Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Ezra Klein looks at the state of the Democrats. . twice.
The Ezra Klein show recently ran two really interesting vlog episodes on why the Democratic Party is in the dumpster, even as the Republican Party makes the entire country a raging dumpster fire. They're instructive, but in the case of the first one, not for the reason the guest likely hoped for.
It wasn't all that long ago, we should note, that political scientists had declared that the GOP doomed to demographic extinction. It was, and is, a small tent party. The party needed to reach out, it was told, and bring in all the people in the Democratic camp. Long time readers here, of which there are likely very few, will recall that I predicated that some of the demographic analysis was flat out wrong, and that Hispanics in particular would start moving into the Republican Party.
I was right.
Now we live in the opposite world. People hate the Republican Party but they hate the Democratic Party more. Really a new party is needed, one that doesn't see global warming as a fib but which opposed abortion, for example, would have a lot of appeal. But that's a post for some other time.
Let's look at what the experts have to say. First, as it was first in time, is the interview with Suzanne Mettler, a political scientist at Cornell and co-author of the new book “Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy"
The interview is here.
I could tell in listening to it that Klein thinks the book is wrong, and while I haven't read it, I know it is, if it espouses the same views that Mettler did in her interview. She looks at everything economically and that's about it. Social issues don't mean anything.
Well, I lived through this and saw a Wyoming that had a large, but minority, Democratic Party almost completely die. Most of the major active Democrats in the party started to move to the Republican Party during the Clinton Administration and that trickle became a flood. All sorts of respected "traditional" elder Republicans in Wyoming were once Democrats. They left as it increasingly became impossible to be a centrist or conservative Democrat. There's no room for a pro life Democrat, for instance, in the party anymore. Once homosexual marriages, transgenderism, and showing up at rallies with blue hair became the norm, the normal largely dropped out and won't come back.
That's what killed the Democrats in the West.
This interview with Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics, is much better as Abbot is realistic and not hopelessly clueless, as Mettler seems to be:
Abbot actually admits that he isn't sure if the Democrats can come back from political exile in rural areas, but the examples he gives of people running from the outside are excellent. Nebraska equivalent of Wyoming's John Barrasso, Deb Fischer, provides an interesting example as she nearly went down in defeat to independent Dan Osborn.
Osborn's race is really instructive as he wasn't a Democrat, but called bullshit on a lot of Fischer's politics. Osborn himself is a working man, and he's pretty conservative.
And there's the real lesson.
Democrats right now can't get any traction in rural areas as frankly nobody can stand to vote for anyone they are putting up, most of the time, and then when they do put up a good candidate, the party's platform kills them. The Democratic Party became, quite frankly, the Transgendered Vegan Party, and that's going nowhere. It not only became that, it can't get away from it. Look at any protest of Trump's policies that's a public one, and you'll see the usual suspects. If there isn't a hugely overweight middle aged woman with blue hair, you just aren't looking hard enough.
Indeed, this has become so much the case that that left wing protests that are popular now are sometimes all Republican. In Natrona County the recent Radiant Energy No Nuke protests were lead by Republicans including a Wyoming Freedom Caucus member of the legislature. Chuck Gray came up and lead his support, sounding like he was Chuck Gray from Greenpeace. If Democrats can't own that issue . . . .
There seems to be a little waking up, but only a little. Public lands is what did it.
Back in the 1980s, when I switched from the Republican Party into the Democratic Party (I left the Dems with the great flood of us who couldn't hack the weirdness), public lands and attention to environmental issues is what did it. People worship Ronald Reagan now, but James Watt, his Secretary of the Interior, was an Evangelical Christian zealot in favor of ravaging the land now, as he was certain that the Second Coming was going to be very soon. That land ravaging instinct remains very strong in the GOP and recently came out in spades.
Wyoming Democrat Karlee Provenza picked right up on that and came out in front. The Democrats need to do more of that. Land issues are near and ear to Wyomingites and the Republicans are very vulnerable on them. That issue alone might, if really exploited, bring the Democrats back if their campaigns were really strategic.
Some of that strategy has to be getting really personal. Sure, Hageman is for turning public lands over for sale. . she's from a "fourth generation" ranching family, and the ranchers always believe they'll get the land, even though they won't. Same for Lummis Sure, Dr. John is for it, he's a Pennsylvanian not a Wyomingite. Did you every see him at your favorite fishing hole?
But one issue alone is a risky proposition. What they also need to do is dump the weirdness. Being lashed to transgenderism is a completely losing proposition. A Democratic candidate is going to be asked about it . . and could really make hay on it.
But only if they're willing to fight dirty, which the GOP definitely is. But they're not prepared for the same.
For instance, if a public lands Democrat was running for the House, and asked about this issue, we would expect the usually milk toast fall in line answer they normally give. But if they said, "oh gosh no, that's a mental illness and it needs to be treated that way, and women's sports and role in society needs to be protected. . . " it'd leave the Republicans flat footed.
