iPod Random Song List Game

Rules: Set your iPod on shuffle and post the first 10 songs that appear. No cheating!

1. "Candle In The Wind" - Elton John
2. "Joyride" - Roxette
3. "In the House of Stone & Light" - Martin Page
4. "Private Dancer" - Tina Turner
5. "Tomorrow" - Bob Seger
6. "Paso La Vida Pensando" - Chayanne
7. "It's A Heartache" - Bonnie Tyler
8. "Back to the Future" - The City of Prague Philharmonic
9. "Lady Marmalade" - Various artists; Moulin Rouge soundtrack
10. "Wheel In The Sky" - Journey

Odd mix, but no 'guilty pleasures' to be embarassed about.

Medieval DNA To Help With HIV/AIDS Research?

The remains of what DNA analysis showed to be a boy found in the Dutch Medieval village Eindhoven, could prove to be revolutionary for both archaeology and modern research on HIV/AIDS:

This chance discovery of ancient DNA has led to one of the most ambitious archaeological projects ever to come out of the Netherlands--a massive excavation in the St. Catherine's Church cemetery and the establishment of a major ancient human DNA databank. With $3.4 million in funding, Arts and a team of archaeologists and physical anthropologists have now unearthed the skeletons of more than 750 Eindhoven citizens. And over the next two years, University of Leiden geneticist Peter de Knijff will attempt to recover DNA from these remains. "We expect that at least 75 percent of all individuals will have ancient DNA and proteins," says [Eindhoven Municipal Archaeologist, Nico] Arts.

For researchers, the Eindhoven DNA bank could prove a major windfall, paving the way for a host of new studies. To unravel the mysteries of human disease, researchers are increasingly studying genetic variations in human populations that increase the risk of illnesses, such as diabetes, or boost resistance to infections such as malaria. By studying the variants over time, researchers hope to advance knowledge of these diseases and gather clues to produce vaccines or new drug treatments. And such medical research is where the Eindhoven DNA bank, which spans 600 years of history, could really shine.

The Dutch team hopes, for example, that their project will reveal the origin and prevalence of a genetic variant that increases resistance to one of the world's most lethal viruses--HIV. Today, nearly 10 percent of people of northern European descent possess this variant, known as the CCR5D32 allele, and the discovery is sparking the development of a new class of AIDS-fighting drugs. Evidence suggests that this mutation first arose 3,100 to 7,800 years ago, but how did it become so prevalent across Europe in an age before the AIDS epidemic? Could this mutation also have boosted resistance to an earlier epidemic, such as smallpox or the Black Death? In search of new data, Knijff and his team will search for this variant in the DNA of Eindhoven's citizens. "There is no doubt that these studies are valuable," says Susan Scott, a University of Liverpool historian who has written extensively on the Black Death and its possible connection to the HIV-resistance variant. "Whilst I don't think [ancient DNA] studies will yield a vaccine for AIDS, they may assist molecular geneticists to develop some gene therapy." (Archaeology magazine)

Investigations into "why so many residents of Eyam, England, survived the black death when it hit the remote village in 1665", produced similar evidence for this genetic resistance. All in all, a fascinating blending of archaeology and modern medicine which has the potential of not only providing us more understanding of our ancestors, but possibly could assist in research for diseases like HIV/AIDS today.

For more on the excavation at Eindhoven, click here.

h/t Per Omnia Saecula

(this is also posted over on Gay Patriot)

Star Trek Fanfiction

...or Reason #97 On Why I'm Truly A Geek.

Although I am a big fan of Star Trek, I'm sort of in the closet about it. No, I do not have a You Wanna Play With My Phaser? t-shirt nor do I really want my own set of Spock ears. I do enjoy the different series and when I need some escapism reading, a novel or two. It's sort of a guilty pleasure I guess, kind of like sci-fi porn and as addictive as the real thing at times. I mention all of this because I stumbled across an audiodrama made by fans that is surprisingly well done. In fact, I'd say it's as close to being like professionally-made stuff as I've seen. The price is also right to listen: nada. The website I found this on is Darker Projects, which contains more than just Star Trek but also some odd horror & zombie dramas for those who like that kind of stuff. The first Star Trek audiodrama this site has is called Section 31. If you remember anything about Section 31 from the series, you could say that this audiodrama is kind of like 24 only because it's Trek not as dark. The second audiodrama is Lost Frontier. This uses some of the characters from the first, but takes the Trek Universe into very different territory. The basic storyline is that a few years after the Dominion War a devastating plague sweeps across the Alpha Quadrant killing billions. The Federation collapses into civil war as rival factions vie for supremacy. The Klingons are nearly wiped out as are the Borg. Vulcan, Earth and a handful of other planets are all that's really left. Starfleet is re-formed and the USS Enterprise-F is commissioned with the mission of establishing contact with the "Lost Worlds" to re-unite the Federation. I've listened to both of these and have enjoyed them immensely. There is a third audiodrama called Pioneers, but I haven't listened to this one yet. All of these are available as podcasts for download on iTunes. Download and listen to them. It is, after all, the only logical thing to do.

