ashamed. I asked if they had the Harvey Milk stamps in a voice deliberately loud enough for the entire room and entire line to hear, and I got my stamps.

You may have heard that this particular stamp has not been without controversy. Reactions from my friends have included, "Who's Harvey Milk?" and also "Why is it a big deal that he got a stamp?" I'm not going to answer the first one, because I assume your Google isn't broken, but I will answer the second one: It is a big deal because it says that gay people matter. It says that our contributions to society are important. It says that someday, any one of us could be on a stamp, just like any other important American.

It is a big deal because it says, in a small way, that we are equal.

Everyone isn't happy with this, of course. There's been the usual grumblings about deviants and perverts and agendas and lifestyles, and the loudest grumble came from the American Family Association, which urged their members to mark any mail featuring the stamp "Return to Sender". Their full press release is included in that link, as well as their letter to their members. It advises them to "Refuse to accept mail at your home or business if it is postmarked with the Harvey Milk stamp. Simply write ‘Return to Sender” on the envelope and tell your postman you won’t accept it."

OK, AFA. I'll call your bluff.

Now that I have my stamps, I went to the AFA website, and was advised that donations could be mailed to this address:



I've prepared a card:





And I've used one of my stamps:



Your move, American Family Association.

"I don't know your coming out story..."

27 days into 30 Days of Blogging, I have failed.

I didn't write a blog yesterday because I was out doing stuff in the afternoon and then I took a nap and then we were out skating last night and then we went to a bar and there was a band and I didn't get home until after midnight and I was tired so I have failed to blog for 30 days in a row. Rather than give up, I will soldier on in the face of my failure and continue writing for the last three days of the project, despite the sad, gaping hole at Day 27.

So, on Day 28 of 30 Days of Blogging, I've come to a topic that my friend QH suggested:

I don't know your coming out story, especially the parental part. I'd love to know about that about you.


It's not that exciting. Like most actors of my stature I had a cover story on "People" magazine and a string of guest appearances on daytime talk shows, Piers Morgan, and "The Daily Show". Isn't that how everybody does it?

Seriously, though, some of my friends know this, my family knows some of this, some random strangers that I've talked to on educational panels know this, but I'm not sure if I've ever laid the whole thing out from start to finish, so we'll start at high school, when I was completely, deeply in the closet. Oh, sure, I knew that I didn't like girls, but I'd spent a really long time and a lot of mental effort convincing myself that I didn't like boys, either, and was instead operating under the firmly set (yet incredibly fragile) view that I just didn't like anyone. I went away to college pretty virginal (I'd been to a couple bases with a girl or two, but nothing serious and no boys), and spent most of college that way. I tried getting interested in girls a few times, and managed to cash in my V-card, but that just convinced me that no, I still didn't like girls.

Then my senior year of college there was this boy. We're going to leave his name out of the story, but we'd known each other for a while, but senior year we really started hanging out a lot, and did pretty much everything together. And then a month or so into senior year we were drunk, and we were in my room, and we did some other stuff together, and it was kind of fun but it was also kind of drunk and the whole thing was kind of weird and awkward and we didn't talk to each other for like two days. I wasn't sure what to do, so I called my friend Donna and her first husband, Anthony. Donna was busy, so I explained the whole thing to Anthony.

"Well, did you like it?"

"I think so, but we were really drunk."

"Well... maybe you guys should talk, and see if you feel like trying it again when you're sober, and then if you do, see if you still like it."

This seemed kind of reasonable, and when Donna finished whatever she was doing she got on and said pretty much the same thing, so after I talked to them I went and talked to the boy and then we stopped talking and did some other things and then we started doing those things a lot. One thing the boy and I didn't talk about, at all, was whether we were gay or not.

I had that discussion with myself a few weeks later, when the boy and I were out driving in the country. He knew this place in the hills above town where you could park the car and see the whole town spread out below you (I have no idea where this place was, and never tried to find it again, but it's up there above Cortland somewhere), and he liked to go there to think and wanted to show it to me, so some night after dinner we went for a drive in his car in the dark and actually found this place. It sounds way more romantic than it was, but there we were, sitting on the hood of the car, holding hands, looking at all the lights in the city of Cortland, and the sky was clear, and the moon was out, and there was a breeze, and I thought he was perfect, and he wanted to drive out there with me, nobody else, just me. Then we drove back to campus and parked the car, and we were walking back to the residence hall all alone in the middle of the night, and all of a sudden I thought that I might be in love with him, and the next thought followed immediately after:

"Oh, shit, I think I'm gay."

For a second, I might have actually said this to him. The words were in my mouth, and right at that moment he started bitching that leaves from some weed had gotten onto his jacket when we got out of the car and now they were all over his coat, so I just shut up and agreed that it was terrible. There was a moment there, but I was the only one having it.

In the spring semester the boy met a girl, and decided that he liked her more, but didn't really seem to know how to actually break up with me and I didn't really understand why he didn't love me like I loved him and it got really messy and that was it with boys for a while. I graduated, spent the summer working as a custodian while I tried to put myself back together, turned down a hall director job at a small school in North Carolina whose name I can't remember and who hired me after a phone interview, moved back home, worked at a reform school/children's home for a semester, and then in the spring after my senior year I returned to Cortland as a hall director.

While I was there again, there was a lot of drinking, and a few guys. I had a full head of hair and was a lot thinner then. The second Easter that I was there I was home for the weekend, and my mom and I were out driving somewhere, and my mom casually asked, "Do you like boys more than you like girls?"

I figured if she was asking then she was ok with the answer, so I said, "Yes."

There was a definite swerving of the car, but to mom's credit, she did not run off the road. We had a long, long discussion (which really can't have been more than twenty minutes because there aren't that many places we could have been going and the whole discussion took place in the car, but in my head I remember it as FOREVER) which basically amounted to mom wanting to be sure that I was sure (not an unfair question, given that I'd recently ended my college career with an obvious mental issue and depression problem) and warning me not to tell dad until I was sure, and that was the last time that we discussed it for a year or two. I kept doing what I was doing, mom and dad kept doing what they were doing, and I built up a neat little wall between campus life and home life where some topics were just never discussed and that was it.