They'd be on their heels, however, if it went further. If you added "and by the way, I constantly hear our GOP talk about being pro family. I don't know how pro family you can be if you are jacking up their cost of living and particularly their insurance rantes, but what about that family stuff? Hageman's been married for years and she ain't got any children. . nephews and nieces aren't the same thing, and Chuck Gray is 36 years old and unmarried. . .what's up with that? Why I think a decent man ought to marry a decent woman young and have some kids. . . and when that doesn't happen that's because they aren't focused on families, darn it".
Yeah, that's nasty, but how do they reply? It is the case that Hageman and her husband have never had children. Maybe there's a medical reason, but maybe it was a focus on careers and using pharmaceuticals to avoid it. If so, that ain't very populist Republican. And Chuck Gray is 36 years old and unmarried. I know that he's a Mass attending Catholic, and I'm not accusing him of any intimate immorality, but I will note that by age 36 men are usually married, or in our current society, living with some female "partner". Gray doesn't appear to fit either of these which is odd, as it demonstrates something about his character, perhaps simply an unlikeable character, that's keeping it from occurring, unless he just doesn't want to get married, which is unlikely.
FWIW, as I'm a bit connected, I know that Gray dated women while living in Casper. Obviously those relationships didn't work out. I'm not claiming he's light in his loafers.
I will say, however, that once you get out there, there are die hard right wing Republicans in this state who are subject to some unwelcome attention on their personal lives. Is that fair? Well, if you are calling for suppressing certain groups, and you are part of them, you owe people an explanation.
Which gets back to the inevitable question that comes up now, "what about gay marriage". Again, it's easy for a Republican to say "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman". A Democratic coming back with "so do I, and I believe that union arises once. . . what do you think about that Dr. John. . . and is that why you abandoned your original faith?".
Nasty. But Dr. John wouldn't have a very good answer for it.
Abortion is always going to come up. Abortion is the issue that ultimately drove a lot of us out of the Democratic Party, including me. The Democrats should simply abandon a position on it and let candidates stake out their own ground. There remain a few pro life Democrats out there, and to be one shouldn't be an anathema.
And, indeed, if that was allowed, it allows uncomfortable questions to be asked. Republicans claim to be pro life, but now their massively in favor of IVF, which kills most of the embrioes that it creates. Current Democrats can't really ask about that without hypocrisy. A pro life Democrat could.
Can the Democrats do all that?
Probably not.
Monday, October 20, 2025
Monday, October 20, 1975. Grain, Cubans, Primates, and AIDS.
The US and USSR entered into a five year grain sale agreement by which the US agreed to sell 6,000,000 tons of grain to the USSR each year, as its collective agricultural system tanked, and by which the US accidentally screwed Canadian farmers.
The Cuban Navy's El Vietnam Heroico, El Coral Island and La Plata brought the first Cuban soldiers to Angola to support the MPLA..
Presumably the El Vietnam Heroico didn't celebrate the numerous South Vietnamese who gave their lives in order to attempt to hold the Communist back South East Asia.
Cuban military support to Angola would lead to the introduction of AIDS into Cuba, that region of Africa having been ground zero for the disease. Myths about the origin of the horrific disease, and a supposed ground zero in New York City, have abounded for years, but in reality SIVcpz, the strain in chimpanzees, was transmitted to humans via contact with infected blood, most likely during the process of hunting and butchering chimpanzees for meat. It was a "crossover disease." It spread undetected for some time in Central Africa, notably by hetrosexual sex, and into the Cuban population by that means of transmission. In much of the Western World, of course, it spread through homosexual sex at first, and then by infected needle transmissions.
FWIW, eating primates is a really bad idea. They're too closely related to us, giving rise to things like this.
It's an interesting example of how war brings plagues of all types.
Last edition:
Tuesday, October 14, 1975. Operation Savannah.
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Kiddie Porn and the library.
People reading my comments on the illegitimate claimant to the Oval Office and the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, and indeed the general drift of Republican politics in this state, all of which are causing the ghosts of Mussolini and Franco to wonder "aren't they a little extreme?", may simply assume I'm a liberal, and that I oppose everything conservatives are doing.
They're wrong, I'm a social conservative, but anyhow. . .
For those holding that view, this post will surprise.
October 14, 2025
Panel advances legislation restricting sexual content in Wyoming library books: The Judiciary Committee voted 11-2 in support of the measure, and the issue unified Wyoming Freedom Caucus lawmakers with Republicans not always aligned with them.Committee Adopts Bill Greenlighting Lawsuits Over 'Sexually Explicit' Library Books
Here's the bill:
I have my doubts about the constitutionality of this effort, but I think this effort is worth it.
