Gay Rights: the more things change, the more they stay the same...

Some days, you want to stand up and scream? Read this and you might weep ... but they'll be tears of anger:


The names of Seattle municipal employees who belong to an LGBT affinity group will not be released for at least a week, but the city argued yesterday before a King County judge that state law requires it to release the names to an anti-gay activist who has requested the list.

Philip Irvin, a city employee and right-wing activist who claims he’s been barred from attending the club’s meetings because he is heterosexual and opposed to gay rights, has requested that the city release the names of employees who belong to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning and Friends (LGBTQF) Club at Seattle City Light, a municipal electric utility.

Private lawyers for LGBTQF members, have asked the court to order the city not to release their names.

After a hearing yesterday, Judge John Erlick continued a temporary restraining order that blocks release of the names until at least next week when both sides will be back in court. Erlick could decide then what and how much should be released...

Read the full story here:
http://lgbtqnews.com/gaynews/Names-of-gay-city-employees-private-for-now-but-Seattle-argues-they-must-be-released.aspx

Announcing GLBT Bookshelf

You might have wondered where I've been for the last 10 days or so ... and the answer to this would have to be: busy, launching something else!

A few posts ago (before the Wolverine review, I mentioned that I was working on something in the background, and would have a new project to launch soon.

It launched a few days ago, and it's already doing fine. Looking superb:

It's a wiki! Not just a book wiki (or a writing, or publishing, wiki) but specifically a GLBT book wiki, for writers, editors, publishers, reviewers, bookseller and, of course, readers.

It's also a bookstore:



...and with better than 30 writers coming online in the first few days, and many, many more about to join us in the next couple of weeks, this is certainly going to become *the* place to shop for GLBT titles ... rub shoulders with writers, check up on the community's publishing news, find a Beta reader or a cover artist, and -- so on!

Where in the world did this idea come from?

The AmazonFail three-ring circus was actually the trigger. I blogged a little about it here: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/04/amazon-apoloigizes-profusely-hands-up.html

...in fact, I just don't/can't believe it happened as a result of human error. I have the strongest intuition that it was a covert attempt to "filter out" content that, frankly, various pundits high up in the Amazonian stratosphere, where the Board of Directors convenes, would rather not see on Amazon. Or anywhere else for that matter.

There are numerous reasons for company directors to want to see GLBT books out. They're not quite the thing you want your eight year olds stumbling into accidentally. They're inclined to make "GLBT" sound actually legitimate to the ears of older teens who know they've grown up gay and are in the process of "guilting themselves straight." And of course, since we're all going to burn in hell for our sins, we have to be saved from ourselves ... it's the only decent thing to do, evangelically speaking. Amazon lives in the States, and ... 'nuff said. (Old Glory flutters proudly over the Land of God. Oh, dear.)

Anyway, to cut to the chase: I've been aware for a long, long time that there remains a high degree of discrimination in online culture. Now, one can shrug off (or sigh off) the snarky remarks you see in YouTube comments, and so forth, as being not worth the pixels it takes to display them.

(Example: Person A uploads a video of Irish dancer Michael Flatley, Person B responds with, "Amazing! The man is absolutely fantastic, never seen anything like it!" And something (god knows what) makes Person B add, "except for th fact hes gay ha ha ha lol" (and you notice the typo, the lack of punctuation, and the vapid 'ha ha ha' and 'lol' -- which are supposedly one's permit to do and say anything in cyberspace ... because it's funny. Sorry guys: not laughing.)

That kind of stupidity is something you have to live with. I wish there were a magic trick to make it vanish, but, people being what they are, we're stuck with it, permanently. However, when mega-business -- like Google, like Amazon -- decides to filter you out, it would be perfectly possible for them to make vast swathes of the world literally vanish.

Many of us (indie writers and publishers, for a start) have very little more visible profile than our online presence. Take this away from us, and we're as good as invisible. And that can't be good.

My hackles tend to rise when this sort of thing happens. I get ... motivated.

We need a hedge, I thought, against possible (probable?) filtering. Because the reason Amazon got caught is that the technology wan't quite up to the task. Yet. The reason Google has been clearly seen, filtering gay content in broad daylight, is because the programming is a few years short of where it needs to be, to get the job done invisibly.

Fast forward to 2011 or 2012. They try it again, and because of the exponential development rates in the realms of code ... yup, it works. GLBT writers and publishers will vanish off the face of the Internet --

Unless we have a hedge of some kind against this: we get together and make a noise. We develop a community that's big enough to generate its own weather patterns. We kick in about a buck apiece and buy the advertising we need to make us high-visibility...

In which case, Google, Amazon and the rest can do a lot less to hurt us than they could, say ... now. Most of us are still shockingly isolated; small groups have knotted together, but there still isn't anything remotely like the vast community which would be needed to ensure immunity to discrimination. The "power of community" blows me away. So --

The first platforms I researched were Joolma, SQL and their accompanying Apache -- and these are wonderful. They're also bloody expensive. I did look at this. I also passed on, when I saw the pricetag and the time lag. How's six months and upwards of five grand sound? Doubtless, about November we'd have launched a GLBT Bookshelf that looked a lot like Amazon itself! But who's going to put up the investment capital?! (Why are you all looking at me, suddenly?!)

So... the whole thing turned into a wiki.

If you can blog, you can wiki. In fact, even if you can't blog, you can wiki. It's no more complex than the Blogger interface ... and it's a lot of fun.

Writers are coming aboard rapidly, and I hope we're also going to attract cover artists, editors, reviewers, publishers, booksellers. It's exciting. It's very exciting. It's a place where we can not only blog and talk, but post articles, artwork galore, and (better yet) SELL our books.

Now, there are lots of book community sites around, like Author's Den and Book Hitch. But "GLBT" is yet another careful quarantine zone at these sites. In fact, Author's Den states emphatically that they don't want, won't have, "adult content" on their site, becausesaid site is open to children. That's fair enough, too, but ... where does it leave GLBT writers, whose content is always lumped in with the "adult" stuff, even when it's mild by comparison (because we're going to burn, and oughtta be saved from ourselves) ...? And also, there's no provision for using Author's Den, Book Hitch, Shelfari and so on, as a bookstore --

Got it covered, guys. GLBT Bookshelf has a bookstore designed in, and you're exhorted to get your affiliate code from Amazon, B&N, Diesel, wherever, and plug it right into the pages that are created and maintained by yourself.

From my perspective, the whole thing is the answer to a prayer.

Go over there, have a look, and ... join us. Register (FREE), and log in to start making your own pages. Enjoy!

Cheers,

MK

Keegan's Week: "proper" gay books. Uh huh.

I fielded a weird question the other day -- and the worst part of it was, the person was absolutely serious, and intended at least half of it as a sincere compliment. "Your work is so wonderfully written," she said, "why don't you write proper books?"

And I went blank. Utterly. For about ten seconds. You might have thought I was having a "senior moment," but in fact the processor was whirring, trying to make sense if the question, only to land back at the hurdle --

What the bloody hell is a "proper" book?

Of course, what she meant was, why don't I write heterosexual books? Or, to slightly rephrase the question so it'll make sense to the rest of us, "Your work is so wonderfully written, why do you write gay books instead of proper ones?"

Deep breath, now. Be calm. Count to ten. In Klingon.

Well ... who in the [expletive deleted] says that gay books aren't proper books? The next thing these people will be saying is, John Barrowman isn't a "proper" singer or actor. And Tchaikovsky wasn't a "proper" composer, and T.E. Lawrence wasn't a "proper" army officer, and Nijinsky wasn't a "proper" dancer. Or that gay people are not "proper" people. And I'm Not. Going. To. Go. There. Period.

Be happy: have a nice day, yes?

In fact, the properness of gay books is increasing greatly -- not exponentially, but nicely. It turns out that 10% of the male half of the population is gay anyway; and about another 15% on the male side of the fence is ac/dc by inclination, which makes 25% of the part of the population that shaves and dreams of power tools would enjoy a gay narrative ... and about 25% of folks on the female side of the fence like to read gay books, for boatloads of reasons. Some are themselves gay; some are straight enough to fancy the hell out of beautiful guys; some get a kick out of the homoerotic; some love a romance but don't like guy/gal romance, because it almost always seems like the gal is getting s/exploited. Some are "modern age" enough to see as far as the romance, and genuinely don't believe gender matters.

That's 25% of the population as a whole, folks.