Then I moved to Albany in 2000, and in October my parents and I went on a road trip and discussed the car that they were planning to buy for me. I was having some trouble with the idea that I should take a car from people that I wasn't fully honest with, and while I was on that trip I happened to buy and read the trade paperback of The Kingdom. As I explained a while ago in another blog entry, reading that comic made me decide to go ahead and come out to both parents, because I was sure and I was tired of having two lives. Mom and I avoided mentioning that we'd had this discussion once before, and that was it.

And that was my coming out story.

Looking over it now, it seems shockingly devoid of drama, but I think I've just smoothed over all the rough spots in writing it down.

Most Influential Book

On Day 18 of 30 Days of Blogging, I'm using up the last of Leo's three part question, but I'm pretty sure the answer is going to surprise her. Leo offered this topic:

most influential book

There are some books that have made a tremendous impact on me over the years, but the word "influential" really struck me when I was thinking about this and trying to narrow it down. My answer is a book that I've read cover to cover only once, although I've read pieces of it hundreds of times.

The book that has most influenced me is the Bible.

I live with the consequences of its influence every day, whether I want to or not.

This has been on my mind since spring break, because the week that we were there was also the week that the Supreme Court was hearing arguments for California's Proposition 8 case and for the challenge to part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. It's very strange to live in a country where your rights as a taxpaying citizen are a matter of debate, rather than actual rights. On some level this is the case for everyone, as recent votes and arguments over the right to health care, the right to keep and bear arms, and the ongoing battle that women face for the right to make health choices about what happens inside their own bodies have shown.

As a person who hears their validity as a human being debated on the nightly news, I have to tell you that sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I feel bad when I hear myself referred to as a pervert. Or a deviant. Or a threat to families or family values or the traditions that our society is built on. As I've said before, whenever the media discusses "LGBT people" or even just "the gays", I mentally insert myself into the sentence, and a lot of times that sentence ends up bothering me. I find out that people who don't know me hate me, and think horrible things about me, and that in our society this is considered a valid argument. Whether or not I should be able to enter into a legal contract to join my household to that of another consenting adult is not a given, because the other consenting adult and I both have a penis.

Why am I off on this tangent?

Because every time someone has told me that I am sick and wrong, it has been because of their religion. And in almost every case, that religion was based on the Bible. God made Adam and Eve, you know, not Adam and Steve. Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman. Sodom and Gomorrah.

Etc.

This is not to say that all religious people have hurt me, or that everyone influenced by the Bible has been negatively influenced. I'm just saying that the book that most influences me on a regular basis is that one. I feel it from October to January every year, when every store I go into reminds me that Christmas exists. I feel it every spring, when I get Good Friday off from work. I feel it at least once a week when someone reminds me that Tennessee is "the buckle of the Bible Belt".

The influence is pervasive and often unnoticed, but here where I live it is always present.

I won an award!

On Day 8 of 30 Days of Blogging, I offer a photo from dinner tonight:



That would be the LGBT Advocate Award for the year, "In recognition of leadership, integrity, and outstanding contributions to advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues on campus."

I'd like to thank the people who nominated me, the people who voted for me, and the people of the greater university community for letting me serve.

Dear Kroger

I love my local Kroger store. I shop there a couple times a week, mostly because even though I have a list in my hand I still often somehow manage to leave the store without things that are written on it, but also because I just like the store. I almost always run into friends:



and it's usually just a calm, pleasant stop in my day.

That's why I was so disturbed last week when some brown-shirted facists tried to solicit money from me in front of the store by selling me substandard microwave popcorn. I've dealt with the Cub Scout and Boy Scouts selling popcorn before, and usually my polite, "No, thank you," is enough to deter them. Last week, though, one of the parents with the kids blurted, "Are you sure?"

Yeah, mister, I'm sure. I don't give money to the Republican party. I don't give money to Focus on the Family. I don't give money to Chik-Fil-A or to Dean Koontz, so I'm certainly not going to give money to you as you school your child in the fine art of bigotry.

I gave him a firm, "Yes," and my tone must have been sufficiently icy since he took a step back.

Later, I found myself still irritated by it, mostly by that last little, "Are you sure?" because I was very polite, and made a point of not lecturing him and his kid, and he couldn't even politely accept my, "No, thank you," and let me be on my way. Unable to track him down, I instead sent a letter to Kroger on Sunday:

Good morning.

I am a frequent customer at my local Kroger store, located at 4918 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN, and have been for five or six years. I shop there at least once a week, know some of the staff by name, frequently run into coworkers and neighbors there, and consider Kroger to be my neighborhood grocery store. While there is a Food City in walking distance of my apartment, I instead drive to Kroger (passing a second Food City along the way) because I know that I will find better value and have a better shopping experience there.

Given all of this, you can imagine my dismay when I stopped at Kroger on my way home from work on Friday night and discovered that Kroger is giving a fundraising platform for groups that support bigotry and discrimination. A group that has argued as high as the United States Supreme Court to prevent gay people from joining or participating in their organization was allowed to set up a table and sell popcorn to fundraise for their organization, allowing them to perpetuate that discrimination and to characterize gay people as not being "morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed" according to the organization's own published policies.

The group I'm speaking of is the Boy Scouts of America. While I am aware that they are a philanthropic organization, they are also a philanthropy that promotes prejudice and marginalization of others. While I am aware that they are considered a positive organization for youth, their impact on youth who are homosexual or who have same-gender parents is less positive. The Boy Scouts also have a prohibition against membership and participation by atheists, a group that also shops at Kroger. In approving them to table in front of Kroger, the store suggests approval of these policies, and I'd like to believe that this is not the case.

In reviewing Kroger's website I was unable to find the specific policy regarding approval for tabling in front of the store, so I'm writing to ask how such approval is granted, and by what criteria? If a group forbids participation based on racial or socioeconomic reasons, would Kroger also approve them for tabling, or does Kroger consider some forms of discrimination to be less acceptable than others?

I look forward to your answers. I like shopping at my local Kroger, but would like to be reassured before I shop there again.

I immediately received a generic, "Your comments have been received and are very important to us" email, but a couple days went by before I heard anything else.

On Tuesday I received an email from an actual person:

Thank you for contacting The Kroger Family of Stores. We appreciate your feedback. Our company is committed to customer satisfaction and we value your input. Your comments have been forwarded to our management team for review and follow up. Thank you for your patronage and have a great day.

It was almost the generic email all over again, but it came from a person and suggested that someone might have actually read my email and thought, "Hey, this seems kind of legitimate." I patiently waited for a response.

And waited.

And kept waiting.