In spite of what people might say, some of these books are absolutely horrific. Without detailing how I know it, two of the books that keep coming up in this discussion, Gender Queer and This Books Is Gay do not belong in the children's section of any library and frankly should only be in a limited adult section at that. I don't overall object to them being in a library, but frankly the common assumption that they are aimed at "young adults" is correct.
Gender Queer is a "graphic" book, i.e., cartoon. It depicts a scene in which a friend instructs another teenage friend how to stick a finger up a vagina, and that's not all. This Book Is Gay is basically a homosexual sex manual for young people, complete with badly done illustrations.
Seriously?
This gets right to the roots of the culture wars. Basically, the authors of these books believe that you are a homosexual from the second you are born, if you become one later, or even really if a person ever ponders such activity. This is to "help" them get past what the authors regard unfortunate mental roadblocks.
The psychological support for such a view is basically nonexistent. Homosexuality itself, while it occurs in all cultures, is particularly prevalent in the cultural West, so much so that in China its regarded as a Western thing. At one time it was so associated with English public (that is to say private) boy's schools that it was called "the English disease". We really don't grasp it all that well.
And frankly what we don't need to do is to push teenagers who might be pondering it, outright into it, which as a society is exactly what we are in fact doing. Books like this help to do that. They're Gender Queer is practically designed to do that.
Libraries have always restricted sexual content to the young. . . until recently. I remember years ago reading an article in the Denver Post about how the Denver Public Library kept Playboy and a Buddhist sex manual in an area where you had to ask for them, with those publications being the two most requested in that section. The point is, they didn't keep bound volumes of Playboy down in the children's sections for teenage boys to peruse, even though a person could argue that it was just as instructive as those struggling with their sexuality as these texts. And, moreover, any teen asking for either one of them would have been told to pound sand.
All this comes, as these articles make plain, against the background of a lawsuit over the topic that was just settled. Not "won", but settled. One ironic element is that the librarian spoke out hoping that her settlement, which is a settlement (i.e., she didn't win, or lose, the suit) would discourage the legislature from passing this bill.
Really? It ought to encourage them to pass it.
Thursday, September 25, 2025
Thursday, September 25, 1975. Three Days of the Condor and Oliver Sipple.
President Ford sent a letter of thanks to disabled former Marine and Vietnam War veteran Oliver Sipple, who had stopped Sara Jane Moore's assassination attempt earlier in the week. Earlier in the week Sipple, who was living and working in San Francisco, had been outed as a homosexual by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen who had received tips from homosexual activists Reverend Ray Broshears and Harvey Milk.
Milk knew Sipple and claimed to be a friend of his, but neither man had his permission to reveal his homosexuality and Sipple, who had been badly wounded in Vietnam, had never told his family. As a result, his family disowned him for a time and the stress of the situation was something he never really recovered from. He descended into alcohol and depression and killed himself in 1989.
Milk has come down as a hero, and even briefly had a ship named after him, which was renamed this year. But outing Sipple was a lousy thing to do.
I managed to miss the incident that Sipple is associated with, which was the September 22, 1975 assassination attempt by Sar Jane Moore. Sipple's quick reactions foiled the attempt, combined with the fact that Moore had purchased the handgun she used only that morning, after one she was familiar with was confiscated by the police the prior day.
Three Days of the Condor was released on this day in 1975.
This is an excellent Cold War thriller based on an underground movement in the US that's operating a shadowy independent mission. Robert Redford, who passed away yesterday, plays the lead character. The plot of the film involved Redford's character being a CIA analysts who reads books and steps out during the day, only to find his entire section murdered when he returns. He flees and is pursued by what turns out to be rogue elements of the CIA. Every actors portrayal in the movie is excellent, but the most intriguing character is a European assassin played by Max von Sydow.
Following the Vietnam War, the public was learning a lot about the CIA and frankly the FBI for the first time, all of which made the movie's plot seem credible. Frankly, back where we now are, it seems credible once again.
Oddly enough, the Church Committee revealed that the CIA had a gun designed to shoot toxic pellets to induce a heart attack just prior to this.
The cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show was also released on this day.
Last edition:
Friday, September 19, 1975. No cash.
Monday, September 15, 2025
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 102nd edition. Short attention span and a Ballroom Blitz*. And self sabotage.
Attention span deficit.
Something I hadn't expected, but which really says something about our times, is that the murder of Charlie Kirk is already, for the most part, in society's rear view mirror.
Yes, there's a lot of discussion about it still, but it's in the chattering class, which I suppose includes this website. Otherwise, things have already moved on.
The speed at which news moves, and the lack of attention to it, is a very bad thing.
Of course, now that it doesn't really appear to be a politically motivated killing, it's lost its attraction as a story to some degree.
A fictional narrative
The story, as noted, is now in the domain of the chattering classes, but also the possession of right wing myth makers, which are really working on it. The odd thing here is that the media has an incentive to downplay what is being learned about the killer, and to an extent, the MAGA myth organ does as well.