Actor Heath Ledger Dead At 28

Wow. It's always difficult to comment on the passing of someone so young and seemingly in the highpoint of their lives. I didn't know Ledger and have no idea what kind of person he really was, but if some of his true character came across the screen than I'd say he seemed to be a pretty good fellow. While I thought Brokeback Mountain was overhyped (Big Eden remains my favorite in this genre) his own performance was superb. I remember seeing him for the first time in The Patriot and then A Knight's Tale, both of which I enjoyed and thought he did a good job in. How sad. I think though that this 2006 interview about why he did the Brokeback film tells us something of what kind of man he was:

Heath Ledger’s critically acclaimed performance as a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain was inspired by the personal experiences of his uncle, gay Australian tough guy Neil Bell, the actor told press in Hollywood Sunday...

Ledger said his uncle’s difficult early life and tough personal experiences helped him forge what is being acclaimed as one of the strongest and most emotionally powerful performances in recent cinema history.

In the film, Ledger's del Mar is tortured by the decades he spends hiding his love for another cowboy, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

"I had a dear friend of mine, who's my uncle," explained Ledger. "He's a big guy. He goes to bare-knuckle fighting out in the Nevada desert, and he's gay." [...]

"His father approached him when he was 20 and said: 'Are you gay?'," Ledger said. "He was about to deny it, because his dad was very Victorian, very stern. But he said 'yes'. "Two weeks later, his father came back to him and said, 'I believe you're ill, and I want you to go to hospital and get fixed. If you don't go, I want you to leave the family'."

Bell eventually moved from Perth to Los Angeles, "and from that point on, he accepted his sexuality to himself", Ledger said. "It was only a couple years ago that he really came out to me and my friends." (GayWired.com)

However overhyped I find this movie to be, his performance in it was very moving and reading the above makes me appreciate what he did all that more. RIP, Heath.

h/t Box Turtle Bulletin

Interview with Pepe Johnson

This is former U.S. Army Sgt. Pepe Johnson, who was discharged in 2003 under the DADT policy for being gay. Today he works for the repeal of DADT, which include efforts through Integrity In Service. From this photo I'd say he looks like he stepped off of a recruiting poster. His record seems to bear out this distinction too. West Virginia Queer News interviewed him recently, which you can read in full here. There are many aspects of his story which I find interesting and I can only shake my head at the stupidity of this law in keeping such fine individuals from serving their country. I really liked how he described DADT's effect on the military and homosexuals in particular:

It mandates that gay soldiers lie to their brothers and sisters-in-arms. It compromises their personal integrity. Lying is what compromises unit cohesion, not the presence of an openly gay soldier. Gay soldiers who are barely coming out have no one they can turn to. Even telling a military chaplain or doctor, is grounds for discharge. You can’t tell anyone, including, civilians, like your mom. Leaders have long recognized the importance of making the soldier’s personal and family life easier in order to allow him to focus on the mission. Don’t ask, Don’t tell makes the gay soldier’s life more difficult. We can’t communicate to our loved ones in the same way a straight soldier can. When we return from an overseas deployment, our partners cannot meet us at the airport, like the wives of straight soldiers can.

