Anti-Gay Gay Politicians Make Me Sick

We are in the midst of the political season so of course the issue of gay marriage is brought up as a wedge issue, mostly by Republicans against more open minded Democrats. What is interesting is how often the anti-gay politician turns out to be gay himself.

I’ve been out of the closet now for 25 years so I’ve seen quite a few of these guys fall from grace. In the last few years it seems to have accelerated.

Prominent on the list is Senator Larry Craig, who has said he is not gay but was arrested in an airport bathroom for allegedly tapping his foot for something. Of course we have US Rep. Mark Foley sending emails & IM’s to underage male pages. Being gay is fine but targeting minor kids is not. Doing such while speaking out against child predators is the ultimate in hypocrisy. Of course it is not just elected officials caught in a conflict between their words and their actions. Ted Haggard, an evangelical leader that gave spiritual advice to President Bush & top advisors. There are many more and each week the list seems to add new names.

These men have a strong level of self hatred that drives them to speak out against gay rights so strongly in public yet in private live a very different life. Many people are opposed to the concept of gay marriage so while I disagree I must respect their viewpoint. But when that person has built a career opposing gay rights only to turn out to be gay themselves then they’ll get no respect from me. Be in the closet and keep your trap shut.

Personally I think the government needs to be out of the marriage business altogether. If it is this sacred religious institution then let the various religions manage how that is administered. For those that want to simplify issues of property rights, next of kin status and so on they can all have civil unions. Leave “marriage” for church.

Just do me a favor and get the self loathing right-wing windbags to a therapist to deal with their internal issues so they stop spreading their hate to folks that otherswise might be more open minded.

As you might expect this has also impacted more liberal Democrats as well. A few years ago the then New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy disclosed that he was gay. In his own words:

I’ve never been much for self-revelation. In two decades of public life, I always approached the limelight with extreme caution. Not that I kept my personal life off-limits; rather, the personal life I put on display was a blend of fact and fiction. I invented overlapping narratives about who I was, and contrived backstories that played better not just in the ballot box but in my own mind. And then, to the best of my ability, I tried to be the man in those stories.

In this way I’m not at all unique. Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many. (source)

At least he wasn’t out there saying one thing and doing another.

For a good take on this topic I turn to openly gay US Rep Barney Frank in an appearance on Bill Maher’s program:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlyJmhwa1c0[/youtube]

My Beloved Honda Metropolitan Scooter Has Been Sold

It was September 5th 2005 and I was so excited — I had just purchased a 2004 Honda Metropolitan that was only slightly used with 235.5 miles on the odometer (see, My Way of Dealing with Rising Gas Prices). Today I sold the scooter with just over 9,000 miles on it. Even in the cold & rain those were some very fun miles. I didn’t want to sell the scooter, it’s just that since my stroke I could not safely ride it with only one hand on the handlebar. As more time passes and I can once again ride a scooter I will certainly buy another.
With our gas prices now at $4/gallon more people should consider a scooter. On my first scooter post (link above) I was thinking about saving on gas. The timing was just after Katrina hit New Orleans but before Rita hit Texas. Gas prices spiked to over $3/gallon for this week but they quickly fell below $3/gallon but not below $2/gallon. At the time I wrote:

I estimate that given current fuel prices every 5,000 miles I can put on the scooter rather than my car I’ll save at least $600. As fuel prices rise the savings will be even greater. In less than 3 years the scooter will pay for itself in fuel savings.

Keep in mind that at the time I had a thirsty AWD Audi. So it turns out I didn’t do 5K per year on the scooter. I do think that by thinking more locally and combining trips I did manage to save nearly that many miles each year.

A year ago I sold my car (by that point I had a more efficient Scion xA). I made it through the hot summer and most of the cold winter on the scooter (I was in the hospital during some of the worst winter weather). There were a few days in December where the snow and ice forced me to stay in, but only a few days. There was this great high from getting around town on single gallon of gas (the scooter managed 85-90mpg but only held 1.1 gallons). Each passing month without a car payment or insurance bill I knew I had made the right decision.

My current set of wheels is the ultimate in green transportation — a plug-in electric, um, wheelchair. It gets me most places I need to go — I took it on MetroLink today (it was “Dump the Pump” day so I had a free day pass). My morning started with an 8:30am meeting on Delmar in the Loop and before the trip was done I was leaving Trader Joe’s and heading back to the Eager Rd. station. Again the chair, combined with mass transit, does a great job of getting me around.

Former St. Louisan, Chris Balish, author of “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: Save Money, Breath Easier and Get More Mileage out of Life”, was right — you can live well without owning a car! Having said that, I’m reluctantly buying a used car.

I can do my job as a REALTOR® from a scooter but not from the #70 Grand bus and a wheelchair, so a car I must purchase. And yes I’ll be able to drive. I have to get a car with an automatic transmission as I can’t rely on my left leg being able to operate a clutch. The only two modifications will be a knob on the steering wheel (so I can turn the wheel with a single hand) and a device that connects to the turn signal stalk so that I can activate the turn signals with my right hand.

Going from not owning a car to buying one when gas is $4/gal. is not good timing on my part but it was not like I planned the stroke. So I’m focusing on two of the most fuel efficient & reliable non-hybrid used cars: Honda Civic & Toyota Corolla. Buying an efficient sedan is the best I can do to hedge my bets against rising gasoline prices. That and continuing to use the wheelchair and mass transit for as many trips as possible. Plus working on my walking too. Tonight I just walked around the block (for the third night in a row).

