More Reviews and a Slew of Bad News

The Chicagoist reviewed Slide this week. Very positive review. Here it is.

You don't have to convert, but you can't stay gay...

Bonnie blogged about this NY Times article (for those of you without a password, bugmenot). To summarize it for my non-article-reading slacker friends, after a teenager came out as gay to his parents, they ordered him into Refuge, a Christian program designed to cure kids of gayness. The program is sponsored by Love in Action, "a group in Memphis that runs a religion-based program intended to change the sexual orientation of gay men and women."

I can't even begin to comment on how wrong this whole program is without preaching to the choir, so instead I'll quote the article. Hopefully that will, you know, get the point across:

The goal of the program, said Mr. Smid (the executive director of the program), who said he was once gay but now renounces homosexual behavior, is not necessarily to turn gays into practicing heterosexuals, but to "put guardrails" on their sexual impulses.
"In my life I've been out of homosexuality for over 20 years, and for me it's really a nonissue," Mr. Smid said.
"I may see a man and say, he's handsome, he's attractive, and it might touch a part of me that is different from someone else," he said. "But it's really not an issue. Gosh, I've been married for 16 years and faithful in my marriage in every respect. I mean I don't think I could white-knuckle this ride for that long."

So the point of the program, if I read Rev. Smid's words right, isn't to give people a health sexuality, at all. It doesn't argue that homosexuals deserve a healthy sex life and that this can only be acquired if they go straight. No no. If I read Mr. Smid's quote correctly, the whole point of this program is just that they shouldn't be gay. If they can't be straight, by God and His Son Jesus Christ, they can't have any sexuality.

Also interesting is that he says he isn't a homosexual anymore. And then goes on to say that he's attracted to men in a way that touches him differenly than other people. Well...I mean, surely there are other success stories. Let's see:

"It's like checking into prison," said Brandon Tidwell, 29, who completed the adult program in 2002 but eventually rejected its teachings, reconciling his Christian beliefs with being gay.

Oh wait...no, not him. Let's try:

Occasionally, recalled Jeff Harwood, 41, a Love in Action graduate who still considers himself gay...

Uh...nope...not him, neither. Oh, okay. Here's one:

"In my experience people who struggle with their sexuality are more mature in general," Ben Marshall, 18, said. He recounted being in turmoil, growing up gay in a conservative Christian household in Mobile, Ala.
In 2004 his parents sent him to Refuge. "I went to Memphis kicking and screaming," he said. "I had grown to hate the church for the militant message it gave off toward homosexuality...But even success comes only through continuing struggle. Although he plans to date women in the future, Mr. Marshall said, he is avoiding any romantic relationships for the time being. "In all honesty, I'm just trying to figure out how to deal normally with men before I start to deal with women," he said.

So after all that, you still don't know how to relate "normally" to men and women? Here's a suggestion: You already knew how you relate normally to men...you were normal. Imagine being normal and different. Baffling to the folks in Alabama, I know.

Dangerous biker gangs...

But enough about the horrible things that people do to their children in Red States (why didn't we just let them secede when they wanted to? Why???), in this lovely city I call home there's a doings a happenin'. Also sent to me by Bonnie (or my own private Harvard research assistant, as I like to call her). Read this article (or wait for the bullet points to follow):

Police spent six hours Tuesday on bike patrol in Lakeview, giving out 37 warnings to bicyclists for running red lights, riding on sidewalks and, indeed, going the wrong direction on a one-way street. Next month, police will start handing out tickets, with fines that range from $25 to $250.

The article goes on to say that it's for reasons of safety and because bicycles need to obey the rules of the road like every other vehicle. Which is great, if we're given the same rights as every other vehicle. Which we aren't. Police aren't, for example, upping the number of fines they give out to cars who pull into the bike lane in order to get ahead of the rest of traffic. Or the folks who cut me off and run me off the road. Which is ultimately why cyclists break traffic laws in the first place: because it's the only advantage we have to keep ahead of the rest of traffic. By and large, motorists don't treat cyclists like they are legitimate vehicles. They cut us off, pull into our lanes, don't pay attention to us when pulling into traffic, etc. This makes biking according to the rules inviable and even dangerous. If one car cuts another off and they collide, there's likely to be a minor fender bender. If a car cuts me off and we collide, I'll probably be injured--maybe seriously so--and my bike is going to end up in shit condition.

The things cyclists do that are being complained about in the article--riding on the sidewalk, running stoplights when traffic isn't coming, etc.--we do because it makes the ride safer for us. I don't pull up on the sidewalk unless some fucker has run me off the road and my choice is sidewalk or crash. I run reds because it gives me the chance to get ahead of traffic. And obviously I don't do it if there's cars coming. The few times I have almost been hit on my bike, incidentally, happened when I was obeying traffic laws--once notably when a truck driver came barreling through an intersection after my light had turned green.

I don't know how serious all this is. It could be just another story in a newspaper. And I certainly haven't had any problems with cops. But if I were just starting out as a cyclist, I sure would be thinking again about it. It's weird in a city as bike-friendly as Chicago (which this city really is) to have cops effectively deterring people from taking up biking.