By Sunday, I hadn't heard anything, so I sent a reply:

Hi.

It's been a week. Do you know if someone is still planning to get back to me?

This morning I received another email, from someone higher up the corportate ladder. This person is so much higher up, in fact, that their email signature informed me that I cannot republish it. It doesn't say that I can't paraphrase, though, so here's a breakdown of what they said:

First, they thanked me for my email and feedback. OK, you're welcome.

Second, they said that they tried to call me, and were unable to reach me by phone. That probably happened, because I don't answer calls from numbers that I don't recognize, especially during election season. I will note, though, that when I filled out the form and submitted my letter, I deliberately avoided checking the "it is ok to call me at home" box and gave them my email instead. Clearly, I didn't want a phone call, but let's move on.

Next they explained that they sometimes allow non-profits to fundraise in front of their stores, and that customers and Kroger employees sometimes feel very passionately about their charities. Kroger tries to stay neutral (except, I guess, for the Salvation Army links on their website; for those who are not aware, the Salvation Army has a somewhat crappy track record on LGBT issues), and values the diversity of all customers. They also hope that I will remain a Kroger shopper.

I will continue to be a Kroger shopper, I guess, but I am kind of annoyed by this email. While it offers a nice platitude about how valued I am as a customer ("We love taking your money! Please don't stop giving it to us!"), it doesn't answer any of my original points:

1) What is the process for gaining fundraising approval to table in front of Kroger?

2) Who is and is not approved?

3) How does Kroger feel about groups that discriminate?

I guess I'll never know.

Your friend, the Gay

I was trying really hard to not post here about the Chick-fil-a thing, because I will just get ranty and I didn't think I had anything to add, and also because I've been posting the hell out of my Facebook about it, but this morning someone I respect, who I thought I was close to, had a picture of a chicken sandwich captioned by "Free speech never tasted so good!" in her Facebook feed and I hit the limit of my temper.

First I defriended her, and then I left this as my facebook status:

[Joel] thought he was going to make it through the Chick-fil-a debacle without defriending people, but apparently this was not to be.

In case I was somehow horribly unclear earlier in the week, let me reiterate: This is not a free speech issue. The guy running CFA can say whatever he wants about his values, his religion, and his beliefs. My issue is that he is not just talking. He is taking the money you are giving him for chicken, and using it to legislatively force the entire country to believe as he believes.

If you are friends with me, then "gay people" are not some group you hear about on the news. They are me. Every time you hear someone say, "Gay people" or "LGBT" or "fag" in a sentence, mentally substitute the words "my friend Joel". Try it. "My friend Joel should pay the same taxes as me, but not have the same rights." "It should be illegal for my friend Joel to live that way." "It should be legal to fire my friend Joel for being my friend Joel." "My friend Joel is disgusting and is going to burn in hell." Once you finish doing that, ask yourself if you and I should actually still be friends if you feel that way about me.

If, after you ask yourself these questions, you can't stop yourself from joyously buying chicken to help oppress me, then by all means, do so. But please, keep the fact that you are actively trying to hurt me and all of the people who happen to be like me, rather than like you, to yourself. Otherwise, I will see it, and I will defriend you.

We will not speak of this again, because your friend Joel is angry, and going to the office to work it off.

I'm not going back on Facebook for a while (by which we all know I mean, "At least an hour!"), because I clearly need to cool off. I'm hurt, and I'm going to sulk.

Dear One Million Moms:

Whenever something about comic books makes the national news cycle, I can count on a half dozen of my friends forwarding an email or tagging the story for me on facebook, and I appreciate it. Even though my google news alerts are set for comic news I do miss stories, but I couldn't possibly have missed the biggest story this week, which is that DC is going to reveal that Alan Scott, the Green Lantern of parallel universe Earth 2, is gay.



Yes, yes you are.



Thanks, Batwoman.

This is what's known in comic circles as a reboot, where the company decides that the previous version of a character is no longer in continuity and no longer exists, and reinvents them as similar, but slightly different. DC did this with Batwoman in 2006, rebooting her as a Jewish lesbian rather than a bored socialite who wanted to marry Batman, and now they're doing it with Alan Scott, rebooting him as a young, gay, media tycoon rather than a WWII-era radio station owner with two wives and two kids. I have mixed feelings about this, but one thing I don't have mixed feelings about is this:

The stance that One Million Moms took on this issue is ridiculous.

For those who don't know, One Million Moms is an organization of (allegedly) one million mothers who are concerned about family values. The group is organized and funded by the American Family Association, which was classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to their anti-gay stance and continuous attacks on gay people and companies that they view as "pro-gay". On Friday, One Million Moms posted a "warning" to their members about Green Lantern's upcoming outing as a homosexual in "Earth 2" #2, and the backlash was so severe that they have (possibly only temporarily) suspended their facebook page.

People have a right to protest, but my problem with their stance is two-fold:

1) Their vulnerable, impressionable young children shouldn't be reading "Earth 2" anyway. The book is flagged right on the cover with a T (appropriate for readers age 12 and over) rating:



Children who are too young to know that gay people exist and kiss each other should probably be reading books with an E (age appropriate for everyone) rating rather than a T.

2) One Million Moms didn't issue a warning for their members over "Earth 2" issue #1, which means that they are fine with children seeing everything that happened in it. Let's just page through, and see for ourselves exactly what the conservative Christian family-values crowd thinks is totally ok for their kids.

How about the scene where Wonder Woman gets impaled?



This is followed by a panel where the sword has been withdrawn and you see the gaping wound in Wonder Woman's torso.

Or the one where Superman is torn apart and then disintegrated?



How about the scene where Batman dies in a fiery explosion while his crying daughter watches and screams for her daddy?



If the violence isn't enough, surely One Million Moms objects to Jay Garrick and his girlfriend's frank discussion of their premarital sex:



or to Jay Garrick's subsequent binge drinking as a coping mechanism for the breakup with his girlfriend:



Except that One Million Moms didn't see any of that as objectionable enough to issue a warning about.

