Posts on the Critical Geography Listserv. Feb. 1 to 13, 2025.
Reaching the global community of scholars with an alternative to the LGBTQXYZ+ and an alternative to queer studies.
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February 1st to 13th, 2025
Human Gay Male Jan. 25, 2025 conference report
Subject: Human Gay Male Jan. 25, 2025 conference report
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2025 21:53:32 +0000
The Human Gay Male conference was held on Jan. 25, 2025 in London in secret with 130 attendees. I sponsored the pizzas for the meeting which I am told prevented people leaving for dinner early and staying for the full conference.
In the past some Gay groups did meet in secret, but that was a long time ago. I became active in the Gay Rights movement in the mid-1970s, but I heard that some groups meet secretely during pre-Stonewall years.
The group meet secretely to avoid harrassment and have a peaceful meeting. I think besides avoiding having bags of crickets released at the meeting, there probably is a fear that their bosses might be deeply troubled and co-workers would say they feel unsafe around attendees.
Being that I am over the age of 70 now, perhaps I don't realize how archaic the concept of freedom of speech is.
Though most of the attendees were from the UK, some were from the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
Organizing in the United States is being started.
This is one report about the meeting.
This is my report on the meeting.
They published a video for the meeting. Start at 2:20 to avoid chit chat.
The UK group tends to focus on refuting gender theory. I tend to focus on how the LGBTQXYZ+ agenda which doesn't have much or no Gay content and doesn't meet the needs of the Gay community.
I quite understand that there are scholars out there who are Gay and privately don't believe in such ideas that Gay is homogender and not homosexual but also have aspirations to have a career and not be contacted by a "deeply troubled" university administration.
However, you can remain in contact on what is happening at https://humangaymale.com/
It is a very grass roots group and they attempt to make sense of what has happened, but mostly regard it as an outbreak of wrongheadedness.
We could use some scholars to help out. I try to do some intellectual work, but I really am capable of doing limited work in that regard.
Homophobia, predatory proselytizing, and obscuring the nature of Pilgrimage Tourism. RE: Grief Pilgrimage - Royal Geographical Society-IBG Conference, University of Birmingham, UK
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?A2=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM;6fedb190.2502
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2025 19:45:34 -0600
Reading Dr. Choe’s post, you might think that this “grief pilgrimage” is about psychological counseling perhaps some new age component added in, with the reference to “religious and spiritual sites” in reference to the “River Ganges in India.”
The reality is that this is religious proselytizing tourism and it is about promoting religions most of which are homophobic.
There is also an erasure. How many of these places were involved in burning people as heretics or witches? How many of these places had sermons ranting against homosexuality? How were they funded? These pilgrimages are time journeys to a fictional pasts ensconced in romantic fantasies.
Christians are very aware that personal crisis is an opportunity for proselytizing. One person at my mother’s funeral thought it was an opportunity to talk about Christ with me. When I was in the hospital in a stressful situation a nurse wanted to share Christ with me.
This bereavement pilgrimages should be seen as predatory proselytizing to go after people in times of stress.
In Texas we have groups advocating school chaplains. Before the public they use the discourses of counseling and psychology and helping young people devoid of sectarian or religious content. However, I am signed up for their newsletter and the same group promotes itself as a religious missionary effort to bring students to Christ. They see opportunity when students are in crisis. I am currently writing up a manual for students as a counter measure.
Marketplace Chaplains, for chaplains in a corporation, stress also the opportunity to proselytize while interacting with people having crises.
Reviewing the British Pilgrimage Trust, you see the pilgrimages are overwhelmingly Christian.
The Gay community does have a small amount of religious tourism. No Gay travel influencer going to Taipei fails to visit the temple of the Gay Taoist God there. I visited also. Though that is the beginning and end of Gay religious tourism except for me.
I have promoted how Gays might participate in religious activities at a couple of temples in Thailand after my visit there and my participations.
At the Ratchaprasong walkway there are eight shrines to Hindu gods and the local businesses have a combined shopping and religious tourism effort, and they are frank about it. One of the shrines is to Trimurti and Gays locally visit it to pray for love. I intensively photo documented them all.
I am starting work on processing my many thousands of pictures of Buddhist and Taoist temples taken in and around Taipei and will discuss traveling through a religious world without hate.
I visited a Cai Dai temple in Dallas also and reported on it and also how the Cai Dai emphasize as a statement of principle that they aren’t homophobic like the Roman Catholics.
So I do religious tourism also, but I don’t obscure what I am doing.
Religious tourism isn’t neutral and pretending it is misleading.
Further I would like to point out that this effort, bereavement pilgrimage is clearly inimical to Gays, wasn’t criticized by the queer studies people because going along to get along seems to be what they do.