Except for those of you that regularly ride a bike for transportation, each of you could benefit from riding a scooter. Those little trips to the grocery store are just so much more fun on a scooter. Using a scooter for shopping is great too — you tend to not buy things you don’t need because you don’t have the space to lug a bunch of crap home.

So hopefully in another year I’ll be writing about the new scooter I bought and in a couple of years I’ll be back to not owning a car. At that point hopefully the WeCar car sharing plan will have a vehicle within a few blocks of my place (all are east of Tucker at this time). In the meantime I’ll still get to see my old scooter as I sold it to a neighbor in my building.

Urban Renewal; The Neighborhoods Were Labeled ‘Slums’ for a Reason

Even in the ‘look to the future’ 1950s it would have been hard to garner taxpayer support for a government program to raze vibrant & cohesive neighborhoods. So the neighborhoods that were a target of Urban Renewal had to be rebranded as slums.

By the time Federal urban renewal funds made it to St Louis many of the oldest areas were likely showing their age. Many of these areas were now 75+ years old and had been through the great depression when there was no money for maintenance. Federal lending policies also meant people couldn’t get loans to buy and update a house in the old neighborhood even if they wanted to.

To many these old brick structures, often lacking indoor bathrooms, looked very dated relative to the new cul-de-sac streets of suburbia. Of course anything 75+ years old (with technology of that era), and with deferred maintenance, is going to be easy to pass off as a slum to those with newer places.

Many Planners & Architects wanted a chance to play a real live version of SimCity. They weren’t satisfied with just erasing old structures but they also wanted to rid cities of the old connected street pattern. Out with the old, on with the new.  To them the buildings and streets had to go
This was the era when density got a bad rap and got confused with overcrowding. Density in terms of the number of housing units in a given acre is quite different than the number of people in a single housing unit. In the 1950s St Louis enjoyed a wonderful urban density that helped support the corner market and mass transit — both outcasts in the new sprawling suburbia. St Louis was also overcrowded which was made only worse as urban renewal & highway projects began to remove large sections of the city, displacing those residents. The market solution would have been to build new buildings with more units per acre — where a four family stood build an 8-12 unit building. That did happen in small doses but urban renewal took the concept too far — taking entire blocks at a time.

“But they were slums,” people exclaim today. Yeah, they had been assigned the label of slum. Functionally these “slums” worked far better for the residents than anything new in suburbia and certainly better than that which replaced their former homes and businesses. Within walking distance of their homes was all the services they needed — several markets, cleaners, streetcars, etc. While their home may have lacked a toilet and could have used some paint these areas were anything but slums.  Slums, the government could blight and take but functioning neighborhoods no.  The neighborhoods, home to so many across this city and country, were poor yes but they were home to families, established businesses and so on.  Besides buildings and streets, Urban Renewal destroyed social networks in every city it touched.  People lived their entire lives in areas now being labeled a slum so it could be taken and cleared.

Ironically the projects that replaced these neighborhoods almost universally became genuine slums, completely dysfunctional collections of people that were placed in a location only because their prior homes were leveled.  City after city the pattern was repeated — poor but functioning neighborhoods were razed and replaced with either a highway or monolithic housing projects.  In St Louis one such neighborhood labeled as a slum and slated for demolition was Soulard. In Boston they have the North End.  Each was once given the title of slum and each today is considered a desirable place to live, if you can afford it.

Urban Renewal policies screwed up St Louis and every major city in the US.  We are still dealing with the aftermath more than a half century later.
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Floodwaters Draws Spectators, Park Service Vehicle Blocks Accessible Route

The Mississippi River is rising but so are the number of riverfront spectators. Saturday night I was among hundreds that found a spot along the Arch steps to take in the vastness of the river.

Some folks were playing in the water which doesn’t seem wise given what is likely in the water.

When I left I headed toward the makeshift ADA route over I-70 at Chestnut.

There in my path is a National Park Service truck. We saw no workers near the truck, just a truck parked between my wheelchair and the pathetic excuse for an accessible way over the highway. My friend pushed her grandson’s stroller through the grass and over a rut. I tested the off road ability of the wheelchair and went a bit wider to avoid the rut in the dirt.

You know the place might be a bit more inviting if they didn’t park three ton vehicles in the direct path of visitors! I can just see us spending hundreds of millions on a “lid” over the highway only to have the NPS screw it all up by parking vehicles as they did the other night. Brilliant!

So How You Doin’? Watch the Video & Tune Into KDHX!

It has now been nearly seven weeks since I’ve been home from the hospital following my stroke on Feb 1st. I’ve been busy complaining about the absence of, the condition of or cars blocking ADA curb ramps. I’ve also resumed working, with a new listing of a two-family at 3880 Juniata. That, doing laundry and cooking my own meals is a lot. In the meantime friends & family are asking how I’m progressing. So, I made a video to show you:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmrTOGsmjyI[/youtube]

Twice during my three month hospitalization I was a phone-in guest on KDHX’s Collateral Damage program.  Tonight, Monday June 16th at 7pm, I will return to the studio — no more phoning it in.    I’ll give host DJ Wilson an update on my recovery and we’ll talk about local development issues, including next week’s Preservation Board meeting.