So, for every million literate people who read, there's 250,000 who would enjoy a gay book, in the highly unlikely event they were ever in a position to see one, and have the opportunity to actuallt buy it.

That's eight times the population of Fairbanks, Alaska. It's about equivalent to the entire population of South Australia that lives outside the metropolitan area. It's about 8.5% of the entire population of New Zealand (I think; if I'm wrong on this one, it won't be by much -- and feel free to give me a kick).

In a country like Australia with something like 20 - 24 million souls, depending on who you talk to, and who's being counted into the complement, you probably have something in the order of about 16 million literate adults, and about 12 million who actually read --

So, three million Aussies would enjoy a gay narrative, if they were allowed to make the reading choice, at the store, or wherever they get their books.

But if you walk into a bookstore down here and look for gay books, you'll soon start to wonder if anyone's publishing them at all. And the reason is that every bookstore down here is an outlet for a chain. It's B&N, it Dymocks, it's A&N, it's the book department in Kmart or WalMart or Target or Myer, or whatever.

No gay books. Why? Because gay books do not sell enough copies, per title, to attract the attention of the distributor. Each individual title might sell 400 right across this country, IF they were shelved with the generosity or impunity with which het books are shelved. But they're not shelved with such catholic generosity...

Why? Many reasons. Management is terribly aware of minors and the elderly, who form a significant part of their customer base; they're equally aware of the religious minority, for whom the "god" books are shelved alongside yoga, holistic food and Relaxation for Uptight Dummies.

Not wanting to offend anyone, Management literally hides the gay books: top shelves, bottom shelves, dark corners, out of reach, out of sight. And -- what a surprise! -- the books sell poorly.

Gay books are seldom advertised on magazine pages or in windows where the average reader would see them. Same reason for not putting a nice, big ad in the window down at Dymocks. And as per magazine advertising --

Do you know what an ad in a major literary magazine costs?!! An ad to run in one issue would put about $2 on the checkout price of each copy of a gay title! Not going to happen, people. (Few mainstream, print media book reviewers will review a gay book ... saaaame reason. Minors, the elderly, and the God Squad.)

So ... gay books don't sell bigtime, and another reason for this is that they're double-marginalized. They're already in the "gay" category at any online bookstore. Then, they're ... what? Gay-SF, or gay-fantasy, or thriller, or western, or historical, or romance, or erotica, or ...

Uh huh. Double-marginalized. So you have someone saying, "Gee, I'd love a new gay book, but I don't want SF, and I've read enough breeches-rippers (the gay equivalent of the bodice-ripper) to last me a lifetime. Uh ... I don't like westerns. I'm not in the mood for a murder mystery..."

Double jeopardy. The gay writer has two hurdles to get over, not one, and if each hurdle is a "filter," then gay books get filtered twice, before any sale is made.

Meaning, a hell of a lot of gay books are sold, but not that many of any individual title.

Another thing that's killing gay book sales, at least in this country, is that books are so expensive. Small printruns make for expensive books, and few people can afford to buy many, when the damned things are $32 and upwards. A lot of readers are landing at the book exchanges, where you can trade something you've read and pay $2 to the store, and get something you haven't read before --

Guess what doesn't often get traded? Right. Gay books are seldom traded (for which the reasons are many), so you probably won't be able to pick up a new one at the book exchange ... and even if you could, the publisher and the writer wouldn't know a thing about it.

Here is where it gets mildly interesting. A few years ago, when readers were still in the habit of sending a few words of feedback, I used to hear that someone had picked up one of my books at a book exchange in, say, Madrid or Munich or Manchester -- Europe, where gay books are treated with a lot more generosity by booksellers. Secondhand dealers in Europe will trade in gay books, where many (most?) of our local dealers are still not quite "there" yet -- inordinately concerned about the minors and elders and religious bods ... which is no bad, thing, in reality. Taking care of kids, and not giving cardiac episodes to others is a laudable goal in itself.

Fact is, the Internet is a far better place to do business. The people who find you deliberately came a-hunting. One seldom has to deal with folks who arrived on a gay page by accident.

There's also a "book swap" subculture out there, where books are changing hands in every direction...

And a writer has to wonder how many sales he or she has actually achieved. Say, 5,000 or 10,000 when the book was new (depending on the printrun -- and they're all over the place, there's no "norm"), plus an extra 1,000 or 2,000 per reprint ... and then, the swaps, the trades, the book exchanges -- for decades.

So, actual "sales" might be way ahead of anything the publisher knows about. Think about that. Nice. I mean, we don't earn royalties on the swaps and trades, but it's so nice to know that new people are buying the old books.

The last thing that makes it tough for gay writers is the sheer volume of the competition. It's astonishing. There are so many gay titles being published these days -- it's a a lit-fest. Heaven on a stick for anyone who has an ebook reader gizmo -- most of these books are available digitally, thank heavens. Makes them reachable for Aussies and Kiwis, because there's no shipping to pay. Postage across the Pacific. Yee-ouch!

Speaking of ebooks and gizmos, I'm still looking for just the right deal on a bit of hardware to do the job, and my hunt has brought me to this quarry:

The Acer Aspire One netbook. It's at least as functional as even the most advanced dedicated ebook reader, with a color crystal brite screen, and a keyboard that some reviewers say is a joy to use ... and it's less than half the price of a good, dedicated ebook reader. On sale, you can get the thing for A$350, which is just about right for my budget. So my fingers are itching to reach for the credit cards... 8" screen, weighs under a kilo, like handling a hardcover book. Boots up in 8 seconds, loads a browser in another 10, wireless, 2 card readers, 3 USB ports and VGA out. And you have GOT to like that. Yes, I know, the battery life is about 2.5 hours, running the browser and modem with the screen at 60% brightness. Now, turn the screen down to 30% and run just the Mobipocket reader on the local system -- no connectivity, no graphics. Ebook reader. Check. Should go about 4 hours between recharges, even with the silly little 3-cell battery that ships with the machine; and that'll do fine.

Still on the subject of ebooks -- I've been busy in the last week, making more available at Smashwords:


$10.95, for iPhone, Mobipocket, Palm Pilot, and more...


$10.95, for iPhone, Mobipocket, Palm Pilot, and more...

...so, there you are. Proper books for your proper ebook reader. Proper gay books, at that. Somebody try telling John Barrowman that he isn't a "proper singer," and his albums are not "proper" albums, because when he sings a lovesong, he's singing about a guy he adores not a gal. I'm not saying JB would bestow a black eye; but if he did, I do believe Scott and Mel would be standing there shaking hands, patting backs and saying, "Well done, mate."

I mean -- seriously!

Cheers,
MK

Independent publishing -- and bookselling -- rock!

I'm still on the subject of Amazon censorship -- last time, honest engine! -- and I'd like to give you something to think on.

Thanks to Vashtan at Live Journal for this:
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/13973.html

And to pique your interest -- so that you buzz off over there and read the rest! -- here's a couple of choice paragraphs:

Amazon’s "Glitch" Myth Debunked
by Francine Saint Marie

I am the author of the LAMBDA Notable Book, The Secret Keeping [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419682369], as well as The Secret Trilogy [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1438240570], Girl Trouble [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1438202105] and several other popular LGBT paperbacks sold on Amazon.com.

All of my novels have been aggressively censored by Amazon since (at least) January of 2008, when they were first released as Kindle editions and promptly rigged in the Kindle store so as not to register any sales ranks and bestselling categories, or to show up properly in Amazon search results. I have also experienced mysterious "sourcing fees" applied by Amazon to the list prices of my LGBT paperbacks, as well as the deletion of five-star customer reviews of them, the removal of their "in stock" status, and a host of other handicapping techniques which are still in effect today.

Since the first quarter of 2008 to the date hereof, I (and my team) have, in vain, relentlessly pursued Amazon about their insidious censorship of my titles. Through telephone calls, e-mails and forum posts, we have repeatedly demanded that they cease and desist burying my novels in their browse tree and otherwise hindering my sales. We have also urged them to provide all authors with "equal access" to their site features and a "level playing field" upon which to compete. As Amazon can confirm, the cry "missing sales ranks" and "discrimination" was Team Saint Marie’s mantra in 2008, and it was even the title of a widely read "thread" we posted in the Kindle publishers’ forum, which Amazon hastily deleted. Indeed, "missing sales ranks" and "discrimination" was the subject of many circular (and recorded) phone conversations with Amazon’s representatives, not to mention an awesome number of e-mails!