I can remember when I first joined the Navy in 1989 before DADT, they tried to screen out gays by asking about sexual orientation on the enlistment application. It may surprise some but I was honestly able to answer "no" at that time. Growing up in the South and the dearth of information available back then for people questioning their sexuality (remember there was no internet for the general public then) contributed to a great amount of ignorance. I was a virgin and from everything I could find in the library, along with what the Church told me, being gay wasn't something somebody is but rather a sin that one chooses. Given what I knew about homosexuality as a good lil' Catholic I certainly didn't want to choose that. The feelings I had were nothing more than a 'phase' which praying hard enough would in time go away. Of course they didn't, nor did any sexual attractions for the opposite sex develop much to my dismay. Like Johnson, I was left with nobody I could trust to talk to lest I be kicked out in disgrace. leaving young soldiers/sailors in such a predictment with no one to speak with is not only extremely cruel, but detrimental to the service as whole. Gays have just as much, if not more, at stake in this War on Terror as heterosexuals do. Let's just say that if Islamofascists dislike America and what we stand for in general, they particularly do not care for people like myself and Johnson. DADT is an anachronism that needs to go and people like Johnson and those from the younger generation should be allowed to freely serve. God willing, the day of its repeal isn't long off.

UPDATE: Welcome Washington Blade readers! Feel free to put yer feet up and have a look around. I also guest-blog over on Gay Patriot from time to time.

First U.S. Soldier Discharged For Homosexuality

It's amazing what one can find via Google sometimes. I was curious who the first recorded gay soldier was that faced disciplinary action in the military and found this interesting excerpt from Conduct Unbecoming: Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military by Randy Shilts:

On March 11, 1778, just sixteen days after [Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von] Steuben arrived at Valley Forge, drums and fifes assembled on the Grand Parade in the brisk morning air to conclude the punishment ordered by a general court-martial and approved by General Washington himself. On that morning Lieutenant Gotthold Frederick Enslin became the first known soldier to be dismissed from the U.S. military for homosexuality.

Enslin had arrived in the United States on September 30, 1774, aboard the ship Union, which had sailed from Rotterdam to Philadelphia. He was in his late twenties or early thirties. He arrived alone, according to the ship’s records, suggesting that he was single. Three years later he enlisted in the Continental Army; within a few months he was serving as an officer in Colonel William Malcom’s regiment.

Though little is known of Enslin’s earlier life, the exact penmanship he used on his company’s muster sheets and his command of the English language indicate that he was an educated man of some financial means. The Continental Army preferred its officers to be educated and able to provide their own supplies.

Under the bunking arrangements at Valley Forge, enlisted men lived in communal barracks while officers resided in small cabins with officers of similar rank. It was in Enslin’s cabin that Ensign Anthony Maxwell apparently discovered the lieutenant with Private John Monhart. Maxwell reported this to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Burr. Enslin responded that Maxwell was lying in an attempt to impugn his character.

On February 27, 1778, the company commander being in New York, Burr presided first at a court-martial of Ensign Maxwell, charged with “propagating a scandalous report prejudicial to the character of Lt. Enslin”. In his orderly book, Burr later wrote, “The court after mature deliberation upon the evidence produced could not find that Ensign Maxwell had published any report prejudicial to the character of Lt. Enslin further than the strict line of his duty required and do therefore acquit him of the charge”.

Eleven days later, on March 10, Burr presided over Enslin’s court-martial, in which the lieutenant was found guilty of sodomy and perjury, the latter presumably stemming from his charges against Maxwell. According to General Washington’s general order of March 14, was “…to be dismiss’d with Infamy. His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with Abhorrence and Detestation of such Infamous Crimes orders Lieutt. Enslin to be drummed out of the Camp tomorrow morning by all the Drummers and Fifers in the Army never to return; the Drummers and Fifers to attend on the Grand Parade at Guard mounting for that purpose”.

Drumming a soldier out of the Army was a dramatic event in those times. According to custom, an officer’s sword was broken in half over the head of the disgraced soldier, while drummers played a very slow tattoo. So did Lieutenant Enslin leave the Continental Army on that cold morning in March, trudging away alone on the deeply rutted and muddy road out of Valley Forge, not far from where Major General von Steuben was shouting orders in broken English.

Some observers have suggested that Enslin’s sentence is evidence that Washington held a lenient view of homosexuality, since such transgressions could have been punishable by imprisonment or even death in the conventions of the day. (Thomas Jefferson demonstrated his liberalism by proposing a year earlier that sodomy be punished by castration instead of death in the new penal code that would replace Virginia’s Colonial charter.) This, however, remains speculation.

