Sex, Politics and Free Speech: Adventures and Misadventures in Blogging and Facebooking

Very controversial photograph depicting Jesus and disciples at "The Last Supper" by © Fred Alert and that was the official poster for the 2007 San Francisco Folsom Street Fair, one of the many street fairs in San Francisco but that specifically pays homage to the city's large and diverse BDSM/Fetish/Leather Communities

Earlier this week I posted an item to my blog. The item automatically also posted to my facebook wall as well as the wall of the facebook page of my blog. The posting included a photo of two men each presumably of African descent engaging in a sexual act (anal sex although no sexual body parts were revealed in the photo). The photo was accompanied by an original poem that included clear references to gay sex as well.

Here is a brief explanation of how and why that post came about. The post was very much driven by the photo that accompanied the post. I found it on a friends blog. I saw the photo and immediately knew I wanted to create a blog post around it. The reasons I wanted to build a blog post around this photo all have to do with the fact that (presumed) images of same gender loving men of African descent engaged in sex acts that are not completely explicit are difficult to come by. The reason for that is because of a mix of how the dominant LGBT communities either define beauty in ways that  typically exclude people of color or when they do include people of color it is usually by way of illustrating a person of color with someone of the dominant gay male community or the photo is constructed in such a way as to encourage the objectification of the person of color. I saw none of that in the photo I chose for the post. So I wished to make a political statement. That statement essentially was, "We're here, we're same gender loving men of African descent that do not need to be with a member of the dominant gay male culture nor shown in an objectifying manner in order for both our ethnicity and sexual orientation to be strongly put forth and honored in a powerful, visual way." Once I finally decided what text would accompany the photo an additional statement was embraced as well. That statement is one that is in alignment with one of the core reasons I have started this blog. That core objective is building bridges between religiosity/spirituality and human sexuality.

It took me three full days to come up with the concept that eventually made its way onto the blog and onto facebook. Due to a very freak event where I attempted to contact a facebook friend mere seconds after I posted the post and where he was simultaneously defriending me, I immediately realized the post was going to be perhaps more controversial than I might have anticipated (the friend who was simultaneously defriending me is a white gay man. I have received no explanation from him why the post apparently prompted his defriending me).

I can't even begin to imagine all the reasons this post may have offended or bothered or was objectionable to different people. I'm sure there are many reasons that wouldn't really resonate with me, given who I am and where I'm at in my psycho-social-spiritual development. However, thanks to my friend Melissa in Kentucky--who did not defriend me--but who has a husband and two young(ish) daughters who all share the same facebook account I did come to understand the possibility of young children coming in direct contact with that post in perhaps an unsupervised way. That did give me pause and opened me up to a different perspective. I do not have children. I do however, understand that we live in a world where so much of what children are exposed to is unceremoniously taken out of the hands of parents. And I support any parent of any young child or children reclaiming some of that control in any way that seems reasonable to them and which does not also include any form of abuse nor the diminishment of their child's sense of who they are as an autonomous person. I trust most parents and children are able to navigate that whole terrain in ways that makes sense to all party's concerned on at least most levels. So I would understand if one of my friends who is also a parent defreinded me in order to shield their child(ren) from seeing potentially troublesome things that may appear on their facebook newsfeeds in the future. I also imagine that if such people were true friends they would take a moment to explain that decision to me either before or afterward.