To sum up, in "Earth 2" #1: Wonder Woman cuts someone's head in half on the cover, Wonder Woman slices someone's jaw off on page 2, Batman sticks a bomb to someone's chest on page 3, Superman punches someone's head off of their body on page 4, Wonder Woman cuts someone's head off on page 4, Superman crushes someone's windpipe on page 5, Wonder Woman cuts off someone's head and hand with the same sword swing on page 5, Robin shoots someone to death on page 7, Wonder Woman cuts someone's leg off on page 7, page 10 has a trifecta of Superman punching someone's head in half while Wonder Woman impales someone and Batman shoots somone in the head, page 12 has Wonder Woman decapitating someone while Superman rips one person in half and shoots his heat vision laser beams through someone's body at the same time, Wonder Woman impales someone on page 13, Wonder Woman decapitates someone on page 15 before being impaled herself in the panel above, Superman is torn apart and disintegrated on page 16 just before we see thhe gaping torso wound in Wonder Woman's corpse on the same page, Batman dies in a fiery explosion on page 20, Jay Garrick and his girlfriend discuss premarital sex on page 25, Jay binge drinks on page 26, and page 27 features Hermes, a naked pagan god, and the conservative Christian concerned mothers in One Million Moms had no objection to any of it.

In "Earth 2" #2, two men will kiss, and the conservative Christian concerned mothers in One Million Moms sent out a press release and warning to all of their members.

And that, frankly, is ridiculous.

Delicious Bigotry

Every tent in this picture belongs to someone who supports bigotry and prejudice:



They all belong to people who are camping out at the new Chik-fil-A, which opens tomorrow. If they camp out for 24 hours and then they are the first 100 people through the door, they will receive a free meal from the restaurant for a year.

They will also willingly support and patronize a business that openly gives money to hate groups.

I'm not exaggerating, either. Chik-fil-A has a long history of donating to anti-gay groups, and they're not small donations, either. Between 2003 and 2009 Chik-fil-A gave over two million dollars to groups like Focus on the Family, Exodus International, and the National Organization for Marriage. Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage have both been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, while Exodus International had strong ties to Uganda's 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which called for the death penalty for gay people and up to three years in prison for people who knew someone was gay and did not report it. Chik-fil-A gave money to these groups, and every time you eat there, you're helping them do it.

I had an argument with a friend about this today, after I mentioned seeing the people camped out and how disgusted I was by the idea of people fighting to support bigotry.

"Well, it's not really bigotry."

"It's not? It supports discrimination against gay people."

"Well, yeah, I guess, but..."

"But? Would you eat there if they were giving money to the Klan?"

"Well, no, but this is different."

Oh. OK. I see.

Racism is bad, but homophobia is kind of ok, and that's the real problem here. As Byrne Fone explained in Homophobia (I can't pull a page number because I donated my copy to the resource center), "Homophobia is the last socially-acceptable prejudice." If you don't believe me, think about it this way:

If you say that your religion says that women are property and shouldn't have any rights, then people tell you that your religion is sexist and outdated. Just listen to the national dialogue on women in burkas and the Taliban if you feel like arguing that.

If you say that your religion says that black people are subhuman and should be treated as such, then people tell you that your religion is racist and outdated. That's why Mormons are still defending themselves in the media over an exclusionary doctrine that was overturned in 1978.

On the other hand, if you say that your religion says that gay people are hellbound sinners who don't deserve the same rights that straight people take for granted, then people tell you that everyone has a right to their beliefs and that we should all respect that. If you want to argue that, take a look at the number of recent pushes in various state legislatures to include "religious exceptions" in anti-bullying policies.

We live in a society where it is currently acceptable to hate and discriminate against gay people. Chik-fil-A gives money to groups that want to make sure that continues. And when you buy chicken at Chik-fil-A, you're helping them do it.

Which brings us back to my friend and I, wandering around Kroger and discussing the nature of bigotry.

"I see your point, I guess, but those people in the tents aren't bigots."

"Then what are they? If you're not a bigot, but you give money to people who are, what does that make you? A fan of bigotry? A bigot supporter? A patron of bigotry? A condoner? A collaborator? Really, what word should I use?"

"I don't know, but it's not fair to call them bigots."

Fine. I won't call them bigots.

But I also won't say that eating there is ok.

Men In Pink

I've heard a friend speak a few times about gender roles, and how you get assigned yours at birth. No one asks, no one waits until you're a little older; they wipe off all the birth gunk, look between your legs, and decide, "Yup, you're a boy."

Or a girl.

Whichever parts you happen to have.

I first heard her discuss this over the summer, and I didn't really give it much thought until I ran into some pretty rigidly defined gender roles maybe a week or two later. See, Jeannie had a baby over the summer, and named her Violet. I decided that I was going to find some adorable violet baby clothes for her, and discovered over the course of a weekend that adorable violet baby clothes are pretty damn hard to come by. You can get a lot of pink, a lot of blue, and then if you really hunt some minty green, lemon chiffon yellow, and slightly-off white, but there's very little of that. For the most part, there's just an endless selection of blue and pink, over and over and over.

I discovered yesterday that it doesn't really change much when you get older.

Today's football game, being the first home game in October, is also the Pink Out Neyland Stadium event for Breast Cancer Awareness month, and participants were asked to wear something pink. I have to wear my white polo, since I'm working, so I needed a long sleeved pink shirt to wear under it. I already have pink shirts, because I need something to wear on Wednesdays, but they're short sleeved, so I headed to Wal-Mart to look for something cheap.

My friend Sandy suggested Wal-Mart, but said I should just get a women's pink t-shirt there. I balked, because I don't know if women's sizes are the same as men, I don't know if women's shirts have extra space up front for breasts and I worried about walking around with droopy extra fabric all bunched up there, but I figured it would at least be a good place to start. I was kind of wrong, in that I paced and paced and paced the men's department for several minutes and couldn't find pink anything. I must have looked suspicious, or they suddenly have a customer service philosophy, because eventually a sales associate came over and asked to help me.

"Yes, I'm looking for a long sleeved pink shirt, a button-down or a long sleeved polo or, you know, even a t-shirt is fine."

"Well, if it's for a lady, the women's department is over..."

"No, I need one in men's sizes."

Blank stare.

"For me."

"Oh. A pink shirt? For you? No, we don't have anything like that here."

Wow. Thanks for not shooting me.

Annoyed, I drove across the street to Target, where I had a similar experience and decided to just cut to the chase.

"The women's department is right over..."

"I'm gay."

"Oh. Well, um, maybe back by the summer stuff."

Yes, I know that straight guys also wear pink, and that I did a horrible job of breaking down gender roles by reinforcing homophobic stereotypes instead, but you know what? I needed a pink shirt, damn it, and I was already irritated by my Wal-Mart shopping experience. And then on top of all of that Target didn't have one.