-----end of quote!

Now, please! Go and read the rest ... and maybe Keegan won't be sounding so paranoid.

You know me: I'm a LOUD supporter of indie anything, being it writing, publishing, film making, bookselling, the works. Indie Rules. Indie is best -- globalize the "power," beat monopolization. In my world view, it's all about human rights, of which gay rights is a crucial (in fact, watershed) subcategory.

Amazon apologizes profusely ... hands up, anyone who believes any of this

Today, from SeattlePI.com...

Amazon calls mistake 'embarrassing and ham-fisted'

Amazon.com has offered a response to the AmazonFail fiasco.

Because there's so much attention to this, I'll offer spokesman Drew Herdener's comments unfiltered:

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

and:

Former Amazonian Mike Daisey offers some insight.

"After hearing from people on the inside at Amazon, I am convinced it was in fact, a 'glitch,'" he says on his Web site. "Well, more like user error--some idiot editing code for one of the many international versions of Amazon mixed up the difference between 'adult' and 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' All the sites are tied together, so editing one affected all for blacklisting, and ta-da, you get the situation."

According to Daisey's inside sources, "A guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up 'adult,' which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon."

[end of quote]

We have a term for this.

We call it damage control.

You blame a human, who can be fired ... this is sooooo convenient. I'd say it's far too convenient. It's the backdoor route onto the fire escape you leave yourself when you're going to try to censor anything to do with human sexuality, in the event you get caught.

They got caught and roasted, and they fled for the fire escape.

What really needles me is that people are genuinely going to believe it. I'm not usually into conspiracy theory, but to me this just looks blatant. Put it this way: I'm far from convinced. It'll take years of loyalty to the GLBT community before Amazon will woo me back into the truth faith worship of the 1,000lb gorilla.

I'm old enough by now to be a lot more suspicious. What I can see is that the attempt at censorship was made -- and didn't work; it was a ham-fisted attempt, along exactly the same lines as those navigated by Kevin bloody Rudd in his vain and moronic attempts to enforce Internet censorship on Australia. Amazon was caught red-handed, and had been "canny" enough to leave themselves an escape chute.

They're out and free today, having learned the hard way that K.Rudd-style Censorship doesn't work; therefore, switch to Plan B, which is "swift, slick damage control ... and whole new generation of brilliant, subtle code that'll sneak through the desired results in 2010 or '11.

Put it this way, guys: I'll believe it's NOT happening when we reach 2012 and it hasn't happened. In the meantime -- seriously! -- having seem the writing very clearly on the wall, I'm already exploring other avenues which will either not involve Amazon, or, if they do, they'll use the Big A merely as a checkout and drop-shipping service.

I don't have the trust today that I had back in March. Do I sound cynical? Well ... I guess I am. 25 years in this game has made me fairly cynical -- though I prefer the word pragmatical.

Got to get to work now...


UPDATED on April 16 with a couple of backlinks:

If you think I'm just being paranoid, you have GOT to see these:

http://blog.vromans.com/amazonfail-the-cost-of-freedom/
and
http://www.slate.com/id/2213037

Woah. Paranoia is the least of it, guys.

Ciao for now,
MK

Amazon headhunting in the GLBT community ...!

Hi, guys ... I'm back, and with something significant to say. The "bad news" is breaking across the GLBT writing community right now ...

Amazon under fire for perceived anti-gay policy

Here's an outtake in a thimble, to give you the gist:

The number one word being used over and over on Twitter at this moment is "AmazonFail."

Why?

Users are angry about a perceived anti-gay policy that removes lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender books from appearing in sales rankings.

Author Mark Probst writes on his blog that two days ago, "mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: 'Transgressions' by Erastes and 'False Colors' by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book 'The Filly.'"

Probst eventually got a response from Amazon.com Advantage member services, he says.

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn DMember ServicesAmazon.com Advantage

In other words, what about the children? Protect the children. Get gay content out of any area of the net that minors could possibly access.

Uh huh. Fair enough. I suppose. But it's going to be a long, slow clean-up for the Big A, because protecting kids also means shielding them from violence, coarse language and heterosexual pornowhatsessz. Massive amounts of Amazon will have to VANISH, pronto, for Amazon to be able to support its claim that glbt writers are not being discriminated against. It ain't just glbt writers who're going to get slapped. Normal Mailer, Harold Robbins, Jilly Cooper, Ann Rice ... all vanishing into the A-search bye and bye...

In fact, the new Amazon censorship is a lot of "same old, same old." Google is very discriminatory too; in fact, discrimination against glbt writers is so common on the web, one learns to live and deal with it. (Example: I've heard of e-zines that sell ad space, and "guarantee" a review of any book for which advertising is bought ... but they don't review glbt titles, even though they'll take the advertising dollar. The scene goes downhill from there,
with glbt-friendly pages and blogs now getting paid out less than a penny for clicks on their Google Ads, though they used to earn up to 75c for a click on the same ad, before company policy changed.)

Amazon's policy shift is subtle ... they seem to be reading tags. If your book is user-tagged "gay," you lose your page rankings ... if your books are not tagged, you keep your rankings.

Say, what?!

My books still have their rankings (!) because I never bothered to go in and tag them for Amazon search ... I know they're called "user tags," but it's the writers and publishers who are far, far more likely to add the tags, not customers. (A customer bookmarks the page where the book lives -- why would they want to run around tagging books, when they've already found the damned book?!) I've been advised (!) to get in there and tag my books for Amazon Search. Uh huh. So, writers and publishers tag their books to make them visible and searchable ... hence, it's dead easy for Amazon to figure out whose page rankings to yank!

They haven't yanked my sales rankings (yet??) because I don't carry the tags. Never bothered to go and do it, because at least 70% of all my sales are driven via my own bookstore, which lives here: http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/catalog.htm

Meanwhile, however ... something else is happening at Amazon, which has nothing to do with tags (I'm untagged) or sales ranking (rankings are still there), and for the life of me I can't figure it out. My Amazon sales are down 80% this month, so far. My sales switched off, as if someone had killed the power, at the end of March. I did great in February and March (actually super-great in March), and then very poorly indeed so far in April ... with the sales rankings still "on" and attached. Go figure

Fortunately Keegan ain't Amazon-centric; they can't hurt me very much. And I know this is going to sound self-centered, so let me hint, here and now before I say it -- behind the scenes, I'm thinking long and hard, and coming up with a way to turn this whole lousy situation not only to my own advantage, but to the advantage of all glbt writers. I think I have a terrific idea, but I need to thrash it out, think it through, research the costs involved, before I share it publicly. However -- hang on, because the light I'm seeing at the end of the tunnel is NOT the train; and it's a nice, bright light ... bear with me a while.

As I said, fortunately (for me; and I'm not being selfish here) Amazon/Kindle only ever accounted for about 30% of my sales overall, so I still have 3 out of 4 of my oars in the water. But I know that other writers absolutely rely on Amazon, and they're in dire straits.

My titles are also retailed via Payloadz, and 70% of all sales are driven via my own bookstore -- so, the violent drop in Amazon sales might smart, but it's not going to kill me stone dead. Other writers are not so lucky -- and I'm not talking, here, about self-publishers!

Most of the writers with whom I'm in touch (about a dozen full-professional) are publishing with
print-media companies in the US; a few are with ebook publishers. Amazon sales are a huge part of the income they get from writing. And this discrimination is going to hurt them badly. As I just said in a comment on the previous post, it's enough to make you weep tears of blood.

Now, as you probably know, my publisher went defunct about eight years ago, leaving me with a big backlist and two thumbs to twiddle! I got busy and have marketed my old stuff while writing new. Amazon was very kind to me, sales-wise, till the end of March '09. I still have no idea of what happened then; however, I'd only gotten around to putting 12 books there, out of 27 on my list -- and as for Kindle, there's only 6 there. So their ability to hurt me is limited.

The number of other venues for selling books online is growing all the time -- Smashwords comes to mind. (Speaking of which, Mark Coker tells me they just went online with a new "meatgrinder," which is their industrial strength, wide-scale document converter. You upload a .doc file or an .rtf, and tell it what formats to spit out. It does the whole thing. Should be easy ... we had problems with it last month, but I'm 95% sure it was all about time-out woes. Will be taking another crack at it shortly, and with luck it'll work just fine.)