Gay studies has always been ready to be critical. The original journal of Gay studies was “Gai Sabre,” a Gay sword.
Ed Sebesta
Gay housing and the loss of the Gayborhood. Book for download.
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?A2=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM;e6a92e42.2502
Subject: Gay housing and the loss of the Gayborhood. Book for download.
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2025 13:30:14 +0000
[1] One of the keenly felt losses among Gays is the loss the Gayborhood. Besides being a place of concentration of goods and services, it was a concentration of Gays.
The single primary concern of Gays, and it appears to be global, is meeting someone and establishing a long term relationship. Being that Gay men are about 3% of men, places of concentration of Gay men, bars, clubs, bath houses, and Gayborhoods are critical to help Gay men meet Gay men.
They were places you could meet Gay people outside the bars in everyday settings. One of the major expressed needs of Gays are places to meet outside the clubs. Also, means of meeting when you get older.
Gayborhoods were also a place where you were the majority for once.
I remember walking on Polk Street back in the early 1980s and this older straight tourists were walking Polk right behind me and noticing all the Gay people in wonder and they commented that, "You see all types here," and I turned around and said, looking at them, "You certainly do." They took it in good spirit, and one said something to the effect that they realized that they were the anomally in the neighorhood.
[2] Most Gays at the present time don't have an opportunity to ever not be renters. In particular what opportunity there is in Dallas has largely vanished. Though the LGBTQXYZ+ media has Gays in restored homes, the great majority of Gays are renters and likely to be so for their entire lives.
Yet there are forms of single sex construction already in existence which could provide means of ownership for Gays who otherwise would never be able to own their place. The fraternity house, the school dorm, are both examples of single sex housing designed to be inexpensive. There are also barracks living arrangements. The detached house has about half of its construction for cycles of reproduction, costs that could be eliminated. The yard can be smaller, and also with fewer rooms the lot size can be smaller.
Or there could be housing designed for multiple couples and throuples co-owning. Opportunities for ownership could be greatly increased.
[3] The built environment is constructed for cycles of heterosexual reproduction. The house has a family room and a living room so the kids don't damage the nice furniture in the living room. There are "master" bedrooms and childrens bedrooms. There is a dining room and the breakfast room, again to have a place to eat for adults and those for children. Hallways exist or are longer to connect to these rooms. Posititoning of rooms to avoid noise is another factor.
Once Gays have restored the neighborhood, it is easy for affluent straight people to displace Gays and move into a neighborhood which originally was built for straights. Gay housing might be built specifically so it isn't desired by straights.
It is assumed that the house will have one reproducing couple, rather than multiple adults in various arrangements. Zoning is heterosexual since it limits the number of unrelated adults living in a house.
The single floor ranch style home is economical when you want a lot of spaces for the cycles of reproduction. Gay housing might be 3 or 4 stories or be very different in other ways since it isn't built around cycles of reproduction.
A bathroom could have a urinal to save on water. The backyard patio could have a pissoir.
Since the existing housing stock is built with straights in mind and it is the only housing we are familiar with is the existing housing, it is initially hard to conceive of housing for Gays, but upon reflection you start gradually seeing one thing or another.
If housing for Gays was built for Gays it would be also housing that Gays wouldn't lose through gentrification, since it would be housing that wouldn't meet straight needs and be undesireable for them or something they would be unable to occupy without difficulty.
[4] Assimilationist Gays hate the Gayborhood since it is where Gays often manifest as different. Much of the opportunity to reduce cost is avoiding the costs of accomodating cycles of reproduction, so the "ideal" couple of the LGBTQXYZ+ media which are monogamous Gay couples who have adoped two children or had surrogate pregnancy to obtain them, are precluded even though they are less than 1% of the Gay community.
Queer stuides scholars have expressed opposition to the concept of Gay housing. In one recent paper I learn that Gayborhoods are the lairs of evil cis white Gays. However, housing is a primary need, and escaping ever escalating rents is a real material issue. I think most Gays will be open to housing they can afford and provides social support, than the ideologies of the Queer studies people.
SUMMARY
The important thing is the idea of having housing built for Gays and to recognize the existing housing as heterosexual. My specific ideas on how that might be done are to initiate discussion.
DOWNLOAD OR FOR PURCHASE
For download.
https://issuu.com/edwardh.sebesta/docs/gay_housing_book_pdf_for_download
Kindle on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQSKJ2YB/
The book was too short for a paperback so I combined it with chapters from "On Being Gay" to have a book with the required length for a paperback with Amazon.