But I found a nice Izod one at the mall, and it was on sale:



I was all set for the game, but the Pink Out Neyland event kind of turned out to be a bust. Very few people wore pink, although I did see a small group:



and some random stragglers, but that might also be because very few people came to the game at all. It's fall break right now, so the students are all gone. Plus we played Buffalo, which isn't even in our conference, and we're favored to come out 30 points ahead. It can't really be that much of a surprise that this was projected to be the lowest attended game in the last 20 years.

It looked fun, though:







And I did get a couple of compliments on my pink shirt.

Pride Month Special: Wonder Woman and the Drag King S&M Street Gang

I read a decent number of books and articles about comic books, as well as a decent number of books and articles about gay topics, but I read a much smaller number of books and articles where the two areas overlap. When they do I take note, and over the past year or so I've read three different things that referenced "Wonder Woman" #185, "THEM!"

Or, as I've seen it referred to: the one where Wonder Woman fights ssome lesbians, the one with the drag kings, and the one where someone was bound in a Wonder Woman comic who actually wasn't Wonder Woman.

Intrigued, I attempted to track a copy of the book, but an issue of "Wonder Woman" from December 1969 isn't always the easiest thing to come by, or the cheapest. Fortunately, DC Comics reprinted it fairly recently in Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Volume 2, a series of compilations chronicling the period when Wonder Woman gave up her powers to live as Diana Prince among the common people of Man's World. Like most common people in the early 1970's she dressed in white jumpsuits a lot, acquired a blind sensei and became proficient in martial arts, and opened a dress shop in "The Village", a neighborhood in a large city on the east coast that's never actually identified as Greenwich Village but clearly is.

For me, the high point of this period in Wonder Woman's life has always been the story in "Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane" (also reprinted in this volume, but I've read it before) where the depowered Diana Prince falls in love with Superman, and Lois is forced to document their romance for the Daily Planet, sobbing behind her camera lens and dying inside. In typical Silver Age fashion, Lois decides that the best way to settle this is to challenge Wonder Woman to a fight for Superman's love.

Wonder Woman responds by straight up beating the hell out of Lois Lane:



until Lois can't even stand:



and then, since Lois lost, Superman is totally fine with leaving her crying in the dirt and flying away:



It cannot be stated enough times that the Silver Age Superman was kind of a dick.

Now that I've read "THEM!", though, I have to say that my favorite story from this period of "Wonder Woman" is still the one where she beats up Lois (it turned out not to be Wonder Woman, anyway, and was instead Kryptonian criminal and Phantom Zone escapee Ar-Ual in disguise; you may remember the Phantom Zone criminals from that time they used the telepathic metal alien bust of Superboy to try to murder his adoptive father), because "THEM!", while interesting, is also just not a very good comic.

Our story opens with Diana Prince returning to her dress shop from a trip home to Paradise Island and discovering a blonde teenaged runaway hiding in her dress shop, which was somewhat common in the 1970's:



The girl is so terrified of THEM! that it's practically all she can babble about, in bold red letters as Diana attempts to question her:



The art is a little unclear there, but is that girl crawling across the floor of the dress shop in terror? I picture her skittering away from Wonder Woman while babbling, but it does her no good, because Wonder Woman has been followed into her shop by THEM!:



Is there a ramp in that picture that I can't see? Because the doorframe of the dress shop is parallel to the top of the panel, but THEM! are angling away to the upper left, against the laws of physics as I understand THEM! In any case, let's take a closer look at our adversaries, since I've read so much about THEM!:



The one on the left is called Moose Mama, but it wasn't until I learned her name a page or two later that I realized that the character was female. She has no obvious female secondary sex characteristics, and in the full page picture it kind of looks like there's a bulge in her jeans. I totally read that as a male until they said her name, and many commentators say that she's supposed to be a butch lesbian. It's true that she could be, and the Comics Code would not have let them say so (no character in a code-approved comic was ever explicitly stated to be gay until Northstar did in "Alpha Flight" #106 in 1992), but I think the commentators are also making an unfair assumption that a masculine woman must be a lesbian. Given that this is Moose Mama's only appearance, ever, and she is such a secondary character that she doesn't even have any dialogue, we'll never know.

The one on the right, in the cowboy hat, is called Pinto, and she is probably a drag king, given her outfit. She could just be a cowgirl, but she's chosen a name that leans more toward the masculine side to go with her persona, so I'm going to say yeah, she's a drag king even though walking around dressed as a cowboy isn't really all that odd in a universe where a man dressed as a bat regularly fights a woman dressed as a cat and a man dressed as a clown. She's a woman impersonating a male, but that still doesn't make her a lesbian. Drag kings and drag queens are often gay, but not always. Like Moose Mama, Pinto is a secondary character, so we'll never really know.

We do know that Top Hat, the one in the middle and leader of THEM!, is apparently not 100% straight. Other commentators have pointed out that she's in drag king dress, too, and I'll agree. She's wearing a pretty masculine outfit, and the pink glasses, big rings, and fancy hat give the whole thing a kind of disco-pimp look. We know that she's probably not straight because Cathy, our teenaged runaway, is also her slave, and we know that because Top Hat has brought along Cathy's collar and would like for her to put it back on:



Top Hat, clearly, is also into some bondage and domination.

Wonder Woman is having none of this, and beats up the three of THEM! as handily as she dispatched Lois. She takes Cathy in, and then Top Hat and THEM! begin a campaign of terror where they throw a brick through the window, stand outside yelling all night, send gang members into the shop to slice up the merchandise, and have Mingo, one of their male gang members, knock groceries out of Diana's hands:



Mingo is suddenly terrified into buying Diana and Cathy new groceries by the appearance of a mysterious stranger:



and here's two of the reasons why this is a bad comic:

1) We never find out, ever, why Top Hat and THEM! are scared of Tony. There's a lot of sneering and retreating:



but never an explanation of why.

2) Wonder Woman, a superhero who handily beat up three gang members at once less than five pages ago, can't handle a guy knocking a grocery bag out of her hands without a man to step in and save her. Yay, feminism!