Amazon doesn't have a monopoly -- it's important to realize this. I also acknowledge that they're the "1000lb gorilla" in this neck of the woods. For some weird reason, READERS trust Amazon over Lulu or anyone else. This is where Amazon can really hurt writers. Customers trust Amazon, and are more likely to buy a book from them than, for instance, Lulu.com or Smashwords.com, or whatever.

The trick will be to find a way to get around the discrimination ... without taking on Amazon in a stand-up fight. Because one does not trade blows with King Kong and expect to come out of it with one's nose in the same place where nature intended. Picture Daffy Duck with his bear on top of his head.

Our mission (and we'd better damned choose to accept it!) is to either persuade readers that it's safe, and good, to buy books elsewhere ... or, to find other ways to bend the existing Amazon model (discriminatory tactics and all) to our advantage.

Stay tuned.

Cheers,
MK

PayPal off the rails, the Gay Gal and Microsoft, and ebooks run amok

Sometimes, you have to wonder. I was sent a link, and followed it to this story which I'm going to share with you here:

Identifying Yourself As A Lesbian Gets You Banned On XBOX Live

Read it and weep. I'll give you the short version, but you have GOT to read the whole thing -- and scan down the comments, too: they get crazy. Makes you take another look at your fellow human being...

"Teresa says that she was harassed by other players and later suspended from XBOX Live because she identified herself as a lesbian in her profile. When she appealed to Microsoft, she says they told her that other gamers found her sexual orientation "offensive."

The whole story leaves you scratching your head, not least about Microsquash. Anybody who knows the slightest thing about XBox Live knows that it's a place where sexism, racism, homophobia, ill-feeling toward women, runaway violence, crass behavior, the most extreme of non-stop coarse language, the whole gamut of social nasties, run rampant.

And they're all bent out of shape because some gal says, "Hey, I'm gay, you got a problem with that?"

Apparently Microsoft has a major problem with that. The rest of the twaddle that abounds on XBox Live is, it seems, fine and dandy. Say what you like, in any terms you like, as poisonously as you like --

Just don't say you're gay.

O...kay. And this is legal? And, if it's legal, this is desirable because...?

While I was over there at The Consumerist (dot com) reading that piece, I couldn't help being whapped between the eyeballs by a couple of their other headlines. Stay with me, guys, because this one is chin-hit-knees time:

PayPal Charges $81,400,836,908 For $26 Tank Of Gas
Juan Zamora fed his 1994 Chevy Camaro $26 worth of gas, a transaction for which PayPal charged his debit card $81,400,836,908. Unsurprisingly, PayPal saw nothing wrong with the charge and demanded that Juan prove that he didn't actually buy $81.4 billion worth of gas.

He only learned of the astounding figure when he received an email later that afternoon informing him that his debit card, which started out with $90 on it, was maxed out.

Initially, Mr. Zamora thought it must've been a joke. But after contacting PayPal customer service he was surprised to see that the company treated it as anything but a laughing matter.

"Somebody from a foreign country who spoke in broken English argued with me for 10 to 15 minutes," Zamora said. " ‘Did you get the gas?' he asked. Like I had to prove that I didn't pump $81,400,836,908 in gas!"
He would have needed more than 3 billion fill-ups of the amount he actually pumped into his tank in order to reach that outrageous sum.

Eventually, Zamora said, he was finally able to convince the representative that he didn't deserve to be in the same position as General Motors, who has lost roughly 80 billion dollars since 2005.

When Zamora returned to the Conoco gas station, he said, the attendant would not believe him until he showed her the printout of the PayPal receipt.

What moral is Juan taking away from the story? "Pay cash."

!!!!!!!!!! There's no answer to that. Here it is again, on another news service -- this is so delicious, you have to read it twice:
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2009/02/27/driver-fills-up-gas-tank-receives-bill-for-86-billion/

And there's one more story at The Consumer you really have to look at while you're there (in fact, this is such a great page, I'm going to bookmark it and go back often ... they get the absolutely choice stories):

Outcry Prompts Amazon To Stop Overcharging For Digital Edition
Wait for it: "Kevin couldn't understand why Amazon charged $29.95 for the digital version of Confessions of a Butcher when the paperback cost only $11.95. Amazon tried to gussy up the Kindle edition by offering what looked like a steep 45% discount, but the digital edition still cost $5 more than the print edition. Even the author's wife chimed in to Amazon's discussion forum to pan the discrepancy, adding, "what's really ridiculous is that we sell more ebooks at $20 than we do new paperbacks for $11.95."

And that's far from all, guys. You might have thought I was over-reacting the other day when I broke the news that Amazon Kindle is an Americans-only club. Turns out, I didn't know the full shock-horror stuff when I wrote The road to Amazon.com is land-mined...

Here's the rub:
Amazon is heavily discounting the price of eBooks to spur Kindle sales, but eBooks won't always be so cheap. Writing over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo warns that if the Kindle becomes as ubiquitous as the iPod, eBooks, which can't be shared, traded, or resold, may soon cost more than their print counterparts. "As the master of the e-book universe," Manjoo claims, "Amazon will eventually call the shots on pricing, marketing, and everything else associated with the new medium." Can you see yourself paying $30 for an eBook anytime soon?
http://consumerist.com/5161348/outcry-prompts-amazon-to-stop-overcharging-for-digital-edition?skyline=true&s=x

Now, there's actually an upside to this ... from Keegan's admittedly skewed perspective. The damned Kindle also reads Mobi, and HTML, and a bunch of other stuff. They're even fiddling around, trying to get it to read a PDF. The third incarnation of Kindle will almost certainly be tweaked to read PDFs properly.

Now, given that Amazon has the desire to dominate the entire ebook field, bet your bottom dollar they'll make their gadget read everything. Then, they'll be charging US$30/A$40 for an ebook ????

Actually, they're welcome to go ahead and see what the audience will tolerate. Because you'll still be able to get a 450pp Keegan for $10, and download it cleanly to your PC, and feed it to your shiny new Kindle via the smartcard slot (!) and read to your heart's content.

Nostrakeeganus, he seeing huge marketplace of desperate people looking for affordable books after they saddled themselves with a Kindle and found out they can't afford to use it...

The greed behind a $30 pricetag for an ebook edition is nothing less than gobsmacking. And who in this world would contest the fact that it will serve the greedy buggers right to engineer an absolutely fantastic, peerless device and then have customers feed it with an SD card, with all kinds of goodies from all over the web -- and never touch down at the Kindle Store, where the same item costs three times the price ... besides which, you can only get American authors anyway!

Is it me, or is this getting just plain bizarre?

Oh -- and speaking of ebooks, the next segment of Legends is up, too...

Ciao for now,
Mel

They love you, Philip Morris ... they just won't distribute you!

Some things never change, do they? Like the apparent belief that the US public isn't ready for a gay movie in the mainstream, even if it does star names like Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey.

A news story landed on my desk yesterday -- mind you, it dates from the end of January, so it's a couple of weeks old already and one sincerely hopes that it's OBSOLETE by now!

The gist of the story was that I Love You Philip Morris hasn't secured a distributor for the continental US after Sundance. Which is just about enough to make you haul off and scream. Nostrakeeganus, he predicting that Philip Morris will do very nicely in Europe, including the UK, and maybe in Japan; but in the States, Canada, Australia...? Forget it. It'll be lucky to play the art houses here -- though it will probably do phenomenal business on DVD.



Well ... shoot. Makes you wonder if we're making any progress at all, what with this happening to Philip Morris, and the brewhaha over Internet filtering in this country, and the Prop 8 fiasco. *sigh* I have to admit, I was hoping (and actually believing) that Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey could beat the system.

Back home in the Mel-o-Sphere, things are happening, albeit slowly. We're working up to the Kindle issues, and I'd like to do a press release: Keegan on your Phone. Look out for this in the next couple of weeks. Also, Legends is steaming along -- Chapter Seven is up today. And I'm delighted to report that the Digital Kosmos photoblog is doing fine, winning Google searches from every corner of the globe. There are times when the traffic on DK is double the number that touches down on this here blog --

Which leads me to the conclusion ... it's time to effectively shut this blog down and start another ... Google never did address the question of my page ranking. It's still utterly impossible for me to win a Google search in the USA, where 90% of anyone's visitors come from. I can win them in Nepal, and Cameroon, and Lithuania, but not in Los Angeles or New York or Chicago. I have almost 300 posts online at this time, of which about 20 are being accessed with any regularity. The rest are buried, and have been buried for about three months. Gak.

