In there – among dozens of "outgoing" and "good-looking, fit" available bachelors who like "dancing" (who doesn't?) and "camping" (you mean Gore-Tex or "Valley of the Dolls"?) and "long walks" (you bet) with other like-minded guys who are "spiritually centered" (uh-oh) and "emotionally mature," and "hairy tops" and "butch bottoms" (eep) – comes this conspicuous howl from the great gay elsewhere:
 

    "I don't own a cat, all my houseplants are dead. . . . It's my hope that the friendship we build may someday grow into a future atypical relationship where hanging curtains, picking out china patterns & adopting poodles together & giving them human names are NOT our goals."
 

           That may be the crankiest, edgiest gay man in Washington, and he's too late. The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name now yawns and checks its watch, as being gay becomes more market niche than rebellion. As humorist Fran Lebowitz put it: "Who are now the most square people on Earth? Who are the only people left who want to go into the Army and get married? Homosexuals."
            As gays and lesbians once again prepare to march on the Capitol Sunday, one thing seems clearer all the time: They're losing the last strains of fringe chic, the vive la diffe»rence that once made homosexuality cool. Now being gay is boring. Being gay is being Donna Reed. Gay men and lesbians, who never agreed on much, have laid claim to the white-picket-fence dream – God, country, Boy Scouts, bridal showers – in unison
            The protest march ultimately led to one place, metaphorically
            That place is Crate & Barrel
            Ah, Crate & Barrel, on a Sunday afternoon in spring, in Pentagon City, so filled with insurgent possibilities. The shopping mall, not the National Mall, is the pulse point of gay male America. (You want the lesbian view, we'll swing by Home Depot on the way back.)
            We watch stealthily as two gay men argue about wine glasses. (You ask: How do you know they're gay? Please. It's not 1983 anymore. It's the uniform – the plaid shirt tucked into the jeans just so, the Ricky Martinish haircut; the Abercrombie-Zombie look. It's like that recent New Yorker cartoon, the one with the old lady in the grocery store eyeing two identical, black T-shirted, shaved-bald, goateed lovers, and one says to her, "No, we are not twins.") Clearly they're acting radically – buying themselves the wedding presents they never got
            How handy it would be to read too much into their story, to reconstruct a narrative that plucks them, leather chaps and all, off pride parade floats or brings them, blinking, out of the pretty-boy disco dungeons into the sunshine. To have them meet and fall in love at Gay Bingo Night at the parish hall; to chart their survival through the AIDS epidemic, and figure when and where politics and the dreaded "gay agenda" ceased to matter anymore
            But instead we stand there, spying, in complete shock: They're buying that lamp? That plain, sad lamp that says nothing except conformity, and even then whispers it?

            A Movement Splintered

            The buzz around this year's Millennium March on Washington doesn't tout glitter or pageantry. It boasts the addition of a "family area" with activities for the kids; it tells you where to rent a baby stroller. The mildest spectrum of gay and gay-friendly show bizzies have been brought in to perform: power couple Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche, k.d. lang, Whoopi Goldberg and Pet Shop Boys, who once sang, in a club hit, "We were never being boring . . ." when, in fact, they were
            So whatever happened to gay edge?
            It's done, girlfriend. Don't ask your hilarious cousin if the purse goes with the shoes, unless you're talking Banana Republic. What about bold, new gay theater? Aside from a one-man show about a maitre d', it's asleep, out of subjects – even the obits for musical theater have yellowed
            Gay movies? Flattened by Hollywood – even Hilary Swank's stunning Best Actress turn in "Boys Don't Cry," as a small-town transsexual, had to be retooled as a sermonette on hate. Fashion? Acting straighter all the time, the jiggy purview of gangstas. What about Dykes on Bikes, the Leathermen of America, Queer Nation? Bogged down, it turns out, in parliamentary procedure
            Even the Millennium March, by almost any account, has had a difficult time rallying the troops this year. Contrarians within the gay movement feel that the march organizers are too bossy, too doctrinaire; thousands more feel they've marched enough already
            The old gay rebellion unraveled, which many read as the ultimate sign of victory for gay rights. A recent cover of Newsweek proclaimed what's "Gay Today" with a tailor-made assemblage of well-scrubbed, diverse homosexuals: a minister in robes, a soldier who is also a state lawmaker (a twofer!), a doctor, a teacher and a New York City police officer. It screams blah
            Blah is bliss. Blah is just what the leading gay-rights advocates strive for in the new century, when triumphs are measured in sitcoms and the slow crawl of statehouse marriage and anti-discrimination initiatives
            Even one of the most bawdy gay men in America, a 36-year-old syndicated advice columnist named Dan Savage – who for eight years has advised straight readers on the intricacies of kinky sex from a gay man's horse-sense perspective – has settled down with his boyfriend and adopted a son in a nice Seattle neighborhood
            "What's wrong with being boring?" asks Savage, who plans to attend the Millennium March so he can write about what a symbolic failure he expects it to be
            "The vast majority of people are boring and stupid and cheap," he says. "We told ourselves for a long time that because we were gay, we are somehow more with-it and urban and on the edge, so we believed it. It was Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and me. Oscar Wilde was one big messed-up queen in England, but guess what? There were a lot more, but they just weren't interesting."
            Ten years ago, when activists chanted "We're here, we're queer, get used to it," did they have any idea how "used to it" America would get? Visibility, it turns out, is bland. TV's "Will & Grace" – a gay lawyer and his straight gal-pal – have pajama parties and gab about boyfriend prospects, although it remains to be seen whether NBC can bestow on Will an actual sex life. In other news, lesbian rock goddess Melissa Etheridge and her partner, Julie Cypher, build a toddler dynasty from David Crosby's folk/rock-hero sperm
            Meanwhile, the movement's true anti-heroes are those iconoclasts in navy-blue suits, the Log Cabin Republicans, whose love for the GOP goes, to the amusement of outside observers, comically unrequited
            What everyone gay now realizes is this: The movement has grown and splintered in a thousand directions. It is soberly governed by national boards and associations of something or other. Many of these organizations are Beltway-based, requiring significant fund-raising and multi-pronged, hypersensitive mission statements. Someone has always just resigned from one of these boards in a snit
            The Rainbow Herd
            To be gay now is to live under the rainbow windsock, submitting to a stringent, self-imposed regimen of gay icons, products, slogans and the mind-numbing history of gaydom
            The modern experience of coming out of the closet has been funneled down to a prescribed set of rituals involving a blase soundtrack of disco anthems (gay and straight Americans alike now grow up knowing how to dance to "YMCA"), a few white tank-top T-shirts, some boots, some unhappy Thanksgiving dinners with the family, a regrettable tattoo, some poetry scribbled in journals. The majority of gay people do not get pummeled or fired or expelled; they emerge a wee bit neurotic and immediately set about shopping. ("I just bought my boyfriend a new car," boasts a smiling blond stud in a suit in a recent ad in the Advocate, a gay magazine. He "was even more shocked by the deal G&L Internet Bank gave me than he was the day he met my ex-wife!")