Since their annoying pranks aren't making Cathy come back, Top Hat and THEM! decide to ramp things up by burning down the dress shop:



at which point Tony steps in and saves the helpless Wonder Woman again, by having his mother invite THEM! (ooops, sorry) them to stay in his sister Angela's room:



In another plot flaw, the story makes a point of having Mrs. Petrucci explain with a sad faced that Angela is "away", but never says where she went or why. This would have been the perfect time to tie together the issues of Top Hat's mysterious fear of Tony and Tony's mysteriously missing sister by revealing that Top Hat IS Angela, but this doesn't happen. We find out much later (not even in this volume) that there's a whole other story with Angela and Tony that this was just foreshadowing for, but we never find out why Top Hat and THEM! were scared of Tony.

Anyway, after a good night's sleep in Angela's room, Diana wakes up to discover that Cathy is gone:



and also that Angela kept both a black pen and a thick red marker in her room next to her writing paper.

Diana goes out searching for Cathy and Mrs. Petrucci goes searching for Tony:



and then for a washcloth since her hair dye is melting down her face. Diana doesn't have to look very far, though, because Top Hat is parading her slave through The Village with an entourage of THEM!:



Again, if you didn't know Moose Mama was a woman, she'd blend right in with the rest of the henchmen. Diana confronts the entire gang, Top Hat starts monologuing like villains almost always tend to do, and Tony and his guys use that time to somehow silently overpower and disarm all of THEM! while Diana has Top Hat distracted:



because, again, Wonder Woman needs a man to save her in her own comic book.

She does manage to give Top Hat the "full Lois" herself:



slapping her hard enough to add some extra letters to the word:



and that's when the police reveal that in addition to being a kidnapper, rapist, human trafficker, gang leader, arsonist, vandal, drag king, and probable lesbian, Top Hat is also a robber:



She's carrying the loot inside her hat.

That, I think, is the biggest flaw in this story. Rather than waving her knife-tipped umbrella around through the story, Top Hat should have been pulling crap out of her hat. It's like the author was confused about how comics work. Kite Man uses a lot of kites (or did before he died), Stilt Man commits crimes on giant stilts, Catwoman always uses a cat motif, Sun Boy has solar powers, Invisible Girl turns invisible, Aquaman lives in water, Green Arrow shoots green arrows, and Top Hat... uses an umbrella.

Comic writing fail.

I guess I was mostly disappointed about this issue because I was expecting so much more. As a gay man, yes, I recognize that this issue is full of gay subtext that couldn't be explicitly stated on the page, and expresses a lot of it really well given the boundaries that the creative team was working under. From the perspective of a comic fan, though, this is a pretty bad issue, and it's no wonder that comic fans never again saw Top Hat or THEM!

Policy Debate

I don't have anything against Senator Campfield, the current state senator and former state representative for my district. I don't agree with his positions or his ideas on LGBT issues, though, which is why I felt the need to email him recently about SB49, the "Don't Say Gay" bill that comes up for a vote on May 5. Senator Campfield tried to pass this bill a number of times as a representative, and now that he's a senator he's trying to pass it again. As a constituent who disagrees with the idea behind the bill, I decided to express my thoughts.

Our email exchange is below. I haven't added or removed anything.

Senator Campfield,

Given that you are sponsoring this bill, I can already guess at how you intend to vote on it, but as a constituent living in your district I did want to say that I disagree.

You've offered no solid, documented examples of homosexuality being taught at any time in any school, anywhere in the state. Additionally, no school district has stated that they intend to add that content to their elementary and middle school lesson plans, so there seems to be no need for this bill.

The (hopefully) unintended consequences of it, on the other hand, could prove very damaging. Children of same gender parents would be unable to discuss their families in school, sending a message to them that their family is somehow shameful. In a time when LGBT teen suicides are receiving national attention, with some of the victims as young as 11 years old (Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover in April 2009), your bill would prevent students struggling with those issues from seeking counseling or resources at school. If they are also not receiving support at home, where are they supposed to turn?

When you were running for your current office, I received a large volume of campaign mail which described you as a fan of small government and a person who would focus on job creation. This bill doesn't seem to have anything to do with either of those concepts.

Please take the time to consider the damage that you are about to inflict on children who are already struggling with their identities and self worth, and withdraw your sponsorship from this bill.


While I appreciate your passion, I still feel it is a parents responsibility to decide when a child is ready to grasp such a complex issue as sexuality and what they want to tell the child about that complex subject.

All children develop mentally at different rates. I do not feel a teacher with an agenda (Be it pro or con) is the appropriate person to decide "Now is the time" for an entire class just because they may think one way or another on an issue and want to espouse it. I doubt you would want a teacher who said "Homosexuality is evil, dirty and wrong" just because they felt it was appropriate and that is what they thought the children needed and were ready to hear.

We are falling behind the rest of the world in math, science, and English amongst other things. This will be just one less issue teachers have to worry about teaching as part of their curricula.

Yours in service, Sen. Stacey Campfield

Senator Campfield,

I appreciate your taking the time to respond, but your response still leaves me with questions.

If the responsibility of helping children to grasp issues of sexuality lies with the parents, then why doesn't your bill prevent the teaching of any kind of sexuality? Shouldn't any mention of heterosexuality also be restricted in the classroom, then?

And if you're worried about the math, science, and English curricula, (which, based on national testing statistics, I agree that Tennessee should be worried about), then why doesn't your bill focus on better techniques and strategies for teaching math, science, and English? It's not as if any school district anywhere in the state is neglecting to teach those in favor of a curriculum about homosexuality instead. By putting the focus on homosexuality, you're actually clouding the issue, and giving people the idea that it's your main concern, rather than math, science, and English. Why not put the focus where it should be?


While there is a scientific need to mention the basics of heterosexuality when teaching the basics of reproduction (XY chromosomes, etc.) there is no scientific need to mention homosexuality as homosexuals do not naturally reproduce.

Neither do infertile heterosexual couples, but you don't currently sponsor any bills banning the teaching of subject matter dealing with adoption or in-vitro fertilization. Besides, if you're making scientific evidence the basis of what is and is not included in the science curriculum, then you're asking schools to overlook the fact that homosexual behavior has been documented in over 500 species. How is the science curriculum improved by censoring scientific evidence?

It is not clear as to its scientific significance.

That's true, but isn't part of the purpose of schooling to teach students critical thinking skills that will enable them to help determine whether it's scientifically significant? By curtailing discussion, your bill prevents them from reaching a conclusion. Is that the way we should treat all unknowns in science? If so, you'll need to write several dozen more bills.