So: MK is about to concede! TKO to The Big G. Now, let's bounce back and see if we can get this show back up on its wheels and rolling, by floating a new blog, deleting this one from the Google index, and importing existing posts to the new template, where they will be spidered and indexed and ... visited. Which was the whole point of writing them.

Anyway -- that's the plan. You know me by now: I get there in the end, but things can (and do) tend to move sloooowly, or at least less quickly than I'd have liked.

Here's a nice piece of news, though: The Lords of Harbendane is selling well enough at Amazon for its rankings to be in the hundred-thousands already, and it's only been on sale about ten days. The actual Amazon rank is 191,965 -- in ten days, before the advertising has started!

The important thing there isn't the number, it's the time frame. All books start out with a page ranking over 2,000,000, and you climb if you can, and as you can, from there. The advertising is about to begin for The Lords of Harbendane, and you bet, I shall be watching the Amazon ranking.

More good news for folks who're looking at Create Space as a possible gateway to Amazon: they've redesigned their page -- it loads a hell of a lot faster. Also, they've tightened up their javascript, and the shopping cart is FIXED. It works, and it works fast ... so we're starting the NARC books on the long, hard road to Amazon. They'll be there in April or so.

I'll leave you with a couple of links:

Chapter Seven: The Prophecy is up at Legends,
and
Home Sweet Home was my post to Digital Kosmos today.

Ciao for now,
Mel

Gay ... in the global sense

It's too hot to think, much less blog, so this might be short ... and not as coherent as Keegan is usually inclined to be! Summer. Australia. Still waiting for the new a/c to be installed. You get the picture. So this is going to be a ramble through the labyrinth of my thoughts -- and in hot weather they tend to ramble far, and unpredictably!

The Internet can be a really weird place. Chasing links from place to place, I stumbled into the online edition of a Nigerian newspaper which is preaching from the pulpit against gay marriage, while their ad server is cheerfully plugging in contextual ads that must have raised a few eyebrows back home in Nigeria. Give this a click -- I uploaded it at 1000 pixels wide so you can actually read:

Gay Cupid on the front page of a Nigerian newspaper?! Somebody put their foot in it, somewhere. I wonder if anyone's noticed yet?

On the other hand, the Internet can be a place of painful truth. There's a feature running on China Daily: Body of Lies, about the plight of being gay and HIV+ in China at this time. It's an eye-opener. The cultural "great wall" the GLTBI community is up against in China is as daunting as anything occidentals knew in other decades. Well worth a look -- and it's not a long read. Just a disturbingly poignant one:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-01/12/content_7387119.htm

Meanwhile, over the water in Japan, it's a very different story, and as a writer I'm fascinated both by the incredible complexities of Japanese gay culture (take a quick peek right here: http://www.geocities.com/bjcjapan/japan.html) and the new wave of Japanese gay publishing, which isn't at all what you'd think.

You've heard of Yaoi, which is "boy love," or m/m romance mostly aimed at a readership of young women. There's also Yuri, which is "girl love," mostly aimed at (you guessed) guys ... and a lot of the Yaoi is written by guys, for the gals, and a lot of the Yuri is written by gals for the guys. Cool.

This echoes back to a post a made a few days ago: Gay books rock, but who's reading them? In that post, I was looking at my readership in response to a question I'd received from a visitor to this blog, and it all got around to speculating about not about who's reading gay books these days -- but who's writing them. Interesting stuff (and many thanks to Alex Beechcroft to adding to this discussion with her own observations).

So -- who's writing male gay books? Guys and gays. Who's writing lesbian books? Same story. Interesting, no? If you're interested, the most convenient place to start is on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan ... from there, you're off on a ramble that will amuse, entertain and surprise!

And now I have to go find somewhere cool, or at least cooler than this corner wher my computers live!

Ciao for now,

MK

Happy New Year! Start rolling out those barrels...

There's not much to say today except HAPPY NEW YEAR! The old year has seven or eight hours left in it, as I write this. I find myself looking both backward and forward, at the events that surprised, disgusted, delighted and grieved us during 2008, and at the events that ought to get us up on the soap boxes next year.

Ought-eight was the year everybody got rid of George W. Bush; it was the year Americans elected a president of color ... it was also the year when people were hoodwinked by the religious right, into voting against civil liberties and human rights. However, it was also the year when the aforementioned religious right well and truly shot their bolt, and "all came out in the wash." Their lies and perfidy became common knowledge, and as they saying goes, "they can't pull that trick again." Gay marriage rights will be back on the ballot sheet very soon, and this time the people of California will go to the polls with their eyes wide open.

It was the year Heath Ledger died; the year the recession hit the whole world broadside. The Olympics went to China ... China could no longer disguise its air pollution problems. The global climate went bung some more, and did it faster than anyone had ever expected ... but record snowfalls are being taken by some idiots as a sign that there's no such thing as global warming! Apparently, we need to start building "proper" power stations as fast as we can. I read a feature article in the UK's Telegraph online; I read it because I thought the teaser line promised a great joke, and was two thirds through it before I realized, this buffoon is deadly serious, and so are the pea-brains who left comments on the page: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html ... don't you love the title? "2008," it says, "was the year man-made global warming was disproved." O...kay.

Well, it certainly was the year that The Dark Knight showed how much money a movie can make at the box office! It also showed that there's a disturbing large part of the audience that's identifying with the psychos, not the heroes. Woah.

But 2008 was also the year when the Vatican said it was fine and dandy to believe in aliens (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90KSE100&show_article=1), and at the same time, gay athletes decided not to come out! Of 10,500 athletes in Beijing, only 10 were out, and only one of those was a guy (http://www.theage.com.au/news/off-the-field/10500-athletes-and-only-10-of-them-gay/2008/08/18/1218911546077.html). Statistically, it's far more probably that about a thousand of these athletes were gay or bi, but with the hurricane of Prop 8 going on in the background, who was going to come out?! The time isn't right, not yet, not quite.

Because this was also the year the Dominionists came within tickling distance of the White House. Don't get me started on Dominionists.

It was the year John Barrowman published his autobiography (!), and Aussie TV decided they couldn't show season two of Torchwood because (so they said) there was material which would offend viewers. If you believe a syllable of that.

This year, our prime minister was demonstrated to be a "cradle catholic" with aspirations to build "the great Australian firewall," meaning Aus becomes one of only five countries to deliberately and vastly censor the Internet. The others are China, Iran, Egypt and ... England. Go figure.

The year Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman starred in a major flop: Australia ... and Kidman has been blamed for it. Well, who could blame Hugh Jackman when the poor man just can't help looking like this:




See what I mean? Not his fault. Couldn't be his fault. Blame Kidman. It's all her fault anyway. (And yes, even Keegan decided to wait for the DVD ... and I'm not usually swayed by critics. I'll talk about the movie when I've rented the disk!)

It was also the year Will Smith was outed, whether he liked it or not! Kewl. Unless you're Will Smith, of course. Then, well, maybe not so kewl. The year Brad had twins ... I expect he had help there somewhere. The year Michael Jackson's nose fell off -- or was that last year? One loses track. The year Whacko Jacko ... and Mel Keegan ... turned 50. Good golly, what happened to time? The last time I looked at a calendar, it was 1997, and I'll bet Jacko would tell you the same.

It's actually been one hell of a year, and the next one will be just as weird and wonderful.

We live in "interesting times," to borrow from the old Chinese curse!

H a p p y N e w Y e a r ! I'll be back next year,

Cheers,
MK

Catholic cake: how to have it and eat it.

You can have your cake and eat it too. The American Catholic upper management has figured out how.

How have GOT to read this: Church gay marriage stand: 'no harm meant', on this url: http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2814

This piece of ecumenical bull-shine came over the wire yesterday from the National Catholic Enquirer, and it leaves you shaking your head in gob-smackedness.

Don't have time to click through and read it? Here's the gist of it:

LOS ANGELES -- In a message to homosexual Catholics in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and the six auxiliary bishops of the archdiocese said the recent vote in California defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman "does not diminish in any way (your) importance" nor "lessen your personal dignity and value as full members of the body of Christ."
The message said Catholic support for Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment approved by a 52 percent to 48 percent margin Nov. 4, "was in defense of the long-standing institution of marriage understood as the lifelong relationship of a man and a woman ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of their children."
The church's support was not an effort to harm the homosexual community or to ban same-sex marriage, even though ballot information about Proposition 8 stated that was the initiative's purpose, the cardinal and bishops said.
"If we had ever thought that the intent of this proposition was to harm you or anyone in the state of California, we would not have supported it," they said. "We are personally grateful for the witness and service of so many dedicated and generous homosexual Catholics. We pledge our commitment to safeguard your dignity."