            There are ubiquitous "Hate Is Not a Family Value" refrigerator magnets, rainbow stickers in the shape of a cat, gay-power credit cards endorsed by Martina Navratilova. The gay-book market, ranging from cookbooks to kids' books, is glutted with memoirs and dyke detective stories and how-to titles like "Speaking Out: 425 Gay Men Explain It All to You" and "The History of Lesbian Hair."
            "No one has ever gone broke overestimating the insecurity of the gay consumer," says Dan Savage. "It's horrifying. The rainbow has become the gay version of the Mud-Flap Girl."
            When Ellen DeGeneres decided to come out as a lesbian on her ABC sitcom, all of gaydom was required to tune in as if she were the first lesbian to walk on the moon. What happened afterward was interesting: Lesbians and gay men saw the eventual cancellation of "Ellen" as a matter of network oppression. Only a few were willing to admit that Ellen was actually more funny as a bumbling Lucille-Ball-in-the-closet. Once Ellen came out, ratings dwindled because her issue-oriented lesbianism was dull
            "It's absolutely shameful to say, because visibility has so many benefits, but there is something interesting that comes out of oppression and being out on the fringe that almost can't be mass-marketed," says Alexandra Chasin, author of "Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market."
            "It's true that I may have suffered as a child from not seeing more gay and lesbian images on television," Chasin says. "But it also meant the field was wide open."
            Today the field is well trod. When she wrote "Selling Out," Chasin spent years examining the growing gay niche market and found that it tends to make outcasts of those homosexuals who don't meet code
            "A lot of ads are 'gay vague.' It's sanitized, and very unchallenging on the level of gender norms," Chasin says. "Often what we see are images of disproportionately white people, who are not too young or not too old, and always healthy. A certain kind of composite picture begins to emerge that unfortunately comes to stand for being gay."
            Railing against advertising is nothing new except that the original spark of gay life, supposedly, was to do everything differently. The drag queen, useful only as a court jester to mainstream gays, hasn't been marketed to or recognized because s/he doesn't wield enough dollar power. Ethnic minorities also get left out of the rosy gay picture-frame (except as exotic sex objects). Ugly gays and lesbians don't exist at all
            "Radical objectives," Chasin says, "that made [gay men and lesbians] different from the straight community are lost."
            So poorly mistreated in high school, so self-styled as sexual rebels, it's odd to learn that gay people tend to fiercely create and adhere to an almost nationalistic rainbow herd. "I get super-depressed about it sometimes," Chasin says. "It's not for me to second-guess where happiness resides, but what happens is when we willfully conform to mainstream practices, then queer people who are less like the mainstream are still excluded, are still discriminated against. The lines just get redrawn."
            She's also disturbed by recent mergers of the biggest gay media outlets: Out magazine was bought by the Advocate, and a month later they were both acquired by PlanetOut, a Web site that makes being gay look like a college brochure
            What could be more boring than a media conglomerate?
            Then again, "What could be more boring than to still be referring to yourself as 'queer'?" asks writer Andrew Sullivan, who rose to prominence as a conservative, reasoned gay voice in the queer noise of the 1990s, arguing in his book "Virtually Normal" that the real revolution resides in the mundane details of plain living
            We called Sullivan two days after his big story on testosterone ran in the New York Times Magazine, where, early in his treatise on chemical manliness, we learn that Sullivan spanked his beagle in a public park after he (Sullivan, not the dog) received an injection of testosterone. Yipe-yipe!
            But anyway, back to gay politics:
            "What's finished is far-left politics," Sullivan says. "It's far more radical right now to be a reform rabbi [a group who, as of last month, officially support gay partnerships] than to be a member of the Lesbian Avengers. It's more radical to settle down and get married than to be a gay activist."
            The thrill is gone, which to some is itself thrilling – a chance to finally peel the rainbow sticker off the Jetta and be done with it
            Undergay and Undersexed
            You know it's over when straight people are feeling hopelessly undergay
            Talk magazine asserts that today's straight woman is looking for a stylish mate who is heterosexual but "just gay enough." Examples? Jude Law, Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Scott Wolf. In other words, men who know from designer goods but aren't actually designers
            To catch up, you can take gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender history in college now, and not just at the small, left-leaning schools. A University of Michigan class offers, in its fall 2000 course catalogue, "How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation," some remedial fare for the young gay student who can't tell his Oscar Wilde from his Harvey Milk. (Synopsis: The night Judy Garland died in 1969, a bunch of drag queens freaked out and fought the cops in front of the Stonewall, a Greenwich Village bar. Later, Ellen DeGeneres was on the cover of Time. There'll be a quiz.)
            And hey, what about sex? We're sad to report, after heaps of field research, that the really wild sex seems to be gone, a casualty not of disease but perhaps of politics. In pushing anti-discrimination laws, lesbians and gay men have learned to avoid the subject of sex, speaking of it only in the abstract
            Lesbian-engineered sex toys have gone suburban, the way of the Tupperware party. The few remaining queer activists bemoan the fact that no one wants to stand by the giant papier-mache penis at the pride parades anymore; in fact, no one brings the giant penis to the parade anymore
            The gay men who show up in furniture and Volkswagen commercials seem to never have sex. They took the advice of the twangy-voiced opposition: What yew dew in yer own bedroom, etc. The only person who still thinks lesbian sex is interesting is Howard Stern. The only people still preoccupied with gay male sex are the ones waving "God Hates Fags" posters in front of the statehouse, forever transfixed by the clinical details of sodomy, looking as anachronistic as the white people who yelled at black school kids
            The big, bad gay bathhouses? They look like health clubs now
            The dens of iniquity? They advertise on their own Web pages
            The porn industry? It's gone totally corporate
            Marching Ahead
            Even takin' it to the streets has lost its allure
            The Millennium March on Washington, organized by the D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign and a network of gay churchgoers, with the word "gay" as a subtitle and a $1.8‚million operating budget, has endured an array of criticisms and boycotts
            Counter-activists say the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (such a mouthful) communities are, simply, done with marching. Accusations of racial and cultural insensitivity abound; the transgendered feel maligned; the goals were uncertain and debatable. (Organizers eventually compromised on eight wordy issues for a mission statement, with the emphasis on marriage, hate-crime protection, health concerns such as AIDS and breast cancer, anti-discrimination laws, military service and a catch-all platform of racial/social justice.)
            But those complaints seem to be sideshows. The most stinging criticism of the march is that it has become a tedious chore. There is a sense of having lost a certain cha-cha-cha
            "No one is signing up for the Millennium March. People are voting with their feet," says Michael Warner, a Rutgers University professor who wrote a provocative and unpopular screed last year called "The Trouble With Normal," in which he argues that gay marriage is a distraction not worth marching for. Being so off-message, his book was promptly ignored by the gay press and gay bookstores – its best shot at readership. But Warner is undaunted
            "This 1950s version of how gay life should be that we've been handed is actually not making a lot of people happy, which is the only thing that gives me hope," he says. "The Millennium March is just a fund-raiser groping for a theme. The people who have put themselves in charge have wedded themselves so earnestly to the idea of a happy gay and lesbian identity – they seem determined to make gay life as boring as it can possibly be."
            Facing such critics and an uncertain turnout, it's a nice surprise to find that the mood of the Millennium March offices, just up 16th Street from the White House, is jovial, upbeat and busy. "Gay rights is a marathon movement, not a sprint," says Dianne Hardy-Garcia, executive director of the Millennium March
            Hardy-Garcia, a Texas lobbyist and gay rights advocate, was brought in last fall, when the march seemed dangerously close to becoming a disorganized disaster. "This movement lasts years," she says. "I think people forget that. I go to a meeting and get excited that there are 200 people there; then I go to a bar and there are 2,500 people there every night. If that isn't a slap in the face‚. . ."
            The gay bar is still the central focus of gay life. March organizers have done a lot of their grass-roots work there, shaking hands, passing out buttons and flyers, shouting over Cher to be heard
            Hardy-Garcia admits that at times the movement feels redundant, but she reminds her critics that, in an election year, there are serious setbacks that should boil the blood of any gay activist
            If this sounds boring to the just-gay-enough modern homosexual, Hardy-Garcia doesn't want to hear it. If gays feel disenfranchised from the clean, perky images the Millennium March is working so hard to present, "My response is, 'So try, dammit.' Get out there and work. Our work is not done. Our movement is not over."
            The Fun Is Done
            But something's over
            Michael Warner won't be marching this year, since he's not interested in the Army or the Boy Scouts. When he feels "despair," he goes to New York and hangs out with drag queens and the transgendered fabulous. He likes the queens; they keep him on that beguiling edge that he first identified with as a young gay man
            "It reminds me what it's all really about," Warner says. "Transgender activism is finally finding its own voice, and they're not happy to just be the 't' stuck on the end of GLBT."
            Warner can't be blamed: Spend too much time reading about gay politics and you, too, will want to run screaming to a bar
            When not raising a toddler and writing sex advice, Dan Savage tries to revert to the prankish ways of yore
            On assignment for Salon magazine, Savage "infiltrated" Gary Bauer's doomed GOP presidential bid and purported to lick the campaign office doorknobs with his flu-tainted saliva. It wasn't surprising that it caused an uproar among conservatives; what was surprising was seeing Savage get savaged by official gay spokespeople. He finally admitted he'd only licked the doorknobs allegorically. The episode spoke volumes: The fun is done
            "Gay culture is boring because gay culture is going away," Savage says. "And gay culture is going away because the oppression is going away. I think that's a pretty fair trade."
http://washingtonpost.com:80/wp-dyn/articles/A23224-2000Apr26.html

