BijouBlog

Some person (I was going to use a naughty word, but I am trying to remain calm) on the Huffington Post claimed that homosexuals started the Nazi Party. This type of ignorance (and this claim has been going around for some time, thanks to Scott Lively and others of his ilk) really makes my blood boil. It's the type of defamation that LGBT persons are still suffering from people like Scott Lively (again, I was going to use more naughty words), Bryan Fischer, and now Sally Kern of Oklahoma, who wants to allow people who may be against what they term sinful homosexual behavior (think: a certain type of Christian of the fundamentalist persuasion) to deny LGBT persons access to public services in her state, among other infamies. Check out this site for more information on Kern's bills.

Ernest Rohm, one of the original compatriots of Hitler, was gay, but he did NOT start the party. And he and his cohorts were “purged” soon after Hitler took over because they Hitler saw them as a threat. He couldn't deal with what was developing into a possibly dangerous internal army (Rohm's Brown Shirts) rising up against him. And he before that point was pretty much willing to “look the other way” about Rohm's predilection for blond, “Aryan-looking” studs. Himmler was the one who pretty much decried Rohm's orientation and influenced Hitler to add gays to his list of Final Solution victims.

By the time the Holocaust was occurring, gays, according to the Nazi world view, had been deemed not acceptable humans. This view was based on their distorted eugenics; degenerate gay men (or lesbian women) could not produce future master race babies. Gays were sent to concentration camps and made to wear the pink triangle. Straight prisoners were encouraged to beat up on them, just as they often would have done in a non-prison setting. It's not clear how many LGBT persons were killed, but of the 5,000 to 15,000 incarcerated, as many as 60 percent may have died, according to one leading scholar.

And we also need to remember that the injustice continued for gay men especially after Hitler's defeat. Many gays who survived the horrors of Nazism still had to live lives of secrecy and continued persecution sometimes based on evidence found during the Nazi regime. Both Germanies (at that time) eventually overturned their “fornication between men” laws in 1957 (in the East) and 1969 (in the West).

We recently remembered the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and we remember all the victims of the Nazis, but was also need to still remember that the Sally Kerns of the world are still perpetrating a similar mechanism of scapegoating those whom they see as threats to the supposed “purity” of their systems. In 1938, after the Kristallnacht pogrom, the Nazis pretty much denied the Jews basic public services in Germany.

In 2015, Sally Kern and other government officials in the United States now seek to do something similar, though many of them are probably operating under the different assumption held by her co-religionists that LGBTs offend by their behavior, not their genetic makeup.

Even though we now know Kern has withdrawn her offensive bills, the fact that people support her bills (and that she was even elected) really makes me both frightened as well as angry.

I think we all have to start not just throwing around this saying by Martin Niemoller as a cliché, but using it as a constant call to action, not just vigilance:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
 

 

Martin Niemoller

Oh, one of my brain candy shows has started another season on TLC aka “Sideshow America.”

There seems to be the usual people eating strange supposedly inedible objects (many of these people suffer from a disease called pica), but one guy, who lives not far from Chicago, shared an addiction which for many in the BDSM community is not that highly unusual a fetish.

Kevin from suburban Lombard, Illinois is a straight guy (who from what I saw would be very popular in the gay bear community) who is addicted to casts. Yes, casts, what gets put on a limb if you break a bone.
 

Now, from what I saw, it's not like he is always putting on a plaster cast (remember how exciting it was when you are a kid, at least I remember, that you got to sign someone's cast or get yours signed); some that he wears seem to be made of some cloth-like material.

And it's not clear, I gather, from the show, if he is getting off sexually from putting himself into this form of restrictive bondage. Perhaps he is, but it's not something he seems to be able to integrate into his intimate relationships.

He is straight and has had girlfriends, and the one on the show who basically told him shrilly to choose between her and all the casts broke up with him soon afterward, but I wasn't getting the sense that the sex involved doing something with the casts.

He seemed to be more of an exhibitionist, perhaps, and the episode showed an obviously staged, scripted incident involving Kevin and his too-too embarrassed sidekick (who always gets roped into putting his buddy into his more elaborate casts, hello, Ethel) parading down Michigan Avenue. Kevin was in some kind of cast that basically covered his torso and pinned his arms to his sides. It's the type of cast someone would wear if he or she, for example, got hit by a truck.