Say -- what?! On Day One they lie through their teeth, even though God hates a liar, in order to get Prop 8 passed. I've blogged about this before, so rather than reiterate, here's the link: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/prop-8-catholics-mormons-and-why-they.html -- Prop 8: Catholics and Mormons, and why they lied.

Then, having lied through their teeth, on Day Two they pray away the sin (!), and now their souls are squeaky clean, they're free to do it again: "What, me? Hurt the GLBTI community? I wouldn't do that. Jesus loves you, and we're committed to safeguarding your dignity." Which is another big, fat lie. So -- Day Three, it's back to church to pray away this round of sin, in order to get their souls squeaky clean again. Ready to be Raptured at a moment's notice. God might hate a sinner (and there's some solid, reasonable doubt about that -- read the post I linked to, right above! You might be shocked), but prayer is the answer to everything, and if you told big fat lies in a good cause, well, apparently God will love thee all the more.

Barf.

This morning's post finds me trying to get over the perfidiousness of it all. The two-facedness. The outrageous manipulation of their own bloody Commandment.

And then, having twisted God, and the supposedly sacred word of same, into a pretzel to get the go-ahead to do what they want, they turn right around and quote scripture at you:

The churchmen noted that the understanding of marriage as a lifelong union of man and woman "is found in at least three major religious traditions which have described the origin, meaning and intent of marriage in their sacred writings."
The Hebrew Scriptures make explicit reference to marriage in 51 verses in 19 books, while the Christian Scriptures and the Muslim Quran each have 14 passages dealing with marriage, they said.
"Our faith communities have never understood this term to be applied to other types of relationships between people," the message added.
Support for Proposition 8 should not be seen as a disregard for civil rights "but as an effort to resist a redefinition of marriage," Cardinal Mahony and the bishops said. "Supporting marriage as it has always been understood diminishes none of us."

All of the above is fine and dandy; live by those rules and be happy ... if you're a Catholic, Mormon or fundamentalist Christian, Jew or Muslim. But if you don't happen to subscribe to the True Faith religions ... if you're an aetheist, pagan, or have your brains connected up right and the power turned on at the moment so that, even though you ARE a Jew or whatever, you can still SEE what's going on --

Beware the Ides of March, or words to that effect. The above piffle comes right from the mouth of the American Catholic Church ... and to absolve themselves of blame they're actually (!) quoting the Quran and the Talmud at you. Say -- what?! There was a time when Upper Management in their own corporation would have burned them at the stake for even reading these books, much less quoting them. In today's world, the same Management are trying to manipulate their audience by quoting from "the other side of the fence" in an attempt to make themselves look more reasonable, less self-centered, less hidebound. Less brainless and wicked?

Fact: There are Reform Jewish sects that have found Scripture in support of gay marriage. Fact: there are Reform Christian movements that approve of gay marriage. Fact: Islam doesn't want to come into the twentieth century, much less the twenty-first, and Sharia law is terrifying. If you once start quoting the Quran in order to buttress your moral position ... where do you stop?! Thas one is a dangerous door to open ... and the buggers have opened it, in the attempt to make themselves appear to be (!) part of the global community, and not separate from it, in a little cordoned-off area marked with a sign saying, "True Faithful and Rapure-Ready Only, Parking At Rear, $2/hour."

Beware. Seriously.



One of the comments left on the above piece of BS from the National Catholic Enquirer said it all, and I'm going to end on a quotation: "If the Catholic Church really wants to "espouse equal rights for all citizens," it's easy. Just speak up in favor of same-sex marriage."

Here, here.

PS: please remember to email URLs of posts you find interesting or useful -- the Google situation remains unresolved, and like that island in Pirates of the Caribbean, this blog can still only be found by people who already know where it is! Help us get around Google, which is 150% in error in this instance! Thank you kindly, guys.

Ciao for now,
MK

World AIDS Day: where lies the future?

December 1st is World AIDS Day -- and I know it's the 2nd of the month on this side of the dateline, but I delayed posting about it until today, because about 95% of readers are on t'other side of that dateline!

There's a slogan: "Fight AIDS, not people with AIDS." This is particularly poignant when one remembers that AIDS is not merely an African problem (though it's anguishingly true that most cases of the disease are found there). AIDS is a problem in every part of the world; and in some countries it's lately been swept under the rug. One need hardly point out the tremendous AIDS problem in the United States --

In the US, little or nothing was done to help infected people, much less the spread of the disease. Why? It's the question which haunts anyone with the brains to think about it, and after the first glance or two into a little research you run headlong into a brick wall:

"In America today, AIDS is virtually a black disease, by any measure," says Phill Wilson, executive director of The Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. Wilson also points out that while many black American leaders and celebrities have embraced the cause of the epidemic's toll in Africa, few have devoted similar energy to the crisis here at home.
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2346857&page=1

And here's the irony: in the public mentality, AIDS remains closely associated with the gay community. Even now, in the minds of many people -- particularly older citizens, and those of ethnic background -- the mention of AIDS pops up images of promiscuous young men; or at least young men who indulged in at least one unwise, probably anonymous sexual act.

This is the burden of stigma that AIDS is still carrying -- at one point, about 20 years ago, I recall it being called the Christians' "dream disease," since it came down on the gay community in particular and sexually active, not to say promiscuous, youth in general.

The irony is that the last US presidential election clearly showed that Afro-American community has a strong bias against the gay community. I have a hunch that the "stigma" of AIDS will be biting hard in the Afro-America because of its gay connotations (be they accurate or not; and they're not), and the punch line to this bad joke is this: AIDS has become a "black disease" in a culture which is fundamentally homophobic.

Homosexuality remains a taboo punishable by gruesome executions in much of Africa, and yet AIDS is a runaway train there. In other words, the connection between the gay community and the spread of AIDS is nebulous these days ...

Yet in the public consciousness the connection lives on; and in hidebound countries where fundamental Christianity is running out of control -- countries such as Nigeria and the United States -- the stigma of AIDS is killing people. A lot of people. Too many people.

Get your head around these statistics:
Black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for over 50 percent of all new cases of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. That infection rate is eight times the rate of whites. Among women, the numbers are even more shocking--- almost 70 percent of all newly diagnosed HIV-positive women in the United States are black women. Black women are 23 times more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS than white women, with heterosexual contact being the overwhelming method of infection in black America.
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2346857&page=1

...now, try to figure out why George W. would cut AIDS research and support funding both at home and abroad. It could be argued that America is a rich nation that should be able to look after its sick without needing vast amounts of government funding -- and this is perfectly true. If commerce and industry were to make small donations, the whole financial aspect of the situation would be covered --

Well and good. But the next bombshell knocks you senseless:
Since bird flu starting grabbing international headlines in 2003, fear of a pandemic has swept across the globe and refocused health policies in some countries, including the United States.

In all, 91 people died of avian flu between 2003 and Feb. 13, 2006, according to the World Health Organization. There are no known cases of bird flu being transmitted from human to human, and no known cases of humans becoming infected from eating chicken or other poultry; only those in direct contact with the infected birds appear so far at risk.

During the same period, 9.1 million people were infected with HIV and AIDS, according to UN AIDS and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Now, President Bush has proposed cutting $15 million in AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health, while increasing funds for studying avian flu and bio-terrorism.
http://www.aegis.com/news/wb/2006/WB060209.html

And what about poor countries which rely on the trickle-down of charitable handouts from countries whose cups runneth over? Consider this:
Mr. Bush's 2004 budget for the Global Fund, $200 million, actually cuts in half what Congress is likely to do in 2003. Mr. Bush has also found part of the money for his AIDS programs by cutting nearly $500 million from child health, including vaccine programs. Child survival is the biggest loser in the foreign aid budget — a scandalous way to finance AIDS initiatives. With the budget dominated by defense spending and huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the White House should not be forcing the babies of Africa to pay for their parents' AIDS drugs." 2.17.03
http://www.bushwatch.com/condoms.htm

The world itself has become sick during the last decade, and its symptoms are greed, stupidity, prejudice, ignorance, and hate. These are the qualities which are holding this world back; we can't step into any kind of a positive future until we let them go.