                    Updated 1:36 AM ET April 28, 2000

  By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA, AP Science Writer

  Researchers are reporting encouraging
  progress in experiments to develop an
  unbreakable computer code that harnesses
  the unpredictable realm of quantum physics.

  You'll probably never have to devise a
  quantum password to read your e-mail or get a
  quick $20 from your bank's cash machine:
  Encryption experts said a quantum code would
  be reserved to protect the deepest national
  security and industrial secrets from
  cyber-sneaks.

  But such codes - probably decades away -
  would be vital if ultra-powerful quantum
  computers are developed that could decipher
  even the most complicated conventional
  math-based codes in a virtual heartbeat.

  "If everyone could be sure that a quantum
  computer could never be built, then existing
  algorithm cryptography is good enough," said
  Charles Bennett, a quantum information
  research fellow at IBM's Thomas J. Watson
  Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

  "In a theoretical sense, quantum cryptography
  provides absolute security," said Bennett, who
  did not contribute to the latest studies.

  Encryption is a lot like evolution. Since the
  Roman Empire, code-makers have been
  constructing ever-more complex formulae to
  keep information secret. Clever opponents
  don't rest until they find the new code's
  weakness and crack it. Then the cycle repeats
  itself.

  Quantum codes rely on the principles of
  quantum mechanics, which allow matter and the
  information it carries to exist in several
  states simultaneously. Only the sender and the
  receiver would know the code and agree upon
  the quantum state in which they would use it.

  Since quantum states are very fragile, an
  effort by an outsider to intercept the
  message and read it would automatically
  disturb the quantum state. Not only would the
  information be unreadable, it would alert the
  receiver that somebody was eavesdropping.

  Several quantum experiments already have
  succeeded in delivering encoded information in
  weak flashes of photons, or light particles.