However, you can download it for free.
https://issuu.com/edwardh.sebesta/docs/on_being_gay_and_gay_housing
Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DVLPCHDM
Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Being-Gay-Housing-books-combined/dp/B0DVFVKS28
Christian Vandalism: Contesting space at the Samyan Mitrttown shopping cener in Bangkok, Thailand
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?A2=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM;4c92b503.2502
Subject: Christian Vandalism: Contesting space at the Samyan Mitrttown shopping cener in Bangkok, Thailand
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 02:11:21 +0000
The Pride installation at the Samyan Mitrtown shopping center in Bangkok, Thailand, was phenomenal. I took multiple trips to the center since it was close to my hotel to get supplies for my field trips to Thai temples.
In addition to an already phenomenal installation, a wall about 100 or more feet long and about 6 to 8 feet high was added in June 2024.
I came across it when I went to the center to photo document its rainbow crosswalk.
While photodocumenting the Pride Art Wall, I realized that it had been vandalized by a Christian who disapproved of LGBTQ. So I made sure that the wall and the vandalism was intensively photo documented.
This shopping center is across the street from the Chulalongkorn University, the two top leading universities of Thailand, and it visited by many students. So many students, university professors and others would see this vandalism. I shared some pictures in some of the Bangkok Gay groups.
Prior to my visit to Thailand I had been doing research and came across Christian missionaries who discussed their efforts against homosexuality in Thailand and I was concerned to alert Thai LGBT. It seems with this vandalism they were going to be alerted without me.
I have this video made of the Pride Art Wall and its vandalism.
Though, I have since established an ongoing contact with a prominent Gay Buddhist and passed along my information about Christian missionary anti-LGBT writings in English to him.
To a Buddhist nation this vandalism by a Christian would not be a surprise. The Christian arson attempts against Korean Buddhist temples is menttioned in Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka and other places.
Christians complain about being persecuted, though often this "persecution" is sometimes just family members not being happy over their religious conversion. But what isn't reported is that Christians often act and behave and talk as if the gun boats of the 20th century European empires are still out there to back them up when they make themselves obnoxious to people in the nation they are in. The Christian complaints over human rights is often that they, the Christians, aren't setting the agenda of who will be persecuted and worse yet, are the targets.
I am going to have a documention video of Samyan Mitrtown Pride Installations. It will take some time, but I thought I would do the art wall first.
The following was a reply to those who said the vandalism of the Gay Art wall in Bangkok wasn’t “true Christianity.” Explaining how that is an evasive tactic.
"True" Xtianity as a tactic by Gay Xtians, liberal Xtians others to disarm the Gay community. E: Christian Vandalism: Contesting space at the Samyan Mitrttown shopping cener in Bangkok, Thailand
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?A2=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM;589d1811.2502
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:57:27 -0600
Often now when there has been an act or policy of aggression of Christians against Gays, or when you are planning counter measures, you have someone start talking about how the homophobic Christianity isn’t the supposed “true” Christianity. This discussion of “True” Christianity is to shut down discussion of Christianity as a problem for the security of Gays and what counter measures to take.
The conversation is shifted to some Christians have the wrong understanding of Christianity that it is anti-Gay and that these persons with this mistaken understanding of Christianity are to be convinced of the error of their ways. This proposed project has very uncertain prospects and is based on the presumption that Christianity isn’t inherently anti-Gay which involves a lot of theological gymnastics. It also doesn’t have prospects of immediate relief from their aggressions, since we have placed control of the success of this project into the hands of the homophobic Christians. It is also based on the premise that Christians will be determining how Gays should defend themselves against Christian aggression.
“True” Christianity has some subtle traps.
You might get pulled in a discussion of what the Bible says. But then the discussion of our rights has now been pulled into and located in the Bible and made contingent on interpreting the Bible and winning a theological debate. This is a hopeless quagmire. Theological disagreements go on for millennia. They don’t have objective resolutions. (With debate, but often they are resolved with swords and torture devices.) However, this isn’t the primary problem with discussing the Bible. Why place our right to breath contingent on interpretations of the various religious books in existence.
I came up with this statement which has proven to be very popular with Gays.
“It is up to Christianity to figure out how Christianity can exist in a universe where Gays exist, NOT for Gays to figure out how they can fit into Christianity.”
Another trap would be to point out that there are or have been many Christianities, wildly divergent, which though they were true and others not true to the extent they would burn other Christians at the stake. Besides Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, there are the Asiatic and African branches, such as Ethiopian, Nestorians, Coptic, and he now extinct oriental branches of Christianity with quite different ideas.
But then you have fallen into the Bible in another way and again made our rights contingent on Christian dogma.