Regardless, you still haven't addressed my original point about unintended consequences of your bill. Will it prevent students from seeking counseling and teachers from making referrals to appropriate resources dealing with LGBT topics? And if so, do you intend to add any amendments before the bill comes up for a vote to insure that the ability of teachers and guidance counselors to help students struggling with LGBT issues is not impeded?


I sent that last one a few hours ago, and so far he hasn't written back. Given that he spent the entirety of the exchange ignoring most of my points, I don't really expect him to, but if he does I'll update this. For now I'm going to get moving on the rest of my day, and hope that people in the rest of the state are contacting senators for their districts, who might actually listen.

Edited to add: Senator Campfield replied to my last message today.

After minds are developed enough for it yes.

I don't even know how to respond to that. I asked four questions in my last email to him, and got only that one sentence in response. I'm not even sure which question that answers.

"If young love is just a game then I must have missed the kickoff."

I mentioned the other day that I had kind of a dating disaster this weekend with that guy I used to like, and my friend Jackie asked one of two logical questions: "How did you get from 'I need toilet paper REAL BAD' to dinner with the guy?"

The answer to that one is pretty easy: I've run into him a few more times since February, mostly in passing, and we managed to set up a casual dinner last weekend under the guise of, "Hey, you wanna hang out? Maybe get some dinner or something?"

The other logical question, of course, would be: What the hell happened at dinner? Before I answer that, I'm going to go ahead and say right now that I am a difficult person to date, and therefore not without blame, flaws, or dealbreakers. In no particular order:

1) I like to be alone, and guard my personal space to an almost pathological degree. Not counting the maintenace workers at my apartment complex, fewer than ten people have been inside my apartment, ever, in the time that I have lived here. At my old place, my friend Jen knew me for five and a half years before she got inside my apartment, and that was the night I moved out. I'm fine in other people's space, more or less, but having people in mine leaves my nerves completely fried and I become a little bit tense the longer the visit goes on. Just ask my friend Dan, who stayed on my couch once and moved some things on my shelves.

In 1999.

And has never been invited to stay over again.

2) Direct quote from a former boyfriend: "95% of everything you say is a line from a movie or a reference to television." That's totally untrue. I also reference books and comic books, which has also lead to the following complaint: "I asked one question. I didn't need a ten minute lecture on the twenty different colors of kryptonite and what they do."

"There are only 17 different kinds, not twenty."

"YOU'RE JUST PROVING MY POINT, AND..."

3) ...WHENEVER YOU CORRECT SOMEONE, YOU SAY IT IN THAT INCREDIBLY SNOTTY, CONDESCENDING TONE, EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T MEAN TO."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, but you were wrong."

"That's the tone! Right there!"

"I'm sorry."

"And there's the martyr tone."

I actually do try not to have either of those tones, but I'm usually unsuccessful. Sometimes I even feel bad about it, but most of the time I'm not even conscious of it until someone points it out.

4) This complaint has come from friends and loved ones both: The shelves in my apartment are full of creepy staring action figures with their creepy staring beady little eyes, watching you from every corner:







I like my figures. Looking at them makes me happy. I'm not apologizing for that. (Side note: All of the figures pictured are of comic characters that are gay. It seemed thematically fitting.)

I'm not apologizing for any of these flaws, actually, or the others that I'm sure I have but don't feel like mentioning or can't think of at the moment. (This is not an invitation for any of my friends to point them out.) I'm just pointing out that I have a lot of quirks that I'm sure other people would consider dealbreakers.

And in that spirit, I'd like to give a few dealbreaker highlights and breakup moments of my own. Again, in no particular order:

1) "I don't mean for this to sound racist or anything, but I really hate working with black people."

Years later, I still have no idea how he intended for that to come out somehow sounding other than racist. This was a blind date that a friend set me up on, with her brother. She looked as mortified as I felt when I explained why he and I would not be dating again.

2) "I think it's so cute how you never outgrew comic books."

Don't patronize me. You don't have to like the things that I like, but you should respect the fact that there are reasons why I like them, and that they mean something to me.

3) This next one happened on a "friends" date, rather than a romantic date, but I had kind of a little bit started thinking of my friend as maybe a possibility and this totally killed it. We were watching the first Harry Potter movie, and Oliver Wood (played by Sean Biggerstaff) came onscreen.

"Wow, he's hot!"

"He's twelve."

"Yeah, but a hot twelve."

There is no hot twelve. That's gross, especially if you're in your twenties. It's as creepy as those "Twilight Moms" lusting after seventeen year old werewolves.

These stories are fun and all, but they still don't answer the question no one asked, which was "What the hell happened at dinner?"

In short, that guy I liked was only likeable when I talked to him for less than a minute at a time. As I mentioned, he considers blogging and all other forms of social media to be a complete waste of time that keeps people from reaching their full potential by "distracting them with meaningless trash, just like TV!"

"You... don't watch TV? Like, any TV at all?"

"I don't even have a TV. I read books and better myself."

Well.

You are officially a better person than me, I guess. Like Veronica Sawyer tells country-club Courtney in "Heathers", in her bitchiest and most sarcastic tone, "You're beautiful."

Dear Tennessee State Republican Party...

My friend Courtney recently described me as an activist, and I was planning to write back to her and tell her that I'm not really an activist, because I'm not a flag waver and I don't put bumper stickers on my car and when I show up to marches and protests I stand in the back. Activists are the kind of people who write letters and yell into bullhorns and wave signs, and that's totally not me.

Instead of writing that note back to Courtney that I'm not an activist, I ended up writing a letter to the Tennessee Republican Party in Nashville in response to some unwanted Stacey Campfield mail that I received this week. In the same way that people don't want prisons, toxic waste dumps, or nuclear power plants in their backyards, I don't want Stacey Campfield's smiling face in my mailbox, so I put together a little care package that I'm mailing back to them:



I'm sure that my letter, handwritten on one of my "Thanks for Nothing" notes (doesn't everyone have a box of passive aggressive bitch notecards?), will end up in a crank file, or tacked to a bulletin board where the interns walk by and laugh at it, but I think it's important to speak up against candidates with anti-LGBT track records, even if all you're doing is asking them not to send you any more of their crap. They may snicker and roll their eyes, but someone, somewhere in that office may read it and think for a minute about the kind of people they're helping to elect, and the kind of environment that those people will create.

Here's the letter I sent. I'll type it out after the pictures, in case you don't want to read my scrawling left-handed writing.