  In the latest research published in the May
  issue of Physical Review Letters, scientists at
  Los Alamos National Laboratory and
  universities in Geneva and Vienna, Austria,
  manipulated the photons to improve their
  security and reliability.

  Rather than transmit information within a
  stream of individual photons, they directed
  the light beam through a crystal, splitting each
  photon into an entangled pair of particles.

  Photons generate an electric field, and the
  direction in which that field vibrates is called
  its polarity. Splitting the photons adds more
  randomness to the photons' polarity and more
  security to the message contained in them, the
  researchers report.

  Both the sender and the receiver have
  equipment to capture photons with the
  agreed-upon polarities and build a key to
  interpret the message.

  However, practical hurdles remain.

  Some quantum experiments have dispatched
  encrypted photons along optical fibers
  measuring about 25 miles. That's far enough
  to send messages between government
  offices, bank branches or laboratories.

  But the photons would wither or change
  quantum states across a nationwide fiber optic
  network or in a satellite relay, experts said. 

                    KAY HARVEY STAFF WRITER

                    In hospice programs, patients are encouraged to
                    say, ``Thank you, I love you, I'm sorry and
                    goodbye.''

                    ``Our philosophy is when it's time, you prepare,''
                    says Phyllis Novitskie, associate administrator of
                    acute care services for HealthEast hospitals. ``In
                    the preparation, there's a magic that occurs. It
                    leaves survivors in a state of grace.''

                    People who live well have a better chance to create
                    a peaceful dying process, say those who work with
                    the dying. Those who have neglected to resolve
                    issues are often riddled with anxiety and guiltat a
                    time when their job is to find a sense of peace, says
                    Dr. Wayne Thalhuber, medical director of
                    HealthEast Hospice Care. It is important for dying
                    people and their families to resolve family issues
                    before it is too late.

                    ``Growth occurs when a dying person lets others in,
                    accepts where they are and attempts to move
                    forward,'' Thalhuber says. ``The best remedy for
                    fear is to share it. It's also good to share love,
                    forgiveness and the spiritual dimension of dying.
                    Dying people can set a marvelous example. I've
                    seen it. Kids and grandkids are propelled forward.
                    It gives meaning to their lives.''

                    But acceptance of dying is a step away from ``the
                    real thing,'' writes Kathleen Dowling Singh in her
                    book, ``The Grace in Dying.'' Next comes the more
                    critical juncture of surrender, a letting go of
                    earthly thoughts and concerns. A function of the
                    dying process rather than the rational mind,
                    surrender involves the melting away of ego as
                    consciousness enters a higher realm. When that
                    process is complete, transcendence from self into
                    spirit has occurred.

                    ``We have reached here a level of soul,'' writes
                    Singh, a transpersonal psychologist in a Florida
                    hospice.

                    For days or weeks before death, it is common for
                    people to talk about seeing visions, conversing with
                    dead loved ones or with God. But after
                    transcendence, many seem to drift in and out of a
                    higher dimension. They report seeing candle-lit
                    stairways or angels waiting to take them home. And
                    while the dying process may be trying, people in the
                    moments before death tend to radiate peace.

                    As Singh sits with people on the brink of death,
                    some tell her they feel ``spirit pour into them'' or
                    that they have ``entered something vast,'' she
                    writes. Many indicate ``they have never felt so
                    truly alive.''
 

© 2000 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press - All Rights Reserved copyright information 

                  Updated 7:58 AM ET April 24, 2000

  MEDELLIN (Reuters) - A husband and wife
  were seized at a Colombian airport on Good
  Friday as they tried to smuggle almost seven
  pounds (3 kg) of cocaine hidden in the pages
  of a Bible on to a flight bound for Mexico,
  police said.

  The couple, in their late 50s, were arrested
  at Rionegro airport on the outskirts of the
  northwest city of Medellin, the former
  power base of the infamous cocaine mob run
  by Pablo Escobar.

  "Our suspicions were aroused when we
  picked up the Bible and saw how heavy it
  was," regional police chief Col. Ruben Carillo
  told reporters.

  He said the couple had also concealed an
  unspecified quantity of the drug in the heels
  of their shoes and the lining of their clothes.

  Colombia is the world's leading cocaine
  producer with an annual output estimated at
  520 tons. 

                  Updated 7:58 AM ET April 24, 2000

  WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish youths marked
  Drenching Monday by hurling water at
  unsuspecting passers-by and tourists in an
  exuberant reenactment of a rural custom.

  The festival, also known as St Drencher's
  Day, began centuries ago as a courtship
  festival in Poland's villages, where boys
  would drench maidens to try and win their
  favor.

  Unlike many rural customs that have
  disappeared over the years,
  "smigus-dyngus" has become increasingly
  popular. And buckets of water are no longer
  reserved for young women.

  Police warned there would be fines for
  anyone caught abusing the custom to ambush
  churchgoers or passers-by. Tourists were
  among the victims this year in Warsaw's
  picturesque Old Town.

  LONDON (Reuters) - It was hard to get to
  the bottom of the story -- whether or not
  British Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife plans
  to use environment-friendly diapers when
  their fourth child arrives next month.

  Blair aides were staying mum on a report in
  the Times newspaper headlined: "Cherie
  Blair pins her faith on green nappy."

  "I can't tell you anything about that I'm
  afraid," said one aide.

  The Times said Cherie Blair had reportedly
  turned against disposable diapers after
  learning how much they damaged the
  environment and cost local authorities.

  Between birth and successful potty training,
  the average baby would soil its way through
  5,000 disposable diapers, the newspaper
  said.

  In Britain that meant that about three billion
  were dumped in landfill sites each year at a
  cost of 40 million pounds, and could take up
  to 500 years to decompose thanks to the
  plastic linings.

  Cherie Blair, 45, expects to give birth to her
  fourth child in late May.

  The Blairs' three other children are Euan,
  15, Nicky 14 and Kathryn, 11.

  By John Hejkal
  Daily Nebraskan
  U. Nebraska

  (U-WIRE) LINCOLN, Neb. -- "No State shall
  make or enforce any law which shall abridge
  the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
  United States ... nor deny to any person within
  its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
  laws."

