Wayback Exchange

American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom by Andrew L. Seidel

Is a fight against equality and for privilege a fight for religious supremacy? A constitutional attorney dives into the debate on religious liberty, the modern attempt to weaponize religious freedom, and the Supreme Court's role in that “crusade.”  Critically acclaimed author and constitutional attorney Andrew L. Seidel looks at some of the key Supreme Court cases of the last thirty years—including Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (a bakery can deny making a wedding cake for a gay couple), Trump v. Hawaii (the anti-Muslim travel ban case), American Legion v. American Humanist Association (related to a group maintaining a 40-foot Christian cross on government-owned land), and Tandon v. Newsom (a Santa Clara Bible group exempted from Covid health restrictions)—and how a hallowed legal protection, freedom of religion, has been turned into a tool to advance privilege and impose religion on others.

I really, really enjoyed this book, and plan on trying to get a hard copy of it to add to the small physical library I’m slowly growing.  As I read itI kept finding myself pausing and telling @flowersforgraves, “I just wish I could read this to my dad, it explains this so clearly, except I know he wouldn’t understand any of it.”  It was eyeopening and scary having something so sinister laid out so clearly.  Seeing the court cases and the lines of argument and the actual statements made, and explained, by someone who has the knowledge and the education to connect the dots, left me feeling almost overwhelmed with rage at the Supreme Court.  It’s a remarkably easy read, and I highly recommend reading it.  Five stars.

Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare

In Brilliant Imperfection Eli Clare uses memoir, history, and critical analysis to explore cure—the deeply held belief that body-minds considered broken need to be fixed.  The stories he tells range widely, stretching from disability stereotypes to weight loss surgery, gender transition to skin lightening creams. At each turn, Clare weaves race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender together, insisting on the nonnegotiable value of body-mind difference. Into this mix, he adds environmental politics, thinking about ecosystem loss and restoration as a way of delving more deeply into cure.

This was a recommendation from a friend, and I’m glad I was able to read this.  While the author is significantly more disabled than I am, I found this an eyeopening and deeply moving read.  Eli has a beautiful, engaging writing style - there are gorgeous descriptions and short poems interspersed throughout the book - and it really draws you in.  Something I really appreciated was Eli’s refusal to give “the answer” to the questions he asks throughout the book.  I struggle, sometimes, when the author clearly hasn’t resolved something for themself.  Frequently, I am looking for “this is what I believe and this is what my opinions are and this is what I think is the correct answer to the question I am asking.”  So Eli Clare going “this is what I believe, and here are some things other people believe that are also true, but are in conflict with what I believe, and I need to take space and sit with that for a while” felt kind of revolutionary.  A very, very good read, definitely recommend.  Five stars.

Pray the Gay Away: The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays by Bernadette C. Barton

In Pray the Gay Away, Bernadette Barton argues that conventions of small town life, rules which govern Southern manners, and the power wielded by Christian institutions serve as a foundation for both passive and active homophobia in the Bible Belt. She explores how conservative Christian ideology reproduces homophobic attitudes and shares how Bible Belt gays negotiate these attitudes in their daily lives. Drawing on the remarkable stories of Bible Belt gays, Barton brings to the fore their thoughts, experiences and hard-won insights to explore the front lines of our national culture war over marriage, family, hate crimes, and equal rights. Pray the Gay Away illuminates their lives as both foot soldiers and casualties in the battle for gay rights.

I went into this expecting it to be more of a “queer people in the South” type book; if you are looking for information about transgender people in the Bible Belt, you won’t find it here.  This is very much about gay men and lesbian women.  Which is fine!  I was just a little disappointed that the book wasn’t what I initially thought it was.  I enjoyed this.  It’s a little drier than I was expecting it to be, and relies heavily on interviews conducted with survey subjects, but it was fascinating reading about how peoples’ experiences could be so different and yet the same in certain ways.  Definitely a heavy read in bits, but worth it, in my opinion.  Three and a half stars.

Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity, and Homosexuality by Micha Ramakers

In this groundbreaking study of the art of Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), better known as Tom of Finland, Micha Ramakers explores the incredible and defining impact Tom's work has had upon the culture at large. It is work whose erotic and emotional power remains unabated to this day. Lavishly illustrated with drawings and photographs, Dirty Pictures is a lively and entertaining book encompassing the rise of the gay movement, the world of fine art, and the function (and the functioning) of pornography. For the millions of fans of Tom's work throughout the world, as well as readers unfamiliar with his work, this study brings uncommon insight into Tom of Finland's decidedly uncommon work.

This was a really neat read, and I’m glad I picked it up.  The author goes into some really interesting detail about aspects of Laaksonen’s life that I hadn’t been aware of beforehand, despite having watched a biopic on him a couple months ago, and presents some interesting thought problems related to his work.  Probably my favorite sections of the book were the ones dealing with race and the portrayal of black men in Tom of Finland art, and the one that asked ‘can art ever be porn / can porn ever be art’.  Not super in depth, but a quick and fun read.  Four and a half stars.

Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language by Paul Baker

Polari is a language that was used chiefly by gay men in the first half of the twentieth century. It offered its speakers a degree of public camouflage and a means of identification. Its colorful roots are varied—from Cant to Lingua Franca to dancers’ slang—and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy, voiced by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne (“Oh hello Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek!”). Paul Baker recounts the story of Polari with skill, humor, and tenderness. He traces its historical origins and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts, explores the ways and the environments in which it was spoken, explains the reasons for its decline, and tells of its unlikely reemergence in the twenty-first century.

A quick and interesting read.  It’s a difficult thing to study and trace, for obvious reasons, but the author seems to have done a pretty good job, and I found the vocabulary list given in the back of the book fascinating.  I learned a lot of things had Polari mentions in them that I’d never known about (a 70s episode of Doctor Who referenced it!), which was pretty cool.  Probably my favorite thing that’s come from this book, however, is a short film the author referenced, which I was able to watch on Vimeo.  It’s entirely in Polari, and is, in my opinion, worth a watch!