What we now know about the killer, Tyler Robinson, is that he was a homosexual living with another homosexual who was in the process of being mutilated to take on the appearance of a woman. Unless this isn't clear enough, they were in a "romantic" relationship, which means they were engaged in sodomy. The "transitioning" roommate was apparently shocked by the killing, but according to one family member, that person was deeply anti Christian and hated political conservatives.
Now, the reason that this isn't getting this much press as the "transgendered" aren't particularly associated with crimes of any kind, let alone violent ones, and homosexuals certainly are not, but this story is deeply weird. A man trying to become a woman is deeply weird, and it is not the same thing as homosexuality. One man screwing another man who is trying to take on female morphology is very weird as well.
We touched on this in a post about Robert Westman, who was an actual "transgender" figure who committed a mass shooting recently. Indeed, he's the only "transgender" figure I know of to commit one, the overwhelming majority are white hetrosexual men.
Anyhow:
A deeply sick society.
We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked find traitors in our midsts. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
C.S. Lewis.
I explored the topic pretty fully there, and I'm not going to repeat it here other than to note that finding a transgender person hating Christianity isn't surprising. Real Christianity holds that to be wholly immoral, even while real Christianity still loves the person. And such a person hating conservatism isn't surprising either, as conservatives hold a similar view.
Robinson wasn't the transgendered person here, but the whole story of this relationship would lend to the theory that he was pretty pliable as a personality. The point is, therefore, this likely wasn't really an act of domestic terror in the conventional sense, so much as it was a person reaching out under the influence of a sexual partner. In an odd sort of way, this killing is more comparable to Dr. Carl Austin Weiss Sr.'s murder of Huey Long, which was over redistricting that impacted his father in law. I.e., a personal connection is likely to have motivated it more than any overarching weltanschauung.
That's a story that's not really going to get explored, I suspect. The right wing wants Kirk to be a martyr, the left doesn't want to talk about the mental health issues this really brings up.
Groypers?
I'd never heard of this term before, but apparently they are followers of Nick Fuentes. As I don't pay any attention to Fuentes, I didn't know that.
Apparently they've drawn a lot of attention following Kirk's murder as there was some peculiar speculation that they were responsible for it. They obviously are not, but that speculation was there, and I'm not sure why.
Fuentes, whose movement is outwardly anti homosexual, as well as anti a bunch of other stuff, has said some really odd things in this arena, one being that having sex with women is gay. Eh? Another apparently was that homosexual sex doesn't mean what it used to, as women aren't living up to their reproductive responsibilities.
A shit post?
This is a really interesting analysis of this topic.
The extra scary part of this is noting, as this person does, how many people in Trump's administration sort of fit into the same demographic.
Not in homilies
Apparently, at least according to Twitter, a lot of people are mad today as their parish priest didn't include a reference to Kirk's murder in their homilies yesterday.
Why would they?
For Apostolic Christians, Catholic and Orthodox, yesterday was the Feast of the Cross, and homilies probably largely had to do with that. Moreover the Catholic Church is just that, catholic, i.e., universal, and this is a domestic American matter that remains unclear. Kirk wasn't attacked because he was Catholic, he wasn't, and the attack upon him may only have a tangential relationship with his Christianity.
Nonetheless, I saw one person who was irate at the Pope for having not mentioned it.
Spencer Cox
The guy who is really coming out looking good after all of this is Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox. He's spoken multiple times and has been a calming voice every time.
This isn't the first time he's waded into these issues. Following the killing at an Orlando gay bar some years ago he appeared at a vigil and stated:
How did you feel when you heard that 49 people had been gunned down by a self-proclaimed terrorist? That’s the easy question. Here is the hard one: Did that feeling change when you found out the shooting was at a gay bar at 2 a.m. in the morning? If that feeling changed, then we are doing something wrong.
Cox's comments are clearly against the stream of the MAGA mainstream. He was originally a never Trumper but claimed to have changed his mind and voted from Trump in his Presidential contests. I suspect we'll be hearing more out of Cox going forward, and he may very well be a Presidential candidate in 2028.
Ballroom Blitz
King Donny went from being outraged by the Kirk killing to bemoaning how it interrupted his might fine, in his mind, ballroom from being the focus of everyone's adoring attention.
That's pretty weird.
Also weird is how quickly this is going up. It's apparently under construction right now. Trump clearly wants it up before he leaves office, on the theory that will mean nobody will take it down.
The monstrosity will now be 40% bigger than originally planned.
Quite frankly, I thought this vandalization of the White House would not actually occur, as it would, in normal times, take quite a while to design and engineer a building. Indeed, I was frankly planning on just that. I never thought the monstrosity would go up, as whomever is Present next won't be stupid or narcissistic enough to bother with a Trump "look at me!" ballroom. It's really moronic.