  So says the 14th Amendment. Let's extend
  that to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
  "UNL shall not make any policy which shall
  abridge the privileges of its students or
  employees ..."

  People of a homosexual orientation, we can
  assume, merit equal treatment and laws.
  Discriminating against them because of their
  orientation would be inconsistent with the
  above premise. The same goes for
  heterosexually oriented people.

  Domestic partner benefits are not necessary
  for equal treatment of homosexuals and
  heterosexuals. Without them, both groups
  receive equal benefit treatment.

  Neither a homosexual nor a heterosexual can
  receive benefits by having a domestic partner.
  Whether someone is a woman or a man, black
  or white, tall or short, it makes no difference.
  If he or she is living at home with a person of
  the same sex (which is basically what domestic
  partner means), that person receives no
  partner benefits. There's no discrimination.

  Because there's no discrimination based on
  sexual orientation, the ideal of promoting the
  sanctity of marriage can be compatible with
  just treatment for homosexuals.

  Discrimination based on marital status isn't the
  same. Equal protection under the laws is
  provided. There are laws about marriage, and
  those laws apply to all equally.

  UNL has a policy of no discrimination on the
  basis of sexual orientation. As demonstrated,
  the policy on domestic partners (or rather,
  lack of policy) is consistent with this broader
  anti-discrimination principle.

  I've many times observed people trying to
  draw a correlation between sexual orientation
  issues and racial issues. So, let's compare.

  Laws segregating marriage were once the
  vogue. On the surface, we may feel that such
  laws are similar to laws prohibiting same-sex
  marriage.

  A black man could not marry a white woman, no
  matter how much they loved each other. They
  could not marry because of their skin colors.
  Terrible? Yes. A legitimate comparison to
  domestic partner or marriage benefits for
  homosexuals? No.

  Inequality was involved in the previous
  example. Not so here. There, a black person
  could not marry a white person of the opposite
  sex. A white person could. Each group received
  unequal treatment. Here, anyone may marry a
  person of the opposite sex and enjoy whatever
  financial ramifications may ensue.

  "But couldn't one use the racial analogy to say
  all people, of whatever race, were once able to
  marry only someone of the same race?" you
  say, "This would be a valid comparison with all
  people, of whatever orientation, being able to
  marry only someone of the opposite sex. And
  both are unjust." This is a game attempt at
  logic, but it fails to hold up.

  Black people were excluded from doing
  something white people could do. Homosexual
  people are not excluded from doing anything
  that heterosexual people can do. Any man may
  marry any one woman. Any woman may marry
  any one man.

  If someone is homosexual, that person may
  choose not to marry, but if that person did
  choose to marry, nothing could prevent it. A
  homosexual man could even marry a
  homosexual woman.

  I've heard people say, "Gays can't get
  married, so they need to have domestic
  partner benefits available."

  As we've just seen, that statement is absolute
  drivel. Homosexual people can indeed get
  married. There's no "straightness test" you
  have to pass.

  If we flip things around, perhaps things will
  become even clearer. Let's say a couple
  straight men are roommates, and they decide
  to get "married" to receive financial benefits.
  They go apply for a marriage license. But they
  won't get one! Even if they say they are
  heterosexual, they will not be allowed to get
  married. That's because homosexual and
  heterosexual people are indeed treated
  equally under the law.

  It would not be fun to want to get married to
  someone of the same sex and not be able to.
  I'm glad I don't have to face that challenge in
  my life.

  Of course homosexuals don't want to marry
  people of the opposite sex. They want to marry
  people of the same sex. I'm not addressing all
  the difficulties that come up when discussing
  how to treat homosexuals with justice. I'm
  simply asserting that whatever is required for
  justice, domestic partner benefits need not be
  included.

  Sexual orientation does not play a role in how
  our law or our university treats someone,
  regardless of that person's sexual orientation.
  It is absolutely equal. We can treat
  homosexuals and heterosexuals as equals while
  working to preserve the ideal that marriage is
  important to society. Let's keep domestic
  partner benefits out of UNL - it's simply
  reasonable.

  (C) 2000 Daily Nebraskan via U-WIRE 

  By Al Edwards
  Kentucky Kernel
  U. Kentucky

  (U-WIRE) LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Oh, damn!
  Oh, hell! Oh, shit! You've heard these words
  before; they're cuss words.

  Cussing in the United States is a common
  thing. People cuss at sporting events, after
  an injury, or on television trying to be funny.

  The words and places of usage are
  different, but students and professors at
  University of Kentucky have shed some light
  on this misunderstood subject.

  Gene Gallagher, a UK sociology professor for
  nearly 40 years, said there are probably a
  couple of reasons why people cuss. He said
  emotions may overflow in a person causing
  him or her to have a slip of the tongue and
  result in cussing, or sometimes a person may
  want to appear forceful with "deliberate or
  controlled cussing."

  "Swearing or cussing can be seen as
  incompetence to use more forceful
  language," Gallagher said. "If you cuss it can
  mean that you have a limited vocabulary or
  that you want to appear more demanding."

  While students may be hesitant to admit the
  curse because of some incompetence, many
  will admit the words slip out frequently.

  "The reason I swear is because I just can't
  think of anything else good to say for that
  moment," said A.J. Kinch, a biology senior. "I
  will also swear because of something exciting
  that just happened like a great moment in a
  sporting event."

  For Kimberly Fogo, an accounting senior,
  cussing can be the quickest outlet of emotion.

  "For me, it's the fastest and easiest way to
  get rid of my anger," she said.

  Regardless of why people cuss, students say
  there is always a time and place for the
  usage of the language.

  "My parents told me it's all right to cuss but
  to do it in appropriate situations because you
  can look dumb," Kinch said.

  Nate Mudd, a junior political science major,
  agreed that circumstance had a huge effect
  on his choice of language.

  "My cussing depends on where I am," he
  said. "If I'm at home with my friends
  watching a game then it's OK, but if I'm with
  my grandparents then it's not."

  While cussing is a part of life for many UK
  students, some of them, even those guilty of
  occasionally cussing themselves, feel that it
  still is not the best way to express one's
  emotions.

