Queer Notes From all Over (Equal Rights for All Excepting Bisexuals, But They Don't Count Division)

RICHMOND, Virginia, March 11 - The governor of the great state of Virginia has shown that, when it comes to equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendered people, he is, well, all for equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendered people. 
   There was no mention made of bisexuals, who, as usual, got the short end of the stick, but who, being attracted to persons of both genders, have twice the chance of getting a date on Saturday night, according to filmmaker and former comic Woody Allen, who made that joke, like, seven hundred years ago.
   Gov. Bob McDonnell yesterday directed state agencies of all sizes, stripes and orientations not to discriminate against gays and lesbians, the Associated Press reported today. 
   State Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who, not that this matters, is a Republican, sent a letter last week to state colleges saying they lack authority to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, and ordered them to rescind any anti-discrimination that include protections for gays and lesbians. 
   It is admirable that Atty. Gen. Cuccinelli sent a letter. Letter-writing is, alas, a lost art, what with emails, texting, Twitter and the general decline of literacy in America, not to mention the fact that the U.S. postal service is considering stopping Saturday service as a cost-cutting measure. 
   That said, it is the content of the letter with which we must concern ourselves, and that content is, in a word, stupid. 
   Apparently, Gov. McDonnell agreed, in essence if not in word, and that is why he issued his directive. His directive trumped that of the Atty. Gen., because he - the Gov. - has much more power. 
   Before the Gov.'s directive reached far and wide into the psyches of Virginians everywhere, the Atty. Gen.'s letter had occasioned no little amount of agitation among, predictably, gay rights groups and, predictably, Democrats. 
   College students - who, by dint of their youth, vitality and idealism, are the Hope for the Future - rallied, but in a very modern, by which one means troublingly virtual, way. 
   The Washington Post, quoted in the Associated Press report, which was run on the Huffington Post news site - one apologizes, but one is simply too tired, at the moment, to track down original sources - reported that 3,000 people joined a Facebook page titled, "WE DON'T WANT DISCRIMINATION IN OUR STATE UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES!" 
   While that sentiment is to be applauded, the use of all capital letters and an exclamation point is not. 
   The Post further reported, according to the AP by way of the Huffington Post, that one protest was organized by a group at William and Mary College, in Williamsburg, Va., the second oldest college in America, the motto of which is: "We're different, and we like it that way."
   The group, called Queer & Allied Activism, launched a social media campaign, the Post wrote, "urging students to protest on Cuccinelli's Facebook and Twitter pages, and to sign a petition organized by the group Equality Virginia." 
   The group's acronym - QAA - has no meaning, and therefore cannot be called, even by a stretch, clever, but its use of an ampersand is alluring. 
   One certainly applauds the students' efforts, but one is alarmed to hear that students are now protesting from the safety of their laptops while, perhaps, sitting around their dorms or frat houses in their pajamas. One is all for lounging in sleepwear, but one also remembers the days when students actually ventured out of doors to protest injustices. 
   Alas, it is a new day. The thought occurs that maybe the weather was bad. Protesting in the snow, while offering the opportunities, during dull moments, to create snowmen, or even snow penises, can be trying.           
   But recent weather reports, you see, say temperatures have been in the high fifties and low sixties. 
   That's practically balmy for Virginia winters, or seems like it should be. One doesn't know; one has never been to Virginia in the winter or even in the spring, summer or fall, if memory serves, which it generally does not. 
                       --30--

Crime of the Century (There's No Art Like Snow Art Division)

   Snow art, it is plain, simply is not appreciated by the keepers of society's mores, be they bluenoses or bluecoats. 
   First there was the snow-penis kerfuffle. Now comes a high-art contretemps. 
   Elisa Gonzalez, obviously a creative, well-rounded individual, recently took it upon herself to carve, on the front lawn of her Rahway, New Jersey home, a snow replica of the Venus de Milo, according to a March 4 Associated Press story. 
   This, really, is so much more inspired than is making, for example, a snowman (although these, at this point in history, can be considered "classics"), or a snow statue that resembles, say, Rush Limbaugh. 
   Quite frankly, you're better off making a scarecrow that resembles Rush Limbaugh. The similarities are eerie: a scarecrow is a straw man; Rush Limbaugh sets up straw-man arguments. A scarecrow scares birds; Rush Limbaugh scares all sentient beings, as well as some of your more concentrated collections of star dust. A scarecrow is brainless; Rush Limbaugh... well, point made. 
   The Venus de Milo (photo, left), an ancient Greek sculpture, is credited to an artist named Alexandros of Antioch. At least so says Wikipedia, the resource of dubiously-sourced information for researchers too lazy to visit all links but the first in any Google search.
   The statue's subject is Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. (The Romans called her Venus; contrary folk that they were, they simply felt compelled to invent their own name for her. This was sort of a goddess-appellation version of how dogs make fire hydrants their very own.) 
   Beauty, sadly, has its comeuppances; time is not always kind to it. Somewhere along the way, the Venus de Milo's arms were severed at the biceps (right) and shoulder (left). Her statuesque (sorry) breasts, however, all the more wondrous for not having been surgically enhanced in her lifetime or any other, have remained on dazzling display all throughout history. 
   And so they did on Ms. Gonzalez's snow statue. In other ways, however, the appropriately armless snow version veered slightly from the original. For example, it had no head. Comparing the two, the AP helpfully noted, "The original Venus de Milo, which is housed in Paris' Louvre museum... is also without arms, although her head is intact."  
   Disparities aside, Ms. Gonzalez, who is forty-four, was rightly pleased with her artwork. 
   "It looked very beautiful," she told the AP. "We got a lot of attention from people in the neighborhood. Some of them got out and took pictures and spoke to us."
   You see? Art not only soothes the savage, ugly, heinous, destructive, wanton, debauched, decadent, lying, manipulative, Machiavellian and porcine inner beast (the, as it were, inner Rush Limbaugh), but it also creates instant community. Just ask anyone trying to hook up with an art-lover at a museum. It's like harpooning whales in a barrel. 
   Alas, not everyone agrees. The idea of "art," especially when it includes a naked snow rack, is in the sometimes bedeviled eye of the beholder. A Gonzalez neighbor, shocked, absolutely shocked by the statue, alerted the local gendarmerie. They, in turn, gave Ms. Gonzalez the choice of knocking it down or concealing the lovely parts. 
   "We didn't want to have any problem with the police, so we covered it up," Ms. G. quite sensibly said. The photo below shows that Ms. G. ingeniously covered the Venus de Milo's historic breasts with a bikini top, cleverly turning her into an ancient Greek, and headless, beach bunny. 

   Well, concessions must be made. Perhaps Ms. G. was aware that, just a few years earlier, police in nearby New York had used shovels to pummel a snow-penis into powder. Would any true artist wish to inflict such a heartbreaking fate upon the Venus de Milo? Of course not.
   This, however, must be said: it is a dark day in America when boors incapable even of rudimentary art appreciation take it upon themselves to set community-wide artistic standards. They're better off doing what they do best: finding fault with the joy and creative expression of others, gossiping about those of whom they're paralyzingly envious, and spending their afternoons immersed in the risible chatter of Rush Limbaugh, right wing scarecrow.