But it's going up.
If I were President, which of course I never will be, my first executive order would be for the Army Corps of Engineers to remove the offending pile of dogshit within twenty foour hours of my being sworn in. I'd have the resulting trash hauled and upmed in front of Trump Tower. But that won't happen. Trump is probably right. A giant cancerous growth will be there forever.
Here is the oldest photo of the structure, and what it's actually supposed to look like:
Of course, as it might be noted, the building has been altered before, most notably the addition of the West and East Wings. Those additions were made due to legitimate working concerns, however.
Again, if it were me, I'd be tempted to take it back to purse original. It's just supposed to be a big house.
The architects for the vandalization are McCreery Architects, whose website has an image of the interior of the structure as its first slide. The following slides show a lot of other impressive structures they've worked on. They do seem to favor heavily classic styles, which is nice. The site oddly doesn't have any text, but maybe if you need to hire a heavy duty architect, you don't need text and the equivalent of architectural headshots works better.
A rational question would be why does this bother me so much? Well, perhaps I just have an irrational reaction to all things Trump by this point. But the ostentatiousness of the whole thing smacks of trying to be The Sun King.**Have we reached that point in this country? I fear we have.
We've always had rich men, of course, but this is the era of fabulously wealth men. It's not right.
Something we may wish to consider a bit. . .
Maybe we have it too darn good (so we're self sabotaging).
It sounds absurd, but there's something to it.
The current Wyoming Catholic Register has an article pointing out that, in 1980, the year before I graduated from high school, 40% of the world's population lived in desperate poverty, an improvement from the mid to late 19th Century when it was 90%.
Now, just 10% does.
Big, huge, improvement.
By any objective measure, the condition of the world has massively improved.
Why do we believe otherwise?
Evolutionary biology has a lot to do with it. We evolved to live in a state of nature, and nature if pretty rough on everyone. So we're acclimated to things not being quite right, and trouble being just around the corner. Now, for most of us, that's not the case.
Gershwin wrote:
Summertime and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'
So hush little baby, don't you cry
Well, it turns out that in summertime when the cotton is high and the fish are jumping, we're looking for a thunderstorm and worried about work on Monday.
I know that I do.
And a super rich society, like ours, seems to make up its own problems.
This is all the more the case when the gates are off the door, as they are. Now, not only are there all our real and imagined problems, but we just go ahead and make new ones up. Woman trapped inside a man's body? Not if the Goths are at the city gates planning on killing everyone.
Anyhow, it seems like we're busy, now that we are in the richest period of our existence as a species, making sure that real problems appear. Apparently we missed them.
Footnotes
*Ballroom Blitz is an early 1970s, rock song by the band The Sweet.
**King Lous XIV.
Related threads:
A deeply sick society.Labels: 1960s, 2020s, AR15 Effect, Commentary, Health, Politics, Weapons, Zeitgeist
Sunday, September 14, 2025
Monday, September 8, 2025
Monday, September 8, 1975. Leonard Matlovich on Time and the UFW.
Discharged Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich appeared on the cover of Time in his Air Force Class B uniform with the words "I Am a Homosexual", for which he was discharged, on the cover. The decorated Vietnam Veteran had come out just before with his status and it seems he had not become a practicing homosexual until after the war. He'd begin a protracted legal battle with the Air Force for reinstatement, which was offered to him originally with a promise that he discontinue homosexual activities, but he declined that. At the time, an exception to the rule prohibting homosexuals in the military existed which would have allowed that. Ultimately he'd accept a financial settlement. The rule itself was removed. It'd be somewhat revived in a different form in 1993 under the Clinton Administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Matlovich was raised Catholic but had converted to Mormonism. He was subsequently excommunicated from the LDS for homosexuality. He died in 1988 at age 44 of AIDS. His actions made him a public figure in the homosexual rights movement, which was just beginning to become a thing at the time. The DSM classified homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973 and was only removed that year due to a paper published by a homosexual psychologist.
I can recall the issue of Time and it was quite shocking at the time.
Matlovich is probably largely forgotten now. The story is interesting in light of subsequent developments, mentioned in part above. Homosexuality was not expressly prohibited by military law for most of the U.S. military's history, but then homosexuality itself was not used as a term defining what it currently does until the late 19th Century. Servicemen were discharged for sodomy, without it expressly being in the military's legal code, as it was seen as a moral abomination, but not as a sort of character defining conduct. This occurred as early as the American Revolution.1 It wasn't until 1921 when it became an expressed military crime. It wasn't until World War Two however that the Service actively worked to bar homosexuals from the Service, making that policy one that had a much shorter period of being in existence than generally imagined. Interestingly a two man panel of psychologists who worked on mental profiles for enlistment just before the war did not recommend excluding homosexuals.