We must find a way to embrace all people, all cultures, all faiths, all strains of romantic affiliation, as being not merely tolerable and acceptable, but natural. We are as nature designed us: many colors, rich and poor, gay and straight, fat and thin, genius and dim, talented and not. Mother Nature doesn't play favorites -- we're all born, and we take our chances! It's what people do that segregates us. It's the class systems, the fundamental "true faith" religions, the politics of greed, and the ignorance, stupidity and prejudice of senior politicians, which keeps alive the old inequities, injustices, and fuels the hate which jeopardizes the future for us all.

Cheers,

MK

Prop 8: Catholics, Mormons, and why they lied

Every few days I receive newsletters from the Human Rights Campaign (http://www.hrc.org/), who gave excellent coverage of the Prop 8 fiasco as well as coverage of many other issues. In a recent newsletter, editor and president Joe Solmonese, discussing the passage of Prop 8, makes this interesting observation:

It is chilling to realize that the Catholic and Mormon Churches knew they were telling lies -- that marriage equality would require children to learn about homosexuality in school, that priests would be required to solemnize marriages of same-sex couples -- and they lied anyway.

And a lot of atheists, agnostics, pagans and Others (being Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Shinto, Sikh, and scores of regional, parochial, traditional, aboriginal faiths, all of which have an equal claim to existence and respect) would be asking, "Why would a Catholic lie, when s/he knows it's a sin, sins get right up God's nose?"

Good question. And if you will accompany me into the murky, paranoid, somewhat fetid basement of the Church, I shall endeavor to explain.

Disclaimer and Full Disclosure: I am not a Catholic. I was nurtured in an Irish Catholic community where the religion was a foil-thin veneer over the Old Religion of Ireland, and by the time I was about 10, my only interests in the Church were 1) the architecture, which I still like a lot, and 2) a morbid curiosity for what seems (when you examine it deeply) like some kind of mental aberration sorely in need of diagnosis and treatment. Meanwhile, I know nothing about Mormons except that they hang out in Utah, Zane Grey hated them, they used to steal women from other communities (I've read Riders of the Purple Sage ... and a more soporific book I have never discovered), guys can marry multiple women, but women can't marry multiple guys, which is the worst inequity of polygamy (!), and they're even more bonkers than Catholics on the subject of (wait for it) sin.

Yet in the run-up to November 4, both Mormons and Catholics pasted on friendly smiles and lied fluently, with ease, without reservation, without hesitation. And they did this knowing that lying is a sin that gets in God's ear. Why in the world would they do it? Doesn't make sense. Does it?

Well, yes it does. As I said, accompany me to the basement of the Church ... the deep, dark place underneath it, where the worms wriggle. The place few folks who're not obsessed by religion even know exists. Put on your hard hat, rigger's gloves and rubber boots, and let's go down there ... see what fascinating worms we can find.

Lying is a sin, right? Well ... maybe. First off, how's about the Ninth Commandment? You probably know it as, 'Thou shalt not lie.' Right? Wrong. The actual wording is this: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Like ... dob him in to the law for something he didn't do, because you hate his guts? Like, spread rumors about him, to cost him is job and ruin his family? Like ... malign him to his kids so they hate his guts too? Uh huh. Other kinds of lying -- no problemo. The whole lying thing turns out to be so specific, you can warp the Ninth to make it mean anything ... or nothing.

Then there's a little verse (not even rhyming), known as "Rev 21:8," and this one is brilliant. It's specific about lying: liars are all going to be burned alive. Or are they? Here's the problem with this old chestnut: it's quoted out of context. It says this: "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” But in fact, if you read the whole thing, you'll discover that the worms wriggled in a different direction.

(Go on, I dare you to actually read it! Revelation reads like the ravings of a deranged mind ... you ask yourself if whoever wrote it -- and they're not even sure! -- hadn't accidentally set fire to the carpet by knocking over the candle when he wrote this last night. In those days, carpets were made of (!) hemp. Breathe enough of that stuff while you're in a mood for Armageddon, and you'll be invaded by Orks and Urukhai, under the gaze of the Great Eye, before you can say "Frodo Baggins.")

In fact, the Revelation worms wriggled their way over here (and don't take my word for it, here it is from a Bible scholar, which is more than I profess to be):
All of those sins mentioned in that verse refer to some specific set of events taking place during the tribulation, after all the context is set at the end of the tribulation period. The lying in this context refers to preaching and teaching a lie (cf. 1 Tim. 4:1, 2). It refers to propagating false doctrine. There would be a lot of false doctrine during the tribulation period (many false prophets and false teachers) even more so than today.
http://www.geocities.com/dcheddie/lying1.html

So, in the first place, lying probably isn't a sin anyway. Go ahead, fib: God ain't even listening.

But supposing lying was a sin ... what then? Bear with me: this gets even better.

If you're not a Catholic (or from the fringe of an Irish -- possibly Italian -- community), you probably aren't even aware that they divide sin into two convenient forms, which essentially lets 90% of people get away with bloody murder and at the same time let these same miserable sinners come down like a load of bricks on folks they don't like.

This is where it gets really good: Type A Sin is venial sin. Wrap your head around this:
Venial sins are slight sins. They do not break our friendship with God, although they injure it. They involve disobedience of the law of God in slight (venial) matters. If we gossip and destroy a person's reputation it would be a mortal sin. However, normally gossip is about trivial matters and only venially sinful.
http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/mortal_versus_venial.htm

Woah. Let me get this straight: what constitutes a venial sin (which is an oopsie so fiddling, it's going to be forgiven in exchange for a prayer, or a round of the rosary, or even a novena ... who was it who said, "talk is cheap"...?) resides in a gray area, a foggy limbo, where everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is open to any individual's interpretation...? Yup. Follow that link to Global Catholic Network, and read the whole page -- it's not long. It's just shocking, if you rather hoped God's law would be specific enough to get a net over the world's villains and keep 'em in check for ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Never going to happen, not on the terms set out in the Book.

So hee we have another so-called Biblical Law that can be (and is being) twisted to say anything anyone needs it to say today. Venial sins are white lies, lies in a good cause ... snapping and snarling, dropping a blasphemy or two, goofing off work or school, eating meat on Friday (!), staying out late, having one too many to drink...

Meanwhile, Type B Sin is known as mortal sin. This is the sin for which the aforementioned lake of fire is waiting for you. So, what's mortal sin? What's Our Father going to barbecue us alive for? Let's take a peek:
A serious, grave or mortal sin is the knowing and willful violation of God's law in a serious matter, for example, idolatry, adultery, murder, slander. These are all things gravely contrary to the love we owe God and, because of Him, our neighbor. As Jesus taught, when condemning even looking at a woman lustfully, sin can be both interior (choices of the will alone) or exterior (choices of the will carried into action). A man who willfully desires to fornicate, steal, murder or some other grave sin, has already seriously offended God by choosing interiorly what God has prohibited.
http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/mortal_versus_venial.htm

Oh ... boy. Idolaters? That can be twisted to mean anyone other than a Catholic. Adultery is a global passtime. Slander is the meat and potatoes of American politics -- they do it proudly, in public, and audiences applaud. Looking lustfully at women?! Then everybody who's drooling over Angelina and Kate, and Kate, and Cate, and Catherine, are in deep doo-doo ... only somebody poured gasoline on the doo-doo and set it on fire. And as for homosexuality -- the doo-doo's so deep, it's way over your head even before they set it, and you, on fire. And what about having daydreams about making off with the boss's sports car?! You'll burn. And having lustful daydreams about any other human being of whatever gender? It's gasoline time. And that one-night stand when you were 19? They're striking the matches already.

Of all the sins for which God will roast his own children alive, only murder is the one where intelligent people draw the line. For the rest? We're all going to burn. All of us. There isn't one single human being who hasn't done something on the Burning List, and God's up there, making sure the gasoline tanks are full and there's a good supply of matches ...

[Have a look at this -- "The List of Mortal Sins Gets Longer Under Vatical Overhaul":
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/list-of-mortal-sins-gets-longer/2008/03/10/1205125804885.html]

Or at least, this is what goes on in the heads of devout Catholics.