What progress that has been made with Christians is the recognition by Christians that we are more popular than they are. Their homophobia has been identified by pollsters as a significant reason for their decline. So the homophobic churches have developed what I call the New Homophobia, which is to make it seem as loving as possible, but also to avoid being upfront about it. The liberal Christians make some adjustments, but with limits which I won’t discuss here.
The objective approach, and approaches based on reality are approaches which have better chances of success, is to look at what Christianity actually does, and what Christianity has done. The record has been very clear, destruction of competing religions since it obtained power.
Author, Catherine Nixey in her book, “The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World” points out that the early Christians were violent, ruthless, and intolerant.
Over the centuries Christians have continued their agendas of destruction. The Hindu groups in India are quite aware of what Christians did or are doing to polytheists.
The modern toleration of Christians sects towards each other and other religions has been contingent on the need for white solidarity in the face of non-whites. As Gerald Horne, African American historian at the Univ. of Houston, has pointed out, American religious tolerance would have been necessary to keep control over large populations of African slaves. I think that if the British were beset by religious conflicts they would have difficulties launching imperial conquests or occupying nations.
Winning the Cold War required Christian solidarity. However, now the Cold War is over.
The rise of these aggressive Christianities in recent times of the last several decades is not a fluke, but represent the reversion to type now that the cold war is over as well as slavery and European imperialism being over.
A successful defense of the Gay community will require an objective understanding of those attacking them and wishful thinking and a rejection of this “True” Christianity ruse. It also requires that we understand that those talking about “True” Christianity are not really our friends but looking to salvage Christianity.
Ed Sebesta
Cartographic revelations of mapping homophobic Churches in Dallas. An overwhelming built environment of homophobia.
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?A2=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM;2c50793e.2502
Subject:
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2025 12:00:08 +0000
Links to new maps at the end of this email.
The original project was to have the churches own their homphobia, to make sure it is part of their public face. More and more churches bury it. Evenually a map of Dallas would reveal a map wih dozens of red dots, like a measles infection. Dallas spent decades trying to rid themselves of the City of Hate label, and in 2017 there was a university press book, "Nut Country," documenting the extremist craziness of Dallas in the 1950s and 60s.
The City of Dallas doesn't have a human rights commission. Its so-called Gay rights ordinance is very unworkable and offers no compensation to the victim. In 2010, the Gay bath house was raided. The local LGBTQXYZ+ establishment likes to represent the city of Dallas as a great place for Gays, but I say, come at your own risk. I supply a link at the end about Dallas. The maps would reveal Dallas for what it really is.
However, I discovered two things creating these maps which were unexpected. How overwhelmingly homophobic the built religious environment is, and how popular it would be with the great majority of Gays, but really hated by Gay Christians. I discuss the first, the built religious nevironmen only.
My first two expeditions to photograph homophobic churches weren't comprehensively thorough of a specific region. In my requests with local Dallas LGBT Facebook groups I had gotten a lof of interest in several specific churches and so I prioritized getting them photographed early in my project. While I was in the area where these churches were, I photographed aother homophobic churches that I had quickly identified. My limit of travel and walking is about 7 to 9, and so in no way did I get all the churches in a specific area.
I didn't make a map until I did the second expedition to Plano to photodocumen some churches there which many Lesbians and Gas had been victims of or were notoriously homophobic. Even so the suburb of Plano probably has 30 homophobic churches and i got photos of 8.
I decided to comprehensive mapping of one urban area at a time and include all the homophobic churches in a specific area.
Reading the news or consuming the media you get the impression that some churches are anti-Gay and others aren't, in some proportion that isn't nearly all homophobic.
However, when you map a specific area you find nearly 90% of the built environment homophobic roughly on avergage. Downtown Dallas had 8 out of 9 churches that were homophobic. The Bishop Arts area was 9 out of 11. In the Gayborhood area, Oak Lawn, Turtle Creek area, it was 9 out of 10 were homophobic.
Some of these churches shattered their denominations to remain anti-Gay.
The churches that aren't homophobic are now seen as just stray exceptions. There is an Episcopalian church or United Methodist Church here or there that isn't homophobic.
Mapping homophobic churches reveals the near total and extensive built environment of homophobia in Dallas. Gays can see the city under an occupation of hate.
The house of faith with its sentimental associations, seen by people everyday in their neighborhood, is now seen as house of hate also. As I progress outward from the center of Dallas, more neighborhoods will come to see what cesspools of homophobia they are.
Given that there must be several hundred homophobic churches in Dallas, it will take some time until I reach the suburbs. I might make exceptions though.
This is a simple project that anyone can do for their local area.
Directory of posts about Houses of Hate and maps.