The prohibition was lifted in 2011.
Part of the reason that all of this is interesting is that I'd predicted that the Trump Administration would restore the prohibition on women serving in combat, which was lifted in 2013 (I don't think it should have been). So far, that has not been done, but the Administration has barred "transgendered" from serving. That frankly makes a lot of sense as a "transgendered" person cannot carry on that status without pharmaceutical assistance, something that obviously doesn't pertain to homosexuals. Anyhow, there doesn't appear to be any Trump administration move to restore the ban on homosxuals in the Service, which perhaps shows how far views have evolved on this matter. The prior Service policies clearly reflected widely held societal views.
Farmworkers in California working for Bruce Church, Inc. voted to join the United Farm Workers, in the first such instance of that occurring.
Footnotes:
1. It's been speculated on whether or not Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian officer who introduced Prussian drill and training methods in the Army during the Revolution may have been a homosexual, although it wouldn't have been understood in that fashion at the time. There certainly seems to have been reason to suspect that and homosexual conduct was common in the Prussian and later Imperial German officer corps. That's interesting in and of itself as it was common for officers to enter the service in their mid teens and serve in consistently all male environments, which would argue for a environmental origin to the orientation.
The same is true, it might be noted, for the pre World War Two British officer corps, which was additionally impacted by the odd British education system which tended to warehouse the male children of the well off in all male boarding schools. At least a few well known British officers have been speculated about in this fashion.
In the U.S. military this environment didn't exist, and it's pretty difficult to find examples of well known servicemen who are suspected of having been homosexuals. Unlike European armies, the U.S. Army did not discourage officers from marrying, although it was often financially impossible for junior enlisted men to do so. Most U.S. officers in fact married at the usual ages, and long serving enlisted men often did as well. Getting out of the service after a single three year enlistment was common for enlisted soldiers who wanted to marry. Of course, like all armies, prostitution was rampant near U.S. Army posts, even on the frontier.
Related threads:
The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past Century, Definitions, Society, Law, Culture and Their Odd Trends and Impacts.
Labels: 1950s, 1960s, 1968, Catholic, Christianity, Economics, homosexuality, mehr Mensch sein, Men, pornography, religion, The relationship between men and women, The relationships of men with each other, trends, Work
Last edition:
Friday, September 5, 1975. Attempts.
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
The 2026 Election, 2nd Edition: The early season.
July 6, 2025
I started drafting this, barely, as the Big Ugly started its final set of debates in the Senate. As I did that, this came out Musk broke, for the second time, with Trump, and claimed he'd form a new party if the Big Ugly passed.
Well, good for him.
I'm not posting this a a cheerleader for Musk. Musk is very much part of what's wrong with the United States. He's a poster child for what occurs in a country where has unrestrained capitalism. His caring about people claim can be doubted. The largest donor to the 2022 election, and the former Gauleiter of DOGE, there's no reason to trust that his view of what the nation's politics ought to look like comport with an actual decent set of political beliefs.
But this does symbolize something I'd noted at the time.
The 2026 election has begun.It'll interesting to see how this pays out.
Lummis is up for reelection, assuming she runs, and she will. She'll blame the Democrats for anything that goes wrong, and talk about being the Cyberqueen.
If she faces a solid challenger, after the Public Lands vote, she'll be in trouble.
The House seat is also up. Hageman won't run for that however, she's going to run for Governor. She's going to lose that.
Chuck Gray is going to run for the House, and he'll lose that.
Times are changing. Whether or not The Big Ugly passes, Trump has shot his bolt. True acolytes can wear "Trump was right about everything" truckers caps, but the opposite is proving to be true.
And this is about to get a lot worse for the GOP.
cont:
And now Nebraska's Don Bacon. The Congressman is in a district that's becoming increasingly Democratic, and my guess is it likely now will be a Democratic seat. The Republicans only hold a seven seat majority right now, which will be reduced to a five seat majority once the Democrats fill two vacant seats. Even assuming the Republicans hold every seat they currently have with out Bacon, that would reduce them to a four seat majority.
But they won't hold every seat. The House will flip.
cont:
Even Elon suddenly woke up.
At the time I posted that, I noted the departure of Don Bacon from the candidate rolls for the next election. Now, Tennessee's Mark Green has outright left. The GOP held 220 seats and the Democrats 213, but two of the unfilled seats will go to Democrats once vacant seats are replaced, reducing the pre Big Ugly margin to 220 to 215. With Green actually now gone, that's 219 to 215.
The House will return to the Democrats in the 2026 election.
By that time, it's my guess that the utility of Donald Trump will be gone, and the utility of being shocked that he has dementia will set in.
J.D. Vance will be President by then, with the NatCons hoping that he isn't tainted by anything that went wrong under Trump. Without Vance, nothing that's happened so far will last very long.