  "I don't think that swearing is appropriate. I
  think whatever you're feeling, there is
  always a better choice of words," Fogo said.
  "There is no need to swear."

  The next time one feels the urge to swear,
  merchandising junior Anna Baldwin has this
  advice to give: "People should use their minds
  and come up with better words. This would
  make them, as individuals, stand out and be
  different from everybody else."

  (C) 2000 Kentucky Kernel via U-WIRE

1. I would not allow this employee to breed.

2. This associate is really not so much of a has-been, but
more definitely a won't be.

3. Works well when under constant supervision and cornered
like a rat in a trap.

4. When she opens her mouth, it seems it is only to change
whichever foot was previously there.

5. He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle.

6. This young lady has delusions of adequacy.

7. He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails
to achieve them.

8. This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an
idiot.

9. This employee should go far and the sooner he starts, the
better.

10. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

11. Got into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn't
watching.

12. A room temperature IQ.

13. Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold
it together.

14. A gross ignoramus - 144 times worse than an ordinary
ignoramus.

15. A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on.

16. A prime candidate for natural deselection.

17. Bright as Alaska in December.

18. One-celled organisms outscore him in IQ tests.

19. Donated his brain to science before he was done using it.

20. Fell out of the family tree.

21. Gates are down, lights are flashing, but the train isn't
coming.

22. Has two brains: one is lost; the other is out looking for
it.

23. He's so dense, light bends around him.

24. If brains were taxed, she'd get a refund.

25. If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice
a week.

26. If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'll get
change.

27. If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean.

28. It's hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm.

29. One neuron short of a synapse.

30. Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, he only
gargled.

31. Takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.

32. Wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.

33. Since my last report, this employee has reached rock
bottom and has started to dig.

34. His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid
curiosity.

 WASHINGTON, DC--In a landmark antitrust decision, U.S.
District Judge Thomas Nance ruled Monday that Parker Brothers' controlling interest in the popular board game Monopoly constitutes an illegal Monopoly monopoly.

                            Found guilty of colluding with  Hasbro to corner the Monopoly market--undermining  the production and sale of similar board games and  designing the Monopoly CD-ROM game to "take  over" the user's desktop and keep other games  from being played--Parker Brothers faces fines of  $15,140 and up to three turns in prison.

      In his 62-page ruling, Nance wrote: "In light of the evidence
presented--namely, the myriad versions of the Monopoly board game
produced, from the first edition to the high-tech Monopoly 2000, as well
as the electronic hand-held version, CD-ROM, and video-game editions,
all of which are produced or licensed by Parker Brothers--this court has
no alternative but to find that a Monopoly monopoly is in effect."

      Speaking outside his green plastic Atlantic City office building, lead
prosecutor Milton Bradley told reporters: "These Monopoly monopolists
have been allowed to park free for way too long, and it's high time they
went directly to jail. We're talking about a company so dominant, it has
leveraged its board-game success into a multi-tentacled goliath with
holdings in railroads, real estate, electric utilities, and water works."

      In testimony last Friday, Parker Brothers CEO Rich Uncle Pennybags
insisted that his company has never violated antitrust laws at any time.

      "Quite simply, we are being punished for being too successful," the
mustachioed tycoon told a packed courthouse. "Monopoly is the world's
most popular, best-selling board game, and it has become so not through
any anti-competitive practices, but simply by being a quality product that
people want to buy. Isn't that the way capitalism is supposed to work?"

      In making its case, the prosecution presented evidence of numerous
questionable activities on the part of Parker Brothers, including making a
series of illegal $200 payoffs to Go-passing associates, operating a
grand-opera ticket-scalping ring, and engaging in price-gouging, charging
$1275 for a three-minute stay at one of its luxury hotels on Atlantic
City's North Carolina Avenue.

      Prosecutors also accused Parker Brothers officials of
money-laundering, both in offshore accounts and so-called "under the
board" money. Parker Brothers attorneys argued that the extra funds
were due to a bank error in the company's favor, but prosecutors cited
tax forms showing that the company opted to pay a flat income tax, per
Atlantic City law, rather than have 10 percent of its gross worth
calculated. Receipts for a luxurious diamond ring taxed at $75,
presented late in the prosecution phase, proved similarly damaging to the
defense.

                                  "Clearly, this is not the squeaky-clean
                            company Mr. Pennybags would have you believe
                            it is," Bradley said. "And while we're on the
                            subject, what about Pennybags himself? How
                            reputable is he? This is, after all, the man who,
                            in 1997, attempted to cover up his
                            second-place finish in some sort of bizarre
                            beauty contest for elderly men."

      The guilty verdict comes at a bad time for Parker Brothers, which is
already reeling from plummeting stock, a shrinking market share, and a
recent assessment for street repairs on all its buildings. Attorneys for
the company attempted to plead insolvency, presenting as evidence
numerous face-down title deeds for holdings, but Nance was unmoved.

      "From the McDonald's Monopoly game to Monopoly slot machines in
Las Vegas to such college-themed games as Michiganopoly and Notre
Dameopoly, Monopoly has so thoroughly dominated its arena, it can only be
regarded as anti-competitive," Nance wrote in his decision. "No board
game should wield this much clout in a free and open marketplace."

      Business watchers say the verdict was long overdue.

      "Pennybags is one of the most predatory and underhanded figures in
the history of the toy-and-game industry," Fortune associate editor Craig
Black said. "This guy was literally writing his own rule book. He stabbed
everyone in the back to get the world's most popular board game all to
himself, and once he did, it was like a license to print his own money."
 

© Copyright 2000 Onion, Inc., All rights reserved. http://www.theonion.com/

                 Jennifer Viegas
                 Special to ABCNEWS.com

                 April 21 — Now that the Easter  season is here, jellybeans are as  ubiquitous as stuffed bunnies,  colored eggs and baby chicks. Upon     first sight, and taste, these candy favorites of presidents and                 children alike seem to be simple  sugary morsels that manufacturers       whip out in mere minutes.   Not so. Like fine wine, a good jellybean will not be  served before its time. It  actually takes about seven  days to make the treats.  Candy makers have been  baffled by this for more than  a century. They know how to   prepare the beans, but can’t understand why it takes a full week to make one little candy.
                      Gregory Ziegler, associate professor  of food science at Penn State University,  set out to solve the jellybean mystery.               The answer, he suspected, had to do with how the beans get their chewy center  while maintaining a hard coating.  With postgraduate student Michelle Troutman and Dr. Bruce Balcom, director  of the University of New Brunswick’s   Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research  Center, Ziegler analyzed the arduous jellybean-making process.
                      Candy manufacturers, he says, “have an  empirical understanding of how the  process works on a day-to-day basis, but       the science behind it has remained a mystery.”