So the infamous Aaron Burr presided over Lt. Enslin's trial, eh? How ironic that Enslin would be "drummed out" when such widely-known homosexuals as Baron von Steuben proved himself as indispensable to the success of the American Revolution as the great General Washington himself. I suppose that lower-level officers were not considered to be as essential to the military to overlook their sexual preferences. It's not clear though whether Enslin really was gay, or like some heterosexual males in prisons, merely engaged in homosexual behavior due to the lack of access to a female partner. Nothing is known about what happened to Enslin after he left the Continental Army in disgrace, Shilts speculates that he returned to his native Germany. As former enlisted myself, I notice that nothing is said about what happened to Pvt. Monhart. Was he kicked out? Imprisoned? Killed? There does not appear to be anything in the records about this. While some allowances for the times need to be made for Enslin's perjury and perhaps the fraternization with Monhart, even so because of the latter especially Enslin does not make much of a symbol in my view for efforts to repeal DADT today. There are very good reasons why fraternization is punishable under the UCMJ and though I strongly favor repealing DADT (along with Article 125 which effects everybody), allowing fraternization regardless of sexual orientation would indeed negatively impact unit cohesion. Officers and enlisted have no business nor right to have intimate relationships with each other and when they are caught deserve the punishments they face. All in all though, Enslin's story is interesting and I'm glad to have found out about this book. This looks like one I'm going to have to buy from Amazon and read fully.

(this is also posted over on Gay Patriot)

iPod Random Song List Game

If you haven't noticed by my absence, my posting will be sporadic at times for awhile. I seem to have front-loaded this year for some reason and there is a lot going on in the real world.

Rules: Set your iPod on shuffle and post the first 10 songs that appear. No cheating!

1. "Can't Help Falling In Love" - UB40
2. "Doubly Good To You" - Amy Grant
3. "March From Raiders Of The Lost Ark" - John Williams & The Boston Pops Orchestra
4. "Hazy Shade Of Winter" - The Bangles
5. "Living In America" - James Brown
6. "Perdoname Conciencia" - Jon Secada
7. "Livin' On The Edge" - Aerosmith
8. "I'll Never Love This Way Again" - Dionne Warwick
9. "In The End" - Linkin Park
10. "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You" - The Alan Parsons Project

Kind of amusing to see what pops up when you put the ol' iPod on shuffle. I haven't listened to Amy Grant in quite awhile and had completely forgot that I had anything by Dionne Warwick!

IDF Experience May Sway US Military's DADT Policy

With most of our Allies having years of experience without a ban in place against homosexual soldiers, justifying DADT becomes more and more difficult for its proponents. Elaine Donnelly must not be pleased. Indeed from what I've seen from her lately, she ain't.

In 1993, Congress banned known homosexuals from the military, convinced their presence could undermine morale and discipline. That year, Israel took exactly the opposite approach.

All restrictions on gay and lesbian soldiers were dropped. Homosexuals in the Israel Defense Forces could join close-knit combat units or serve in sensitive intelligence posts. They were eligible for promotion to the highest ranks.

Fourteen years later, Israelis are convinced they made the right decision.

"It's a non-issue," said David Saranga, a former IDF officer and now Israel's consul for media and public affairs in New York. "There is not a problem with your sexual tendency. You can be a very good officer, a creative one, a brave one and be gay at the same time."

Israel is among 24 countries that permit known gays to serve in the military, and its experience is giving fodder to opponents of the United States' controversial "Don't ask, don't tell" policy... (St. Petersburg Times)

The 1919 Newport Sting

Box Turtle Bulletin has a very interesting article linked about one of the first recorded gay scandals in the U.S. Navy:

The first national gay sex scandal was instigated in Newport in early 1919, by a sailor with an ear for gossip and a hatred for homosexuals.

Before it ended, the scandal had blazed in headlines across America, embarrassed future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and led to FDR suing The Providence Journal.

Court trials and a U.S. Senate investigation into the Newport episode exposed that the Navy had sent sailors to entrap homosexuals by having sex with them... (Providence Journal)

Interesting approach: they used men to have sex with other men in order to find out who the gays in the Navy were. What a clever use of their...er, assets. Could this be the first known case of "gay for pay"? Of course given the government involvement in this sting operation, it wasn't long before the original intentions were expanded and these same decoys were used to expose gay civilians as well. Now that's a remarkable abuse of power...