What will occur in the Wyoming midterm, which will address in another post on a somewhat separate theme will be really interesting. There's a good chance that Hageman and Lummis won't survive the midterms and that Gray will be defeated in his effort to climb the next rung of the latter, a sign that he'll he'll soon leave the state entirely, it no longer serving any purpose for him.
July 10, 2025
Interesting article pointing out that Musk's third party effort is a long shot, but still has a shot.
Already, I'd note, the one thing the Democrats and the GOP are agreeing on right now is that you must not vote for any new Musk party.
Not that I would. The values that the South African Mass Sperm Donor Billionaire hold are very far from mine. DOGE was stupid beyond belief. And frankly, I don't think that the Federal Government needed to be smaller in the first place, and that the common belief that it does is simply a "common sense" bromide that people believe because they believe it. But he is right about the looming budget crisis. I'd fix that much differently than Musk would.
But I don't think his party, should he form it, can necessarily be discounted. By next election the declining Trump, will sound more and more like mush. Trump already often sounds like this:
Or this:
The room to take Trump on is increasing, and the question is how much the NatCons really want to invest in a bowl of oatmeal as a figurehead. That could prove to be a bad strategy.
One thing I'll note is that I have a thread I haven't posted yet pondering a sort of Wyoming Party. I should have finished it as I could sort have been to this topic first.
And Musk certainly has the cash to get his views out. As he does that, the GOP will spend a lot of cashing yelling "don't listen to the right wing nut!"
Of course, the Democrats will agree with the Republicans on that, as not voting for a third party is the one thing they agree on. . . which is ironically one of the things that an American Party could point to as a reason to vote for it.
I'd also note that if an American Party was intelligent, which there's big reason to doubt that it would be, and carved off some of the real conservative topics from the GOP, and was actually fiscally conservative, it might appeal more broadly than the GOP suspects.
In more local news, former primary candidate Reid Rasner, who ran to the right of John Barrasso, and who forced Barrasso to run to the right of himself, has filed a lawsuit in the 2nd Judicial District against far right former state senator Anthony Bouchard for defamation.
July 10, 2025, cont.
So, the news on Ranser and Bouchard seems more clear. Rasner claims that Bouchard ruined a major economic deal he was working on to buy TikTok by emphasizing that Rasner is a homosexual, which Rasner does not deny. Bouchard had a sexual scandal of his own that came to light earlier on, which, the way I typed it out, would seem to suggest that Rasner's being a homosexual is a scandal, which he doesn't deny (his orientation) in his lawsuit.
Bouchard dropped out of the legislature after his own rather gross sexual scandal came to light, so the fact that he'd make any kind of a big deal out of Rasner's homosexuality is really petty. Apparently screwing and impregnating 14 or 15 year olds, albeit when he was 19, is not as bad as Rasner having same sex attraction. At least, the argument seems to be, you are screwing the opposite gender, so that's better. I'll leave that to others to judge. But why would one far right figure go after the other?
Proper sexual orientation seems to be the only reason. So, really, in the MAGA world screwing a 14 or 15 year old when you are 19 is, well, one of those "Romeo and Juliet" type of deals, to use Bouchard's words, but being a homosexual is just wrong.
Of course, from an Apostolic Christian point of view, sexual relations are only licit between a man and a woman inside a valid marriage, which can occur only once, while both of the couple are living. Inclination doesn't matter, and is not sinful inside itself. But that's not the modern United States, where a serial polygamist is the alleged President and who was a friend of a procurer (which perhaps he was unaware of), but he's okay as he has the right attraction. Most Populist Americans seem to believe that there's nothing really wrong with 1960s sexual libertine behavior, as long as its directed towards the opposite sex.
Rasner must figure his bolt is shot politically, as publishing himself as a homosexual will kill any chance he has of office in contemporary Wyoming. He's not the first Wyoming homosexual to have sought office, and three Wyomingites who were homosexuals have served in elective office, with two of them being open about it. I'd be stunned if there aren't any now, other than the one legislator who admits to being homosexual. Indeed, it'd be interesting if the sexual conduct of every Wyoming political figure came to light so that the MAGA adherents could be exposed to the full sunlight. Maybe they're all pure in their carnal desires, and properly oriented, but I'd be surprised.
An interesting thing here, I'd note, is that Rasner ran to the right of Barrasso, which puts him in full NatCon territory. The NatCons feel that homosexuality is a total abomination. This points out a really curious aspect of it, however, as individuals who can carry the Populist banner don't seem to see a conflict with those who would basically burn them at the stake. No matter what a person thinks of it, homosexuality wasn't something that traditional conservative Republicans cared about at all. Hardcore NatCons sure do.
July 11, 2025
The Secretary of State, whose job in Wyoming is to be a Secretary, is once again criticizing the Governor, whose job is to govern.