Dear Tennessee Republican Party,

Please accept the return of the enclosed Stacey Campfield campaign materials, which I found in my mailbox today. Although I am a registered Democrat, I do read and try to inform myself about the candidates, but in this particular case I am already well aware that a vote for Stacey Campfield is a vote for open bigotry, and a vote against LGBT people in the state of Tennessee. While I sometimes cross party lines in the voting booth, I will never hate myself and my community enough to do so in this case.

Your candidate has twice attempted to advance his "don't say gay" bill, outlawing any discussion of LGBT topics under any circumstances in Tennessee schools. This sort of legislation is not the hallmark of the "smaller, smarter government" described on your flyer. In March of this year, Stacey Campfield also spoke out against the OutReach LGBTA Resource Center that opened on the UT campus, saying that funding should not go toward "special groups" who did not have a real need. While the recent wave of LGBT teen suicides would seem to disprove his point, he has not retracted his statements. This speaks to the kind of human being that he is and the values that he supports.

In short, I'm saying that I'm gay and I vote, but I will not vote for Stacey Campfield. Please save your party some printing and postage, and mail these to people who agree with Campfield's platform of bigotry and dehumanization.

Thank you.

The Gays Come to Riverdale

Comics are solicited months in advance, so it's been quite a while since the publishers of Archie Comics announced that they would be introducing their very first gay character. It was such a big news story that CNN burst into their daily Lindsay Lohan prison watch to report it, and now, months later, "Veronica" #202 is finally in stores, so I went out to find it.

This was easier said than done. My comic store, which caters to the serious graphic novel aficionado (unless they want trade paperbacks, which are for some reason not kept in any kind of order; I like my new store, but good God, is alphabetical by author really that difficult?), does not carry Archie Comics. Borders, on the other hand, tries to be all things to all people, and is more than happy to carry Archie Comics next to the CD's, DVD's, books, magazines, greeting cards, fresh pastries, candles, handbags, toys, coffee, umbrellas, calendars, and makeup. Not to sound all Andy Rooney or anything, but when did bookstores stop carrying books?

Anyway, I took my brand new copy of "Veronica" #202 home and read it, not really knowing what to expect. I haven't read an Archie Comic since I was little, and vaguely remember them as a place where everything seemed to be stuck in the 1950's and Archie, for some unknown reason, had trouble choosing between a hot girl with middle class parents and an equally hot girl whose father is a millionaire. The idea of the writers sticking a gay guy in what I remember as being a comic version of "Happy Days" seemed like a potential recipe for disaster or a well handled educational experience.

It turns out to be a little of both.

Let's go ahead and meet the new guy, shall we?



I've heard he's hot.

Our story opens at Pop's, the Riverdale malt shoppe, where Veronica has stumbled onto a hamburger eating contest:



Who knew that the citizens of Riverdale were such vigorous fans of competitive eating?

Anyway, Kevin is proving here that he's not just pretty, but also smart. Anyone who's seen "Never Been Kissed" knows that the instant way to high school popularity is to challenge a popular boy to an eating contest at lunch time and then beat him:



Sure enough, everyone loves Kevin immediately, especially Veronica, who explodes with enough love to make Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" look like a wallflower with a schoolgirl crush:



Veronica is so instantly in love that I think her shirt changed color in that scene to match the crazy hearts in her crazy eyes. Over the next few days, a deeply smitted Veronica pursues a somewhat friendly but disinterested Kevin, becoming increasingly frustrated as he plays hard to get.

Except that he's not playing. Kevin really, really isn't interested in Veronica:



I give Archie Comics a lot of credit here, for two reasons. First, nobody asks what "I'm gay" means, keeping this from veering into the territory of an after school special. Second, Kevin turns out to be the nicest character in this story, because he immediately wants to explain himself to Veronica and let her down easy. Jughead convinces him not to, though.

Because Jughead is a total bastard:



The worst part is that Jughead's reason for this is that Veronica called him a total failure for losing the hamburger eating contest. For this, Jughead is going to dick around with a teenaged girl's emotions, and then laugh about it. These two things aren't even close to equal. It's kind of like Veronica punched Jughead in the arm and he responded by hitting her in the knees with a baseball bat. Jughead convinces Kevin that he should let Veronica down really easy, so Kevin tries to drop some hints:



Unfortunately, they fly right over Veronica's head, but Betty picks up on it almost immediately.

This is unfortunate because Betty Cooper, all American girl next door, takes advice from Satan:



Yeah, Betty, you go, girl. Go straight to hell! Demon-Betty convinces Betty that she shouldn't tell Veronica, either, because as long as Veronica is tied up with a futile pursuit of Kevin then Betty can have Archie all to herself.

Welcome to Riverdale, kids. Keep your friends close and your frenemies closer.

Veronica's pursuit of Kevin becomes so desperate and frantic that eventually Betty has a change of heart, breaks down, and comes clean about Kevin. She can't bring herself not to be a little snotty about it, though:



Still, Veronica takes it pretty well, and she and Kevin immediately descend into a charmingly stereotypical friendship:



So, what have we learned?

1) Cross Jughead at your peril. His response to gentle taunting brings new meaning to the term "scorched earth". Jughead won't TP your house. He'll burn it down, bulldoze the remains, and then salt the earth so that nothing ever grows there again.

2) Straight people are perfectly willing to behave in a completely unethical manner to win. Betty thinks it over for a whole four panels on a fraction of a page before she decides to sell out her friend to land a man. The only person in this book who consistently wants to do the right thing is the gay guy.

3) There are black people in Riverdale now. I saw at least two in this comic.

4) Reggie seems to have vanished. When I was little, Archie Comics had a strange romantic quadrangle going where Betty and Veronica fought over Archie while Archie and Reggie fought over Veronica when Archie didn't also want Betty and Betty didn't sometimes end up with Reggie and Reggie wasn't dressing up as a girl for some unknown reason. Given the way the rest of this comic went, I figure they either decided Reggie would complicate the story too much or that Reggie is buried under the floorboards in Jughead's basement for taking the last ice cube out of Jughead's freezer and not refilling the tray.

5) Kevin Keller, competitive eater and semi-pro glutton, is a huge drama queen. This reaction is completely disproportionate to fruit-filled candy:



Wait, wait, what am I saying? He's a hot gay guy who hates fruit and loves candy.

He's pretty much my dream guy.