And this is why the majority of them would have considered it a small price to pay for the venial sin of lying through their smiling teeth, when they spread such deceit about California's gay community. The know they can pay off the venial sin of lying with a few prayers -- talk is cheap -- while the garbage they dished up to the community at large, and especially to the African American community, might just (you got it) save a few souls from the mortal sin of committing homosexual acts.

Bottom line: they were out there saving souls by lying, and now they're all in church saying their rosaries to pay off the fiddling little sin of what they said and did.

I've been extremely flip and glib in this article -- and intentionally so. If I've offended anyone ... I don't actually apologise, because I often find myself offended and insulted by religious tracts and folks, and since I respect their freedom of speech to call me a moron and a sinner, I expect my freedom of speech to be reciprocally respected.

For the record: my own belief is that the level of religious obsession that believes in lakes of fire as the punishment for the imagined sin of falling in love (or even in lust, for that matter) is a mental illness. Before anyone suggests I "Study the Bible, turn to Jesus" for my wicked ways ... I already read that particular book, and I know how it ends: almost everyone in the world gets burned alive -- if you believe this stuff.

Sorry, guys, I don't. And I've read it. But don't take my word for it -- find out for yourself!

Other sources you might find useful:
http://www.newadvent.org/index.html (The Catholic Encyclopedia)
http://www.ewtn.com/index.asp (Global Catholic Network)
http://www.saintaquinas.com/theology.html (Saint Aquinas-dot-com)
...I'd say "enjoy," but I sincerely doubt you will.

Ciao for now,
MK

Remembrance of Human Rights ... Prop 8 is the tip of the icebeg

Humans are a curious species. As a whole, we seem to have a knack for self-destruction ... not that any specific individual actually wants to to self-destruct, but so many people around this world would like to see their neighbors vanish into the ether, never to return, if the whole world got its one true wish on Tuesday morning ... no one would be left.

We're one species, pulling in about a thousand different directions.

Right now, the biggest issue in many people's lives in the US is certainly Prop 8 -- and its racial backlash, which in retrospect was unavoidable ... though one might wish otherwise.

For the absolutely definitive perspective on Prop 8, I'm going to pass you right into the capable hands of Harvey Fierstein, who said it all, said it right, and said it like a gentleman:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-fierstein/historic-for-some-same-ol_b_142170.html

The fight for human rights ... civil, gay, religious, racial ... is particularly poignant today: November 11. I was in the grocery store at 11:11am, and it hit me like a load of bricks --

I realize this isn't a tradition in the United States, but in the Commonwealth countries, Remembrance Day is 11/11 ... and it's observed at 11 minutes after the 11th hour, people stop for one whole minute and -- well, you're supposed to "remember," but for most younger people it's actually more about "stop and think about it for godsakes," while a bugle plays the Last Post over TV or radio. Sporting events will stop in their tracks; cashiers and tellers will stop in their work. Classrooms and clinics go silent for sixty seconds.

Now, the traditional take on Remembrance Day is summed up by various verses which are customarily read:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
(from the "Ode of Remembrance", excerpted from "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon)

and

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
("Here Dead Lie We" by A. E. Housman)

In both verses, we're exhorted to stop and think for a little while, about the lives that were given by millions of young men who were fighting for the very liberty we're blithely abusing right now.

And in first world countries, many people -- particularly those who are complacent and even smug in their cozy, convenient religious niche; which in our world sadly means Christian -- act as if the battle has been won. From their comfy, sitt'n-pretty perspective, it was won a long time ago, and folks like gays are just being damned pesky, trying to rock the boat for everyone.

Stop for one minute ... give the sixty seconds which are asked of you on 11.11, and read this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/nigeria/3407882/Child-witches-of-Nigeria-seek-refuge.html

Read it and pick your chin up off the floor. And when you're capable of thinking clearly again, read this:

Fate of Karimojong women [and gays] lies in the hands of tradition

In neither instance am I going to give an outtake from the articles, because their pivot points are so way out there, some readers will certainly be disturbed.

At least, being gay or pagan or female in the US, you don't have to lie awake nights worrying about the legal system killing you in the most barbaric ways. A couple of weeks ago, it was a 23 year old woman in Somalia, being stoned to death for adultery ... these executions, and the abuse and murder of children on the most devout Biblical grounds are happening right now.

Human rights are fragile, and once their integrity is compromised, they can fly away like smoke. In the US even as you read this, the Prop 8 backlash is ugly ... and it was always going to be ugly:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pam-spaulding/the-n-bomb-is-dropped-on_b_142363.html

Racism has reared its nasty head again -- and anyone with half a functional brain would have predicted it. So, in the name of anyone's god, or God, or any plurality of same, why would the Catholics and the Mormons pump untold millions of dollars into California, to persecute peaceful people who are not even in their own jurisdiction -- knowing (as they must have! Or are they completely insane?) that the result could only be an upsurgence of racism that must wound America as a nation?

Answer me that, someone. And while you're trying to work it out, imagine how far that money would have gone to rescue innocent people -- including young children, whom first world governments will go to almost idiotic lengths to protect against against something so easily Net-Nannyable as sex on the Internet. Internet porn is an insignificant moral blip when measured against the unbelievable, government- and church-sanctioned crimes that are actually happening elsewhere on this poor planet.

The Australian government is planning to spend over $125 million to filter the Internet against porn (using methods which will cripple the Internet in Australia). Meanwhile, legions of innocent children -- who're no less worthy just because they're a different shade of brown from the Canberra politicians (!) -- are being tortured, maimed and killed, in the name of Christianity.

(For more on Australian Internet censorship:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/internet-content-filtering-impossible.html)

Something, somewhere is disastrously wrong. The Mormon church pumped US$22m into a campaign in someone else's state, to wipe out civil liberties, while little kids, illiterate and helpless women, and gays, are being treated with a contempt which makes a mockery out of church, faith ... even the very name of Jesus. Sorry guys, but there it is, out in the open. Someone has had the courage to say what you've been thinking.

A very few decades ago, legions of young men gave their lives willingly, believing they were fighting for liberty. For the rights of citizens like you and me to live in peace and freedom. Civil liberties are bought with blood ... and apparently, they can be expunged on a religious whim.

There's a statistic which has come out in the post-Prop 8 analysis ... and get hold of this bit of info before you blow your stack and get rowdy and rude toward the Black American community. (Here, I'm not going to say "African American," because in this column I've already talked about Africa itself, and I want to differentiate the two communities ... Black Americans are not Africans, no matter how European Americans phrase it).

Here's the cold, hard statistic: exit polls show 65+% of aged Americans voting with their Bibles.

And with the rapidly aging population of the first world, the demograph is already skewed ... there are many more elderly in current communities, especially in warm, climatically gentle states (such as California and Florida) than there have ever been before.

As I've remarked elsewhere (http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/looking-for-up-side-to-prop-8-fiasco.html), the aged are extremely vulnerable, since the Pearly Gates are looming large at that time of life. They are therefore easy prey for churches with more money than decency, more funding than compassion, more wealth than brains.

The popular vote in California would appear to have been swung toward hate not by the black population, but by the aged ... who were mercilessly targeted by an advertising campaign orchestrated and conducted by the church. Religious leaders preyed on the vulnerabilities of the old and the very old, whose immortal souls have begun to weigh more heavily than liberty, freedom, justice, peace, compassion, fairness -- even democracy itself.

Someone somewhere coined this phrase, and I wish I knew who said it: "Democracy means not always getting what you want."

I actually do believe that it'll turn out to be utterly unlawful for any constitution, state or federal to be rewritten to uphold a bias for a religious group. I believe that evangelism should be examined ... people have the right to proselytize up to a point, and no further. And constitutional law would draw the line -- where? Right at the point where religion starts to stick its unwelcome nose into law, government, and the constitution itself.

It hit me like a load of bricks, in the supermarket ... the Last Post was played on the radio and the whole store stopped. 11/11 -- 11:11am. Everyone stopped and remembered the legions of young men who died, willingly, in the cause of freedom and justice.

And I thought, "The sound you can hear is those young people spinning in their graves as they see what's happening right now, and wonder why the hell they really gave their lives for." Because it's over 90 years since the First World War concluded, and liberty, justice, remain frighteningly elusive, fragile as snowflakes, even in the United States of America, which has for many, many years been held up as the home, the very bastion, of the free.

I'll be back tomorrow with happier subjects, but today is Remembrance Day, and if there was ever a time to say these things, this is it.

Best wishes,
Mel Keegan