Gordon Defends Energy Platform; Gray Says Wind, Solar A ‘Woke Clown Show’
Gray clearly can't stay in his own lane, and is clearly running for something else. Wyomingites are pretty sharply divided on him, with the far right seeing him as some sort of brilliant crusader, and many others seeing him as a self serving buffoon looking for the spotlight to shine on himself.
July 22, 2025
In what was very clearly the first political campaign rally of Chuck Gray's 2026 campaign for Governor, Chuck spoke at The Hanger in Bar Nunn.
Spewing his usual stew of nonsense decrying "the radical left", he then turned against Radiant Energy, which has reportedly received opposition in Bar Nunn. Chuck has learned how to sound like a diehard full Trump right winger except on things unpopular, at which point he becomes nearly a Green Peace activist. You really can't thread his positions together in a straight line.
He also predictably railed against Governor Gordon. Gordon is theoretically barred from a third term, but only theoretically. Gray clearly feels that Gordon may be running, and the fact that Gordon hasn't been a far right drone has made him the target of Gray's ire.
An interesting thing here is that this the opening of his attempt at the Governor's office. Very reliable inside information had Gray going for Harriet Hageman's seat, but this would suggest that might have changed, or that Gray just doesn't have anything real to discuss. If Hageman decides to run for a second term, which as an opponent of public lands she might regret doing, Gray won't challenge her. Hageman may know, however, that her chances for the Governor's office are now dead in the water. For that matter, her chances of reelection to Congress may be as well, but there she can try to deflect attention by clinging tightly to her support of the still popular, in Wyoming, for right now, Trump.
You also can't really explain why a Secretary of State would need a "town hall". The job is about as interesting as wall paper paste if it's actual role is discussed.
July 29, 2025
From the Cowboy State Daily:
Worth noting, Hageman might not be as popular as she once was following her support of Mike Lee's land grab effort.
July 30, 2025
Gordon among nation’s most popular governors despite criticism from right flank, poll finds: National survey of Wyoming voters shows Gordon’s popularity has remained steady throughout his tenure.
July 31, 2025
August 2, 2025
The site:
Hageman has condemned the site as promoting violence due to its use of a rifle theme, which is pretty ironic for the GOP in Trump's era.
August 11, 2025
I suspect people are beginning to get a bit nervous about what their support of the land disposal move will mean at the ballot box.
They should.
One reason I suspect this is that billboards thanking the politicians are showing up. Two billboards featuring all three are thanks from "the energy industry', and ironically show the background of the Tetons.
That presumably means petroleum and coal, but it's really hard to say. The energy industry wasn't under attack to start with, so its not even clear what the thanks is for. Why do they need to be thanked?
Somebody wants everyone to remember, I guess, that all three stand with the "energy industry". We knew that. They stand with us on public lands. That's the point.
Another one around here thanks John Barrasso from the health industry. That's laughable. It's supposed to be for cutting waste from Medicaid. His support of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says all you really need to know about where Dr. John's heart really lies.
Both Barrasso and Gov. Gordon were at some health related event last week. I've lost track of what it was. Barrasso isn't up for reelection for years, so all of this image redirection is really interesting.
August 13, 2025
Sen. Eric Barlow will run for Wyoming governor: The Gillette Republican and former Speaker of the House will vie for the state’s top post in 2026.
This is the first really significant announcement in this race. Barlow is a somewhat known name, and definitely a serious candidate. He's a Wyoming native (which Gray is not), a working rancher (which Hageman is not) as well as a veterinarian and apparently not well liked by the Freedom Caucus (which Gray and Hageman are).
There's reason for some cautious optimism here, although I frankly don't know that much about him.
The 2026 race goes into a different phase at this point. It's actually on. Gray and Hageman. . . as well as Gordon, have to decide what they're going to do. Hageman at this point may choose to stay in the House of Representatives, or try to. Gray has to run for something, but his chances of a long term political career are evaporating.
Barlow noted he wasn't going to run a nasty campaign right away:
Barlow knows it will get ugly. If either Hageman or Gray run for Governor, it will by default. Gray can't order breakfast at McDonalds without going into a tirade about left wing communist news media conspirators, it's his brand. Hageman would likely not go nasty, but her populist backers would.
Speaking loudly in Barlow's favor, the real MAGA crowd is already attacking him on social media, according him of being a RINO. In Wyoming, the accustors in that category are Cornfederates, that crowd that figures everything went wrong since Lee surrendered at Appomattox and are deep into the lastest wacky conspiracy. Indeed, Barlow's announcement gave them a chance to declare, as I saw in one comment, that he "didn't protect us during COVID", by which they mean he didn't deny COVID existed and everything was A-Okay, which even their beloved leader King Donny didn't state.
So there's some hope here.
And this will conclude this edition.
Last edition:
The 2026 Election, 1st Edition: Spring Training Edition.
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