Now, the usual end of this show is some meeting with a medical professional, in this case, a psychologist. The doctor proclaims, sadly, that Kevin will always be alone. His addiction (I guess fetish, but as I said above, I just can't tell how sexual it is for him), according to the doctor, isn't something he can or even will manage to overcome, much less integrate into the rest of his life.

I've seen plenty of guys get into all types of restrictive bondage (I've even seen a plaster cast scene at one event), but the elaborate bondage was part of a large dominance/submission dynamic. Plus it was clear the guys got off on the activity (not that I could see evidence if the cock was covered by plaster!). Plus they were playing with like-minded people in a sexual setting. In Kevin's case, how he approaches his addiction to casts doesn't really fit into this play party context.

Now I've seen (and known) plenty of guys with sexual fetishes become so addicted to the fetish that they lose sight of actually relating to a person. I think specifically of guys who post multiple times a week on craigslist. (I am thinking in Chicago of Mr. I want to lick the mud off the boots of a UPS driver or Mr. karate kick me in the balls.) I guess they are reaching out and don't want to jack off alone, but the person they play with is a means, not an end.

I do sincerely hope that Kevin will find a castmate (pun intended) because of the show's publicity.

Check out our website for some of classic BDSM videos, and don't forget to check out all our fetish books and magazines too.

 

Now, this guy was one superstud, but also, from what I have read, multitalented. Born in Germany as Wolfgang Praegert in 1957, of an artist father, and the young Wolfgang apparently exhibited acrylic paintings at exhibitions in both France and Germany. He lived in Paris (to which all artists gravitate at some point), and then emigrated to New York City. He studied opera there briefly. (I am impressed. I wonder if he was a tenor, a baritone, or a bass.)

He then got into gay porn, making his first appearance in Chain Reactions after moving to Los Angeles. Now, why would he get into porn? He was one studly macho guy (uncut, hairy chest, but also the Marlon Brandoesque lips, woof!), of course, but maybe the art and the opera didn't quite work out as well for him.

He worked with Al Parker for Surge Studios, making appearances in Head Trips and Strange Places, Strange Things.

I remember when I was growing up in the seventies talk of streaking; and given the penchant of pubescent boys of lying about physical (and sexual) exploits, several of my classmates claimed to have streaked. I'm pretty sure their only streaking may have been running wet and dripping from the shower to their bedrooms. 

But given my sheltered upbringing, I knew nothing of the legendary Robert Opel Academy Awards streaking incident, not that the Academy Awards was forbidden television viewing in a household which banned Maude because the character had an abortion. 

(Little did the Catholic household I grew up in know that streaking occurs in the Bible See Mark 14:50-52 for the famous naked youth in the Garden of Gethsemane; also go here for more information. Of course, the blog urges one to run from temptation. I would rather run toward it.) 

According to Leigh Rutledge in The Gay Decades: 

“April 2, 1974 Having inexplicably fascinated the nation for roughly six months, the fad of “streaking” reaches its apogee with gay photographer and former advertising executive Robert Opel, thirty-eight, plunges naked across the stage during a live broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. Opel's “streak,” almost certainly the most witnessed stunt of its kind, occurs during the most popular part of the telecast, the announcement of the award for Best Picture, thus guaranteeing him an estimated audience of more than one billion television viewers worldwide.” 
 

Yes, this really happened; here's a link to the true story. 

But there's more, and it's even more shocking. 

Robert Opel was murdered by an intruder at his art gallery who demanded drugs and money in 1979. Opel was famous for publicizing the works of gay artists Robert Mapplethorpe and Tom of Finland. 

Opel was a well-known leatherman as well. 
 

His nephew -- Robert Oppel -- created a documentary aiming to find out exactly what happened. 

The film, Uncle Bob (now on DVD), is an innovative fantasia filled with vintage clips, interviews, and segments with the young Oppel playing at being his uncle while re-creating his filmmaking, his TV appearances, and even his bloody death. 

Streaking, leather, nude young men in the Bible, the Oscars: what a gay combination!