                 Start With the Center
                 Beans are made from the inside out,  starting with their centers. A gooey  mixture of corn syrup, sugar and  flavorings is cooked in a big kettle, and  then poured into trays containing molding  starch. The centers dry overnight and become hard and tough, resembling  nothing like their gel-like consistency at the end of the process.
 

                 “You wouldn’t want to eat them at this  stage,” warns Ziegler, whose next  research project involves studying  jellybean starch molding.
                      The second big step involves   “engrossing,” or putting a sugar shell over  the centers. After the center has been  engrossed, candy makers must then wait   two to four days before they can polish
and package the jellybeans. Ziegler and  his team focused on this pre-polishing  delay.

                 Jellybean MRI’s
                 The scientists carefully halved newly   made jellybeans in the aging stage and  photographed the sections using MRI    equipment. What they discovered was a bit of scientific and culinary magic.   As it turns out, moisture from the  coating ingredients gradually is drawn  away from the outside shell and into the  center of the bean.
                      “It’s almost like curing cement,”  explains Ziegler. “The curing time has two  opposite, but essential, functions: It  hardens the shell, but softens the center.  There is no way to artificially stimulate       that process.”   Ziegler explains that the scientific  principle underlying this is molecular  diffusion, with the driving force for the  diffusion being osmosis, which is the  movement of water from an area of higher               concentration to one of lower  concentration.
                      Further, in beans, the glucose (corn syrup) in the center actually attracts  water to a greater extent than the   sucrose (cane or beet sugar) in the shell.   One reason is that sucrose tends to     crystallize, and therefore retains less water.

                 Candy-Maker Angst
                 Over the years, jellybean manufacturers  have fruitlessly tried to speed up the  curing stage.  Michelle Frame is product development  senior scientist for Just Born of  Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, makers of the  following jellybeans: Teenee Beenees,  Mike and Ikes and Hot Tamales. Just  Born also produces another Easter basket             favorite, Marshmallow Peeps. The  company, along with Goelitz (Jelly Bellies) and a few others, provided Ziegler and his  team with test beans.
Frame says Just Born has tried to  harden the shells and soften the centers  by refrigerating the beans. They also  experimented with blowing dry air over  the candies. All attempts to reduce the   curing time resulted in dried out blobs.   “Every day, thousands of pounds of              curing jellybeans sit on racks in our  manufacturing center,” says Frame. “They require an environmentally controlled   storage area and take up lots of valuable floor space.”
     High-Tech Beans In Future?

                 Now that Ziegler’s team has explained the  mechanism behind the curing process, candy makers like Frame hope that they  may be able to cook up jellybeans more  efficiently, and at reduced cost.    For example, Ziegler speculates that   the recipe could be reformulated, so that  water activities could be equalized from  the start of the cooking process. But, he  says, this might compromise the jellybean’s taste and texture.
                      In the foreseeable future, jellybeans  will continue to be made using traditional  methods. Frame still thinks the research sends a  valuable message to all of those who might   munch on the candy by the mouthfuls.   She says, “Most people don’t realize   how long it takes for us to make jellybeans. By understanding the cooking  process, maybe people will enjoy them  more and won’t take them for granted.”
 

                 Jellybeans’ Colorful History
                 In the 1800s, candy makers developed new panning
                 equipment that enabled them to experiment with
                 new, difficult-to-make sweets, like gumdrops,
                 jawbreakers and jellybeans. These are virtually
                 impossible to produce at home, so kids and parents
                 at the time were immediately taken with the new
                 edible novelties. The resulting sweet tooth frenzy
                 began what is known in confectionary circles as
                 “The Penny Candy Craze.”
                      Jellybeans came on the scene around 1861.
                 Evidence for this appears in an ad featuring beans
                 made by William Schrafft and Company of Boston.
                 The ad promotes jellybeans as a great treat to
                 send to Union Army soldiers.
                      Chocolate became more popular in the early
                 1900s and caused the penny candy boom to wane.
                 Things at this point were looking mighty grim for
                 the humble jellybean.
                      World War II turned things around. During the
                 war, most of the nation’s chocolate was
                 distributed to soldiers overseas. Also, the Great
                 Depression and the hardships of war put consumers
                 in the mood for a bit of light-hearted comfort
                 food.
                      Jellybeans foot the bill. With their then-pastel
                 colors, they became associated with Easter in the
                 1930s. But, because jellybeans take so long to
                 make, manufacturers only prepared them during
                 the holiday season. This changed in the 1950s, with
                 the advent of better production techniques to suit
                 increased demand.
                      While their blissful marriage with Easter and
                 springtime endures, jellybeans now may be enjoyed
                 year round.

The Married Man
 

A little bit of White
    mischief

    by William Leith
 

    Edmund White, the novelist who has chronicled nearly half  a century of gay life,  is in London to promote his latest book, The Married Man, an autobiographical account of two men  who fall in love in  Paris. Regular readers  will not be  disappointed; the book  is as frank, lucid and   revealing as the rest  of White's work.
    "Straight writers," he  tells me, "are worried   about their reputation    with their own partner. They don't want to   reveal too much. Whereas gay people are  much more relaxed about it."

    White, 59, writes about people who, like  himself, have had sexual encounters with  thousands of men. In novels such as The    Beautiful Room is Empty and The Farewell  Symphony, his characters launch
themselves into sex with astonishing vigour  and ferocity - they cruise, hustle and trick  their way through White's pages. They  have anonymous encounters in bath houses  and sex clubs. They drink, take drugs, tie    each other up, make dirty phone calls. "It just seemed normal," White tells me.
    "Once in a while a man my age will come up  to me at a reading and say, 'You're the  only one who says what our lives were  actually like'."

    Having worn kaftans and beads in the  Sixties, velvet jackets in the Seventies  and a clone moustache in the Eighties,  White is now the soul of respectability in a tweed jacket. He has neat, short hair and    a quizzical, observant manner. He has an  air of the actor Roddy McDowall. An    outsider for much of his life, he has no  haughtiness or grandeur. "New York in the  Seventies," he says, "was one of the most    exciting periods that I've ever even read  about, much less experienced. People    thought nothing of going to the opera and    then going to a back room."

    Men and women, he believes, have  different attitudes towards sex. "I think  women in general expect fidelity from  men, and men who love women try to  accommodate themselves to that  standard, though it's a very unnatural one  for them. A gay man can stay in love with  his partner and have lots of adventures on the side."

    His life's work has been to write about  what he calls the "rapid cycle" of gay life.  Quoting from The Farewell Symphony, he  says, "gays were oppressed in the Fifties,  freed in the Sixties, exalted in the  Seventies, and wiped out in the Eighties."
    The latest novel, set in the Nineties, features a character called Austin, based  on White, who begins the story living in  Paris, HIV positive and single. Austin  assumes he will "be dead in two or three  years, or in a year, if he was less lucky".
    Even so, he is "alert to even the grubbiest  sexual possibility", and when he meets a  married man in a gym, his journey towards  death, the "cold way" as White puts it, is  enlivened by an unexpected detour. Soon,  Austin finds himself experiencing the sort  of pleasure "a straight stud must feel  when he's racked a woman with yet  another orgasm".

    This is very close to White's own story; he lived in Paris, where he met and fell in love  with Hubert Sorin, a married man. White  has been HIV positive, to his knowledge,  since being tested in 1985. His condition,    he has been told, is non-progressive, although for years he went through life  like a ghost, assuming he was near the end.  He does not look, to use his own word,  "Aidsy"; if anything he looks fleshed-out, well fed.

    "I've never taken any medication," White tells me. "Either I have a genetic defence  against Aids, or I was infected with a very  weak strand of the virus." In real life,  Hubert Sorin died of Aids and the disease    makes a sudden, dramatic appearance in  the new book. As a writer, White is as  frank about disease and death as he is  about sex. He describes one dying  character as "a saint ... who has already  moved halfway towards transcendence"; later, he is a "death's head shaking on a  stick".

    White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to  wealthy parents; he says he was   tormented by the secret of his  homosexuality. "Freud said the purpose of  psychoanalysis is to turn neurotic anguish into ordinary human suffering and I think  I've followed that trajectory," he tells  me. Now he works at Princeton as a  teacher of creative writing. He says he    believes that if a teacher is frank about  his sexuality, it leads others to be frank  about theirs, "... whatever it is. I mean,  I'm always hearing stories about my  students' abortions and affairs."

    There is, he believes, still a deep underlying prejudice against    homosexuality. When I ask him the reason  for this, he answers without hesitation.
    "Christianity's the problem," he says.
    "Judaism and Christianity. Islam's no
    better. To me, religion is the great enemy.
    I despise it."

    White cofounded the Gay Men's Health  Crisis with Larry Kramer and others. He believes that separate gay and straight  ages of consent "don't make sense" but is  against the practice of "outing". He thinks    "barebacking" - unprotected gay sex - is terrible, although he admits to having done  it himself, years ago. After five years with  his current partner Michael Carroll, a  35-year-old teacher, Carroll is still HIV    negative.

    "Condoms are the whole secret," says  White, "but it helps not to be drunk or  stoned."

    How does it feel to have had so many   sexual partners? "People like to tease you  about it," says White. "Sometimes it was  genuinely anonymous and fleeting and  sometimes you could spend an incredible  night with somebody in the baths, talking  to them all night long and sharing all your   secrets and, though it was only one night, it   was sometimes one of the most searing  experiences of your life, something you'll  remember on your deathbed."

    • The Married Man is published by Chatto

  Staff Editorial
  Daily Collegian
  Pennsylvania State U.

  (U-WIRE) UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- James  Dale, a former member of the Boy Scouts of  America, was expelled from the association  upon the group's learning he was gay.

  The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the  case of the Boy Scouts of America vs. James  Dale next month when the Boy Scouts appeal a  decision by a New Jersey court.

  That court earlier ruled the expulsion of Dale  from the association because his sexual orientation violates the state's  anti-discrimination law.

  While the organization should allow Dale to remain a member, it does have the right to choose its own members. The policy was in  place before Dale's sexual orientation became  association knowledge.

  But not allowing Dale, an Eagle scout and former assistant scoutmaster, to remain in the  organization works against the Boy Scouts of  America's goals: As a service organization, the volunteer spirit of its members is what makes  the association what it is.

  Excluding someone from a service organization on the basis of his or her sexual orientation is contradictory to the term "community service."  If Dale is willing to serve, then it goes against the group's mission to reject him.

  By forcibly removing Dale from the Boy Scouts, the organization is reacting to a particular  stereotype: that of the pedophile gay man.

  However, Dale's sexuality was never questioned publicly until his name was found in a  newspaper in connection with a gay student  group that he was a part of at Rutgers  University; he was not flaunting his sexuality in  front of other Boy Scouts of America members.

  Dale was a model scout -- by achieving the rank of Eagle Scout, he has proven his worth as a model citizen who worked to better his  community.

  The leaders of the association had no problems with Dale's service before they found out he was gay; why should the association have  problems with his service now?

  If a citizen is able to serve his community well and his sexual orientation never prevented him  from doing so, then there is no reason to block  his readmission into the organization.

  It's time the Boy Scouts of America employs  something like the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Though it is Boy Scout policy to not extend  membership to homosexuals, the Boy Scouts had no problem with Dale until they happened  upon the newspaper article in question.

  It's also time the association takes the high  road and voluntarily changes its membership policy. By taking the issue to court, the  association is making a private matter  unnecessarily public.

  Giving to the community is not a service that only heterosexual males can provide. Service is  nondiscriminatory, and by keeping a model  citizen in the Boy Scouts of America can only  help the association's image, not tarnish it.

  (C) 2000 Daily Collegian via U-WIRE